Social Selling: 11 Best Practices To Apply In 2022

Are you looking to develop your marketing strategy through social selling, but not quite sure how to go about it? You are in the right place.

Perform competitive intelligence

A presence on social networks can facilitate its competitive intelligence. By following your competitors, your suppliers, your partners, your customers and prospects, you obtain a lot of information. This monitoring can also make it possible to identify new leads .

You can also use media lists or feeds to see what others are saying about you, your industry, or your competitors. There are free or paid tools for this.

This watch also allows you to observe requests for recommendations and sources of dissatisfaction, which will give you the opportunity to express yourself and stand out.

Choose the right networks

Being present on social networks does not mean being everywhere. It is essential to choose the networks that resemble us or that can be useful to us. In addition, it is better to select some of them to be able to provide regular and continuous work, rather than being on all the networks but not being able to regularly publish relevant content.

You must first ask yourself where your target audience is, something done thanks to monitoring. Also find out about the audiences generally found on each of the social networks. If Facebook allows users to create groups according to their interests and is used by all audiences, even seniors, Snapchat mainly affects young people under the age of 21. Twitter is ideal for disseminating all types of information quickly. A privileged network for journalists and the media, it is also appreciated by teenagers and young adults. LinkedIn , a professional network, is used by individuals, but also by B2B companies. instagram, based on the visual, is preferred by women and young people. It is interesting for companies related to the creative environment and aesthetics (art, fashion, architecture, photography, cooking, etc.).

Take care of your profiles

After choosing the social networks to focus on, take care of your profiles . The essential networks, in the professional environment, remain LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. On LinkedIn, do not just write a CV but prefer a “customer centric” approach. Your content must make it easier for your customers or prospects to find your profile. For your profiles or company pages, be careful to properly document all your information, your contacts, the links pointing to your website and your other social networks and to use good quality photos (profile, cover, etc.). For LinkedIn, also be careful to give a clear and catchy title and to write a professional summary (details on experience, background and expertise). For more concrete, you can add videos, portfolios, anything that can enrich your profile and make it more attractive and effective. Your profile should appear when prospects or customers search for your industry. Stand out as an expert and leader in your field.

Develop your network

Before expanding your network of new relationships, pay attention to your existing network. To develop your network, a time-consuming process, you can force yourself to spend between 15 and 30 minutes each day. Increasing your number of relationships is good, but quality is better than quantity. Your quality relationships can facilitate the meeting and relay your content. Invite indispensable and influential people . Never mix personal and professional network.

The invitation request, accepted or not, do not hesitate to show attention to your relations. Take an interest in their content, like, comment. Do not use robots to automate and save time on this step, so as not to affect your image. Get active and build real relationships. Be approachable and human.

LinkedIn is particularly useful when seeking new connections in a social selling strategy . First add the people you meet professionally: customers, prospects, suppliers, partners… Expand your network to include their relationships, then look for new targets , thanks to the advanced search, filtering by region, sector, position,… the same approach can be implemented on Facebook. On the latter platform, you can also use groups.

Choose the right tone

To communicate through your networks, you must choose a tone that you will stick to. Define the vocabulary to be preferred, the one to be avoided, the level of language, the familiarity or the vouvoiement, the dose of humor or seriousness, … to be used in all your publications. This voice will be the identity, the personality of your company . It is to be determined according to the culture and values ​​of your company, your community and the type of conversation desired (authentic, sincere, attractive, etc.).

Frequency and editorial calendar

You need to provide your community with relevant content on a regular basis , without overwhelming them with information. You have to find the middle ground. The frequency of publication ideals varies in particular according to the social network. For example, on Twitter allowing to publish very short posts, you can make between 3 and 5 daily posts. On Facebook, the good routine is 2 daily publications and on LinkedIn, one per day. And that, every day of the week. Nevertheless, this regularity seems ambitious. You can then try to respect a less sustained weekly rhythm. You need to establish a real publishing routine. Then try to post at least twice a week on LinkedIn and at least once a day on Twitter and Facebook to be visible.

Tools exist to automate the publication and integrate an editorial calendar . You can then prepare all your posts for the week at once and set aside a day for this purpose. The tool will take care of the publication according to the schedule.

Variety of publication sources

Vary your content . You can produce blog articles, more visual posts (like infographics, video tutorials, behind the scenes photos, …) and downloadable content (guides, white papers, tools, …). On your networks, you can also distribute content that you have not produced from A to Z, such as articles relating to your sector, news in your field, etc. Position yourself as a source of intelligence and bring to your prospects the information they need.

Variety of formats

Also remember to vary the formats : attractive visuals (photos on the ground, behind the scenes, of a trade show, infographics, etc.), videos (facecam, tutorial, corporate videos, etc.), blog articles and on LinkedIn Pulse (business anecdote , good practices, …).

Relevant content to develop your notoriety

Focus on quality and relevance of content . Better to produce less, but quality. You can keep up your posting pace by posting content from other sources. In this case, you can personalize this reuse with a personal comment or a small analysis. But when you produce your own content, it must be precise and effective. It should allow you to stand out as an expert in your sector. Although you can sometimes mention your services and products, do not just commercial content. The strategy of social selling is based on establishing quality relationships that could lead to a sale, but not lead to a sale directly after the first contact. Once again, we focus on quality.

The production of quality content is a guarantee of notoriety. Still with this in mind, you can also intervene in a relevant way in conversations without placing yourself as a seller, but as a simple adviser.

Stimulate the commitment of its targets

To boost engagement, don’t use the cold call technique in a social selling strategy. But then how do you encourage engagement within your network? You have to provoke conversations with your targets. You can then ask questions to your network, launch surveys, etc. Adopting an engaging , sincere and warm tone is also essential. React, like, comment on publications related to your sector of activity, take part in conversations, … A good understanding of your audience is essential to provide them with the appropriate content. You can use tools to provide you with this type of information.

Also, pay attention to the right time to send a first message . You can, for example, take advantage of the fact that one of your contacts is changing jobs or companies to congratulate them. You can also react to a person asking for information, advice to provide him, in a private message, with a useful answer, solutions, etc. You can also target the most committed people in your community. Also identify contacts with whom you have a relationship in common.

Follow up on all these contacts . Report them in your CRM. This lets everyone in the company know what stage of the relationship you are at with the prospect.

Be patient and be pedagogical. Seek to initiate and then maintain individualized discussions with your prospects and not to sell at all costs. Position yourself as an expert in your field and not as a salesman. Your message can provide information about your business such as the link to your landing page or your contacts, for example, but you can also attach downloadable content.

Analyze and optimize your social networks

For a successful social selling strategy, listen to your community . Then use the measurement tools of your social networks. Find out if your content is relevant, if your profiles are complete, if you post at the right frequency and at the right time.

A social selling strategy is practiced on a daily basis. It requires patience and empathy. It revolves around the monitoring of trends and competition, the relay and production of relevant content, the constitution of a quality network, the commitment of its community and, of course, the analysis and measuring its performance.