Boost Sales With These 7 Social Media Steps

When social media first hit the scene, I thought three things: this is a waste of time, I don't have time for it and my customers are not here. I was wrong on all three counts. Social mediums are vital to your business. They all can grow your brand awareness and your profits.

Just three years ago I was oblivious to these tools. Today, my companies have more than 5 million views on YouTube, accumulated 300,000 Facebook followers and another 275,000 active followers on Twitter. Like you, I started with no followers and a very limited belief in these platforms.

Here are seven things we did that helped us build a presence and a following on the social media platforms:

1. Start. The most important thing to do is to start, and start fast. You don't need to know anything to do this. Create an account and commit to posting content. That’s all! Nothing is going to happen without starting. Billions of people are using social media worldwide -- proof that it’s not complicated. 

2. Post often and keep posting. There is no such thing as posting too much content. There are some “experts” out there who discourage frequent posts. They think if you post too often people will quit following you, but in the beginning, you don't have followers. The only way you are going to get attention is through frequency. Those who quit following you because you post too much aren’t your market and won’t buy from you anyway. If people aren't complaining about how much you post you are not posting enough. In three years, I posted more than 1,200 videos on YouTube, the social medium I consider to be one of the most powerful. That's almost 400 videos a year.

3. Be the celebrity expert in your space. Post content that makes you the expert in your space. Think in terms of providing information based on what you know and the service your business or products offers. Offer tips and insights such as how to, how not to, what to avoid, how to find the best, what makes it the best, how to fix it, repair it and what you must know. If you are a dry cleaner, post everything there is to know about dry cleaning, stain removal and fabrics.

4. Make planet Earth your target. Unlike traditional marketing, social media allows you to pitch the world. In the beginning, you want attention from anyone. I have followers in China and India that may never buy my books or sales training programs, but they may share my content with someone here in U.S. that can become a client. Understand from the start that anyone worldwide can see your content and be inspired to take some sort of action.

5. Create varying content. Use every form of content possible: videos, photos, quotes, articles and blogs and curating the content of others. Content sharing is the easiest and the one that may get you more followers faster. By sharing the content of a competitor or another expert and giving them credit, you will pick up followers from those that follow them.  

6. 80/20 rule. Eighty percent of your content should be information based, not promotional. In the beginning, you may even shift that to 95/5, where 95 percent is information. No one is going to come to you because you posted something promotional because no one is even following you. You have to get an audience that wants your content. As you grow followers, you can increase promotions.

7. Do not delegate. No matter how important your position or how busy your schedule, you must take ownership of your social media presence. I run three different companies and I still find time to post daily because I understand the power of these mediums. I am also supported by an entire marketing department of young social media-savvy people, but none of them knows more about my businesses than I do. They help create and push promotional content, but my voice is my own. You have to be authentic. Many brands miss this.

No matter who you are, how old you are or what you do, these mediums can be great for your brand and business, but first, you must get started and get a following.

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Facebook Posting Techniques that Really Work

There’s a fine line between a scientific approach to marketing on Facebook and a haphazard shotgun approach. For those of you who prefer not to "point and shoot," a new study from a San Francisco-based social media strategy firm offers an in-depth analysis of the top 20,000 Facebook Pages and up to a quarter million posts in an effort to determine the most useful posting techniques.

In the just-released report called Engagement and Interaction: A Scientific Approach to Facebook Marketing, Momentus Media provides answers to the seven most frequently asked questions by Facebook page administrators:

1. When’s the best time to post? While weekends and off-peak hours from 2pm to 5am are the times when page admins are least likely to add a new post, those are the posts that receive the highest interaction rates. Thursdays, on the other hand, shoulder the highest number of postings during the week and the lowest interaction rate. And since a high level of postings results in a lower interaction rate from users, it only stands to reason that posting in off-peak hours means you’ll gain more interaction from fans.
    
2. How many times should I post per day?You’d think too many posts would offend your followers but the report suggests frequent posting increases interaction. As you might suspect, fewer posts reduce the chances users will see them. And while unsubscribe rates go up after three posts per day, they level off at higher frequencies. The secret is to find that balance between optimizing interaction and managing unsubscribes, which is going to be different for every business.
    
3. What type of content elicits the most interaction? By far, photos generate the highest interaction rate for the six varieties of content, with status updates ranking No. 2. Others -- in descending order -- include video, music and links. The fact that links are at the bottom is interesting, considering they are posted the most often. Photos rank at the top because they’re visual, easy to digest and they elicit emotion.
    
