With so much of the world now active on social media, social selling is more relevant than ever. When used effectively, social selling can be a differentiator for forward-thinking sales leaders.
To support your social selling efforts, we’ve put together this guide. It covers the basics and more advanced topics, like how to measure its effectiveness and what social selling tools can help you best.
What is social selling?
Social selling is the process of researching, connecting, and interacting with prospectuses and customers on social media networks. By commenting on, liking, and sharing prospects’ and customers’ posts on networks like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, salespeople create relationships with buying over shared interests.
Social selling more closely resembles lead nurturing than hard selling tactics, it is not about seeking quick wins, it is about engaging with your target buyers and building credibility in order to succeed.
Rather than a hard closing plan or one-and-done deal, social selling is more closely related to lead generation — the process of forming and maintaining relationships with customers through every stage of the sales pipeline and sales funnel. With that in mind, sales teams must be willing to put in ample time and intentional effort to engage with their prospects and buyers on an ongoing basis.
The Art of Social Selling
Data shows that sales reps who put the most effort into social selling reap the biggest rewards. According to LinkedIn, 76% of top-performing sales reps “always” research their prospects before reaching out and the value of those sales is also increasing. In 2022, 31% of sellers closed deals with over half a million dollars without meeting face-to-face.
In today’s digital-heavy world, conventional sales forms often feel impersonal, social selling is a great improvement. Through direct engagement like commenting, liking, and sharing customers’ posts, companies can naturally build social credibility and generate “free” advertising to turn their prospects into buyers.
Top-performing salespeople — which we've defined as sellers who have reached 150% of quota or more — were more than twice as likely to have expanded their LinkedIn network in the past year (53%) compared with their average peers (25%), according to the 2022 LinkedIn State of Sales report.
Social selling gives sales leaders better results, making sure your team understands why social selling is important and how to do it responsibly is an important part of any ABM strategy.
Social Selling Best Practices
There are several steps a rep can take to level up with social selling. Get started with the advice below.
Optimize your social media profiles
Optimize your social media profiles before beginning your social selling initiative. Prospects won’t respond to your outdated or incomplete profile, visit our guide to learn more and prepare your social media profiles for their new purpose, social selling!
Join LinkedIn groups and other relevant forums
LinkedIn and other sites have groups you can join that follow larger industry trends. These can keep you informed of the challenges your buyers are facing. Find out which groups are popular with your prospects and join them.
If you can provide value to a discussion, do it! But don’t use groups as an opportunity to sell your products or services.
Unsolicited sales-y comments will annoy members, just like a cold email or phone call would. Contribute to the conversation in a meaningful way, or just observe.
Set up social selling listening alerts
Use Google Alerts or a social listening tool to set up social listening alerts. These are notifications that tell you when your prospects or customers experience a trigger event or post a possible sales opening.
For example, if a prospect mentions a problem that you can address, a social listening alert can help you quickly join the conversation with a healful value-added piece of content or insight. Or if a potential buyer’s company hires a new CEO or expands its business, you can be first in line to comment on the trigger event and get on their radar.
Share content to build your credibility
Sharing original and compelling content is one of the best ways to build credibility and engagement on social media. This can be insights, tips, or any information that is relevant to your audience.
If you read an interesting article that relates to your prospects’ industry, share it! If you saw a thought-provoking study that could be a good conversation starter, share it! And don’t forget to ask people to engage in the comments to start a conversation.
Sharing engaging content with your social networks provides value and in turn, can help you build trust and credibility.
Don’t ignore the comments section
Browse the comments section and join the conversation on high-engagement posts in your feed.
This will give you an idea of the kind of content your prospects enjoy and engage with and help inform what kind of content to share. For example, someone might comment on Propensity’s Web Tracker product launch post asking if it’s available for free-trial users. Our sales team might respond that all users have access to this feature and share why it is a game-changer as part of an ABM strategy.
Share success stories
Testimonials are valuable social proof. Customers like to hear success stories from people like themselves. Sharing these stories helps build credibility with potential buyers. If a prospect resonates with a testimonial you share, they might be more inclined to use your solution.
Be mindful of customer support opportunities
Keep an eye on what buyers and consumers are saying about your company on social media and messaging platforms, especially if a customer is dissatisfied.
Stay alert to social media chatter about your company, take note of the issue and if your company’s marketing or support teams haven’t responded, make them aware of the comment so they can address it, and note the language they use for the resolution. You’ll be more prepared to talk to prospects who may have seen the disgruntled customer content.
Be consistent
Spending all day on social media is likely not the best of your time, but aiming for consistent posting and engagement is key. Posting at least weekly on LinkedIn with individual follow-ups for prospects who engage with your content is a good place to start. Three to four interactions, within two weeks, show professional presistence without overwhelming the prospect.
Track engagement
Social media engagement metrics include likes, comments, shares, and high engagement. The data indicates that a piece of content resonates with your audience and you can learn what works best so that you continue to share the highest impact content for your audience. For example, if Propensity notices that content about the Five Strategies for Successful ABM Campaigns gets the most likes, comments, or shares, that’s a good indication that the topic resonates with our audience and we can then discuss the topic of ABM campaign strategy more often.
Subscribe to blogs
Not sure what to talk about with your prospects on social media? Start by reading. Check out what content your buyers are sharing, and subscribe to those blogs. You can then share the articles you think would be particularly interesting to your buyers on LinkedIn or other social media sites.
Ask for referrals
You know your buying personas from Propensity, check them out on LinkedIn and see if you have any connections in common. You can then request a referral from your mutual connection, unlocking a new warm lead!
