by MIMO Solutions | communication skills, goals, marketing, sales, social media, social media marketing, Social Networking, tips
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| Social Media Sales From Click To Close |
This topic is really why I am writing this book. I was doing some research about social media, and I found thousands of books and articles on how to get followers and grow audiences through social networking. After reading a dozen of the best books on the subject I found that most of them stopped once you grew your audience, but that doesn’t actually translate into sales at the bottom line. Since then, I have found a few books and websites that talk about sales and social media, but still very little information about what happens after the “like.” They all say something like “engage your audience” or “develop the relationships” and no one really tells you how to do this… until now.
Here are the top 10 ways to turn social networking in to actual sales revenue for your company:
1. Having business conversations
Two of the most common mistakes people make when social networking is that they share posts and start conversations about the wrong things. They either only post personal information about what they are eating and where they are going, along with sports, weather and news, or they only post offers and constantly bombard you with their latest marketing messages. No one likes to follow the person who only blasts out spammy sales messages, so don’t get me wrong here. The key is to share interesting information and start conversations about your business and the problems you solve.
Try to find a happy medium in the middle, so you can start having meaningful business conversations. Try to keep posts related to your business on sites other than Facebook. Your personal Facebook page can be more about you, but make sure your friends and family still know what you do for a living so they can use or refer you. On your business Facebook page, treat it more like LinkedIn and keep it about business. Ask questions and post articles that start conversations about your area of expertise and this will lead to more leads and sales.
2. Listening, watching, and caring for your audience’s needs
Another chronic problem with social networking is that it is usually all about you. We love sharing and posting about ourselves, but we hardly ever listen to what others are saying and sharing. Your sales antenna should always be up, and you should constantly be seeking out people who have the type of problems you solve. Find people, groups, blogs, and communities who fit your target market and watch and listen for opportunities where you can be of service. Reach out to others when someone can benefit from your product or service and offer to help in any way you can. Start the conversation and see if it doesn’t end up in more sales.
3. Proactively starting conversations and sharing helpful information with others
Following the previous step, you don’t always have to wait until you see someone post about a need. There is a good chance you know what someone looks and sounds like when they need your company. Seek these people out and offer a hand. When I designed websites and I came across a really bad site with a copyright at the bottom from 5 or 6 years earlier. I knew they needed a new site, so occasionally I would reach out to them with an offer or a helpful suggestion. This can take many forms. You might send an industry related article to a referral partner or client, give some advice to someone making common mistakes in your area of expertise, or just say hi, tell them what you do and offer to be of service if they need you. The key is to not wait for people to seek you out and follow you, but to be proactive and go find people who can buy from you. Many times they don’t know what they are missing, and you can help them discover your company for the first time.
4. Using open ended questions and challenging statements to start conversations
This can be tricky at first, but with a little practice you can get really good at posting questions, articles, or statements that start conversations. Too many people forget there is no “dislike” button on social networking sites, so people are much more likely to interact with positive messages then negative ones. Also, if they are too boring or obvious most people won’t waste their time. Think to yourself what would make you or your business likable. What message would cause people to comment or hit that share button to show all of their friends. Don’t waste you and your prospects time with boring posts or negativity. Try to give them something compelling and uplifting. Humor gets shared quickly around the world.
Don’t forget about tip #1 up there! They should be related to your business, and lead you to prospects not useless conversations about food or politics.
5. Doing a little free consulting
Normally, we discourage salespeople from doing too much free consulting and solving the prospect’s problem before they get paid for it, but social networking is a little different. This is a prospecting activity and not a sales call so it is OK solve some people’s problems, especially if hundreds or thousands of people can see you do it. Don’t be afraid to share too much inside information on your blog or social networking sites. Chances are that people can’t do it themselves anyway, or you wouldn’t be in business. Take this post for example. I am giving away a lot of good information about how to sell, but I know most of you can’t or won’t take the time to do all 10 of these things and eventually you will probably need more of my help. (I don’t mean you. You are committed to take action on these items immediately and will be forever changed.)
