With the maturity of social media in business over the last few years, many organisations are realising the true value it can provide.

Whether you use social media to help sell products directly or use it as one piece of your lead generation process, taking a planned approach that fully integrates social media into your overall marketing strategy will give you the best chance of generating new business.

If you’re not sure about how social media can help your business, consider these three powerful social media stats supplied by Steve Jones, of Newport-based Branching Out Europe:

72 per cent of men and 76 per cent of women use social media

71 per cent of all consumers say that they are more likely to purchase based on social media referrals

Linked-In accounted for 64 per cent of visits to corporate websites from social media

Social selling isn’t new, we’ve been doing this ever since the first market stall was established, millennia ago.

Before the birth of the internet, you sold your goods to others in the village, but you still bought from people you knew, trusted or had been recommended by a friend.

Move forward, and in today’s world the best sales come from people you know, trust and have empathy with.

The challenge today of course is that many buyers use the internet to learn about products and services that are available – so how do they know who to trust?

Social selling is a daily mix of digital marketing, social media and good sales skills.

As a social seller you need to understand each of the potential tools available, most of which are free, and use them appropriately.

Each platform, whether it is Linked-In, Facebook, Twitter, Google +, Instagram or any of the others available, has etiquette and unwritten 'rules of engagement' – but most audiences are forgiving and there are a variety of stories of how businesses have adopted social media to rapidly accelerate their growth or even save their business in the face of adversity.

We are going to highlight some of those real life stories with the people involved at Digital Tuesday, on May 12 when we will be Getting Social @Urban Pop Up, Newport - a business which has benefitted from being in a traditional industry, but making full use of digital to deliver maximum benefits.

We will also hear from Newport’s 'digital leader', Helen Reynolds, who will deliver a short presentation on the benefits of social media to growing your business, personal profile or both. She’ll then conduct case study interviews with our host, Tiny Rebels’ Bradley Cummings and Parc Pantry’s Matt and Ant as to how social media has been key in growing their businesses so quickly and successfully.

We have also added two more guests to our panel – Jon “@thenewsagent” Powell, who adopted social media when his business faced a crisis and ended up as the focus of television companies when Nato came to town, and Jon Thomas, ex-board member of a number of major breweries and his own views of the power of social media.

Visit www.digital-tuesday.co.uk for tickets.