How to Successfully Boost Your Sales using Social Media

Globally, the Internet has become more accessible than ever. Due to this, people around the world can access and use social media for different purposes. Some use it to stay in touch with friends and loved ones. Others use it to stay up to date with the goings-on taking place locally or different places around the world. But social media has also become a powerful marketing tool. It can help companies increase sales beyond their wildest imaginations. However, despite social media platforms introducing features like the ‘Facebook Shop’, the vast majority of prospects, (and there’s every chance this might change in the future) don’t go to social media to buy directly.

Prospects go to social media to decide if they can trust a company, to learn more about their products or to learn more about the people behind the brand.

So, it’s important realise you’re unlikely to boost your sales using social media directly, however every business nowadays absolutely must be active on social media. Being on social media increases your brand awareness, allows you to connect with prospects and customers on a personal level and builds trust.

So what steps can you take to increase your sales using social media?

1. Begin with a Plan

It is no use setting up a Facebook page or a Twitter profile for your business if you’re not going to use it. In fact, this can look worse than not having one at all! So, before you set up your accounts, put a social media strategy in place. Decide on the following:

How often are you going to post?
Who are you targeting?
What kind of content are you going to produce?
How much time and money are you going to invest in social media?

Once you know the answers to these questions, you’re ready to start creating your content and planning specific posts which we will touch upon later.

Planning your strategy will help boost your sales using social media because it will enable you to target the right people with the right content.

2. Commit to a Maximum of 2 or 3 Platforms

Committing to the social media platforms that will benefit your business the most is key. Committing to too many social media accounts that you simply don’t have the time to manage is a big mistake.

So which should you choose?

Facebook remains the most popular social media channel with over 2.2 billion users and so we would certainly recommend setting up a Facebook page for your brand.

Instagram is a great platform for fashion brands or brands with very visually appealing products and “drives the most engagement per post compared to any social network–84 times more than Twitter, 54 times more than Pinterest and 10 times more than Facebook.” Sprout.

YouTube is, of course the best platform if your brand can benefit from producing videos but requires a lot of hard work and dedication.

Once you choose the right platforms for your brand, you should then make another commitment to post regularly. Sporadic posting on social media does not work. Think about it- if you post a Tweet at 8:30am; only a handful of the people following you will see that Tweet. However, posting 4 times a day will quadruple your audience in theory. Therefore, quadrupling your chance to boost your sales using social media.

3. Create Various Forms of Content

Simply posting text-based statuses on Facebook and Twitter is not enough to keep your audience engaged or boost your sales using social media. According to Marketing Tech Blog, 2014 “the most common type of content posted by brands on Facebook is photos (75%), followed by links (10%), statuses (6%), albums (4%), video (4%), and other (1%).”

Using tools like Canva and Pablo, you can easily create graphics optimised for social media, with little skill required. Posting graphics like this one from Urban Outfitters (right), along with an offer will grab your audience’s attention and boost your sales.

4. Always Include a Link to your Website

This is a really simple one, but make sure that there’s a link to your website at the top of every one of your descriptions on your social media accounts. This will help drive traffic to your website or a particular landing page in order to make a sale.

5. Offer Freebies in Return for Details

Offer your followers a freebie like a free e-book or article or even 20% off your latest product in return for their email address. To do this, you can create a webform using a system like InTouch and embed it on a landing page. From here, post a link to that landing page on social media. This will enable you to nurture them through your sales process in the future and further boost your sales using social media.

6. Create Sharable Content

The more sharable your content is, the more reach your posts will gain and the more sales you will achieve. In order to be sharable, your posts should be either. What makes content sharable? People love sharing entertaining, informative, emotional, controversial and valuable content. If you can tick any of these boxes, you’re onto a winner.

Boosting your sales using social media will not happen overnight, you must invest enough time and effort to first build your audience and then to keep those people engaged and interested in your brand.