Social Selling Explained: w/ Techniques and Benefits [2024]

Let me guess: You want to help your clients see their sales skyrocket, don’t you?

I mean, everyone loves a good rising sales graph.

It’s good for your clients since it shows their business is growing.

And it’s good for you since your clients will want to continue working with you.

You see, that’s why you need to master social selling…

When your social selling foundations are solid, you can run campaigns that turn your casual social media visitors into paying customers.

It’s where you learn the right techniques, tools, and relationship-building strategies to convince social media audiences to buy your clients’ products or services and keep them coming back for more.

The question now becomes: How do you help clients run effective social selling initiatives?

What you will learn

• What is social selling?
• Social selling vs Social media marketing: What’s the difference?
• Benefits of social selling
• Social selling techniques to boost sales
• Master the art of social selling

What is social selling?

Social selling is using social media to find and connect with potential customers. 

Think of it as the more sophisticated and sustainable cousin of cold calling. 

In this type of selling, you build and nurture relationships with prospects instead of hard selling. 

Social selling involves sharing valuable content, engaging in memorable or meaningful conversations, and fostering trust with potential customers. 

The idea is for connections to become loyal customers or clients over time by “planting seeds” that grow into strong and fruitful business relationships. 

Social selling vs Social media marketing: What’s the difference?

Social selling and social media marketing can seem similar because they are typically used to achieve a similar objective: driving sales. 

However,  the two serve different purposes. 

Social selling is about building one-on-one relationships with potential customers on social media platforms. 

The interactive and personal approach focuses on connecting directly with your clients’ potential customers. 

Chatting with a LinkedIn user, offering valuable tips or advice, and slowly building trust—this is what social selling is all about. 

On the other hand, social media marketing is broader. 

It involves creating engaging content for target audiences to promote your clients’ brands, products, and services. 

[Must read: Outsourcing Social Media Marketing: A Guide for Agencies]

Most social media marketing work is creating and managing posts and ads and running campaigns to engage many people simultaneously. 

Social selling is about building individual relationships and directly engaging prospects, while social media marketing focuses more on reaching and influencing wider audiences. 

Benefits of social selling

Helping clients nail their social selling initiatives offers several perks, including the following. 

Builds trust with potential customers 

Social selling is designed to create genuine, one-on-one relationships. 

It facilitates direct engagement with potential customers (or clients), making them feel understood and valued. 

The personal touch helps build a strong foundation of trust, which can encourage potential customers to choose your clients over competitors. 

Boosts engagement

Direct interactions, such as commenting, liking, and sharing relevant content, help capture the attention of your clients’ potential customers and build loyalty.

Prospects will likely see your clients as more than brands but as thought leaders and partners.   

[Must read: Social Media Interaction Post Ideas This 2022]

Improves brand reputation

Consistently sharing valuable content and engaging authentically with social media audiences demonstrate your clients’ reliability and expertise.  

The approach can boost your clients’ brand reputations, making them reliable go-to resources in their industries. 

People will likely trust brands that can provide value consistently. 

Shortens the sales cycle

Traditional sales methods can be tedious, and getting results and closing sales can take time. 

Social selling can speed up the process by helping your clients build customer relationships and trust with prospects faster. 

Potential customers who trust your clients’ brands are more likely to move through the sales funnel quicker, leading to faster sales. 

Social selling techniques to boost sales

Social selling can skyrocket your clients’ sales with the right tactics. 

Start with the following social selling techniques. 

Optimize social media profiles

Optimizing your clients’ social media profiles is crucial since they’re often the first things potential clients see.  

If possible, highlight relevant skills, experiences, and achievements.

You can also include links to your clients’ other social media profiles and relevant pages. 

Use the link in bio tool from the social media management platform Vista Social. 

The tool includes landing pages you can customize and use as mini websites to house your clients’ landing and product pages and other conversion content and tools.

After creating your client’s Vista Page (mini website), copy the generated URL and add the link to their social media bio. 

Vista Page can be an excellent space for building and nurturing customer relationships, capturing leads, and driving conversions. 

Post valuable content

Share content that educates, informs, and addresses the pain points and needs of your clients’ potential customers.  

These can be videos, infographics, articles, and more. 

[Must read: How to Build a Social Media Playbook (For Agencies)]

Regularly share relevant content to keep audiences informed and engaged. 

Leverage Vista Social’s social media publishing feature to schedule your clients’ posts for auto-posting. The feature helps ensure a consistent flow of valuable content.

Upload your image or video, customize the post, and set an optimal auto-publishing schedule.

Generate fun and engaging captions or improve them instantly with Vista Social’s AI Assistant.  

Engage potential customers authentically

Genuine engagement is crucial for building customer relationships that lead to successful social selling. 

Ensure genuine engagement by commenting on potential customers’ posts, sharing insights and tips, and joining conversations. 

Manage your clients’ conversations and audience engagement efficiently with Vista Social’s social media engagement feature. 

It includes a smart, unified Social Inbox that puts all your clients’ social media messages, comments, reviews, and mentions on one platform.

The feature includes filtering and labeling options. 

It allows you to respond to messages directly from the platform, facilitating quick and easy engagement and interaction management and tracking. 

Track your social selling efforts

Determine whether your clients’ social selling efforts are working. 

Track and measure engagement metrics such as likes, shares, and comments to assess the performance of your clients’ social selling initiatives. 

You can leverage the insights to refine your strategy, spot gaps, and improve social selling techniques that yield the best results. 

Use Vista Social’s robust social media analytics feature. 

It can help you generate, customize, and automate reports that give you a comprehensive view and insights into what’s working with your clients’ social selling efforts. 

[Must read: How to Create Automated Social Media Reports]

For example, you can run a social media performance report based on your clients’ LinkedIn page data and engagement metrics.

Master the art of social selling

Mastering social selling should be one of your main priorities as a social media manager.

After all, an increase in likes, shares, comments, and even follower count can’t help your clients pay their bills.

They need sales.

And it’s by mastering social selling that you, as a social media manager, play a crucial role in helping your clients convert their social media traffic into paying customers.

Your expertise is invaluable in this process.

To level up your social selling game, remember to use Vista Social.

It’s a reliable social media management tool used by agencies and seasoned social media managers.

With our platform’s advanced social media marketing features, you can run an efficient social media marketing campaign and scale your initiatives, all without paying thousands of dollars.

Create your Vista Social account now.