Social media is an excellent sales tool. According to research, 78% of salespeople using social media outsell their peers, and leads generated through social networking are closed faster than both leads generated through a website and those generated through a referral. However, sales happen when you begin by building sales relationships. How can you effectively connect, engage, and enjoy the benefits of new relationships with thousands of prospects? Here are five ways to help you move steadily in that direction.    

What to Share for Increased Engagement

The start of any good relationship on social media starts with engagement. Engagement should naturally increase over time if you post valuable content and show a genuine interest in your following. Yet some content really just doesn’t get a lot of likes and comments. Usually, this is because it doesn’t touch your audience’s emotions.

Even as far back as 2017, Turner and Canvs, the industry leader in measuring emotion, did some investigation to better understand the value of emotional reactions to branded content. First, Canvs analyzed all public branded content posts in Q4 2017 by two of the leading categories on Facebook: cultural news and sports publishers. For this analysis, Canvs focused on the primary Facebook page of each publisher, and the data revealed some interesting takeaways. First, there is a strong correlation between emotional reactions and shares. Second, quantity didn’t necessarily translate to more emotional reactions. That is great news for small brands.

To help you start a long-lasting and meaningful conversation with your target prospect group, share a range of emotional content. Here are some examples:

• Beautiful images with inspirational and motivational quotes
• Community, office and team events
• Fun facts
• Live videos 

Yet it’s not enough to simply post emotional content and move on. In order to build stronger relationships, you must also engage with your audience in a timely manner once your content is live. That means responding. Thirty to fifty percent of sales go to the vendor that responds first, so keeping on top of your notifications and taking fast action to respond to all positive engagement is now an important business practice. 

Converse In Chat Threads and Direct Messages

As soon as a conversation starts, a relationship is being built. So another critical action you’ll want to take to attract prospects is to spark relevant conversations wherever you can. You’ll also need to keep them going in the direction of a sale.

This is all very well, but sometimes a conversation can stop abruptly within a chat thread. Yet that doesn’t have to be where the conversation ends. Move over to direct messages to personally keep building relationships. This is particularly important at the beginning stages of growing a following. Reach out in direct messages to prospects who have engaged and have shown a real interest in your content. This can be a safer space to build further rapport, dig into their challenges/pain points and their vision for the future in relation to what you offer. It is often the perfect place to set up a sales video call once you’ve built rapport by asking questions and listening to the answers. 

If a prospect you engage with on social media doesn't convert into a client or customer, additionally reach out to them later (and often) to follow up on the same platform or via email. Studies show that email is an extremely powerful tool for acquiring new customers, and it helps you stay top of mind with less effort if you can’t follow up often via social media due to time constraints. During your conversation, offer to send them information via email and get a double opt-in before sending them marketing emails. You could use a free resource such as a checklist or short video series to help acquire it.

Following up with direct messages could be as simple as asking how they’re doing, if they’re still struggling with the same issues, or sharing content you believe could be valuable to them personally. Reaching out in response to a birthday celebration or one of their own posts can also work well. Keep a running list of prospects to follow up with and make sure to check back at least once per month. Building a relationship is about showing you care about their well-being, happiness and health over the long-term. Showing an interest in their life and being curious is even more important on social media, where it's trickier to make a connection with people than during face-to-face interactions.

Be Actively Curious

Once you’ve actively shared valuable content and engaged in a dialogue with your followers, you might start to feel like you’re running out of ideas. This could be a wonderful time to sprinkle some deliberate conversation starters between posts aimed at providing value. 

Why not start a debate? Most people love to express their opinion and reply to questions such as, “What are your thoughts on [enter a breaking health news discovery]?” 

Be actively curious, and current in your questions. Once in a while, be personal and informal. Posts such as, “What are you going to do at the weekend?” get a lot of responses. Short, simple and to-the-point text posts work wonders. Facebook or Twitter? Fill-in-the-blank posts also attract comments: “Fill in the blank. I laugh every time I think about _____.” These posts don’t always need to be health related, but do your best to stay on-brand.

Testimonials

Video testimonials of yourself with clients build relationships quickly because it’s easy for your prospect to put themselves in the shoes of the client in the testimonial. They can have a great impact on your prospect’s liklihood to buy. Almost 50% of American adults say that online reviews are extremely or very important in influencing their buying decisions. Build into your video the elements of a good story, ensure you have good lighting, and a backdrop with a hint of branding, and you’ll be on your way to a very effective social post. Plan to provide at least one testimonial every month for your audience to watch on social media for best results. 

Consistency

Just like relationships built face to face, building relationships on social media takes effort and showing up consistently. Posting once per month on social media, or inconsistently over time, gets noticed and can be counterproductive, so if you can’t post on a range of platforms regularly, it may make sense to focus on just one or two. Ideally, you should post on social media daily if you don’t plan to use paid media to increase reach. Then create a schedule, an editorial calendar and stick with it. Scheduling tools have many benefits, such as help you organize and set up lots of posts in advance, manage customer relationships, analyze social performance, and keep up with engagement on the go. 

With a system, building relationships on social media doesn’t have to be a headache. Once you have it set up to include regular emotional and conversation-driving posts, testimonials and genuine and sales-focused follow-up, you will be able achieve your marketing and sales goals. 

