One of the key essentials to a great product or service is that it solves a real problem that many people experience. While you don’t want to give away your entire business model, product, and/or service for free, you can use social media to create sales by seeking out and responding to the problems your brand solves.

To use social media to generate sales by solving problems, you will want to seek out those who are experienced with these and related problems using various social media platforms. Twitter and Facebook are great tools for seeking out people with specific problems. With Twitter, you can use its Advanced Search feature to search for people mentioning problems in their tweets, or that have keywords related to the problem in their bio. You can also latch on to trending topics if they are related to the problem your brand or business solves by including the hashtag when you tweet about your business on Twitter. With Facebook, you can use its search function to look for groups or pages dedicated to a cause or problem your brand addresses.

Once you have found people on Twitter or pages on Facebook with a problem you can solve, this is not an opportunity to make a sales pitch, but rather establish the credibility and expertise of your business by offering helpful advice. After establishing a solid reputation as an expert in your industry, these other Twitter and Facebook users will turn to your product to solve the bigger problem by purchasing your product or using your service.

When using social media to increase sales, remember that establishing you and your brand as an expert who can solve problems is critical in developing a trusting relationship that is necessary for building a customer and client base. If you can’t prove that your product or service solves problems, you will have a hard time converting any sales pitch into an actual sale.