Social Media Sells — 15 Options You Can Use

Social media sells? Many marketers focus their social media efforts on building their brand and attracting new prospects since they can’t figure out how to make the connection to sales. The bottom line is that social mediacan drive sales for your product. It depends how you use it and how you’ve set up your own website and analytics to track the results.

Not sure how to use social media to drive sales? Here are fifteen social media tactics with examples you can adapt for your business.

1. Create a daily deal. This doesn’t mean a Groupon type promotion since research has shown that there’s a good chance that these can hurt your business. Take a page from Woot’s playbook. Offer one product or special per day. It’s good for 24 hours or as long as supplies last. Of course, on social media, the number of people participating can be large. Use your blog or Twitter to promote these sales.
2. Socialize your offering on one or more social commerce sites. The challenge of this form of social media is that many participants prefer to discuss shopping more than they want to shop! ThisNext is an older example of social commerce and Fab is a newer example.
3. Encourage your community to join the purchase process. Get prospective customers to help create or vote on your products. Threadless does a great job of integrating social and sales. Their community participates in the design of their clothes.
4. Beckon prospects to social media with promotions. Encourage prospects to join you on social media, especially Facebook. Understand that using coupons and promotions can cause shoppers to only stay for the discount on your social media site. [Don't believe it? Check out this research on Facebook likes.] Here’s 1-800 Flowers’ Facebook promotions. This retailer gains from getting customers to buy for non-occasions.
5. Stay on Facebook for the shopping. Incorporate f-commerce into your Facebook offering. The object is to allow shoppers to complete their shopping without ever leaving Facebook. (Note: This option has lost some of its luster. 1-800 Flowers appears to have closed shop.)
6. Sell with movies. Use videos to support your sales process. The most notable examples is Will It Blend that gained prominence grinding up iPhones. Before YouTube gained the traction it has now, there was a great video call The Institute for Back Up Trauma staring  John Cleese. This agency-developed video went viral because it understood its Monty Python loving target audience. (Watch the video if you want to see how it works.)
7. Display your wares. Show buyers your offering with photographs and graphics. Remember a picture is worth a 1,000 words. Many bakeries use Flickr to show off their creations. Here’s an organic bakery and their baked goods.

[Read More from Heidi Cohen...]