Making Money With Social Media: 3 Tips To Follow BEFORE You Try to Sell

If you want to make money with social media, it takes more than a series of hype-heavy posts on Twitter and Facebook to drive clients your way. Most entrepreneurs fail by jumping too quickly to selling and ignoring the most important aspect of this type of marketing.

When you go straight to selling, you’re telling your contacts it’s all about you… what you have, what you sell, what you do. At some point you can indeed sell. But you need to know when the time is right. It’s like courtship- timing is everything!

Here are 3 important tips for you to focus on before you try selling your services using social media. Keep these tips close by and run a check on yourself each day so you can profit and prosper from the valuable connections you’re making.

1.    Focus on Value
Your followers are not tuned into you so you can pitch them nonstop with sales promotions. They want something that will inform, engage, and be of value to them. When you approach your social networking with the mindset of adding value to your network, you’ll immediately set yourself apart from others who are stuck in the mindset of overt selling. This is about giving first and understanding that it will come back to you ten-fold.

2.    Focus on Credibility
By focusing first on adding value to your followers’ experience, you pave the way to increasing your credibility. Credibility is not something you claim on your own. You have to prove yourself to your audience. There are plenty of self-proclaimed experts using social media, however when you do a quick Google check, you learn that for many this self-proclaimed expertise is not supported by any real world experience. Make sure you have a long tail of evidence supporting your credibility by writing articles, blog posts, providing top notch value, and having a credible web presence.

3.    Focus on Trust
We buy from those we know, like, and trust. In fact, people will pay a higher price to do business with someone who is perceived as more trustworthy. You can use social networking to gain the trust of your followers so that they’ll arrive to you practically pre-sold. So how do you build trust? First take note of tips 1 and 2: focus on value and credibility. As your followers learn that you’re a person who provides value and is a credible resource, the trust will grow.
By focusing on value, credibility, and trust you create an emotional connection. Making an offer to someone who knows, likes, and trusts you is much easier than pitching a new contact who barely knows you. That’s where most entrepreneurs fail in social networking- they jump for the pitch before the relationship is established.

Now that you have these 3 things to focus on, you can enjoy making money with social media in a way that will be true and authentic to you. You’ll not only find yourself able to get new clients, but your reputation and credibility will serve as an easy way for others to say YES to your offers.