Good Habits with Social Media Lead to Success in Sales

by Aaron Zwas

Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are making headlines on almost a daily basis.  Despite their increasing ubiquity, however, many in the business world are not wholly convinced of the effectiveness of these platforms as sales tools or channels that generate revenue.  While the tide is slowly turning, this appears to be especially true within sales teams and at small and mid-sized companies.  The truth is that a notable upside can be realized when businesses engage their clients through social media.  The challenge is in realizing that engaging in these channels requires more than a Facebook profile, however.  Real success depends on articulating a detailed strategy and working from a proper plan.  If used correctly, these elements can help Sales teams achieve and, just as important, measure success.

In today’s post, we’ll walk through a basic plan that can be used to walk a sales organization from being “social media illiterate” to deriving actionable prospect intel and revenue.  Remember that the plan is never exactly the same for any two organizations, so, by design, these steps are iterative.  In general, it is best to start small, take notes, and refine.

Step One: Confirm that You Are Ready for This
Engaging in social media requires buy in from a variety of teams within the organization, not just Sales or Marketing/PR.  Customer Service should be involved.  Same with order fulfillment and product development.  Be sure that there is executive buy-in to experiment and learn together in social media.  If there are any members of the organization who have a natural interest in these platforms, consider how they might be able to support the effort.

Step Two: Be Clear on What Social Media Can Do for You
The goals of social media can vary per business, but in general fall somewhere within this list:

• Identify new pre-qualified audiences: that is, individuals, groups, and businesses who are already engaged in conversations related to your product or services
• Learn more about potential clients’ needs
• Learn more about public perception of your product and those of your compset
• Identify customer service issues that can be routed to appropriate members of your organization
• If worked properly, establish yourself as a “thought leader” within your market
• Energize customers who advocate for your product.  In turn, they multiply your sales efforts, providing informal customer support, and – best of all – do it for free!
• …and last but not least, increase revenue.

As a salesperson, most if not all of the above items are most likely part of your general client-acquisition strategy already.  Proper use of social media channels helps to amplify the effects of these efforts.  The next step, monitoring and listening, will help you to define your specific goals while you process feedback from customers and learn from your competitors.

Step Three: Start Listening
The double-edged sword of social media is that your clients are already talking about you and your market, whether you like it or not.  The plus side of this is that you can quickly dip your toe into the streams of these discussions without having to commit up-front time to development costs or content creation.  Consider these general steps:

• On Twitter, set up a profile and create a few saved searches based on your company name, products, market, and compset.  Example: If you are an Audi car dealership, you might set up searches for “Audi”, “TT” (one of their car models), “Lexus” and “Luxury Cars.”
  • Tip:  At first, it’s ok to set up a “listening” profile that does not include your company name.  You can create a more brand-appropriate profile later.
• Use a standard search engine to find blogs, forums, and other online communities that might be dedicated to topics of interest to your target market segment.  Example:  If your business sells custom kitchen cabinets, you might want to look for foodie and gourmet cooking forums, along with “home redesign”.  Bookmark these and begin to read.
  • Tip:  Also search specifically within Yahoo and Google groups, as well as About.com.
  • Tip:  If you find several sites and are finding it hard to keep up, consider use of an RSS reader.  For the sake of (attempted) brevity in this post, I encourage you to contact me directly if you’d like to learn more.
• On Facebook and LinkedIn:  Set up profiles here, too.  Search for relevant groups, organizations, and people.  Especially in Facebook, join groups and become a fan of relevant complementing/competing businesses.
• Now you are set up to listen.  Check in regularly.  Try for about 15 – 30 minutes each day.  Discover.  Take notes.  Ask yourself what you are learning about… 1) your audiences’ needs, 2) the topics and special offers that seem to be gaining traction, 3) individuals (usually bloggers) and groups of particular influence, and 4) the perception of your own organization “out there” in the public forum.

Step Four: Start Contributing
When contributing to the conversation, remember that what matters most is to provide value to your readers.  Try following these general steps, at your own pace, to build yourself up towards creating your own meaningful content.

