Social media is the new way that businesses and customers alike engage with buyers and sellers. A long way from the selfie only days, social provides a hub for lead generation, customer care, and spreading brand recognition.

In this article, you'll discover how to use a strong social selling index to gain leads. 

What is Social Selling?

Social selling is a means by which salespeople find and nurture new leads via social media. Sales teams that use social media to generate leads see an 18% increase in potential customers. The Social Selling Index is a sales solution offered by LinkedIn. It measures your performance on social media and helps you improve through social selling best practices. 

Social selling and social media marketing are similar but have key differences. Social selling is about revenue-generating activities. Social media marketing is about growing your brand awareness which isn't always directly related to sales.

Social Selling Best Practices

The best practices of social selling are key ways to find your audience and improve your sales performance. Sellers that spend 25% or more of their time researching prospects believe social selling can reduce this time to 1%. A consistent, measurable effort can lead to higher conversions. 

Always Provide Value

The number one rule of social media for business is: always provide value. As a social seller, how you show up is important. This means you want to present yourself as a credible resource and expert in what you offer. 

Value is offered in the form of informative posts or showing how your product or service solves a common problem. You can also build trust and credibility by sharing engaging content from others. This establishes a network with the creator while leveraging the audience.

Listen and Engage

The next best practice is to always listen and engage with your audiences. You do this by discovering where your audience hangs out. If your customer base is primarily on Facebook, then you should have a presence there. The same goes for other social channels. 

Check out forums and groups your customers engage with on platforms like LinkedIn. This gives you a real view of your customer profile. Read the comments and complaints they leave and respond with ways your product can help. Social listening alerts from popular apps and software can also help with this.

Build Relationships Through Customer Care and Testimonials

Many customers engage with businesses on social networks to handle issues that arise. These are public opportunities to show your potential clients how you interact with customers. It also builds trust and loyalty. 

You can also choose to use your platform to share customer success stories. In a world where buyers check online reviews before making a purchase, this is valuable social proof. It builds a resource of referrals for your customers to pull from when they are making solution-based purchasing decisions. 

The Formula to Your Social Selling Index

The formula to your social selling index is simple: provide value, engage with your audience, and build relationships. The next important idea is to track all inputs and outputs. This way you identify what tactics are working and which aren't.

While simple to understand, these steps may require outside guidance to fully optimize your business. Contact a digital service that has experience in taking your sales team to the next level.