Know when to move your conversations off social media
You will eventually have to take the social media connections you make offline to land the sale. Once a solid connection is made with a prospect on social media, offer to hop on a call to continue the conversation. You will learn more about their pain points, which will help you gain the clarity you need to land the sale.
If interactions with a prospect that fits your ICP move in a positive direction, you should seek out the contact’s email addresses to set up a call and continue the conversation off social media.
Blog - if you really want to
Effective social selling does not have to include sales reps' blogging, but it can be a valuable way to attract qualified prospects. Reps build influence in their industry and provide value to their audience with original insight and thought leadership. If a sales rep wants to take social selling the extra mile, they should consider the following:
- Choose topics that you know your audience cares about
- Capture their attention with the title
- Posts should not be too sales-y
- Share your perspective and insight
Share the posts on social media, like Twitter and LinkedIn, and use relevant hashtags to help with discovery.
How to Engage with Your Buyers on Social Networks
Social selling is about engagement, but keep in mind that your interactions should be thoughtful, relevant, and personalized. There are four primary forms of social engagement: sharing, liking, commenting, and connecting.
Sharing
Share content that interests your audience, the more relevant the better. Link to your company's content and other people’s content. Switching up your sources will disallow the perception that you’re self-serving.
As more and more consumers make buying decisions online, sharing content is vital. In fact, 30% of buyers report reading more than five pieces of content before making a purchase.
Liking
If you don’t have anything of substance to add or you don’t have time for a comment, a like or favorite works just as well. Likes can also work as a thank-you when others share or retweet your content.
Commenting
A comment is not a sales pitch or a link to your company’s website. It should be a thoughtful response to an article that is thought-provoking. Commenting on active and lively threads that hit the core interests of your target audience, you can drive engagement to your own site.
To make the most of your comments check out this guide on the best times to post across different social media platforms.
Connecting
On X (Twitter), you can follow as many prospects as you want, but on Linkedin, you need to be more judicious.
Consider not requesting to connect with someone on LinkedIn until you’ve had a meaningful interaction, in person or online, and always send a personalized invitation explaining why you’d like to be in their network.
Working Social Selling into Your Day
Worried about keeping up with your buyers on LinkedIn and X (Twitter) when also trying to sell? Like anything new, one of the most significant perceived hurdles to adopting social selling is that it takes too much time to make sales. But like anything else, a good routine solves this worry and cuts down on the time commitment.
Ben Martin, Director of Automation Squared Ltd, recommends the following 12-step social selling process that can take as little as 30 minutes per day.
- Find relevant content to share
- Share the relevant content on social networks
- Check on who’s viewed our LinkedIn Profile
- Interact with target buyers who look at your profile and send connection requests when appropriate
- Monitor engagement with your content
- Interaction with those who engage with your content
- Review LinkedIn alerts
- Organize target buyers in a LinkedIn folder
- Share content with target buyers
- Review any additional trigger event alerts
- Respond to messages
- Initiate new conversations
Still hesitant to adopt social selling?
Reps can sometimes be hesitant to adopt social selling because they are worried it will come off as “creepy” to buyers. We get it, no one likes feeling like they are being researched by people they don’t know. If you’re worried about turning off prospects when social selling try incorporating these best practices for interacting on social media in a way that doesn’t feel creepy:
- Don’t send messages out of the blue. You should be engaging with prospects who have expressed interest in your product or services by commenting on or sharing your or your company’s content, ideally.
- Customize your messages, custom is perceived to be less creepy than generic
- Only reach out to prospects on professional accounts, don’t try and connect with their non-professional accounts such as personal Instagram or Facebook pages. For most, LinkedIn is the best for professional, positive engagement with prospects.
- Using light social selling interactions (liking, favoriting, retweeting) is a good way to tip your toe in the water and is considered to be less invasive than messaging or commenting
You want social selling to feel natural and conversation for both you and the prospect, do what feels right for you.
Measuring Social Selling Success
Measuring social selling success is arguably the most challenging part of a social selling initiative because the effects aren’t linear. There is no formula that correlates the number of content shares or likes with the number of deals closed. The majority of social selling metrics available today assess an individual's aptitude. LinkedIn has its own tool, the Social Selling Index, to help those with Sales Navigator Premium accounts understand their effectiveness on the platform, there’s also tools like Buzzsumo.
The Social Selling Index (SSI) measures how effective you are at establishing your professional brand and presence on LinkedIn. The tool requires a subscription to LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator Premium, in which you’ll get daily updates on the Social Selling Dashboard.
Social Selling Tools
It’s easier to implement social selling with the right tools. The right products will depend on the specific needs of your organization and the challenges your buyers face. Some of the most popular social selling tools include:
A powerful software suite that allows marketers to build B2B social selling plans for their organization. The platform also includes robust data collection and analysis capabilities, allowing sales teams to track ROI and derive insights from customer engagement. Oktopost integrates with several of the largest CRMs, making it easy to deploy.
Audience intelligence and social listening platform, Pulsar identified trends and insights from the vast social media space. This tool can help sales teams shape their messaging with real-time data on social media trends and conversation and identify influencers big and small in the social space, helping maximize sales efforts.
Lets you upload and share customer videos, which can give your sales team a critical edge in social selling. It’s easy to use and includes numerous video templates that can help your team easily create professional-looking videos on demand.
Optimizing content delivery across the buyer’s journey, get help coordinating the moving parts involved in social selling. You can track what pieces of content you share in each channel and their metrics to analyze performance.