Social Selling: How to use resources that maximize our strategy's impact

Social Selling is a sale's strategy that exploits the possibilities of social media as marketing channels or Social CMRs. The three main activities, connected to each other and indispensable in order to achieve good results, are: the creation of new connections, pay attention to and dissemination of various contents. This brings us back to another set of valuable aspects that helps evaluate and implement a plan, which has to be both functional and include quality and tailor-made content for your audience. How to use your resources in order to maximize the impact of our strategy?

The first step: new connections

Connecting with new people while keeping track of already established business relationships are two fundamental goals in social media. In particular, itís ideal to sketch out a proper plan, targeted searches from a professional userís point of view, which will then help us reach new potential customers. The search and creation of new connections, as suggested by Mic Adam on socialmediatoday.com, is a task that should occupy roughly 10% of your working time.

The second step: listening

Among the three main activities to carry on for Social Selling, to listen to whatís happening online is probably the most important one, though also the most complex. Listening has a clearly defined purpose: to understand your contacts and potential customersí interests, so that you can create tailor-made content to actively engage with them. Adam theorized that the listening activity of your audience, potential or not, should occupy 60% of your working time.

The third step: sharing

Once you've listened and understood the interests of your potential customers, it's important to schedule a tailor-made content sharing strategy for the existing audience and engage with them in the future. You should spend 30% of your time on this task.

The 10-60-30 rule

When it comes to Social Selling and social interactions, rules are not set in stone. Weíre talking about interactions with very different people, which canít be studied exclusively in a scientific or mathematical way. However, this so-called 10-60-30 rule theorized by Mic Adam provides an interesting reflection: the customer is the star around which the whole social sales system orbits. Based on what she needs, is asking and looking for, itís possible to develop a functional and structured strategy.

At the heart of each Social Selling planning, customers have a primary role. We need to satisfy their expectations, demands, and act in order to do so; therefore, itís essential to be as effective as possible in this area. The effectiveness of Social Selling requires a degree of transparency with the audience, which will obviously know about your final purpose (sell a product), but nonetheless are interested in the product we offer and is engaged with us.

The Social Selling strategy strongly supports the idea of deep trust in order to keep the interest of your targeted audience alive. The value of your own product and brand is an indispensable point to share with your audience after connecting with them, as well as creating customized, tailored content for their interests and sharing quality content: interesting, clear and engaging.