How can employees make new contacts or future leads through tools like social media and benefit the whole organization? Here are the benefits of social media.

Employees can make and nurture professional connections.

With the help of social media platforms, your employees can create and strengthen professional relationships with people outside your organization. This means these relationships can lead to new opportunities that would otherwise not have been available for you.

More and better connections can naturally result in more sales leads, interest in potential employment, new business opportunities, and ideas. LinkedIn is specialized for these types of connections and has a range of obvious business uses.

Besides that, employees can use social media as a communication tool to get new job-related information. It is also a tool for your employees to spread awareness of your company. This type of transmission of information can create brand awareness and open up new business and recruiting opportunities. 

This is where employee advocacy (such as social selling) is helpful – it is all connected to people and their influence. The main benefits to businesses are:

• Increase lead conversion: For  84% of B2B buyers, the purchasing process with leads and referral generated through employees have been proven to convert 7 times more than any other form of lead generation. Social selling is also a solution to the cold call’s decreasing effectiveness.

  
  

• Increase brand trust and confidence: People are much easier to trust than brands. The humanization of your business through your employees being the face of your company will enable customers to trust you more and feel a connection with your company.

  
  

Millennials are savvy on social media and more keen to network and build their social media profiles, so the concept of employee advocacy will not be so challenging compared to older generations among your team members.

Generate leads.

Social media offers a low-commitment and easy way for potential customers to express interest in your products and business. Lead generation is such an important feature of social media for business that many social platforms offer advertising formats specifically designed to collect contacts and leads.

Learn more about your potential customers.

Social media offers a huge amount of data about your current and new customers in real time. You can use that data to make better business decisions.

All of the major social platforms offer analytics that gives you demographic information about the people who interact with your account. This can help you customize your strategy to reach your audience better.

Boost sales.

No matter what your product is, social media can help you. Your social profiles are a crucial part of your sales funnel. These are the way that a new contact becomes your customer.

As the number of social media users grows, and social media sales tools evolve, social platforms will become increasingly important for e-commerce and product search. The time is right to align your sales goals and social marketing.