HOW TO BUILD RELATIONSHIPS WITH NEW PROSPECTS ON SOCIAL MEDIA

Social media is an excellent sales tool. according to research, 78% of salespeople using social media outsell their peers. And leads generated through social networking are closed faster than both leads generated through a website and those generated through a referral. However, sales happen when you begin by building sales relationships. How can you effectively connect, engage, and enjoy the benefits of new relationships with thousands of prospects? Here are five ways to help you move steadily in that direction.    

What To Share For Increased Engagement

The start of any good relationship on social media starts with engagement. Engagement should naturally increase over time if you post valuable content and show a genuine interest in your following. Yet some content really just doesn’t get a lot of likes and comments. Usually, this is because it doesn’t touch your audience’s emotions.

Even as far back as 2017, Turner and Canvs, the industry leader in measuring emotion, did some investigation to better understand the value of emotional reactions to branded content. First, Canvs analyzed all public branded content posts in Q4 2017 by two of the leading categories on Facebook: cultural news and sports publishers. For this analysis, Canvs focused on the primary Facebook page of each publisher, and the data revealed some interesting takeaways. First, there is a strong correlation between emotional reactions and shares. Second, quantity didn’t necessarily translate to more emotional reactions. That is great news for small brands.

To help you start a long-lasting and meaningful conversation with your target prospect group, share a range of emotional content. Here are some examples:

• Beautiful images with inspirational and motivational quotes
• Community, office and team events
• Fun facts
• Live videos 

Yet it’s not enough to simply post emotional content and move on. In order to build stronger relationships, you must also engage with your audience in a timely manner once your content is live. That means responding. Thirty to fifty percent of sales go to the vendor that responds first, so keeping on top of your notifications and taking fast action to respond to all positive engagement is now an important business practice. 

Converse In Chat Threads And Direct Messages

As soon as a conversation starts, relationship is being built. So another critical action you’ll want to take to attract prospects is to spark relevant conversations wherever you can. You’ll also need to keep them going in the direction of a sale.

This is all very well, but sometimes a conversation can stop abruptly within a chat thread. Yet that doesn’t have to be where the conversation ends. Move over to direct messages to personally keep building relationships. This is particularly important at the beginning stages of growing a following. Reach out in direct messages to prospects who have engaged and have shown a real interest in your content. This can be a safer space to build further rapport, dig into their challenges/pain points and their vision for the future in relation to what you offer. It is often the perfect place to set up a sales video call once you’ve built rapport by asking questions and listening to the answers. 

If a prospect you engage with on social media doesn't convert into a client or customer, additionally reach out to them later (and often) to follow up on the same platform or via email. Studies show that email is an extremely powerful tool for acquiring new customers, and it helps you stay top of mind with less effort if you can’t follow up often via social media due to time constraints. During your conversation, offer to send them information via email and get a double opt-in before sending them marketing emails. You could use a free resource such as a checklist or short video series to help acquire it.

Following up with direct messages could be as simple as asking how they’re doing, if they’re still struggling with the same issues, or sharing content you believe could be valuable to them personally. Reaching out in response to a birthday celebration or one of their own posts can also work well. Keep a running list of prospects to follow up with and make sure to check back at least once per month. Building a relationship is about showing you care about their well-being, happiness and health over the long-term. Showing an interest in their life and being curious is even more important on social media, where it's trickier to make a connection with people than during face-to-face interactions.

Be Actively Curious

Once you’ve actively shared valuable content and engaged in a dialogue with your followers, you might start to feel like you’re running out of ideas. This could be a wonderful time to sprinkle some deliberate conversation starters between posts aimed at providing value. 

Why not start a debate? Most people love to express their opinion and reply to questions such as, “What are your thoughts on [enter a breaking health news discovery]?” 

Be actively curious, and current in your questions. Once in a while, be personal and informal. Posts such as, “What are you going to do at the weekend?” get a lot of responses. Short, simple and to-the-point text posts work wonders. Facebook or Twitter? Fill-in-the-blank posts also attract comments: “Fill in the blank. I laugh every time I think about _____.” These posts don’t always need to be health related, but do your best to stay on-brand.

Testimonials

Video testimonials of yourself with clients build relationships quickly because it’s easy for your prospect to put themselves in the shoes of the client in the testimonial. They can have a great impact on your prospect’s liklihood to buy. Almost 50% of American adults say that online reviews are extremely or very important in influencing their buying decisions. Build into your video the elements of a good story, ensure you have good lighting, and a backdrop with a hint of branding, and you’ll be on your way to a very effective social post. Plan to provide at least one testimonial every month for your audience to watch on social media for best results. 

Consistency

Just like relationships built face to face, building relationships on social media takes effort and showing up consistently. Posting once per month on social media, or inconsistently over time, gets noticed and can be counterproductive, so if you can’t post on a range of platforms regularly, it may make sense to focus on just one or two. Ideally, you should post on social media daily if you don’t plan to use paid media to increase reach. Then create a schedule, an editorial calendar and stick with it. Scheduling tools have many benefits, such as help you organize and set up lots of posts in advance, manage customer relationships, analyze social performance, and keep up with engagement on the go. 

With a system, building relationships on social media doesn’t have to be a headache. Once you have it set up to include regular emotional and conversation-driving posts, testimonials and genuine and sales-focused follow-up, you will be able achieve your marketing and sales goals.