Many businesses utilize social media as promotional tool however, as you may have noticed, some of businesses are able to use it to their advantage, while others aren’t. One of the biggest mistake businesses can make with social media is overly pushing sales and forgetting to stay true to their brand.
Businesses need to remember that regardless of the importance of sales, a business is nothing without its customers and clients. To ensure that a business utilizes social media to the best of its abilities, there are a few steps that should be taken prior to initiating the sales cycle. These steps include a proper introduction, engaging followers, and building trust.
Hello
Introduction to social media for businesses is not something that should be done halfheartedly. Like in personal relationships, businesses have but one chance for a first impression, and they need to make sure it counts. Some keys to having successful social media accounts include spending time carefully selecting content, and creating unique and creative graphics for each post.
Certain social media sites such as Facebook allow for businesses to post quite a bit of information, where other forms of social media such as Twitter and Pinterest only allow a limited amount of text to be shared. To optimize your social media presence, make the information about your company is clear and concise, as you want to capture the consumer’s attention.
Tweet tweet
Posting, sharing and tweeting is not about bombarding followers with constant sales attempts, it’s about engaging your audience. Posting special offers or sales daily can deter customers and potential clients from your business just as walking into a store and being bothered by sales people can annoy you. It’s easy for a business to lose social followers, which can lead to a decrease in sales.
Yet another way to enhance social media posts is to make them engaging to consumers by using creative writing. Instead of posting something fairly bland such as “come in to check out our new spring collection,” try something more engaging such as “mauve and grapefruit are the featured colours in our spring collection, what do you think?”
By increasing your engagement in different ways such as promotional contests, question posts and by showing appreciation to consumers, your social platforms will contribute to an overall increase in sales.
Trust
Trust is not given, it’s earned. Consumers by nature, are not trusting people they’re always waiting for the “catch”. There are a variety of ways you can build trust with consumers whether it’s through sharing insightful content, responding to questions and concerns, telling a story or even by guest blogging. Engaging with consumers does not just mean posting on social media sites. Building trust takes hard work to show them how committed you are to your business and brand.
Sales
Engagement is the most important step to take before sales, and it is imperative that the time is taken to draw in the attention of your audience before sales are introduced. Once you feel that you’ve engaged your clients and followers well, introduce sales in a creative way with a unique offer. By coming up with a unique offer, followers will have to consider it, and the creativity will be rewarded.
In focusing on a introduction, creating unique and engaging posts in proving to your audience that you’re not just another pushy business you can increase sales and build a loyal customer base overtime.
