Social selling is more than casual posting to keep your Facebook page “alive.” It’s a sales strategy used on social media to find potential customers and nurture them into leads.
To be successful with social selling, you need to provide value to your target audience and stand out. Generally speaking, you can do so by:
- Answering questions sincerely
- Sharing content that educates
- Engaging with new prospects
Let’s dig a bit deeper to see how you can improve your Shopify store’s conversion rates.
Here are the five tips on social selling that will help you to earn more!
1. Figure out your main social media channels
First things first - you don’t have to be everywhere. Just because Tik Tok is the new hot thing now, if your potential buyers are not primarily Gen Z, you really don’t have to spend hours trying to figure out how to monetize the latest Tik Tok dance.
Instead, you need to find where your target audience hangs out the most. Then, invest in building those social media platforms. One way to do it is to use Buzzsumo, an online research and monitoring tool.
Buzzsumo will help you to find the most shared content according to the topic you’re looking for. Sure, it will probably include some of the major social media platforms like Facebook or Instagram. But you may notice some subtle nuances in metrics that will help you to grasp an idea on which social media platforms your content would resonate the most, and you will be able to prioritize your budget accordingly.
You can also check this research of over 60k+ Shopify stores to see where buyers come from depending on different niches. It will give you a good idea in which channels you should invest to maximize your Return on Investment (ROI).
2. Establish yourself as an expert in your niche & provide value
Once you’ve decided on which social media platforms you should be focusing on the most, you need to get in front of your potential buyers there.
One way to get through all the noise is to show that you know your niche - you need to establish yourself as an expert. For example, if you sell dog food on your Shopify store, you could share tips on keeping a balanced diet of your dog, hold question and answer sessions, organize live videos with vets, etc.
The point here - don’t just push your products. Share educational content around your niche, provide real value, and you’ll form a loyal audience that trusts you enough to repeatedly buy from you.
3. Foster a community around your brand
Social media engagement doesn’t “just happen.” To get people talking with you and about you, you need to be proactive in forming a loyal community around your brand.Here are the three main principles of an active community on social media:
- Unifying cause. You need to give people the reason to participate in your community. They need to have a compelling, meaningful cause that resonates with their values at the right timing.
- Recognition. People will engage more when they feel appreciated. It can be as simple as enabling a top fan badge on your Facebook page, or more complex like organizing community awards inside your groups.
- Honesty. Building an online community comes with the risk that some people will express their frustrations about your brand. While it may be tempting to hide or delete such comments, it will backfire if your followers notice such behavior. A smarter thing to do is to be honest, and admit your mistakes, be compassionate. No one is perfect. Your online community will appreciate your willingness to listen.
It is a little bit of work. But get these three main principles covered, and you’ll form not only a loyal community but also get brand ambassadors who are willing to recommend your business to their friends! And that’s the best kind of marketing there is.
4. Be there for your customers
Today, customers expect you to be there for them across all possible channels that you provide. Facebook reported that people exchange over 1 billion messages with businesses every month on Messenger. And if replying to email in 24 hours is still somewhat okay, it’s completely different with social media.
If you want to keep your churn to the minimum, you need to be fast and attentive with your replies. A message left unresponded to can result in a 1-star review, and you will both lose a potential sale and hurt your social proof. And it’s not just about responding on time. It’s also about doing it with attention and care.
To prevent brand damage, you need to have a plan for your customer service on social media. For starters:
- Be organized. Get the tools for message management to reply on time.
- Be easy to find. Make sure your social media icons are not hidden in the footer of your online store.
- Be smart with your voice. While it may be ok to get a bit more fun with GIFs in your Facebook comments when a situation calls for it, make sure you use an appropriate voice when customers are complaining about your products or services.
- Be aware. Your customers might drop you an email and, if you don’t reply in a few hours, they may ping you on messenger. You need to have an internal process in place to track the reason your customers were reaching out to you earlier. If you jump into the conversation with a solution instead of asking the customers to repeat themselves, you will get a much better result.
5. Use social listening
Social listening is the process of tracking your brand mentions on social media and other online communities to understand how your brand resonates online.
Social listening is not just about gathering metrics like the number of mentions. It’s more about trying to understand the mood behind these numbers.
Once you gather the information, you need to analyze it to develop actionable insights to improve your marketing, or, sometimes, even your product.
Social listening can also help you to spot a crisis in its beginning and jump into existing conversations to fix the situation before your brand image is damaged. If you act smart and fast enough, you can even turn negative feedback into social proof by showing your customers that you care.
Want to get started now and not sure where? Check out Hootsuite. This tool will help you to monitor mentions, conversations, keywords, and hashtags.
Key takeaways
If you want to improve your conversion rates, you need to build meaningful relationships with your potential customers on social media.
- Figure out your main social media channels
- Establish yourself as an expert in your niche & provide value
- Foster a community around your brand
- Be there for your customers
- Use social listening
Social selling is a marathon, not a sprint. But if you go for it strategically and consistently, you will not only form a loyal community around your brand, you will see your sales grow.
P.S - B2B Businesses
Lastly, one more important thing to note - social selling is not just for the B2C sector. Potential B2B customers also include social media in their research before deciding whether to buy or not.
So, if you’re in B2B, check out this blog post about social selling on LinkedIn for nine useful tips that will help you meet new prospects. Do you have any more questions about social selling or want to add anything to the discussion?
Leave a comment below!
About Julija
Julija Televiciute is the Head of Content Marketing at sixads, an app that provides ad exchange and ad automation services for online stores. Specialized in copywriting, social media, and dog memes, she helps businesses get creative with ideas for content that creates value and sells. Want to know more ways to attract buyers to your online store?
