Achieving Social Capital Helps Selling

You may have heard the term “Social Capital,” which seems to be noticed more and more lately. It is related to “Social Selling,” which is selling that is achieved through the interactions on social media channels. With social capital, you leverage your relationships and use them at the right time.

One interesting difference; however, between traditional capital and social capital is that you can’t use social capital up. It will always be yours. With traditional capital, if you use it up, you won’t have any more.

The definition of social capital

Before anything else, it is important to understand what social capital is and how it applies to your business here and now. In some people’s opinion, social capital is a type of branding. It is probably safe to say that branding holds some sort of value. You can monetize it to some extent. It is not easy to tell for a little while if it holds value but you will eventually be able to determine the return on investment (ROI) of social capital. However, it is also important to remember that because it is “social” capital, human emotions and relationships are also figured into the success equation. With that in mind, it is very important to remember that you must behave considerately and ethically for it to work for you and your business.

One thing that is definite is that social capital is needed to help increase revenue for your business. You will need to tap your online connections and communities to make that work. As it is with any selling success, you need to develop the relationship with the other person before you can sell anything. By doing so, you are building trust, expertise, and credibility in the eyes of the other person. They, in turn, will feel the same way about you. The difference here is that it will be much easier for you to interact with your connections than you would have been able to do in the traditional manner. You will have to work hard to get what you want (just like always).

Can you measure social capital?

There are many analytics that you can get your hands on and those analytics tools are striving to help people to measure social capital as well, although it isn’t exactly there yet. There are not any social capital analytics tools in existence yet. It is most likely only a matter of time until tools of that type will be available and you probably will not have to wait too long. It is extremely important to bear in mind that (and this will always be the case) if you have a chance to sell anything, you will do it because of what you say and how you behave. It won’t be for any other reason. One thing that is important to remember is that you will need some analytics tools if you are going to become truly successful. Understanding exactly how social capital falls into the scheme of things when it comes to your business’s success is critical to your success.

Which tools should you be using?

It is important for you to become well acquainted with the tools that are available to you. You will see that that are aspects to many of the tools that can help you with social capital even though none of the tools are designed to deal exclusively with social capital. If you do your homework, you will start to understand more thoroughly what works the most effectively for your business. Once you understand what is available for you and your business, you can start to narrow down your choices and choose only what will work well for your business.

Conclusion

Social capital is one of your end goals. The tricky part is figuring out how to gather as much of it as you possibly can. It certainly makes logical sense that you can gain social capital since you are forming relationships and eventually selling your products and/or services to your online connections. Some people feel that social capital is more valuable than other types of capital because there is such a human element to it. If you can think of relationships as part of the capital, it all makes perfect sense.