• Begin by simply forwarding relevant/useful content.  This is the easiest step of content generation and a natural next step after listening.  This type of activity establishes you as a source of information, which encourages people to follow you.  When you find someone else’s useful content, forward it!  Include a short comment of your own and then include the URL (the link) back to whatever content you are referencing.
  • The major source of this content will be the connections you set up in the previous steps.
  • Tip:  Use a URL shortener like bit.ly to fit links into your tweets AND to track how many people are clicking on them.  This is a great first indicator of the response rate of your own content.
• The next level up is to comment on others’ blogs or status updates.  This is a baby step towards authoring content with deeper thought and can be accomplished with minimal agita and time commitment.
  • Tip:  The comments should be focused on furthering the conversation, not to shill your goods.  If you have a relevant product, however, it is ok to link back to the appropriate page on your own site.
• Finally, author your own content.  Include links.  Keep it short and lively.  The specifics of this might play out into a blog and vary notably per business model and goals.
  • Tip:  Consider WordPress if you are going to begin your own blog.  It’s free and includes a variety of useful reporting tools.

Step Five: Measure
Although the supporting technology is not fully matured, it is possible and important to measure success in these efforts.  On the one hand, it is easy to measure readership in terms of quantity of people who are fans on Facebook, for example.  But how does this translate into ROI?  Solutions vary per business model, but a common early tactic is to experiment with coupon codes that are offered through a specific channel only.  Use of web analytics tools, even free ones like Google Analytics, can also offer valuable insight into the payoff of your social efforts.  Look for correlated effects.  Did a specific post or offer generate a spike in your social media metrics (ie: more followers)?  If yes, look for a related spike in revenue.  When possible, seek to narrow the revenue spike to the products and services related to the social media campaign.

Step Six: Entrench Your Habits and Integrate
It will take you a few weeks to a few months, depending on the size of your organization and other factors.  At this point, however, you should have the following in place:

• Defined people assigned to reviewing and creating social content.
• Regular and consistent updates to various profiles
• Perhaps one or two test runs with special offers
• A fundamental understanding of where your target market segment prefers to “talk.”
• A social media lay of the land, especially in understanding the sophistication of your clients’ efforts in these channels.

With these items in place, it’s time to integrate.  Review your owned media assets, including your websites, advertising, the signatures in your email and more.  Ensure that you make it easy for clients to find your social media profiles on Twitter, Facebook, and anywhere else where your customers are.

Step Seven: Repeat and Evolve
Perhaps the greatest challenge with social media is to understand that it is not an effort that has an end point.  Once your brand is out there, it’s out there to stay.  As the cost/benefit of social efforts is proven, your organization’s strategies around social media will evolve.  Depending on needs and budget, you’ll want to consider a more detailed review of audience demographics and technology use.  There might be needs for custom Facebook pages, more advanced monitoring tools, and a formal development of policies and SOPs related to interacting with clients through these channels.  Over time, a fully-realized social media program can take some burden from customer support and research & development teams, for example.

Regardless of the next steps, however, remember that one of the unique benefits of social media is that the results can be measured.  At all times, be sure to understand how you will define and measure success.

Since 2003, Aaron Zwas has based his work upon the belief that the structured analysis of organizations is a key contributor to strategies that maximize the ROI of mergers and acquisitions.  Aaron has specialized in organizational efficiency and supporting technologies for over a decade, and he places a special emphasis on repeatability and transfer of knowledge to his clients.

In his role as Director of Social Media at Digital Marketing Works, Aaron combines his structured operations-oriented approach with his native enthusiasm for social media and consumer technology.  The result is a consultancy that emphasizes the methodology and measurement of social media and mobile efforts with a particular focus on ROI.  To learn more about Aaron and Digital Marketing Works…

• www.DigitalMarketingWorks.com
• blog.DigitalMarketingWorks.com
• www.Twitter.com/DigiMktgWorks
• www.Twitter.com/aaronzwas
• www.google.com/profiles/aaronzwas