6. Sharing an easy entry offer
If your goal is to get more sales through social networking, eventually you are going to have to ask for the sale. Despite what a lot of marketing gurus say, people usually don’t just call up and buy the biggest and best your company has to offer because they liked you on Facebook. You are still going to have to sell. One easy way to move your audience into the funnel is to make a no or low cost offer as an entry point. This will help you collect their information as a lead, and it will allow them to sample a bit of your solution before they take the big plunge. Think about how this might work in your business. It could be 30 day trial, a consultation, or a coupon. Just make sure it is easy to buy or try, and that you make it highly visible on all of your social media accounts and website.
7. Targeting ideal customers
We already talked about being proactive and seeking out people to have a conversation with, but this time I want you to think bigger. See if you can come up with the top 10 ideal clients for you that you have always dreamed of… who would that be? Who would be the biggest, most profitable, dream clients that you have always wanted?
Now go out there and get them. There are no gatekeepers, mean secretaries, or other obstacles standing in your way online. Virtually everyone is on at least one social networking site, and they are out there waiting for you to connect with them. Having trouble reaching that CEO of the hospital who needs your software? What about that rich politician who needs your interior design expertise? What are you waiting for? All you need is a name or a company name and you can find out a way to reach them. Start following them on Twitter, ask for an introduction on LinkedIn, send them an email, make the calls, send a friend request on Facebook, find out where they like to eat of Foursquare. This is why you make the big bucks as a salesperson. Go connect with them and start the conversation!
8. Targeting referral partners and raving fans
Being likable in tip #4 is good. Being share-able is even better. At least once a week, share a post, email, or blog that is designed to be shared by your referral partners and raving fans. These people would be happy to refer you, but sometimes they don’t know how. You can use your easy entry offer, or some compelling educational content to encourage your connections to share your offer with other people you don’t know yet. This is a great way to grow your audience and convert them into sales.
We all know referrals are the holy grail of leads, and creating a post that is easy for people to share will allow your fans to refer you to all of their contacts. The average person is connected to about 250 people. Influential referral partners may have thousands of followers and connections to which you can get a promoted. Want to know who is the most influential in your network? Look up their Klout.com score to get a rough idea.
9. Taking the conversations offline
Very few businesses completely sell and service their clients online, so you will probably want to take the relationship offline and into the real world at some point. Don’t be afraid to make the first move, but don’t be pushy either. People enjoy the relative safety and security of online communications, and calling too soon can be considered pushy. When making this call, I find it best to you a very soft, customer service approach.
When calling a prospect who has completed a call-to-action on your site and entered their phone number, try something like this. “Hi, I’m from ______ company and I noticed that you download the white paper on ______. I just wanted to make sure you found the answers you were looking for and see if there was anything else we could do to help. Did you get everything you needed?” This will lead one of two ways, if it did, you can follow up with “What did you like about it?” “What made you download that one?” or “Great, how did you find us?” If it did not, you can follow up with “Sorry to hear about that. What were you hoping to find?” Those questions can lead to the problems they had that your company can hopefully solve. Just be real and honest and see how you can further the relationship. No need for complicated scripts or high-pressure sales pitches.
Also, don’t forget about your clients and referral partners. Your existing connections need attention too! I recommend calling at least one connection on LinkedIn per week and getting together offline for a lunch or conversation about how they are doing and how you can best help each other moving forward.
10. Following up constantly and consistently
Finally, the big one! Did you know that 55% of Internet leads are never followed up with, and of the 45% that are the average response time is over 2 days?!? Believe it or not, it actually gets worse. Again, of the 45% who follow up on leads, the average number of attempts is less than 2. Most salespeople make one call, email or follow up and then let the relationship drop. This same study found that your chances of getting an appointment actually go up through the first 6 attempts! Learn this lesson now. You are not bothering people by being consistent and thorough in your follow up. People need to be reminded and you are only one event out of hundreds in your prospects day. Don’t give up until you actually get a firm YES or a firm NO!
