A Guide to Social Selling
Social Selling: What Is It & Why Is it Valuable?
Wouldnât it be great if your social media posts were directly tied to revenue? Welcome to social selling.
Selling on social media is not about posting ads and hoping for the best; social selling is a fundamentally different approach to revenue generation compared to traditional and other digital sales methods.
The key to success is understanding how social selling is unique, the key tools and platforms that empower it, and developing a social selling strategy thatâs right for your organization.
What Is Social Selling?
Social selling is a method of sales where you use social media platforms and networks to build relationships and understand prospective buyers before making a sales pitch.
This may include:
- Direct engagementthrough comments, polls, and opinion posts;
- Learning about potential customers using social listening;
- Postinginformational content to explain how your product or service helps customers; or
- Inviting followers to learn about your brand through your link in bio.
Traditional Selling vs. Social Selling
Traditional selling is based on finding people who need what you offer and convincing them to buy your solution. This might involve cold outreach, calling, or even digital ads (paid or organic). Social selling prioritizes building an audience on social media and educating them, building connections, and learning about people first, before making a sales pitch.
Social Commerce vs. Social Selling
Social commerce involves directly selling products through social platformsâfor example, using an Instagram Store or selling products in your Link in Bio. Social commerce is a tool you can use as part of your strategy; however, social selling also involves positioning your brand to create relationships and lasting brand awareness rather than simply boosting your revenue.
E-Commerce vs. Social Selling
E-commerce sells things via an online store; for example, using a Shopify Store, Etsy, or an Amazon storefront. It is a form of digital storefront rather than an approach to sales; social selling may be used by e-commerce brands and end in someone making an online purchase, but itâs a different process.
Why You Should Care About Social Selling
Done right, social selling delivers a few key benefits for your business.
You Can Seriously Scale Up Your Sales
Social selling is a way to connect with and understand the billions of people who use social media daily, leading to an audience scale that would be difficult (or incredibly expensive) to build through other channels.
Influencer marketing, when used as part of your social selling strategy, adds even more fuel to this fire. For example, most (69%) consumers trust influencers, friends, and family over information directly from brands.
That means an influencer might generate more impact, even if they share the same message.
You Can Build Genuine Customer Relationships
Social media is a two-way street. Not only are you showing off your brand in posts and stories, but you can also talk to people in comments or DMs and answer questions in real time.
This builds stronger relationships that can convert not just into one-time sales, but overall customer loyalty.
One way to take this to a new level? Use a social listening tool to join conversations where your potential customers are to build relationships off your profile.
You Can Turn Social Media Into A Standalone Revenue Driver
A strong social selling approach results in actual revenue â meaning you can clearly demonstrate how investments in social media result in growth and sales.
If youâre using influencer marketing as part of your social selling strategy, you want to know how your campaigns impact the bottom line.
The Platforms That Make Social Selling Possible
Social selling pros leverage a few different channels and platforms to make their strategy work. Here are the essentials that we recommend.
Influencer Marketing Platforms
Partnering with the right influencers means you can leverage their platforms and reach to amplify and sell your products and services.
The right influencer marketing platform makes it simple to find creators from different industries, manage your campaigns, communicate with creator partners, and analyze results. Later Influencer is one example.
Link in Bio
A well-planned Link in Bio page helps you feature products and promotions you talk about on social media.
With Link in Bio, you can promote key information about your brand and link relevant social posts from Instagram and TikTok to pages on your website for more information.
Itâs the easiest way for your followers â and customers â to take their relationship with your brand beyond social.
A Best Time To Post Tool
Use a best time to post tool to find the perfect time to post for your audience, then schedule for each platform like Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, or TikTok.
Knowing your custom best time to post helps you meet your audience where theyâre at, making your post as visible as possible.
While you could calculate your best time by hand, we recommend experimenting with posts and channels at different times during the week and then using Later Socialâs best time to post tool to determine when you get the highest engagement on each channel.
