How Social Media Can Increase Sales

Social media marketing is an area that small businesses sometimes ignore. Whether or not this is because of the time and effort involved, or simply misunderstanding the benefits of social media, it can be a costly misstep.

Social Media Is about Connecting with People

People are driven by people. Social media allows any business to harness the strength of the organic follower – which is ultimately more useful and loyal than the bought follower. A group of organic followers can become a community. A group of bought followers will simply remain a group of bought followers.

Social Media SalesPeople are motivated by what interests them. People who have no deeper engagement with your company’s products or services are very unlikely to actually purchase anything at all from you, or make strong recommendations to their friends about the quality of your business.

A community, on the other hand, can easily build interest around your business and products, and is far more likely to opt-in to offers or make purchases from your e-commerce component.

You Have to Give Before You Get

In order to take full advantage of social media, businesses need to produce content that is “share-worthy”. Creating accounts on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest are important steps, but if you can’t feed them with shareable content, it just makes your business look boring.

Good content and regular posts on Facebook will build your company’s following, and may eventually get shared. Good tweets on Twitter will get re-tweeted. Interesting or helpful blog posts will be linked to, and more people will discover your blog. The further your content goes, the more interest it generates, and the more social return on investment your company will gain.

Here are some quick tips to help improve your social media presence:

  • Visual Power: Use images to convey your message wherever possible, people enjoy and absorb them faster. If your product photographs well, Instagram and Pinterest are perfect for you. In July, Pinterest broke 70 million users, with 2.5 billion monthly page views. Instagram has 130 million monthly active users, with 1 billion likes daily.
  • Tell a Story: Consumers care about you and your business, not your statistics. Share experiences, use first person, connect. Save the statistics for your investors. Arianna Huffington gave a keynote address at Vocus’s Demand Success 2013, in which she stressed that marketers need to be master storytellers, and even move from storytelling to “story-doing”.
  • Lead Your Field: People trust businesses when their CEO’s are visible and interacting in social media. It’s rare to see this, but the companies which do have proven results. Here’s a great infographic from Ceo.com.
  • Good Profile Photos: Think about presentation -- first impressions are powerful. Statistics from prolific dating site OKCupid found a 30% positive difference in something as simple as smiling and looking at the camera (for women) or looking away from the camera and not smiling (for men).

At the end of the day, social media is about building relationships which, when done correctly and given the time they deserve, will ultimately boost your company sales.

Eric Wagner

While Eric now focuses on internet marketing, he also has a background in web development. He loves being among the first to find out about new tech—and better yet, being a part of making that tech succeed. Eric is known to be a good listener, seeking to understand how each individual sees the world. He is a harmonizer in group settings, cultivating unity while constructing the overall goal and strategy. When he’s not busy helping i7 clients dominate the online marketplace, Eric enjoys drone videography (he’s got a UAV pilot’s license), woodworking, community service, and all things outdoors.

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