What is Social Selling?

The buying and selling of products or services has always had a social component to it. It makes sense that when social media arrived—changing how we connect with one another—buying and selling would be impacted by that, too. 

But there’s a lot more to the social angle of ecommerce than getting to the online shopping cart. There are digital communities for reviewing and promoting goods or services, or gathering over mutual interest in a product. 

Social selling is an important reality for any business owner or entrepreneur. By harnessing the immense power and reach of social media platforms, businesses can find, promote to, and talk to their customers—establishing and building relationships with clients or buyers beyond a single purchase. 

We’ll guide you through the specifics of social selling, including how it differs from social commerce, how to start social selling, and ways to measure success. 

Understanding social selling 

Social selling is a strategy using social media platforms—like TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Reddit—to find customers to market your products or services to. Social selling is more than promotion: It  prioritizes establishing a connection with users before attempting to convert them into buyers. Business owners do this by building community around relevant content and engagement, and earning trust by responding to customer needs.

Benefits of social selling

Social selling comes with a lot of benefits—a key one being a pathway to making a sale. But social selling is more connection-based, focused on providing not only value, but relevancy to a potential customer’s online experience. 

For businesses and entrepreneurs, social selling can help with: 

1. Brand awareness: Social media offers a much higher ceiling for brand reach and awareness than other traditional marketing efforts. 

2. Building trust: Developing useful, engaging, and informative content builds trust with potential customers. People are more likely to buy from businesses or entrepreneurs they trust.

3. Customer insights: One of the best components of social media is how rich it is with data. You can learn so much about your business, your customers, and how you’re showing up on their feeds and impacting their buying habits.

What platforms are best for social selling?

Social selling can, in theory, happen on any social media platform. However, by trying to sell to everyone everywhere, you risk selling nothing to no one. Focus on building a brand or community where your audience already is.

For example, an apparel designer specializing in unique t-shirts may find a better audience on TikTok or Instagram rather than X (formerly Twitter) or LinkedIn. If they provide content that suits the format and type of users on that platform, like videos showing how to style their shirts, it may yield better conversion on purchases. 

Some platforms to consider and who makes up each audience includes:

• TikTok: Younger generations of buyers, like late Millennials or Gen Z, who appreciate narrative or humorous video content

• LinkedIn: Professionals looking for services, such as photography or copywriting, who tend to favor content that shows a business or entrepreneur’s skill 

• Instagram: Users who enjoy discovering creators or entrepreneurs with compelling video and photo content or interesting captions.

• Facebook: An online, local marketplace for one-of-a-kind or niche items for resale from other users

• YouTube: Users who are primarily under 45 who enjoy short or long-form video content and livestreams

How to start social selling 

Chances are if you’ve promoted your work or products online in some way, you’ve engaged in light social selling. But there are tactics and strategies to deepen your social selling capabilities and generate conversions or higher volume purchases. 

No matter what your overall business goals are, here’s how you can start exploring social selling. 

1. Créez votre marque

A strong understanding of your brand is the foundation of any social selling strategy. Just like it’s easier to build a relationship with a person with reliable, consistent behavior, having a consistent voice, appearance, and way of engaging with your audience will help you earn their trust. 

Determine what your brand is, including colors, fonts, what type of imagery or videos you’ll use, and how you’ll speak to your audience. Develop a brand narrative that’s authentic to you and relatable to your chosen audience. Make sure anything you post on social media fits your brand guidelines. 

2. Determine audience and nurture relationships

Not every person is going to be part of your audience—and they shouldn’t be. One of the key benefits of social media is that you can reach niche or unique audience groups for your business. 

For example, for an entrepreneur specializing in streetwear apparel, not everyone is going to be interested in that particular streetwear and its designs. That entrepreneur must find that community—usually beginning with their own connections—and nurture those relationships. 

On social media, nurturing relationships entails responding to direct messages (DMs), responding to or liking comments, using a link in bio to collect email addresses for a newsletter or email marketing, and any other opportunities to connect one-to-one. Like any other relationship, let your audience and their responses guide how and when you connect.

3. Choose the right platform 

Like your audience, not every social media platform is going to be for you. If you’re very into visuals, try your hand at Instagram or TikTok. If your business needs to establish professional authority, LinkedIn may be for you. 

Try to pair your brand’s identity and narrative to the most compatible social media platform and focus on developing your audience there. If you try to juggle too many platforms at once, you may risk poor engagement or lowering the quality of your content and audience interactions. 

4. Strategize to identify opportunities 

Have you thought about partnering with like-minded influencers? Or having a Q&A on a livestream with customers or a public figure with a following? These are some strategies any business can try on social media as part of their social selling approach.

Try to identify opportunities that align with your social selling goals. Start by thinking about what type of content potential customers or clients are looking for at different parts of the marketing funnel. Are they looking for information about your niche, or actively considering spending their money on something?

For example, a career coach focused on freelancers could ask an illustrator or graphic designer they follow to collaborate on content  that answers common questions for your audience. Or they could tap into an influencer’s audience by way of cross-promotion to reach people looking for their services. 

5. Post consistently and adjust based on results

Building an audience requires patience and consistency. Don’t be discouraged if it takes a period of regular posting to start getting regular engagement. Give yourself a trial period—say three to six months—and make a plan to post regularly during that period. Then review responses and data from that time to get a sense of what content is landing with your audience.

There are some specific tools that may be able to help you create content and gauge your results.  After your trial period, consider what types of content you’ll create regularly and whether tools could make you more efficient. Perhaps you need video editing or hosting help. Maybe audio because you’re branching into a podcast.

Measuring the success of social selling 

There are a few ways for businesses to measure how well their social selling efforts are doing. Some measurements, such as brand awareness, are harder to track, but engagement data can help you get a sense of these. 

Consider the following ways to measure how well you’re selling your business on social media.

• Social Selling Index: LinkedIn’s Social Selling Index is a helpful tool to help understand your social presence on the platform. It measures how effective your brand presence is and how well you’re engaging your audience on a daily basis.

• Website traffic: Every business benefits from having a website. If users on social media are clicking the link to your website, that’s a positive sign. It means they’re investigating and investing in their relationship with your brand.

• Business goals: Determine what success looks like to you with a set of goals for a specific period of time. For example, measure conversion, such as new clients or more sales, over a quarter. If those numbers are higher compared to a period without social selling or a previous quarter, then it’s a sign your approach is working.

• Engagement: A comment, like, view or DM are all types of social media engagement. Engagement is crucial in measuring the success of content types online. You can learn valuable information about what to offer your audience based on if they’re engaging with it.