Social Commerce Shops
If your content includes product demonstrations or walkthroughs, think about selling directly with an in-platform shop like Instagram Store, TikTok Shop, or YouTube Shopping.
These platforms allow you to feature your products in more detail, providing a way for your social-savvy followers to try them out for themselves.
Social Listening Tools
Social listening helps you understand your audience and jump on trends, get in on conversations, and even get ahead of potential customer complaints.
Social listening helps you build those genuine relationships that we mentioned above.
The Best Social Platforms for Social Selling
Any social platform where you can gather followers and engage with them will work for social selling!
That said, here are a few of the biggest platforms to leverage:
- Instagram is a powerful platform for sharing videos and Reels, as well as relatable storytelling via Stories.
- TikTok allows you to show off your creative side with videos by following trends or showing behind-the-scenes content about your business.
- Pinterest is great for sharing infographics, rich graphics, and style inspo. (The perfect platform for retail brands!)
- YouTube is strong for short and long video content. YouTubers have super-engaged communities, so connecting with YouTube influencers is a great way to create connections with niche audiences.
- If your audience uses the platform, Facebook is a great way to start a private group for your biggest fans.
- LinkedIn is typically used for business-to-business social selling, but more brands are using it to share knowledge and connect with Linked-influencers who share their work wisdom on the platform.
Whether youâre active on one platform or ten, the key is to use the right social media management tool to manage scheduling, posting, and analytics.
How To Develop A Social Selling Strategy
A successful strategy will help you plan out, launch, and grow your approach to social sellingâhere are the steps.
1. Choose What You Will Sell
Social selling can be used by any brand, but is a great choice for retail brands and ecommerce brands. When selling your brand, remember to sell the fundamental components of your brand first. By focusing on selling your brand, you avoid situations where you feel compelled to always put out advertising messages to cover every product and service you offer.
It also helps to create content pillars, 2-5 topics that you can consistently post about as part of your brand.
2. Identify The Platforms You Will Use
Success with social selling requires a product-content-platform match.
For example, a beauty product might do well via Instagram, while a self-organizer guide with checklists might do well via Pinterest.
To pick the platform(s) that work for your brand, think about:
- What suits your product or service;
- What platforms do your core audience and ideal customers use;
- How you can best showcase your offering; and
- Your brand style.
This will often help you find your primary platform. From there, think about repurposingâfor example, a video made for TikTok can often be reposted as both Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts.
3. Set Your Campaign Goals And Metrics
While social selling is about building your brand online, youâll want to set some goals and that means having analytics set up.
Some of the metrics youâll want to track include:
- Impressions and reach
- Engagements
- Link in bio clicks
- Earned Media Value & Return On Investment
4. Find Influencer And Creator Partners
The right influencer partner can amplify your social selling efforts ifthey have a relevant audience and the content they share aligns with your product or serviceâs benefits.
To put it simply: It has to make sense for them to be promoting your products, or else their audience either wonât engage or might look negatively on your brand.
But with the right brand ambassadors, influencer marketing can take your brand to new heights (and new levels of revenue).
This is where tools like Later Influence can help. Not only does the platform help you find influencers but you can also manage communications, contracts, and payments in a single platform.
5. Plan And Launch Your Campaign
Planning and launching a social media campaign – or an influencer marketing campaign – takes work, but that work is always worth it.
First, identify how often you will share certain types of content from your content pillars AKA the different types of content youâll focus on.
Second, finalize all collaborations with influencers. This might include:
- Nailing down the core campaign message;
- Adding supporting messages;
- Finalizing content aesthetic; and
- Identifying who is responsible for content creation and posting.
Once the content is ready, pick your launch date and go! Donât forget to respond to comments, join conversations, and jump on Stories to stay top-of-mind beyond posting.
6. Review And Iterate
Social selling is an ongoing process of building relationships, growing brand awareness, and profiting off your results.
Just like any marketing strategy, it requires constant attention and adaptation. Regularly review your social selling tactics and tools to identify what’s bringing in the results you want and what needs improvement.
Source: Later. Top image by Cottonbro Studio via Pexels.