Top Business Social Media Websites for Busy Sales Professionals
Okay… I know that this topic has been done before. That being said I thought I might bring a different perspective to the mix. As you may or may not know, I own a SEO Company called WebTalent SEO. I often use social media websites to connect with prospects and generate qualified sales leads. I have also coached many other business on how to make the most out of their time spent on these social networks. The most common rebuttal I get from experienced sales professionals is that they just dont have enough time to monitor and maintain all these profiles. Now many of the other blog posts list dozens of site that you need to be on in order to effectively reach your prospects online.
Let me be blunt.. There is no way that any busy sales person can maintain a presence on these sites and cater to their pipeline without some help. I have known some sales managers to hire a social media agency or a socially savvy assistant to maintain the profiles of their sales people. This is a sheer luxury for most sales people who are tasked with replenishing a pipeline of qualified prospects and just don’t have the time. My solution to this problem is to concentrate on the most fruitful websites and social networks. Here is what I use in my sales process:
1. 
Ping.fm what we call a social aggregate tool. You can sign up with ping.fm and use it as a distribution tool which connects to all your other social media profiles such as linkedin, facebook, twitter, myspace and much many many more. This program has been a life saver for me and allows be to update most of my social profiles all at one time. Ping also allows your to send in updates from the road and it takes care of the rest. This is “must have” for today’s busy road warriors.
2. 
LinkedIn.com is (in my humble opinion) the best tool online for prospecting. Most of your prospect or clients will be on this network. You can also search for potential prospects by name, location and specific industry as well. You can highlight your company with a corporate profile and even post jobs. I have a friend who is a sales person for a IT firm and he closes more sales from linkedIn.com than any other medium, including cold calling.. LinkedIn.com is no joke.. Check it out!
3. 
Twitter is a great tool for any business person. Like Linkedin.com most of your business contact will be found on twitter as well. I use twitter to search for conversations happening around my industry. Your can use twitter’s search function to find the conversations happening around your vertical and single out qualified prospects. There is a great tool called Tweetbeep that will email you whenever a specific word or phrase is used and tell you who said it. Make sure you post as often as you can to keep people interested in your profile and to attract new potential prospects.
4.
Facebook is another social network that is overlooked by some sales professionals. Facebook is often viewed as a strictly “personal” tool and not to be mixed with business. Those days of keeping your life private are over my friends. Facebook allows you to connect with your prospect on a personal level and really grow that relationship between the salesperson and potential client. You can setup user permission so that your the prospect only has access to certain elements of your profile. This will still give you some privacy for those that have something to hide or want to protect their family. Fan pages allow you the opportunity to set up a community around your company or product and engage fans of the brand. You can also update facebook with the Ping.fm profile.
5. 
Ning is a community of thousands of unique niche social networks. Sales professionals can often find an entire community around their industry and become submerged in a large sea of qualified prospects. If you dont see a community that matches your target market it is free to create one. My creating a community catering to your prospects you’ll be able to engage and interact as the community leader network with them one on one.
6. 
Google alerts allow you to receive email alerts when google scans something relevant to your market. This can be a blog post, a tweet, a press release or new website. Utilizing Google alerts has created various opportunities for me in the past which have end in long term sales relationships.
People would argue with me that there are betting way to attract and engage potential prospects online. I would also most likely tend to agree with them. But like anything else, prospecting is not a one size fits all type of activity. You need to work through a lot of different types of techniques and see what ones work for you in your particular industry. I believe that these methods above will work for any type of sales person in any type of industry. That being said, I look forward to hearing your comments and experiences below. Good luck!
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One Response to “Top Business Social Media Websites for Busy Sales Professionals”
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This is a great post on all of the valuable places that the busy sales men of this world can leverage for lead generation through social media, but you failed to mention the value of organic search as a lead generation tool. Also, social media avenues can be very difficult to track on an actual ROI basis when considering traffic and actual conversion. I would love to talk to you more about this.