Social Media is a critical tool for businesses to use to engage with customers and increase sales. This article provides advice and guidance to get you going.

Ten years ago, even five years ago, if a Sales Manager or General Manager caught you on Facebook during work hours how would that conversation have looked?

Today though, if you are a sales leader or business owner, selling through social media should be a KPI for the sales team.

#Hashtags? Tweets? Instagramming? That's what the colouring in team, ahem, marketing team do not the sales team? Right?

Well, from a company level, the marketing team need to be driving the main bulk of your social media content marketing. But if you are in sales and are not "Social Selling" then you are missing a trick.

"Social selling is when salespeople use social media to interact directly with their prospects". HubSpot

Why, as a sales person, would you need to do this? Well in fact you are probably already doing it without even realising it. For example, every sales person has a LinkedIn profile (please say yes), so every time you post an update or share some content you are social selling.

What you probably need though is a bit more intention driving your social selling. How do you go about it? There are three main things to consider:

1. Where are your customers socialising?

Social selling is just like selling. You just need to go hangout where your customers hangout! Are they bloggers, Pinteresters, Instagrammers, Tweeters, Facebookers, Redditers?  As a sales professional you should know the likes and habits of your customers, so it's not a big leap to know or find out where they hang out digitally.

Most industries or companies will have appeal across only a handful of social media channels. For example, if you are selling into a design led community (e.g. architectural products) then Pinterest and Instagram are likely to be good places to start.

As a starting point look over your top 10 to 20 customers and research where they are active. If your top customers are active on Twitter, for example, then chances are you will find more great customers there.

2. How do you build trust?

Now you have found your customer hang-outs, you need to interact with them in a non-salesy way and start to build trust in your brand - i.e. You don't just sign up, login, and then spam them with a pitch. You wouldn't do that to a client you just met would you? (Please say no). 

Here are some tips for finding and engaging with the right people:

• Optimise your social media profiles. Make sure anyone searching can find you and recognize you as a leader in your field.
• Reach and follow your ideal customers. For example, use LinkedIn's 'saved search' feature to be notified every time a new sign-up matches your ideal profile, or use a tool like Followerwonk on Twitter that allows you to search profiles by topic or keyword.
• Contribute to existing conversations about your brand. Use tools like Google Alerts or Hootsuite that allow you to monitor the web for brand mentions, key words, and phrases.
• Add value by writing or sharing content. Provide knowledge that establishes you as an expert in your field, reply to comments with authenticity and authority, add to conversations, provide relevant links to articles of interest etc.

Be an active part of the wider community that you serve. Wait to be invited to pitch, if you create enough value it will happen.

3. Create achievable goals.

What can you expect from social selling? Like anything, before embarking you need to work out what successful social selling means to you and your business. Are you doing it to build your list of prospects for an outbound sales team to engage? Or to try and get a purchase via your web store right now? The outcome will dictate the pace and style of your communication.  

Final thoughts:

In essence, your keys to success are:

• Just make a start.  
  
• Pick a social media channel that you are comfortable with and is relevant to your audience. Or look at a tool like Hail (www.hail.to) which can distribute social media content across multiple channels.  
• Also review products like buffer.com, Hootsuite.com, or Loomly to schedule posts and updates.  
  
• Commit to doing the activity regularly. Even if it is just commenting on others activity -or even better create a social media plan read this article on how to do this.  

Article was prepare by Tim Jones, from Sales Operative.  Tim is also a B Corp Ambassador and is assisting Digital Journey on its growth plans.