Setting Your Business Apart: Social Selling

 Whether you are a seasoned sales professional or are just starting out, it’s easy to see that traditional selling methods are just not working like they once did. My first career out of college was as a life insurance salesman. My mentor with that company’s philosophy was, “open the phone book and start dialing." It did not take me long to find out that I was wasting my time and energy making cold calls. What my mentor failed to realize was that in this day and age of caller id and spam blockers, the time one puts in to sending ghost emails and making cold calls is not an effective use of a salesman’s time. In 2015 access to information about people is easy to get. People now want to work with individuals that they have a connection with and can trust. Most importantly they want you to prove your worth and expertise before they even consider accepting one of your phone calls.

You may have already heard of the concept of social selling, a concept that every sales professional CLAIM they are using. They think  having a vague LinkedIn profile is enough. Then, they’ll wonder why they aren’t getting the leads from social media that they should.

If you want to succeed in this new way of selling you have to put the time in. Just like cold calling, if you only made 10 cold calls in a day you probably won’t net one worthwhile conversation.  Social selling is time consuming, but if done right can net amazing results!

Here are the three steps that make a great social seller in 2015:

1. Promote

When you reach out to a prospective client, the first thing they are going to do is look you up on social media and google to get as much valuable insight as they can into what you offer.  So, have it available!  A clearly defined personal mission statement, a detailed description of what you do, testimonials from clients that you have worked with in the past, gives a better idea of you personality outside of work. Consumers want to work with professionals they can see themselves having a drink with on the weekend.

Promote as if you had to buy from you. Who would you want to work with and what would you want to know about yourself before making a purchase?

2. Educate

Your potential clients want to know what your skills are, and they want you to prove it to them! The best way to do this is to educate them. I believe that this is the most important aspect of the social selling model. I also know, that this is the part of social selling that most professionals skip, and is the reason they are not successful getting business opportunities through social media. There are many ways of educating your customers. Some of my favorites are: blogs, webinars, YouTube videos, e-books, and white papers.  Writing one blog per week or hosting one webinar per week is not time consuming and can make all the difference in your customer’s eyes. Educating your potential clients will give you a leg up over your competitors.

3. Delight

The final step to social selling is delight. Your potential clients want to get a pat on the back every once in a while, so give it to them! If they have a birthday, make sure to send them a message, if they just had a new baby reach out to congratulate! Those are the obvious ones. But if you really want to impress them you have to customize your delightful messages. Once a month, try sending them some information about something that you learned about them on their social media accounts. For example, if the person is a baseball fan. Send them and e-mail and tell them you read an article about baseball and it made you think of them and send them a link. Consumers will appreciate this small gesture more than you think.

Thank You For Reading

Randy Delling

Social Stride

4 Tips on Using Pinterest for your Business

Pinterest is the 2^nd largest social source of traffic=people love Pinterest.

This means, although Facebook and Twitter are great/amazing/easy/whatever else, you NEED THIS. 

According to research, 50% of business occurs after 3.5 months of posting, which means it’s worthwhile to pin!

You may think your business doesn’t need to pin because you aren’t selling clothes, shoes, or anything tangible. This thinking is very outdated!

Check out these features of Pinterest and great tips to get your business thriving!

1. Make Rich Pins

This means, when you click a pin for information, the Pin includes extra information on the pin itself.

There are 6 types of “rich pins:” app, place, movie, recipe, article, and product.

App Pins: include an install button, so Pinners can download without ever leaving Pinterest.

Place Pins: a map, address, and phone number of business is provided.

Article pins: Include headline, author, and description of article.

Product Pins: Include pricing, availability, and location to buy while providing notifications of price drops.

Recipe Pins: Include the entire synopsis of recipe and cook time!

Movie pins: Include Ratings, cast, and reviews.

For those not very technical (like myself), check out this site on how to create rich pins:

  Click HERE

2. Know Photos

·      Clear, clean product images that are natural are usually pinterest-worthy.

·      Images without faces usually are repinned, 23% more

·      Pins with multiple dominate colors are pinned more, so stay colorful (red-orange hues get about twice as many repins as blue-green)

·      Taller images are more likely to be repinned and images should be close to the maximal image size of 763 pixels

      3. Pin when your Audience pins

Timing is everything. If your customers pin when they are going to bed, as an evening time-waster, pin 6-11pm. That, along with 2-4pm, works well for most pinterest boards. However, if you are a business blogger, you may want your article pins before and after lunch hour, and 3-5pm when business workers are browsing the interest before leaving work.

