Social Selling: Getting Buyers to Know, Like and Trust Your Business

Social Selling: Getting Buyers to Know, Like and Trust Your Business

This is Episode 33 of This Old New Business weekly business podcast with Jeff Korhan.

Today we are going to talk about social selling, more specifically, using social media to sell.

Some people will tell you that you cannot use social media to sell. In my opinion that is because they do not understand successful selling is not about sales transactions, but relationships with buyers.

My sales career goes back to 1982, a time when your selling tools were the telephone and visiting face to face with customers. No computers, Internet, or email, not to mention no social media.

While a lot has changed, one thing that has not is building relationships. Now we can do that better and faster using the power of the Internet and social media.

Successful Social Selling: A Practical Example

Last summer I read an article about Laura Madison, at that time a car and truck sales professional in Bozeman, Montana. She was using social media content to attract buyers by helping them understand more about every aspect of the automobile buying process.

Social Selling: Getting Buyers to Know, Like and Trust Your Business


The Social Marketing Process ™

Laura created tutorials that helped her audience become better buyers of the types of services she offered. My first thought was: She gets it! And trust me, not many do.

Selling is nothing more than removing obstacles that prevent people from stepping up to buy. That’s easily accomplished by helping them do what they want to do. Maybe that means buying from your company, but not always.

Laura used YouTube extensively. She showed how to negotiate a lease, how to get better mileage with your hybrid car, and much more.

‘How to’ accounts for the majority of searches. Try it with Google to see for yourself how well it works. Once people get beyond ‘how to,’  they tend to buy. That’s good for the seller, and Google, which profits from AdWords sending buyers to sellers. Interesting, isn’t it?

Your online (and offline) marketing needs to be less about your business and more about how it helps its customers. Start by creating media and telling stories that shows how to buy and use whatever it is that you sell.

In the process of consuming that media, you will develop relationship with potential buyers. As Laura commented in our podcast interview, “I think in the future people will expect to have a relationship with somebody in a company before they will approach it.” I agree.

Assuming your products are the solution to your buyer’s problem, using social media to sell comes down to this:

#1 – Know Your Customers – You have to become one with your audience to really help.

#2 – Remove Buying Obstacles – Use social media to help buyers get what they want.

#3 – Nurture Relationships – Now you have technology to do this better and easier.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on social selling? Meet me over on Twitter to take the conversation further.

Key Take-Aways

You can still get your virtual pass to Social Media Marketing World 2015. There will be over 140 speakers, including me presenting on this topic of social selling.

Learn more about How to Start a Podcast and How Every Business Can Benefit from Podcasting.

How to subscribe to This Old New Business podcast

Click here to subscribe via iTunes.
You can also subscribe via Stitcher.

Help us Spread the Word

If you enjoyed this episode of This Old New Marketing podcast, please head over to iTunes or Stitcher to leave a rating, write a review, or subscribe.

About the Author:  Jeff Korhan, MBA, is the author of Built-In Social: Essential Social Marketing Practices for Every Small Business and host of This Old New Business podcast.

He helps mainstream businesses adapt their traditional growth practices to a digital world. Connect with Jeff on LinkedInTwitterFacebook, and Google+

Visual Storytelling: Business Marketing with Instagram

This Old New Business Podcast with Jeff Korhan

This is Episode 19 of This Old New Business weekly business podcast with Jeff Korhan.

If you have been wondering why Instagram has become one of the top social media channels the last couple of years — but more important — how you can use it to market your business, then you will want to listen to this episode.

Sue B. Zimmerman kicks everything off by explaining why a strategic approach to Instagram is absolutely essential. Then we dive into the specific steps you can follow for putting that into practice, with all of it anchored to Sue’s proven and memorable CLEEP formula.

Our Featured Guest: Sue B. Zimmerman

Visual Storytelling: Business Marketing with InstagramSue B. Zimmerman, otherwise known as the #InstagramGal and #TheInstagramExpert is a master at Instagram for Business. She teaches entrepreneurs, business executives, and marketing professionals how to leverage the power of Instagram for business marketing. Sue B. is the author of Instagram Basics for Your Business, a speaker, business coach, and the founder of Sue B. Do and a number of other businesses.

Permanently Profile Your Best Content

Sue B., as she likes to be known, naturally embraced Instagram for business marketing when she recognized its capabilities for personalizing any business. Having enjoyed success with a scrapbook business, she realized Instagram is ideal for visual storytelling

There are other social media platforms for business stortelling, such as LinkedIn Publisher. Unlike Facebook, Twitter, and other social media channels, the LinkedIn and Instagram platforms offer the unique advantage of permanently profiling your best content, to the extent the platforms do not substantially change.

