Social media marketing plays a different role for a sales professional than it does for a company. From a revenue-generation standpoint, businesses use social media to promote their brand and content, with the ultimate goal of having prospects read their blogs and complete forms on their landing pages to become leads in their marketing databases. As a sales professional, your goals are twofold:
Here are some tips on how you can leverage a social media marketing process to help you be successful.
A corporate blog not only positions the organization as a thought leader, it also provides marketing benefits in terms of increased website traffic. As a sales professional, you have one goal in blogging – to provide useful advice that answers your prospect’s questions thereby establishing you as a person that they want to do business with. Consider devoting the time to write a 400-600 word blog once a week that touches on topics in your industry that are interesting to your prospects. There are free blogging platforms that let you publish your blogs professionally on the web. I recommend Word Press and Google’s Blogger.
Now that you’ve started blogging, it’s time to get your message out to your prospects. The first thing that you need to do is to establish your business accounts on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. Keep them separate from your personal accounts and present a professional image at all times. Don’t be afraid to let your personality show, but don’t include any pictures or other information that you wouldn’t want a prospect to see. I recommend broadcasting two types of posts:
For B2B sales, LinkedIn is 3 times more likely to produce a lead than Twitter or Facebook. However, both Facebook and Twitter provide opportunities to connect with your prospects and monitor what’s important to them. I recommend using social media automation tools like HootSuite that let you schedule posts to all 3 networks simultaneously. There is a free version of HootSuite and a Professional version that cost $9.99 a month. Check them out and see which one is best for you.
In upcoming blog posts, I will explore how to use each of the three networks in detail. For now, let me give you a few brief tips:
Again, these are just a few of the ways you can use social media to help you meet your sales goals. Stay tuned to our blog to get more detailed tips on how to use each of the three networks mentioned above. For you sales professionals that are using social media, please share your thoughts by leaving a comment. Happy selling!