Go to Denim Social
All Collections
Strategy and Social Selling Guides
Key Guides
A Social Seller's Introduction to Social Selling
A Social Seller's Introduction to Social Selling
Social selling leaders manage to create 45% more sales opportunities than their peers. Let's talk about how you can optimize your approach!
Taylor Gaffney avatar
Written by Taylor Gaffney. Updated this week

But first, what is social selling?

Social selling is a form of relationship building - it's the process of connecting and interacting with prospects and customers on social media. By sharing original posts, commenting on, liking, and sharing partners/prospects’/customers’ posts on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram, and Twitter, you can create and nurture relationships with buyers over shared interests.

Instead of a hard closing tactic, social selling more closely resembles lead nurturing. Social selling isn’t for reps seeking quick wins. To succeed, you must put in the time and effort to engage with your audience and build credibility.

Here are the steps to ensure your social presence is optimized:

  1. Polish & Check In On Your Social Profiles

  2. Post Meaningful & Relevant Content

    1. Creating a healthy and informed content mix

    2. When Should I Post?

  3. Interact With Your Community

  4. Make Social A Habit

Step 1: Polish & Check In On Your Social Profiles

Keep branding updated and uniform across networks:

If you want to dig in deeper to best practices across each network, click the links below:

Step 2: Post Meaningful & Relevant Content

Create a healthy and informed content mix:

A good rule of thumb for your weekly content mix is 1 Industry post, 1 brand post, and 1 personal or community post ( 3 total/week). Want to go above and beyond? Try 2 industry, 2 brand and 1 personal or community post per week (5 per week, at least).

Check out this article to learn more about different types of content.

When Should I Post?

Each network has different engagement levels depending on the day and the time of day. Looking at the analytics for your specific audience will give you the best idea of when to post to maximize engagement!

Step 3: Interact With Your Community

Don’t ‘Post & Ghost’ - remember that social selling is about building relationships in an increasingly digital world

Don’t miss a thing - Set up your dashboard in Denim Social so you can track all comments, reviews, tags and posts across your networks in one place

Step 4: Make Social A Habit

Carve out 30 minutes weekly or bi-weekly to:

Grow your network:

  • Respond to any new connection requests on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter!

  • Send any relevant connection requests with a personalized note

  • Check your recent new followers and follow them back!

Listen for new opportunities

  • Look up clients on social channels before meeting with them. Learn about them either professionally or personally - Congratulate them on promotions, babies, and any other life events!

Build Credibility

  • Check out the content library + content calendar and schedule out content

  • Check your dashboard for updates + engage with your audience on social media

  • Check the reach and engagement on your posts - use that data to drive your social priorities for the following month

  • Engage with content posted by other businesses and professionals in your community to stay top of mind

Want more post ideas? Check out our content calendar.

Did this answer your question?