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Many people are frustrated by the disconnect between the use of social media and getting that ever-elusive steady stream of leads (and ultimately, more sales!). It doesn’t have to be that way. Here are three steps you can take today to build a foundation and tweak your social media strategy to make the most of your followers and ultimately, turn them into sales.
1. Think about WHY.
Why are you using social media? If the answer is to help you sell more in your business, you need a strategy that will help your business capture social media leads, and that means giving your fans a way to set up appointments or buy from you, and building your email list for future nurturing and sales efforts. If you can answer “yes” to the following questions, then you’re well on your way. If you can’t, check out our freebie – 4 Easy Ways to Capture Leads on Social Media to get started. Click here to get it now!
- Do you ask for sales or appointments (occasionally)?
- Do your potential customers know what you offer and how to contact you or get more information?
- Do you have ways to capture their contact information?
- Do you have a lead magnet or gated content that will prompt them to give you an email address?
Growing your email list is the perfect way to build a custom audience that is already interested in your services who you can engage with over and over again for free. Take a moment to think about ways you can capture sales leads through social media, and put something in place today. Need more ideas? Download the free IdeaBook: 4 Easy Ways to Capture Leads on Social Media.
2. Do an engagement check.
How engaged is your audience – really? Are you posting awesome content to an orchestra of crickets? Are you even posting the right content? Take an inventory of 10 or 20 of your most recent posts. Are there any patterns that will give you a clue about what your audience likes? Try posting something similar today, and take note of the results.
If you’re feeling ambitious, create a spreadsheet with a couple different post ideas for the next few days or weeks and experiment:
- Use with different types of content (pictures, videos, text, stories, news, just for fun, behind the scenes, etc.)
- Use different types of language (speak in first person, use humor, etc.)
- Post at different times (try late at night for Facebook, or early in the morning for LinkedIn, for example)
Use your spreadsheet to keep track of what worked best for your audience and tweak your posting strategy accordingly.
3. Get organized.
If you find yourself scratching your head about what to post on social media next, this tip is for you. It’s time to create a content bank. Whenever you have an idea for a promotional post or other topic that fits your audience, add it to the content bank. Be sure to include lots of evergreen content (from your website, for example), that you can pull from easily when scheduling your social media posts.
If you’re working with a team, Google Sheets is a great way to collaborate on this. Take a moment to create a simple spreadsheet with columns such as “Content Idea”, “Owner”, “Complete – yes/no”, and whenever you have an idea, add it to the spreadsheet. When you use an idea, mark it complete.
Getting more leads from social media shouldn’t be a headache.
First, get a structure in place so you can capture leads (Need help? Click here to get the IdeaBook). Next, by doing an engagement check, you’ll be able to test which posts and sales language work well for your audience, and finally, by organizing a content bank, you’ll have a readily available arsenal of sales posts to pull from when needed. While there are many moving pieces to the social media puzzle (contact us if you want a custom social media consultation), if you make engagement checks and updating your content bank a habit, you’ll streamline your social selling efforts and ultimately, sell more with social media.
Download the free IdeaBook: 4 Easy Ways to Capture Leads on Social Media
