Get More Sales with Social Media
Wednesday, May 18th, 2011
Social Media is a great marketing tool to use to promote your business, but how can your individual sales representatives use social media to target specific markets and demographics? By using Twitter and LinkedIn, they can find prospects in a variety of ways.
For LinkedIn, this is the gold mine for business professionals because it is the most popular business-oriented social networking site. If your sales rep wants to tap into a new market, they should join groups that are relevant to the market’s demographics. Once they join, they would be able to gather a large amount of leads, and information that is exchanged within these networks of people. When the sales reps are in the groups, they should take a look at who belongs to it, what business those members work for, and what positions they hold. This will give the sales rep an idea of who some of the players are of that industry. The sales rep should also look at the discussions that are held within the groups. This is their chance to listen to what these professionals have to say about their industry. Members may have complaints or questions that your business could help them with. By listening in on these discussions, your sales reps could come across golden opportunities to engage with possible prospects who are in need of your business’s services.
Twitter is another useful sales tool that your sales team should consider taking advantage of. You can find people with specific job positions in particular industries by searching keywords that would be relevant to who you are trying to find. When they find the people and businesses that they are looking for, they should go ahead and follow them. Most of the time businesses follow you back, so once your sales rep is connected with them, there will always be the opportunity for open communication between the rep and business. Have your sales rep follow what businesses are saying, and encourage them to retweet or comment on what their target markets post. If your sales reps do this enough, the people they follow will take notice and become more aware of who your sales reps are and what your business is.
One best practice for engaging with a specific audience on Twitter is to use hashtags. If your sales rep is sharing information about a type of service that would be interesting to an industry, they should put a # symbol in front of the keywords of their post. For example, by me saying “Need Facebook Basics for the #Marketing Services Provider? http://ilnk.me/6644 #socialmedia”, I’d be able to send that post to marketing and social media audiences. By attaching a hashtag to “marketing” and “socialmedia”, my post would appear when people search those keywords. Since I shared an article that I wrote in that post, people would be reading my own advice, so they would start to see me as an informational source for social media and marketing tips. If your sales team has content or finds content that would of interest to a specific audience, they should attach hashtags to the audiences’ keywords. For example, if you wanted to share information on mailing and fulfillment tips, use hashtags like #logistics, #mail, #mailing,
By using these best practices, your sales team can seek out target markets by becoming active on LinkedIn and Twitter. It is important for them to be consistent with their social media activity. You want people to tune in to what you have to say. Remember, the more you participate in social media, the larger your network of prospects will grow.
