Social media’s role has drastically changed in the past few years. Before, social networking sites were for personal use only. These days, many businesses are looking how to use social media to promote their products and services. However, not all of the marketing efforts conducted online end successfully!

If you intend to use social media as a tool to market your business, you have to bear in mind some pointers to ensure it is successful!

How To Use Social Media – 3 Principles To Success

For sure, your ultimate goal is to generate sales through social media marketing. Given this, you need to understand the following ‘3 principle to success’ that can help to sell your products and services online:

1. Provide solutions to the customers problems that are related to your product or service.
2. Plan a social experience that can compel customers to respond.
3. Understand the needs of the customers as they evolve, and then apply this knowledge in order to improve your own response.

Essentially, everything that you do using social media must “create behavior”. This particular behavior should be part of an overall plan that you need to implement to compel customers toward your offer. Experts call these three actions  ‘components of a courtship’, which happens between the seller and the buyer. Creating sales is more than just implementing branding plans. Sellers who wish to use social media to boost sales should do something with the attention they are getting from their target buyers.

Creating A Response From Customers

If you are serious about creating leads and sales, you need to make sure that your posts, tweets, videos and other updates are designed to catch the attention of your target market. It’s like going to work each day, where you have to come up with fresh, creative ideas on how to push others to respond to your work.

There is no need to ask for others to “like” your Facebook posts without giving people a reason to actually like what you have posted. Try to tease or tempt them by posting something really interesting. Customers want nothing but an honest value in term, so give them what they need and want.

Understand The “Ethical Bribe”

One tip that business owners should know is how to creatively get customers to start talking about their problems. Ideally, you want people to talk about something that is related to your business. You can “ethically bribe” people to speak their mind, which can help determine how you can be of help by providing solutions to their problems. Don’t forget to see yourself as someone who actively addresses the complaints given by your customers. You could always encourage people to talk about these things by offering them something.

For example, a grocery store could pay customers if they ask health and wellness questions via their Facebook page. This may sound weird for many business owners at first. Why would you pay customers when they are the ones supposed to bring the money? It’s simple, you need to help customers to create a powerful response. This can help in connecting with your client base better. This is also an opportunity for you to create new products or services that solve your customers problems, which in turn boosts your own business.

Focus On Solutions

Social media is your tool to convince customers to take action. Aside from being a platform with a very wide reach, this can also be an interactive platform that you can use to improve your business. Use social media to increase your brand exposure and find business opportunities, as well as interacting with customers.

Highlighting solutions to people’s problems can grab people’s attention.  This is particularly effective when you are selling a product or service that solves their problem.  You can encourage customers to buy by offering them a discount or special offer.

You can also suggest other helpful products/services that are related to your own.  This way, customers can see that you are genuinely trying to help them. Answer peoples questions, help them out where you can, interact with them, etc.  It all helps to use social media marketing effectively for your business.

What do you think?  Are you looking how to use social media for your business?  What other ways do you use social media marketing for your business?  Let us know by leaving a comment below!
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Thank you to my Guest Post Author: Lena Paul

Lena is an MBA graduate and holds a leadership position with Sigma Research, a firm that provides term paper and home work help to students.
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