Social media has become a powerful tool not only for marketing, but also for sales. Through social selling businesses are able to target and convert customers to grow. Consumers are open to having conversations with businesses on social media platforms. According to HubSpot, 76% of buyers are ready to have sales conversations on social media platforms. More businesses are leveraging social selling as part of their digital sales. However, not many are sure about how to measure their social selling success.
Tracking and measuring the right metrics is important to prove the success of your sales efforts. With the help of these insights, you can improve your strategies and make them more effective.
Data is equally important for sales as it is for marketing. Tracking social selling success can be a challenge as it involves measuring individual interactions. In this article, we will discuss some important metrics that will help you measure your social selling success.
LinkedIn’s Social Selling Index (SSI)
The LinkedIn social selling score or SSI measures how effective your business is in setting up your professional brand, targeting the right people, engaging with insights and building relationships with prospects. This score is updated on a daily basis and gives you opportunities to improve. This metric basically measures your overall presence on LinkedIn. It is free and does not require you to pay for a premium account.
Here are the four criteria on which SSI is measured:
Establishing your brand: This includes optimizing your profile for your ideal customers. To establish yourself as a credible source of knowledge and information on your respective industry. It is important to share content relevant and useful to attract the right people.
Targeting the right people: Know who your ideal customers are and what keywords they are looking for. LinkedIn has a number of targeting tools to find the right people and build your connections.
Engage with insights: This is a great way to find the right audience with similar interests in your industry. SSI measures if you are having the right conversations or discussions with the right people. You can also join various groups on LinkedIn based on your industry to communicate with like-minded people.
Building relationships: This part aims to measure the private conversations you have with people who are decision makers. It Is a good way to ensure that you are communicating with the right stakeholders of the company who influence business decisions.
SSI is one of the important metrics on LinkedIn that can help you measure the effectiveness of your social selling efforts.
Content Engagement Rate
Keeping a track of all the followers and connections you have is good, but you also need to see how much they are engaging with your content. Sharing valuable content is important for your social selling efforts. This content can give them more information about your product or services and also educate them on the industry. If your followers are engaging with your content, it means that they find it relevant.
Monitor various insights available on social media platforms to know the engagement rate. You can track the number of shares, like or comments on your posts. Higher engagement on a certain post would mean that your followers appreciate that particular topic or type of content. This metric is a good way to gauge the impact your content has on your followers and how relevant it is to them.
Want to improve your sales efforts through social media? Read our blog on How to Use Social Media to Boost Your Sales.
Growth in Network
This is a metric that goes hand in hand with the content engagement rate. It is good to keep a track of all the followers or connections you are gaining. This will show you the increase in brand awareness. However, for a successful social selling strategy you also need to ensure that your followers are potential buyers who will be interested in your products or services. Monitor the growth in your network along with the engagement rate.
Tracking both these metrics can show you that you are catering to the right audience. When these followers make comments or share a post, it opens an opportunity for you to have more discussions and conversations with them. Hence, just tracking the growth in your network won’t make much of a difference till you know how much these new connections are interested to do business with you. This can help you go after the right accounts who are more likely to convert.
Inbound Connections
Network growth shows you all the connections you have on your social media account. While inbound connections determine the quality rather than the quantity of these connections. On social media you can easily increase connections or followers, however just increasing them in number won’t have any impact on your social selling strategy. You need to ensure that you are building a valuable relationship with your connections.
Inbound connections are the ones that send you a connection request or follow you. These connections may have come in contact with your content through blogs or other social media platforms and are interested in your company. They might also discover you through mutual connections or through recommendations. These are the prospects that are looking for you. Therefore, they are more likely to engage with your content and have a potential to invest in your products. High number of inbound connections prove the success of your social selling strategy.
Prospect Referrals
Referrals is one of the successful prospecting techniques that allows businesses to have a personal connection with the prospects. Instead of connecting with cold prospects, referrals allow sales reps to connect with new prospects and mention the contact that gave the referral. According to Sprout Social, 70% of B2B companies say that referrals can convert, and close deals faster compared to other leads.
Consumers often follow reviews or testimonials when they make buying decisions. Hence, recommendations are always appreciated by consumers when they want to invest in certain products or services. If you are getting more referrals that means that you are building strong and valuable connections with people in your network. Even if you have none, you can focus on improving your connections with your current followers to increase prospect referrals.
Link Clicks
Link clicks is another engagement metric that can show you if your followers are clicking on the links provided in your post. Monitoring the percentage of prospects who click on your links can show you if you are providing interesting and engaging content to your followers. When followers click on your links it means that they are curious to know more about the content you have shared. If this content is from your own blog, then you can successfully send traffic to your website from your social posts.
Tracking this metric can help you improve the quality of content or messaging you share on your social platforms. This will positively impact your relationship with your potential buyers.
Social selling metrics are important to track as they give you opportunities to improve on your existing strategies. Many businesses focus on formulating the perfect social selling strategy but overlook the measurement of their efforts. Use these metrics to start tracking your social selling success and gain valuable insights that can improve your ROI.
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