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You’ve created or found a product that you love. You want to share it with the world.
Your first thought: use social media to sell my products!
Sounds like the perfect plan—at first.
But you’re worried that you might be perceived as an over-enthusiastic used car salesman. Or, that people who follow you want to know more about your personal life than your business.
The truth is you can make money through social selling in a way that is authentic and non-sleazy.
How to use social media to sell products: 6 easy steps
Selling a product has never been easier or more affordable. Because of the worldwide reach of social media platforms, you can build an audience that wants what you have to sell. Here are six steps to help ensure the success of your social selling endeavors.
1. Evaluate and adapt to customer behavior
Before you start creating content for social media, first consider:
- Where your ideal audience hangs out
- What kinds of pain points they have
- Their purchasing behavior
- What type of content they want
The information you obtain will tell you:
- Which social media platforms to frequent
- How to appeal to potential customers
- What type of content to create
Taking the time to understand your customers will ultimately help you save time, effort, and money by helping to streamline your marketing process.
2. Create content that is optimized
Start by optimizing content for your customers. The best way to do this is to evaluate what type of content they like and share. For example, you can learn whether they prefer:
- YouTube videos
- Instagram Reels
- Instagram Stories
- Shared long-form blog content
- Long social media posts
You can also test this for yourself through A/B testing. Create two types of content (a blog and a video, for instance). Share one on one social media platform and the other on a different platform. See which performs better. You can also experiment to find out how often your audience wants to consume your content. Too little and they’ll forget about you. Too much and they’ll get annoyed.
Optimize your content by using hashtags. Doing so will make it easier for potential customers to find you and your products.
3. Start building your network
Search social media sites to find where your target audience and influencers are talking about your industry/products or using keywords related to them.
Start building a network by:
- Sharing posts
- Responding to questions that influencers or your target audience pose
- Contribute to the conversation
By doing this, you can start to develop relationships with others in your industry and show potential customers the type of value that you can provide. Pretty soon, your own social media following will start to grow.
At first, this may feel a bit overwhelming. You can get sucked into the social media void, intending to answer one or two questions, and ending up spending hours scrolling through your feed.
Two ways to prevent getting overwhelmed and wasting time:
- Set time limits
- Create daily, weekly, and monthly posting and engagement goals
4. Engage regularly with your network of followers
Once you start building a following, you’ll need to engage often with your followers.
If someone asks a question, answer it as quickly as possible.
If someone makes a comment praising a post, video, blog, or even your product, respond to it or like the comment. Say thanks. Give your audience some love. Doing so will help:
- Build rapport between you and your audience
- Display your professionalism
- Any damage control if someone has an issue with you/your product
5. Embrace calls to action
Never assume your followers know what to do next.
You know you have a product to sell but if you only tell your audience about it occasionally, how will they know about it? Infrequent promotional posts can easily get lost in your audience’s feed.
Start utilizing calls to action (CTA) in your social media posts.
Write engaging, entertaining, or informative content. At the end of the post, ask a question and invite your followers to answer—or to visit your website/social media profile for more information.
6. Leverage help from other influencers and entrepreneurs
A great way to build your side hustle on social media is to engage with and reach out to other influencers and entrepreneurs in your industry.
Some people avoid doing this because they’re afraid working with the “competition” will take potential customers away from them.
Instead of thinking in terms of competition, think in terms of collaboration. Occasionally working with other influencers can help build your audience and theirs. Remember that there are billions of potential customers out there and you can’t take care of them all. Neither can your competitors. Collaborating from time to time can help differentiate between your products and brand personalities, giving customers a better idea of who they want to invest their time and money in.
How to avoid turning people off
Some people avoid promotional social media posts or adding CTAs to other posts because they don’t want to come across as sleazy or pushy.
You can avoid coming across this way and still engage in social selling for your side gig in the following ways.
- Promotional posts: Balance the number of promotional posts with informational and entertaining posts. Then, your followers won’t always feel like you’re trying to sell them something.
- CTAs: Word your CTAs in a way that comes across as helpful or inquisitive. People love sharing their opinions and wins. They also love knowing that if you ask them to share their challenges that you’re likely going to offer some sort of help or guidance. Doing this will help you avoid coming across as too salesy.
Not sure which products to sell?
Let’s say you like the idea of earning some money from part-time work but you don’t have a product to sell. In that situation, Vector Marketing can help.
With zero investment, you can work from home and start making money. We provide the samples and the training, so you have a better chance at success.
The training you receive through Vector is something you can use to grow your product- or service-driven business in the future.
Would you like to join the Vector team? Contact us to schedule an interview.