Ready, get set, sell, sell, sell! (how to sell more on social)

01 February 2020By Michelle

Social media is about driving engagement and directing traffic to your website. But ultimately, it’s about generating revenue and boosting sales. Connecting the former with the latter is where most businesses experience plenty of frustration. The secret that links engagement and traffic to revenue and sales is the right strategy – which is formed from four essential steps…

1. Stop with the constant promo posts

People say that they use social medial to…

stay updated on current events (40%)

fill their spare time (39%)

find entertaining content (37%)

This tells us that social media is about connecting with your audience and establishing trust (which won’t come through promo posts that talk about your products).

In order to engage and establish a conversation, your content strategy must understand what matters to your audience. Then and only then will you be able to create content that your audience value.

As a general rule of thumb, posts about your products and services should make up 20% of your postings, while value-focused posts should make up the remaining 80%.

2. Start building your email list

Email is 40x more successful at acquiring new clients than either Facebook or Twitter.

You might go to great lengths to craft blog posts that deliver value and that keep people reading from beginning to end. And yet, very few people move on from your blog to make a purchase. Which is maddeningly frustrating (you don’t mind admitting).

The lack of instant sales can see many businesses throw in the towel on blogging before it’s even had chance to deliver results. What you might be underestimating, is the need to nurture the relationship. For which email is the perfect partner.

When someone signs up to receive your emails they should then follow a gradual workflow, delivering blog posts, downloads, podcasts and other items of value. For optimal results, you should provide content that’s highly relevant to your audience (for which you should segment your recipients – showing your sign ups various options at the stage they enter their email address).

3. Consider collaborating for instant affiliate sales

If you already have a sizeable following and an audience you have a relationship with, an easy and instant boost to your business coffers could come through affiliate products or services.

Consider the tools you trust to run your business – your hosting, team planning, social media management and so on. In many instances these tools will offer affiliate links, and when users sign up using your link you bag yourself some commission from each sale (take the Lead Social Referrer Program as a lucrative example; this program pays out an on-going 10% gross profit share – not too shabby for a product you don’t have to create yourself!).

Lead Social Pro Tip: Be straight up and entirely transparent with your audience – don’t provide links without telling them you’ll receive a small chunk of the sale. Not only can this lead to distrust, it can even get you banned from certain social networks).

4. Weigh up the worth of sponsored posts

An alternative if you have a large, loyal following could be sponsored posts, which are individual postings that other businesses pay you to create – which could be everything from unique images to blog posts onto videos or simple social posts.

Depending upon your following, industry and complexity of the content, the revenue you receive will differ from post to post.

Businesses that invest in sponsored posts are looking for engaged, active communities that fit in nicely with their niche of product or service.

There are increasing numbers of Influencer tools that can connect you with companies seeking profiles just like yours – check out IZEA, Upfluence and Vuelio.