      4. Sell the Lifestyle

Inspire your audience, don’t just sell to them. This is the whole reason to use pin. Great pinterest boards compliment their product by being subtle that they are selling, while inspiring your audience to feel the need of having your product in their life. Know who you are selling to, what those people want, and be a friend with great pin ideas. The selling will sell itself.

Not every pin should be a product; you want a board of amazing content. Your product pins should shine a little brighter, and you will sell. 

This is just a little PINspiration for you to understand the beauty in this social media platform. It should not be ignored; every type of business can use it.

Thanks for reading,

Lana Sache

Social Stride

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4 Reasons Your Companies Traditional Marketing Is DEAD

If you are a long time owner of any sort of company, you may wonder why your traditional marketing efforts are not working like they did in the past. With usage of internet and mobile applications on the rise, your customers are not responding to broad advertisements that they hear on TV or radio, or read in newspaper or magazines. Consumers today are more informed and want to be engaged and build a relationship with the brands that they love. There are many reasons for the demise of your companies traditional marketing efforts, here are the Top 5

1. Traditional Marketing is not personalized

Traditional marketing is about producing one advertisement that caters to everyone that it reaches (while spending a ton on $). The content of those ads are NOT personalized and when advertisements come on, people tune out. Traditional marketing does not take into consideration the specific needs and wants of each individual customer. Today, we need to market to each individual separately. When customers are engaged with your company, they leave a trail of clues as to what they are most interested. Companies today should be using all of the information there customers give them and implementing it through individualized content in the form of social media posts, videos, e-mails, articles, etc. The days of guessing what your customers want are over, so why is your company still advertising aimlessly, instead of individualizing you marketing?

2. Traditional Marketing does not promote interaction with customers

In the past, your marketing department would come up with an advertising campaign, roll it out to the public, then sit back and wait for customers to call or come in. With the way buyer behavior has recently change, you simply cannot just sit back and expect customers to come to you without interacting with them. Your customers expect you to be there and expect a quick response when they have questions. Marketing in 2015 is a great way to communicate with your customers and gain insight about your customers. Don’t just sit back and expect this generation of consumers to come running to you.

3   

      3. Your customers have more resources

10 years ago, using traditional marketing tactics, your marketing department played the role of the expert. Due to a lack of information back then, the customer usually took your word because that was all the information they had. But in todays changed marketing environment, consumers can easily gain information about your brand through review sites, social media posts, and blogs. Even better, this content is coming from and unbiased source, their peers. So not only do they read what you have to say about your brand, but also read about that other consumers have to say about your brand.  Taking that into consideration, your company not only need to generate great content, but also need to promote the content that your customers are saying about you and insuring that the customer experience is a great one.

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      4. Your traditional marketing is temporary

With traditional marketing, your ads only last as long as you keep paying for them, but the internet has change the lifespan of your marketing to FOREVER. When you use content marketing, whatever you post is a marketing asset that will generate new business FOREVER. I like to think of Traditional marketing as leasing an apartment and content marketing as buying a house. Content marketing is an asset that will last forever. Keeping this in mind, with content marketing, you have to make sure that the message that you are sending is consistent. If your consumer finds a post or article form 2010 and its different from the messaging you are sending in you most recent post or article, your customers will get confused about what your company actually stand for.

Technology has changed the way that your customers shop for products and service. Traditional marketing is dying but your company can use content and context marketing to engage with your customers and create a pleasant buying environment. Worth a try, eh?

For more information please visit our NEW website www.socialstride.org and like us on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/pages/Social-Stride/642974392492344?fref=ts

Randy Delling

Social Stride

Top 5 Tips for Social Media Customer Interaction for Small Businesses

People go online for three reasons. To connect with other people, to be educated, and to be entertained. When building your social media strategy make sure that you are fulfilling all of these. Although you may find running a business and building your social media following stressful, it’s where your customers are! It is important that you are building a social media strategy that will effectively and efficiently reach as many potential customers as possible. Before you start building your Social Media presence there are 5 points to keep in mind:

1. Be Available

Not only do people learn about businesses through social media, they also want their questions about your products of services answered in a timely fashion. With this in mind, it is important that you set expectations for your customers, outlining when you are available to answer questions on your social media sites. One way is to make a “available to reach time” for questions to be answered (9am-11am for example) within during normal business hours. That way you can glace at your computer for an hour or two and reach maximum clients.

