There’s no denying that social media is a very powerful vehicle for influencing consumer sentiment. The companies that aren’t using social media are losing sales opportunities.
But – there’s so much to know to make it work. Let’s take a look at all the factors that affect performance.
Communicate
Just setting up a presence and randomly tweeting/posting about anything and everything is a sure fire way to damage your brand and lose sales.
The style that you communicate in, the type of things you communicate about all have an impact on your brand, on customer engagement levels and on direct sales. It’s vitally important that considerable thought is given to the style and content. That’s why a social media marketing plan makes sense. It includes factors like:
- What do you want your social media activities to achieve?
- What writing voice will most engage my audience and perfectly reflect Your brand?
- How frequently should YOU be communicating?
- What topics and content will best reflect your brand and achieve your goals?
- How can you maximise interaction with followers?
- What activities can you undertake to use social media as a direct sales vehicle?
Design
Featuring professional profile and fan page images enhances your professionalism online. Having said that, it’s important that you have the right response mechanisms and the right copy on that page, as well as the right ongoing communication.
Engage
People love to have a voice and they love to interact. The more interactive your communication is, the more engaged your audience will be which means the more they’ll want to buy from your company.
Build
Naturally, it’s pointless having a social media presence if nobody is seeing it so it’s important to know how you’re going to attract followers/fans.
- At the bottom of your email signature
- Email list signup functionality from Facebook to your website
- Various places on your website
- On your stationery
- Using search functions to target qualified prospects with interests that are aligned with yours
- Facebook advertising
- Special offers to attract people to your page – competitions and giveaways
- Signage at your premises
- Mentioned regularly in your e-newsletters
Sell
Social Media can be a fantastic vehicle for producing direct sales. There is an art to it, though. Too much direct-selling gets seen as spam. Too little and your sales potential will be wasted.
Before undertaking any sales promotion campaign, map out what you want the campaign to achieve and then map out a series of posts/updates that are designed to build up interest and add value to your list prior to launching the product online.
The result?
Your followers will be more interested in what you have to offer and more excited about the buying opportunity.
Automate
The more you can automate your standard postings across multiple social media presences, the greater your reach will be and the more time you’ll save.
There are a variety of tools that are highly effectively for sending posts/tweets to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and others all at once. there are also a variety of tools that enable you to schedule a variety of posts/updates in advance. Using these tools to their full potential enables you to save up to an hour a day. What’s more, it ensures that your message is being seen by as many people as possible, plus it helps drive direct traffic to your website AND it helps increase your search engine ranking.
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