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Many companies have joined, are in the process of joining, or at least realize that social media exists and is a powerful marketing tool. However, many more companies are not leveraging social media to its fullest capabilities. Not only should social media be a part of your marketing mix, but your sales people should also be engaging in social media.

Following are some guidelines that might be helpful when it comes to social media integration with sales professionals.

Social media is not merely a channel to push information. It is a place to communicate with other people in niche digital communities. Specifically, sales professionals should follow this process for integrating social media into their overall sales approach:

Social Media Rules of Engagement:

• Sentiment around various industry topics, keywords or brand names
  • Google Alerts
  • Twitter Sentiment.com
  • Tweet Feel.com
  • Backlink.com
  • Linked In Questions and Answers, Linked In Groups
    • Ideally, each regional sales manager could run point on managing engagement for a specific group. Yet, everyone should listen to stay informed.

• Competitors
  • Press Releases
  • Problems
  • New Solution Offerings
  • Change, Turn-over, etc.

• Influencers
  • Are there names that seem to come up a lot within a specific space?

     2. Evaluate

• Does this information matter?
• Do these individuals matter and do they have any clout (Klout.com)?
• Is there a consequence if I engage?
• Is there an opportunity that might be created if I engage?

     3. Engage  

• Seek to add value to any conversation you join.
• You may not comment, but you may want to pass the information to someone else in your network that may be able to contribute.
• Engage early in the conversation when the topics and discussions are fresh.
• Be courteous and don't push our product or service.
  • If you think your product or service can be beneficial to someone, send a direct message to that specific individual.
  • Make it easy for the person in question to self educate themselves.
• Don't engage unless you feel comfortable with the rules of engagement of that group.
• Do seek to understand how to engage so you do feel comfortable engaging in specific groups.
• Initiate conversations you would be curious to develop a deeper understanding of, such as:
  • Industry 
  • Brand
  • Sentiment

Hopefully this will clarify how you could be leveraging social media to support your company's sales process. It's not necessary to spend hours socializing (no more than twenty minutes a day scanning through all your groups and commenting and/or forwarding comments is plenty). Social media is a simple way to keep tabs on trends and may give you a slight edge as you are selling.