Top 3 Tips to Perfect Your Social Prospecting Strategy

We are officially in the digital era, where more people communicate via text than over the phone, and updating a social media status is considered an acceptable form of communication. Even dating is done on apps. What was once traditionally done in person is now preferably done online.

So how can this be applied to growing your business? Enter: social prospecting.

What is social prospecting?

Social prospecting refers to the process of leveraging social media platforms to identify, research and engage with prospective new customers.

Generating new business with social media

According to Hootsuite, 88% of Americans use social media. That’s a massive audience your business could be tapping into. The best part is you’re likely already using at least one social media platform, so you already have a foot in the door.

However, just being on social media isn’t enough. You need to know how to leverage it to actively grow your business and generate more leads.

Here are our top 3 tips to social prospecting:

1 Build a network of your target audience

Before you can begin social prospecting, you need to know your target audience and build a professional network of people in that audience. LinkedIn specifically is a good way to do this. You can find the people you want to target based on their industry, company size, job title, seniority, connection degree (i.e. 1st, 2nd, 3rd-degree connections), etc.

The more people in your niche you connect with, the bigger your network will become and the easier it will be to generate leads.

2 Create effective messaging that resonates

Messaging is perhaps the most important aspect of social prospecting. With platforms like LinkedIn, you are unable to interact one-on-one via messaging if you aren’t connected. Creating a personable, yet intriguing, connection message is key in order to talk further.

The best way to go about social prospecting on LinkedIn is by treating the conversation just like that...a two-way conversation.

This is an ideal opportunity to learn more about your prospects’ business so you can better understand how your products or services can best support their goals. You might even find the relationship can be mutually beneficial if they are offering products or services you could use.

For an in-depth breakdown about crafting the perfect social prospecting messaging, check out a blog we recently published all about messaging here.

3 Always follow up and follow-through

Just like with any type of sales strategy, you must be persistent in order to be successful at social prospecting. While social prospecting gets you closer to your target audience, quicker and at higher volumes, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’ll be a guarantee close. Social prospecting is about building relationships and nurturing those relationships.

If a prospect isn’t ready at the time of your reaching out, it’s imperative to set reminders to follow up with them at a later date to close the loop. A lot of the time you’ll find that when you follow up, it’s the perfect time for them and you end up seeing positive results.  

Additionally, checking in every once in a while to see how business is going for them, or simply sharing a new piece of content you published helps put you back to the top of mind for them. They may even have someone in their network that could benefit from your business and you could gain a new referral.

Check out how one of our clients used CoPilot AI to perfect his social prospecting strategy and ended up closing his biggest account to date here.