6 Ways To Generate More Sales From Social Media
Social media is an incredibly powerful marketing tool that can help you make more sales. However, you need to know how to build and follow a winning social media strategy if you want to see the best results from your efforts.
So, in this article, we will study six effective tactics that can help you create a viable strategy and get more sales from social media. Read on to find out more.
Find a good balance between promotional and informational posts
While you might primarily be using social media to make more sales for your business, you don’t want all of your content to be promotional — it should be informative, too. Inc. com proposes that businesses use the 80/20 rule of social media marketing. This means 80% of your posts should be informative and entertaining, while 20% should be promotional.
To help you keep a balance with the types of posts you publish, make sure you create a content calendar that outlines all the posts that should go out on your social media accounts within a specified time. This will give you an overview and can help you monitor the ratio of informational to promotional posts that you have coming up.
To give you some inspiration, let’s study the social media feed of a business that does well in finding a good balance between promotional and informational posts.
Take, for example, the Instagram account of Hootsuite, a social media management platform. If you look at their page, you’ll see that they are doing a great job of maintaining a balance between informational and promotional posts. They regularly post educational content with tips that can help their audience succeed on social media. But, from time to time, you’ll also find them posting promotional content on product updates or news about their company.
They’ve found a way to provide both categories of content for their followers, and this can help them build trust and get more sales in the long run. You can also use this tactic for your social media accounts, as it’s a great way to provide value, and it can also help you acquire new customers on social media.
Collaborate with influencers in your niche
Influencers are popular individuals who have a large following on social media and can influence people’s buying decisions. To make more sales, you can power your brand with these influencers so they can market your products or services to their audience.
It can be as simple as providing influencers with free products or services, which they can then promote to their engaged followings. Or, you could pay them to create specific content for your brand. Some companies even partner with influencers on a long-term basis so they can promote the company’s services over a set amount of time.
Before you choose your influencers, you must consider some important factors. Don’t just look at the number of followers they have, for instance. Instead, make sure they are operating in your niche, look at their engagement rates, and check to see if they have a positive relationship with their audience and can actually influence people’s buying decisions. After choosing the influencers you want to work with, try to reach out to them via email and on the platform where they are the most active so you can be sure that they will see your messages and respond.
When you want to work with relevant influencers, make sure that you draft a contract, set clear objectives, and outline all the necessary information and conditions. This helps ensure that all the parties involved know their duties and it can always be referred to at any point of the engagement.
Publish website content your audience needs (and share it)
Content marketing is a very important strategy that you need to include as part of your digital marketing efforts, as it allows you to provide value for website visitors and customers using helpful blog posts or content.
It is also a technique that can help you with link building and SEO so you can improve your rankings on search engines. Plus, content marketing will help you make more sales, show that you know your stuff, and play a significant part in building your brand reputation.
When you’ve created a new piece of content, it’s important that you share it on social media so it can reach a wider audience, raise awareness of your brand, and drive more traffic to your site.
There are specific kinds of content that tend to be the most helpful and shareable. For example, you could create how-to-guides that give your audience step-by-step instructions on how they can perform specific tasks. Or you could use your blog posts to answer some of the questions that are bothering people in your niche.
You could also provide buying guides to help prospects make the best choice when looking to invest in new tools or products. Alternatively, you can create expert round-ups that include valuable quotes and opinions from respected authority figures in your niche.
To give you some inspiration, let’s take a look at an example of a great how-to guide. The company behind this piece of content could then share this guide time and time on social media, which is bound to get more eyes on it and lead to more sales for the business.
S&L Beauty Company is a cosmetic brand that sells gel nail polish and, on their website, they’ve got a great example of a how-to guide that can help their audience. It’s a simple guide to doing gel nails at home.
The guide lists out the different items that people would need for this task and outlines the process for a gel manicure in eight easy steps. It’s a really valuable post that can help readers do their nails without needing a trip to the salon. They can also decide to share this post on social media to educate more people and possibly get sales from their followers.
If you also want to create helpful blog content and share it with your audience on social media, make sure that you’re using intriguing captions that will get your followers’ attention. This will motivate them to click on your post so they can get access to the full article on your site.
Make it as easy as possible for people to make a purchase
In order to gain as many sales from social media as possible, you need to make the purchasing process very simple. If your followers hit any snags when trying to make a purchase, it could slow them down and even cause them to change their minds.
So, to avoid that, try to make the purchasing process as simple as possible. This will help optimize your online sales funnel and make it easier for people to convert to customers from social media.
To simplify the buying process, try using the shopping features of the social media platforms you’re on and ensuring that your checkout process is quick and easy. Also, you could publish posts that advertise your products and include the exact links to the items on your site so people can buy without any stress.
Use social media to show your products or services in action
An effective social media marketing strategy you can use is to let people see your products or services in action. This shows them what they’re getting and can motivate them to make a purchase. For example, you could show your products in action by using them to create your social media posts (if applicable). Or you could share demonstration videos to highlight the features of your products.
You could also create informative videos to educate your audience about the benefits of your products or services. And, lastly, you can share user-generated content as a way to show your followers how real customers are using your products.
Now let’s look at how some businesses use social media to show their products or services in action.
Venngage is an online infographic maker and, if you take a look at their Instagram account, you’ll find that they are doing a great job of showing their product in action. They do this by using their tool to create all the visual content posted on their social media. For instance, take a look at this post where they explain the way brands use video content.
You can see that they’ve used their infographic maker to create all the images and charts that have been uploaded to their Instagram account. This is an excellent way of showcasing how high-quality their tool is, and it can help them get more sales from people who might have been looking for a new design tool.
Our second example is from Starbucks, one of the most popular coffeehouse chains in the world. Looking at their account on Instagram, you’ll see that it’s populated with pictures and videos of people who have bought their drinks.
By displaying user-generated content, they’ve found a way to show their products being enjoyed by actual customers. This can catch their audience’s attention, build trust, and get more people to buy from the brand. You should look into using any of the methods we’ve mentioned to showcase your products or services in action, as it can help you build awareness and get more customers.
Stay consistent so you’re always on your audience’s minds
One of the keys to making more sales is ensuring that your audience thinks about you regularly. Then, when they need your products or services, they’ll come straight to you.
To ensure that you’re staying consistent, make sure you create a social media content calendar to outline all the content that you’re supposed to schedule over a given period of time. You can also use a bulk scheduling tool to plan and post everything in advance — this will save you time and help you stay organized.
If you need some help in choosing an adequate tool, you can take a look at this guide from SocialPilot that lists some Facebook publishing tools you can use for your business. And the great thing is these tools can actually be used for any social media platform.
By making sure that your followers see your posts regularly, you’ll be able to ensure that you’re among the first options they think of when they need certain products or services, and that will lead to more sales for your business.
Summary
If you aren’t already using social media for your business, then you’re missing out on a lot of benefits, like the opportunity to get your brand in front of a new and wider audience. But it’s not too late, as you can start by using the tips we’ve outlined in this article..
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Author bio & headshot:
Adam Steele is the COO at Loganix, an SEO fulfillment partner for agencies and marketers. We build easy-to-use SEO services that help businesses scale. If you liked this article, please check out our SEO guides and templates on the Loganix blog
