A newer term that’s been popping up lately in the social media marketing world is social selling, part of the process of increasing sales using social media services.
It is very similar to social marketing, but with a slightly different focus.
Used together, social selling and marketing provide your company with the social media marketing help it needs for brand building, connecting with more of your audience, and ultimately making more sales.
What Is Social Media Marketing?
Social media marketing is just one branch of many types of online marketing used today to help businesses grow and sell more.
Technically speaking, it falls under the bigger branch of content marketing as social marketing revolves around circulating great content to social networks to show it to targeted audiences.
Social media services concentrate on creating high quality and relevant content to distribute in the hopes of attracting attention from those most likely to become a follower, a customer, or convert in some other way.
Social marketing may also include using paid advertising and other methods of getting a brand’s name in front of the right people.
The goal of this type of marketing help is always to attract viewers and increase exposure, then continue the progress toward conversion using social selling.
What Is Social Selling?
Social selling is the next step that happens after social media marketing does its job of increasing brand exposure.
With this technique, ads and content have already reached the target audience and that audience has taken a step forward by following the business page, commenting on something, or interacting in some other way.
Once the initial contact has been made, social media services try to build and nurture relationships with this audience.
Relationship building involves distributing even more valuable content to the user and engaging them to promote communication.
It involves finding ways to keep that user interested in the brand and coming back for more information and more interaction.
Social selling across different networking platforms is great for brand building, improving authority among audiences, and creating a level of trust that increases the chance that a user will actually buy.
In addition, it improves brand loyalty and sharing, which increases exposure even more.
How Do They Work Together for Maximum Results?
Essentially, social media marketing and social selling work hand-in-hand as two steps of the same content marketing process.
They both revolve around the distribution of high-quality content for the target audience; however, one step focuses on attracting users while the other focuses on building relationships with it.
It’s easy to get content in front audiences; it's not quite as easy to sell them just by putting it there.
Social selling is the gradual, low-pressure sales strategy used to eventually create customers out of viewers.
Success with social media services depends on two things: an understanding of the social marketing process as well as creating and distributing outstanding and effective content.
Great content is the key vehicle for social selling and the element that brings social marketing success.
Companies that need social media marketing help must remember that ads and content distribution are only half of the battle.
To actually make more sales, they must also invest in a good social selling campaign!