Follow up also includes those other relationships with referral partners and clients. We all know too well, that just because someone agreed to something, doesn’t make it so. The friend who said they would introduce you to a potential prospect, or the client who said the check is in the mail, almost always need additional follow up. The studies don’t lie. It takes up to 8 contacts to get a result, and you chances of being successful increase over the first 6 times you try. If you want the sales, it is your responsibility to see that each and every lead or introduction has an outcome.
The key to converting social networking into sales is personal connections and interpersonal communication.
Social networking is really no different that business networking in the real world. Most people screw up both by either being to soft and not talking business, or being to hard and trying to sell before the develop trust in the relationship.
Approach social networking like you would approach people socially at a business networking event and you will avoid problems and make better choices.
Did I miss anything? Please share in the comments below.
by MIMO Solutions | goals, sales, social media, social media marketing, Social Networking
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| Social Networking For Salespeople – Pros and Cons |
We have all seen the good, the bad, and the ugly of salespeople in real life, but what about on social networking sites? Do you and your salespeople look more like the top picture or the bottom one?
Take a minute and consider the pros and cons of social networking for salespeople and see if it is worth investing your precious time, money and resources into before you jump in head first.
Pros
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Cons
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- You can interact with your target audience.
- It is easier to give and get referrals and reccomendations.
- You can generate leads for yourself.
- You can use it as a CRM to keep track of contacts.
- You can improve your credibility and reputation.
- You can improve your search engine rankings and brand recognition.
- You can monitor what people are saying about you.
- You can keep up with industry trends, experts and vendors, and the competition.
- There is a low hard cost of using social media.
- Most people do it wrong.
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- It is hard to keep up with all the changes in social media.
- You might get negative feedback.
- You might look unprofessional.
- You might waste too much time.
- You will need computer skills.
- People will try to sell you.
- It has a lot of soft costs like time, energy and resources.
- Everything is public and lasts forever on the Internet.
- Requires some new thinking and strategies.
- Most people do it wrong.
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The deciding factor is “Most salespeople are using social networking completely or at best mostly wrong.”
If you are considering getting more involved or investing more energy and resources into social networking as a business or salesperson, please consider this factor heavily and commit yourself to either be a professional or generally stay out social networking and cut your losses.
The fact that most salespeople are doing it wrong can be a pro or a con. If you can take the time and energy to learn how to do it right, then you can easily crush your competition on social networks, because they are doing it wrong. If you can’t or don’t want to do it right, then you are probably wasting your time. This single factor will negate most of the cons and maximize most of the pros for social networking.
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| Social Media For Salespeople |
Social networking for salespeople, when done right, can be a powerful new tool to connect you with qualified leads and referrals that you would have otherwise missed.
Look at the cons list again for a second. If you really decided to dive in head first and get good at social networking, how many of those would still bother you?
You could… keep up with changes, handle negative feedback and win over a customers, look more professional than your competitors, deal with the spam and other bad salespeople, learn the computer skills necessary, handle the soft costs because they are resulting in revenue, learn the privacy policies and how to post professionally thing to want to last forever, gain the knowledge and skills necessary to communicate your sales message over social networking sites, and finally, you could dominate anyone who was not willing to invest the same energy to do all that.
One more thing… There is no magic bullet in sales or social networking!
If you haven’t noticed by now, social networking will never be a magic bullet that gives you all the leads and sales you can handle with little or no effort on your part. Building a book of business through social networking is no different than doing so in the real world. It takes longer than you want, it requires commitment and a strong desire to succeed eventually, and finding qualified buyers is still like herding cats.
However, for salespeople social networking does have it’s advantages compared to the real world. It is more easily monitored and tracked. Most salespeople are not that organized to begin with and these tools help. You can reach a lot more people in a shorter amount of time. You can send the same message to multiple people or groups. You can prospect around the world instead of just your town or hopping on a plane.
Finally, once you do the hard work of building your social network, it is harder for it to come crashing down. In general, even if a competitor decides to get serious about social networking, they are going to be way behind you and you can use your established network to continue your momentum. If you change jobs, you can bring your social networking with you much easier than real life.
