Social is big and it is everywhere. Marketing and Sales were one of the first business functions that took off on social media. The Art of Social Selling by Shannon Belew promises to teach you how to sell on different social media networks including Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn among others.
Shannon Belew is an online marketing consultant and speaker. She is also the coauthor of Starting an Online Business All-in-One For Dummies and has a more than a decade long experience in sales.
The Art of Social Selling
Author: Shannon Belew
Publisher: AMACOM
Pub Date: January 2014
Your Price: $19.95
ISBN: 9780814433324
Page Count: 272
Available at: Oreilly.com – http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780814433324.do
Book Review
The chapters are well organized and the author immediately addresses the main subject – selling. The assumption is that the audience is aware of the social media concept. The author makes little effort to introduce the concept to the reader and no effort to sell the idea of social media for business to the reader. The focus is entirely on sales using social media. However, the author does discuss how it is different from traditional selling. Although the author assumes that you are aware of social media, she does not assume that you know how to exploit it for business and generating sales.
The author first puts forth the current state of sale departments and their waning ability to meet targets. She also points to various organizations that are successfully using social media. In chapter 1, Fishing In Social Ponds, the author argues why social selling is important and where to engage the customers. She Compares social selling to fishing and introduces different types of social hubs or ponds you can fish.
Salespersons adopt different personas from being a passive onlooker to someone tweeting every 5 min or less and hogging your timeline all the time. More than Lead Scraping accepts that everyone wants sales, but the author reiterates that success depends on the process you adopt. The author narrates personal experiences to show the difference between lead scraping and the traditional cold-calling approach. Here, she introduces the concept of Unselling which focuses more on relationship building than pitching products and services to your social media peers.
We have all heard the chorus for engagement on social media. In Content, Engagement, And Building A Relationship, the author points out that the sales funnel is not dead, it is altered. Awareness and much of Evaluation now happens using online information and content is central to this new buyer behavior. The chapter answers critical questions about the type of content you need to create, and how to map the content to different social networks.
In the later chapters, the author discusses tips on how to best use your time and get most out of it. She warns that the networks are free, but your time is not. For accurate calculation, the author lists various costs that you should take into account when you consider different traditional and social selling options. She then digs deeper into each of the big networks: LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Google Plus. Here, the author shares her views on creating effective profiles, the unique options that each network provides to further your message, and the best practices that you should adopt for these networks.
In the end, the author presents three case studies showing how different businesses have used social media to connect with prospective customers and generated leads through social media.
The book is focused on a single topic, compared to some other books that try to cram everything in one. The author uses many examples and covers different sales scenarios, which makes it easy to understand. The Art of Social Selling covers everything you need to know about social media to exploit it for business. The audience is everyone in the marketing function and small business owners who will be managing social media campaigns on their own.