2. Consistency

Consistency is key to building a loyal customer base on social media. So many people start off posting multiple times a day but over time, start drifting off. Also, if you say you will be available to answer questions during certain times doing the day, make sure that you are following through on your promises. Just as in any aspect of business, you are only as good as your word so be consistent and reliable.

3. Don’t focus on all platforms

You can’t be everywhere at the same time. After all, you do have a business that you need to focus on and social media can be very time consuming. If you focus on using too many platforms, your social media strategy will not be effective.  Start with one, like a Facebook page or Twitter.  Your customers will notice the high level of customer service they receive on those platforms. You can always add another platform once you get comfortable with the one you are currently using.

4. Promote products in creative ways

Every business is on social media. Most of them use social media to post special or promotions and leave it at that. If you want to create an effective social media presence you need to think outside the box. The reason for being on social media is to RELATE to customers, not ANNOY. People are more likely to refer their friends to businesses that are generating awareness. Stop trying to sell, instead, help people buy. Some great examples are photos of your business, behind the scenes actives in your business, and blog posts on past events that your company has been involved with. Think outside the box.

5. Organize your thoughts

An effective social media strategy needs to be organized. At the start of every week, take ten minutes to write out a list of topics that you can generate content for social media with. Using this tactic you will avoid having to think about possible content that you want to post and instead will be ready to get your content out there for everyone to see.

Follow these steps and comment below on how it's changed your business' social media!

Have a great one,

Randy Delling

Social Stride

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Two Reasons Your Social Media Is Slacking

The reason you are reading this doesn’t matter. Whether you are starting your own car detailing company or the next Kim Kardashian look-a-like model, you probably need some help online.

I could have titled this: How to get 1,000 twitter followers a day, and I may have reached the same crowd.

Good.

I need the people looking for numbers…the people ALMOST willing to throw away money to have it! The numbers you can buy on the black market of social media most likely will have profiles that look like this:

Or

If you know how hashtags work you know the first two things he highlighted were FUTURE and NO. You mean, no future? Oh the jokes I could make about Proudly, SMD, and No Future.

  

That, along with a few thousand XXX profiles (no joke) and….

 

a ton of useless eggs. If that suits your needs, throw your money away for a number! Your schoolgirl popularity contest via the Internet will do you and your business no good.

So, how do you get real, human, followers?

Content and Sustainability.

1.Content

What you write has to be:

a.     Original

Even if you are the millionth person to write about fedora hats, there’s something in that head of yours that will bring people running to your page. Maybe it’s “how to wash your fedora hat” and pair it with whatever you REALLY want to write.

The reason I didn’t title this “How to get 1,000 twitter followers a day” is because that’s been used about 32,800,000 times (thanks Google). https://www.google.com/#q=how+to+get+1%2C000+twitter+followers+a+day

Even though what I’m writing can easily make that happen, I can’t cross my fingers for 1 out of 32,800,000. I have to be original. Now, go copy and paste MY title. J

b.     Personal

Honestly, people want to know YOU. It’s a weird feeling to put yourself out there online to strangers, but that’s what people like. A decade ago, everyone could hide behind their computer screen and be whoever they wanted. Now, you have the gift of being the REAL you, and have millions of people love exactly that!

Even if you are a small business owner, people want to know the passion you have!

2. Sustainability

Sustainability: “Strengthen or support physically or mentally.”

By sustainability, I mean be quick to respond, be patient, and continue regardless.

·      When you get a comment or email, respond within a few hours. Or, if you have a large business, having a online webinar people can attend at a specific time to ask questions is a great way to become personable. Make yourself available.

·      Be patient with the humans; they are only humans. They’ll follow back eventually (if your content is useful).

·      Continue posting even if progress is slow. In this day and age, the marketability online is too huge to look past. You honestly don’t have a choice.

Post smart, be patient, and be you. That’s the main thing. It may be frustrating, but not only do you have endless opportunities, you don’t have to spend thousands to reach thousands.

Get yourself a coffee, watch inspirational videos, come up with ideas, and just write.

-Lana

Social Stride

P.S.
What do you think? What aspects make a great blog/social media following? Leave your comments and questions below!