Overall, social networking for salespeople is a very powerful tool, but it is not a magic bullet. Understand that, and you can make the right call.
by MIMO Solutions | behavior, goals, marketing, sales, social media marketing, Social Networking, tips
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| How to set goals for your social networking behavior, results and target markets. |
Getting Started With Goal Setting
Before you start setting goals for your social networking activity and results. There are a few things you need to know about goal setting in general.
- Just the act of setting SMART goals increases your chance of success by 10 times.
- Written goals increase that likelihood even more.
- Sharing your goals with your team, family or accountability partner again increases your chance of success!
- You can only manage what you can control. Setting goals for other people’s behavior is futile.
Studies show that only about 50% of people have goals in general, only 10% have written goals, and only about 1% have a plan to achieve them and share them with an accountability partner. Those people who do all three are exponentially more likely to achieve their goals than those winging it.
I hope that doesn’t come as a shock to you. If you wanted to take a road trip, you might want to decide where you are going, get directions, and tell someone else where you are going. Chances are you would get there safely. If you just took off one morning with no goal or plan and didn’t tell anyone, you might end up lost forever.
Most importantly, you can only manage what you can control. You have probably heard about SMART goals before, but you may not have considered this. Setting goals for result, especially those that depend on the action of others is generally not helpful. They are nice to have in mind, and important for determining your behavior, but they alone will not lead you to success.
Let’s use an example. If you set a goal to get 100 likes on your Facebook business page, it sounds like a good goal. However, it tells you nothing about how to actually achieve it and what actions to take. Even worse, it depends on other people to take the action by clicking “like.” You can’t force anyone to do that, so your goal is out of your control.
If that is the result we want, there are still goals we can set. The just need to be SMART goals which we can manage and control.
Smart Goals are:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Attainable / Achievable
- Relevant / Realistic
- Time-Bound
Specific leads us to the exact location we want to be on our road trip. Measurable and attainable tell us that we need to be able to track our progress, and it needs to be a behavior we can control. It is hard to measure unspecific feelings, or generalities like “be more successful,” “be well-liked in the community.” or even “get more leads.” How can you tell if you are making progress or even achieved “being successful”?
Relevant or Realistic is also very important. If you goal seams impossible, it is unlikely that anyone will go after it. Great goals inspire action. It needs to be relevant to the outcome you want and realistic so you believe you can achieve it with the right actions.
Finally, goals need to be time-bound to drive you to action and inspire you to achieve them. This can be done in to way. By simply adding a date that it is to be completed, or by adding how often you need to take the action. Let’s try some examples for social media.
Setting SMART Goals for your Social Networking activity
There are three categories that you will need goals for in your social networking activity. You will probably want to plan and track your progress toward what you need to be doing, who you want to reach, and the end results for your business. In other words your behavior, targets and results.
Behaviors
- Post status updates on Facebook three times per day, morning, noon and night.
- Write one call-to-action message, one original thought or blog, and re-share some interesting post about my industry on Facebook to fulfill my 3 post per day on Facebook.
- Send 5 Tweets per day, 3 Re-tweets of interesting posts, 1 original thought, and 1 call-to-action.
- Post one interesting article, either mine or someone else’s on Linked In.
- Share a link to an interesting article or +1 a website on Google+ once a day.
- Write one original blog about an industry hot topic per week.
- Send and informative email blast to my clients and prospects once per week that contains my new blog post, a call-to-action, and links to my social networking accounts.
Targets
- Respond to every email, direct message, or comment received within 24 hours.
- Add any new connections or business contacts I have made to my email lists each week.
- Find 1 new interesting industry expert to follow on Twitter every week.
- Add any new requests or suggested family, friends and personal connections on Facebook who I would like to talk to in the real world, each week.
- Add any suggested connections on LinkedIn who I have met in person or done business with in the last year, or I know well enough that they would take my call.
- Add suggested connections to appropriate Circles on Google+ each week, if they are someone I would like to keep in touch with.
