How you can turn social media into a real money-spinner

THE OPPORTUNITY SOCIAL media provides to interact with current or potential customers across the globe is phenomenal – and few businesses are really taking advantage.

The problem with social media is that it’s a social environment not a sales one. That doesn’t meant you can’t generate revenue from social media, but it does mean that the revenue is not generated directly on the channels. You need to change the setting.

Imagine walking into a business networking meeting with a sandwich board advertising your product. You probably won’t get the best reception.

You don’t sell at networking events, but they are the ideal environment for people to get to know, like and trust you. Only then will they consider doing business with you; the same applies with social media.

So if you can make revenue from social media but you can’t sell directly on the channels, how exactly does it work?

Here are the 5 steps that can lead to you actually making money:

1. Build a following on social media of people that are relevant to what you sell, whether that’s on Facebook, Twitter or other platforms. The size of the following does matter if they are relevant.
2. To get people to take action you need to build a relationship with them. Sharing valuable content is a great way of building a relationship as you educate, inform and maybe even entertain.
3. Encourage them to visit your website. When you share content you don’t always share your own content, but, when you do, some of your audience will visit your website. You’ve done the work by building your audience and relationships with that audience – now you get the rewards.
4. In an ideal world, your website visitors will buy your product or service immediately, but that typically doesn’t happen. So you need to capture their details to continue to market to them. Encourage them to sign up to an email list, which is crucial as it is where a lot of your online sales will come from.
5. Sell your products and services to people who sign up to your email list. We all get too much email, so when someone commits to you sending them more email on a regular basis that is a potential buyer of your products or services.

After they sign up, you can immediately send them to another page on your website and make an offer. If you are a consultant you may offer them a free 15-minute session and on that basis you sell your service. If you sell online training, you may offer an initial low-cost product to get your first purchase.

If they don’t take you up on this offer, it doesn’t stop there. You create a series of emails that they get after they sign up which ends up with an offer for your product. In the first set of emails you convince them of the need for such a product without mentioning the product and this ultimately leads to an offer.

Providing valuable content is a key component of this process and every business needs to invest in this. For example, imagine if you had a home removal business. What sort of content could you produce to add value but also to let people know the business you’re in so they get to like and trust you?

How about a blog post on things to consider when moving house? Content is the lifeblood of social media, and creating and sharing great content will help build an audience and relationships. With a blog you’ll get plenty of traffic too.

Ian Cleary is the founder of RazorSocial. He will be holding a conference on ‘content marketing mastery’ in Dublin on 31 May with US author Mark Schaefer.

If you want to share your opinion, advice or story, contact opinion@fora.ie.