Use CLEEP to Get More Peeps

In addition to providing valuable tips and tools for creating attention grabbing photos, Sue B. shared her CLEEP formula for attracting and engaging more Instagram followers to your business.

Instagram is searchable, with hashtags being vitally important for categorizing your images so that they can be found. Use Tagboard.com to research hashtags and create your own unique hashtags for building your Instagram community.

#Categories – Sue suggests starting with broad categories and then niching down. In an earlier espisode of This Old New Business Mike Rorie discussed how the most successful landscape companies build repeatable income by focusing on a landscape business niche. For example, commercial landscaping is a niche, but within it are shopping centers and other even narrower niches.

Important Tip: Your hashtags are most valuable in the comments of your posts, so make it a habit of commenting on your posts and adding hashtags there.

#Locations – Location is a powerful category for virtually every small business. The trick is to combine location with your brand or product and service names.

The idea with all of these hashtags is building a community around your brand by attracting a portion of the community that is interested in and supportive of the value your business provides.

#Emotions – The power of social media in general, but especially visual storytelling, is triggering excitement and other emotions that encourage favorable buying behaviors.

As with any other form of content marketing, being strategic with your Instagram posting is vital. Remember, more is not a content marketing strategy.  Start by asking what you want your customer to feel about your business.

#Events – Events are excellent opportunities for creating visual content that is then curated on Instagram with appropriate hastags. If those events are recurring, then your business is progressively creating greater alignment with like-minded people.

Naturally, there are major events such as Social Media Marketing Worlds 2015. (Come join us!) It’s the world’s largest social media event. However, an event of any size is relevant, and worthy of it’s own unique hashtag that honors everyone involved. It’s all about community.

#Products – It should go without saying that you ideally want to build communities of people that are fans of your products. When you create unique hashtags for your products you create an online community hub for that product for sharing ideas, solving problems, and growing your business.

All of this probably sounds like a lot of work, and it is. However, once you develop your strategy and learn the practices and tools for implementing it, you’ll soon discover how powerful Instagram is for building communities of fans that want more of what your business offers.

Check out the Key Take-Aways below for more tools and training options for taking your Instagram marketing to the next level.

Visual Storytelling: Business Marketing with Instagram

How is your business marketing with Instagram?

Lighting Round Tips and Advice

Sue’s Top Sales or Marketing Advice – Offer free 15 minute consultations or use some other means to offer value that allows for sampling of your expertise. Then monetize that relationship.

Her Favorite Productivity Tip – Use Trello for managing your notes and workflow. Also, if you have been challenged with learning Evernote, subscribe to Steve Dotto’s YouTube channel. Here’s his video Introduction to Evernote.

A Quote that has Inspired Sue’s Success – Good things come to those who work their asses off and never give up.

Visual Storytelling: Business Marketing with Instagram

 

Key Take-Aways

  • Check out WordSwag – a cool 3rd party app for creating graphics for Instagram.
  • If you are an active Instagram user or manage multiple accounts ScheduGram is a paid tool for scheduling your Instagram images.
  • Follow Sue B on YouTube and get free access to lots of Instagram tutorials, including The 3 Things You Should Do When You Take an Instagram Photo.
  • Consider joining Sue B’s InstaResults Facebook Group.
  • If you would like to take your Instgram to the next level, check out Sue’s Insta-Results Course.
  • Use Tagboard.com to research hashtags and create your own unique hashtag to build your Instagram community.
  • Use the free Iconosquare site to analyze your Instagram metrics.
  • Grab your free copy of 7 Things Not to Do on Instagram at SueBZimmerman.com
  • Take Sue’s challenge: Take a screenshot from any graphic on this page, post it to Instagram and tag Sue B Zimmerman or The Instagram Expert and Jeff Korhan (me!) and we’ll both respond and engage with you!

How to subscribe to This Old New Business podcast

Click here to subscribe via iTunes.
You can also subscribe via Stitcher.

Help us Spread the Word

Let your Twitter followers know about this podcast with this ready-made tweet.

If you enjoyed this episode of This Old New Marketing podcast, please head over to iTunes or Stitcher to leave a rating, write a review, or subscribe.

About the Author:  Jeff Korhan, MBA, is the author of Built-In Social: Essential Social Marketing Practices for Every Small Business and host of This Old New Business podcast.

He helps mainstream businesses adapt their traditional growth practices to a digital world. Connect with Jeff on LinkedInTwitterFacebook, and Google+

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