- Update my list of the top 10 potential clients I am targeting weekly, and make at least one attempt to contact them or share an interesting article with them.
- Make contact by phone or email with at least 5 of my top 20 referral partners or strategic alliances.
- Clean out my contact lists every quarter, and remove anyone I no longer want to be associated with or have not interacted with in over a year.
Results
- Schedule 1 meeting per work day with a referral partner.
- Schedule 1 meeting per work day with a potential client.
- Follow up on all leads generated through my calls-to-action on the social networks and email blast.
- Ask for referrals, reviews or recommendations from every new client.
- Thank referral partner with an appropriate reward for each referral that becomes a client, and explain why if the referral did work out.
- Review my Google Analytics, Facebook page dashboard, and any other reports monthly, and make notes on what generated the best response and track my progress.
There are many other goals you could set, but these are some of my favorites, because they are all things that you can control and do on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. It is very hard and frustrating to only monitor results because they can fluctuate on thing outside your control. Plus, if you try to manage results, you are managing in the past. Typically, the results you are getting now are based on your activity from one to 3 months ago. In longer selling cycles, it could even be that the sales you get this month are a result of networking or referrals from over a year ago.
Feel free to use any of my goals above, or discuss some more appropriate goals for your organization. The ones listed above could actually be mores specific, but I wanted them to apply to more people. For example, “follow an interesting industry expert” would actually be better as, “follow an internet marketing expert.”
Goal setting will set you apart from the majority of humans and businesses, so take an hour to write them down this week. Then just follow the plan and adjust as necessary. Keep them SMART, and keep them positive. If you need any help, just email me.
by MIMO Solutions | goals, marketing, sales, social media, social media marketing, Social Networking
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| Having A Sales Mindset on Social Media Isn’t A Bad Thing! |
You might want to change your mindset about “sales” to be successful in your social networking online…
Chances are you have the wrong idea about “sales” as it relates to your behavior.
Most people are either deathly afraid of being considered a salespeople or too pushy, or they have no idea about what sales actually is and they are the one’s being to pushy.
So that’s the problem, about half of the people are too weak and the other half are too strong. It has always been a funny fact of life to me that about half of the population is afraid to do what they dislike in others, and the other half has no fear, but no filter either. This is especially true when it comes to the sales profession and what an actual professional salesperson looks like, sounds like, and behaves like.
Did you know that “sales” has been one of the most hated professions since is was officially created in the 1920’s? It is right up there with lawyers, politicians, and dentists every time they do the surveys. The most loved professions are things like teachers, clergy, and firefighters. These should come as no surprise to most people I would guess.
How many third graders do you think you would have to ask to get just one that said they wanted to grow up to be a “salesperson”? About a 1,000 is what we have come up with, you will find an occasional kid with the gift of gab and professional salesperson as a mother or father who is a strong role model for the child. The rest of us would rather be astronauts, doctors, and teachers.
However, do you happen to know what the most popular profession is in the United States? Surprise, it is “sales” with over 4.2 Million people performing the role, not including inside sales, waiters, or cashiers who all also happen to sell for their profession!
Last one, do you know what professional is a perennial contender for the highest paid profession? If you didn’t guess it, you need to pay better attention. Salesperson has almost always been in the top 5 highest paid professions since its inception. Now there are a lot of people making low wages as salespeople, so the average doesn’t come out in the top 10, but as far as top earners are concerned, salespeople come in right with CEOs, doctors, engineers and lawyers.
Why you might have the wrong idea about what professional salespeople do:
- Salespeople have a bad PR department. We take a bad rap in commercials, movies, and TV shows. We are associated with used-cars, polyester suits, and either the most pushy or most slick of our kind. Eventually, we need to get together and sell some marketing people to take on the task of changing our public image…
- Good salespeople make a lot of money. Did you notice the correlation above between the income of the most hated and most loved professions? The most hated generally rake in the dough, while the most loved are notoriously underpaid for what they do.
- There are a ton of bad salespeople out there. This one I will grant you. There are a ton of people doing it wrong. Hey, we have 4.2 Million salespeople out there; they can’t all be winners. People rarely talk about the good ones though. They silently propel companies and communities forward without being noticed.
