Social media will get you the cash

There is now little dispute that social media is an essential sales channel. Many printing companies are winning a steady stream of new business through their social media activity.
One company has estimated that 46% of its new business is sourced through social selling. On a much simpler level, one of my clients recently won three meetings with prospects that she thought were dead after about 15 minutes activity on LinkedIn. There are plenty of other similar case studies.

How do we create such profits?

Sometimes the world of social media can seem overwhelming. An awful lot has been written about social media, but it can be hard to find any worthwhile advice from all this information.
Many people sign up to social media platforms and then simply do not know what to do. They become frustrated at the fact that they are not winning any business. So they simply give up on social media.
Getting results on social media is actually a lot easier than you might think. Here’s a simple four-stage process that will win you results:

1. Make your profile engaging & interactive

I am always surprised at the number of profiles that I see on social media that fail to engage. Your social media profile is your chance to tell the world all about you and the results that you achieve for your clients. Many social media profiles look like they were created in about five minutes. They will be ignored by most prospects.
Once you have a good profile, the next stage is much more likely to be successful. Here’s what you should do next.

2. Connect with your audience

Imagine you have just seen a perfect prospect on social media. Would you just try and connect with no message? That is precisely what many, many people choose to do. So no dialogue is created. Always send people a short message telling them why they should connect with you. And, when they do connect, send a follow up note as well.
This makes the third stage much more worthwhile.

3. Interact and engage

Give people a reason to stay engaged with you. The best way to do this is to post information that will be interesting to them. Make sure that this information is interesting to them, not you. That means less articles about print.
Make sure you actually have conversations with people. Ask them questions. Post comments on their profiles. And be sure to reply to any comments they make to you. I have many “virtual” conversations like this. Often the prospect actually makes the first move. These conversations allow the fourth stage to take place.

4. Take business offline

A business agreement is rarely made on social media. At the very least, it usually requires a personal phone call or e-mail. So use the social media conversations to take the dialogue away from social media and into the real world.
You are now contacting a warm prospect. This means you have a high chance of turning them into a client.

The foundation for successful social media activity is to have an engaging profile
The majority of people get this wrong. They have profiles that actively put prospects off from engaging with them. Spend some time on your profile in the next few days. It’s your first step to winning business with social media.