It seems like our perception as a people of “sales” is bipolar. We love that people are willing to do it, we just don’t want to be one, and we don’t want them calling on us. We will gladly pay salespeople large sums of money for what they do, but then run and hide with our phones turned off if they are being paid by someone else.
People hate to be sold, but they love to buy!
In order to have the best of both worlds, to make sales and make friends, it takes a special mindset and a balance of the good, the bad, and the ugly aspects of sales.
What can you do to make sure you have the right sales mindset when you are on social media sites?
To me, great salespeople are like great waiters and your favorite restaurant. This is the sales mindset you should have on social media.
- You want to compliment the experience not force or artificially create it.
- You want to make suggestions about ideas that will enhance the experience.
- You want to be likable as a person and a company, and create an atmosphere that compliments your brand.
- You want to listen and anticipate the needs of your audience.
- You want to solve problems and make sure the customer is happy.
- You want to encourage your customers to try new offerings.
- You want to use your expertise to point the customers to the right solution for them.
- You want to welcome new guests and explain why people love you and why they made a good choice to check you out.
- You want to have fun and promote an environment that matches the customers expectations.
- You want to let them know when things have an up charge or will take longer to receive.
- You want to make sure they understand their purchase if people make common mistakes.
- You want to make sure they are 100% satisfied with the experience before you deliver the bill.
- You want to clean up after there messes if they make a mistake with your product or service.
- Finally, you encourage them to spread the word if they liked the experience, or ask for feedback if they did not.
All of those things a waiter does well, are the exact same things that will help you grow your business on social media sites, and create a raving fan base of loyal customers, who refer you often. Some people call it customer service, some people call it marketing, some people proudly call it sales. It really doesn’t matter, but those things that make a waiter great, are the same things that make salespeople great.
They create an atmosphere and environment which allows the customer to buy, while the salesperson stays out of the way.
Some, so called sales and marketing gurus, will tell you that this means the salesperson is unnecessary. That could not be further from the truth. Please don’t think that you can use marketing automation, can the salespeople, and still create that kind of environment.
There is a reason that a drive-through, fast food experience is different than being served by a great waiter who helps create a memorable experience. It is called “salesmanship” and it results from interpersonal communication and treating each person like the individual that they are.
You cannot substitute information and automation for interpersonal communication and expect the same results!
Don’t be afraid of being a salesperson, be afraid of not selling anything or not serving your customers the way you want and they deserve. Learn how to develop a sales mindset appropriate for social media and create the experience you would want when dealing with your company.
by MIMO Solutions | communication skills, marketing, sales, social media, social media marketing, Social Networking
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| How do you put together the pieces of a great social networking campaign? |
I was teaching a sales class about how to use social media the other day and this question was posed to me. I thought it was very interesting and something I have been struggling with for awhile. I am going to share my thoughts here, but I would love some feedback in the comments. Do you think businesses should be training salespeople to use social media or social media people and marketers how to sell?
Is it easier to train sales people to use social media or to train social media people to sell?
I have dealt with this from the sales side a lot as a
Sandler Sales Trainer. Everyone wants to know if it is actually something you can learn, or it is something you naturally have. I have also taught introductory computer classes for the elderly and out of work. I can absolutely say without a shadow of a doubt in my mind that you can train people to be better at sales, and you can train people to be better at computers and social media. I have done it for thousands of people.
However, that doesn’t really answer the question of which is better or easier… Really, it is a fundamental question of human behavior. There are generally four things that people are good at: working with the big picture and making decisions, working with people and influencing them, working steadily and keeping the peace, and working with details, systems and compliance. This is know and the DISC behavioral model if you want to learn more.
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| DISC Behavioral Styles |
Here is what you need to know for sales vs. social media:
People who are naturally gifted at sales are called “Influencers“. They are good at things related to social situations and communications. They are extroverts and people-oriented.
People who are naturally gifted and computers are called “Compliants“. The are good at things related to structure and organization. They are introverts and task-oriented.
These two types of people are exact opposites. Most people have some combination of all four types because all of those things are necessary to survive as a human being. However, Influencers and Compliants are on the opposite sides of the spectrum, so it is rare to find someone who will be high in both of these categories.
So which type of person makes the best and easiest social networker on the Internet?
The answer is training one person in the opposite task from their natural strength will be equally painful for both.
If you try to get an Influencer to sit behind a computer by themselves and focus on a task, they will be very stressed. If you try to get a Compliant to go out to a business networking function and deal with people, they will be very stressed. However, this doesn’t mean that you have to give up.
So who do you put in charge of social networking?
You can find the rare person who can do both well. Since there are millions of companies and some are existing entirely of 1 person, there is a good chance you can’t find yourself an I-C combo who happens to be an expert in Internet marketing and your business.
You can team up an Influencer with a Compliant and teach them the value of the other persons strengths. Salespeople generally know that they hate details and paperwork, and would much rather have someone else do it, and IT people generally realize they are not good at dealing with people’s irrational behavior and that they dislike trying to build relationships or popular. So as long as you explain why they need to team up and help them build a strong working relationship even though they are different, you can get the best of both worlds without stretching either outside there comfort zone.
If it is only you or you are currently in charge of social media and you are not an I-C or either, then you are going to be stressed, but you are not out of options. You can always outsource the creative or production to someone that has what you are lacking, or you can just realize that this task is going to be uncomfortable but you have to do it. There is a funny thing about human beings that we hate to do things that are uncomfortable, but the more we do the less uncomfortable the become. If you are not good at computers but you force yourself to learn, eventually they become easier deal with and you gain an appreciation for what they bring to the table.
Conclusion
Social networking takes an interesting balance of skills. You need a minimum level of skill at relationship building and computers and social media. If you are lacking in one area or the other, it is probably because it goes against your behavior style. You can except this and sure up your weakness or you can pass it off to a team member that is naturally more gifted than you. I generally recommend the latter.
by MIMO Solutions | marketing, social media marketing, tips
Social networking is the #1 online activity, used by 1.2 billion people worldwide. Nearly one in 5 minutes online is spent on social networking websites, and 75% of that is on Facebook.
“Social media is like teenage sex – everyone wants to do it. When they do they’re a bit awkward and disappointed, but as they practice and it gets much better.”
– LinkedIn’s marketing director, Josh Graff.
Getting Started:
ð Sign up and complete your profiles on LinkedIn, Facebook, Google +, and Twitter.
ð Use the same picture on all four profiles, and same logo on company pages.
ð Make sure you include links to your company website and other profiles.
ð Follow the favorites, join popular groups, and connect with key influencers.
ð Send personalized invitations to connect to your network and suggested friends.
ð Request recommendations and favorites politely and return the favor.
Being Social:
ð Use the 80-20 rule – 80% content and 20% promotion.
ð Update your status at least 3 times per day – morning, lunch, and night.
ð Share and comment on other people’s posts at least once per day.
ð Send invitations to connect to new people at least one per day.
ð Comment or answer questions in groups 3 times per week.
ð Cross-promote your other profiles, email newsletter, and website or blog once per week.
ð Spy on your competition, research potential clients, and help referral partners.
ð Be consistent, dead profiles make people think you and your company are dead too.
Netiquette:
1. NEVER USE ALL CAPS!
2. Never us social media or email to cancel plans or send urgent messages.
3. Avoid shorthand, buzzwords, and other jargon that can confuse people.
4. Keep private stuff private and personal stuff with personal friends.
5. Respond to every message from a real person, even if it is just “Thanks.”
6. Respond on the social media site you were contact, unless asked to call or email.
7. Don’t send out or respond to invitations for games or other timewasters.
8. Be patient when waiting for a response. If someone doesn’t add you back, accept it gracefully.
9. You are judged by the company you keep, so be careful about who you add to your network.
10. The internet is forever. Make posts you can be proud of. Manage your reputation.