4. Should I ask fans to Like or Comment on my posts? Absolutely. Just by taking advantage of a "Like" call to action boosts your interaction rate by 216 percent. Momentus Media analyzed 49,266 Page posts, comparing interaction rates for posts with "Like" and "Comment" calls to action and those without. And while only 1.3 percent of status messages had a call to action attached, those who used "Like" or "Comment" showed a huge boost in interaction rates.
    
5. Should I ask my fans questions? You’d think that by asking questions you’d get a better interaction rate, but such is not the case. However, Facebook page admins looking to achieve the highest comment rate should pose questions and then directly ask for fans to reply with comments.
    
6. How long should my status messages be? According to this study, size does matter. While there’s a higher posting rate for shorter posts (especially those that stay within the 140-character limit for cross-posting purposes on both Twitter and Facebook), interaction increases as the length of the status message increases.
    
7. How long do my messages remain in the Newsfeed? In the first hour of a Facebook status update, half of the users who will click on the post will have done so, with 90 percent of the clicks occurring within nine hours of the post going live.

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Facebook: Where Selling Meets Social

Imagine you live in a small town in a big, old house with a wrap-around porch on Main Street. You are sitting on your front porch as people walk by on a warm summer evening. You sip lemonade, commenting on the heat, and playing checkers with your neighbor. Many of the people who walk by wave or say hello. Some stop and visit for a while, chatting about births, weddings, deaths, local gossip.

Sometimes those who join you on the porch also invite friends to join them on the porch to sit and chat. Others walking by shout a quick hello and a short bit of news without even slowing their pace.

This casual, dynamic, social environment is Facebook.

Facebook is the new town square where people connect with friends, family and acquaintances. People do not go to the town square to search for the answers to a problem or to buy life insurance. They go to meet people, to see and to be seen, to interact.

Facebook is about who people are: what they like, what they believe in, and with whom they like to associate. Facebook is where people share announcements, opinions, and insights not for any particular objective, but just to share. To connect. To be alive.

People do not go to Facebook to search for the answer to a problem, to find a product or learn about your service. The front-porch experience is about connecting and exchanging ideas and news or even just a "poke."

Can you still sell on this new front porch? Absolutely.

Selling on the front porch is not that same as selling with Google AdWords. An ad that had terrific results on Google AdWords may flop on Facebook. But why?

Consider this example. Search for "guitar" on Google. Instantly, Google shows natural search results related to the keyword guitar. As Google delivers links to information about guitars, it also simultaneously displays ads related to guitars. If Google does its job well, users shouldn’t care because the search results and the ads are of equal interest to them.

Now search Facebook for "guitar." Facebook's search feature searched content only on Facebook. Because Facebook’s ads aren’t based on what you are doing right now, which is searching the word “guitar,” no guitar ads will appear. Rather, you will see ads focused on who you are as a person: your age, your sex, your marital status, and the pages, TV shows and other things you’re into.

In Google you get to sell to the specific need that the user is digitally shouting at you. Not so on Facebook. If you were to stand on your front porch, or Facebook, and yell at everyone walking down the street that “I have a great deal on car insurance,” some people might stop by and talk with you, but most would start walking down the other side of the street.

Selling on the front porch is about engaging people where they are, based on their personal likes and interests. This is what makes Facebook such a great tool for advertising products related to art, beliefs, music, culture, health, fitness or hobbies.

Let's say sell pottery. Selling directly on Facebook (“Buy this glazed mug right now for only $150”) can turn off your audience -- Facebook users are not shopping. You’ll miss the real opportunity and will probably not sell enough pots to pay for the ads.

So what might you do instead? Tell a story based on what marketers like to call your unique selling proposition. Why is your product or service special? You must offer something nobody else offers, does or promises.

Next, craft interesting and engaging content that reflects this unique selling proposition. Are you selling pottery as an investment? Art form? Dinner plates? Are you selling to twenty-something hipsters? Forty-something professionals? For each one of these groups, you may craft a different front-porch experience that provides value to your audience, like a video visit to an artist’s studio, a buying guide for different types of pottery, or a slideshow of crazy, one-of-a-kind pieces.

Pictures, videos, cartoons, testimonials -- all about pottery -- support your front porch conversation and validate your unique selling proposition. Gather email addresses through at least one special offer that comes only through email, and always invite your visitors to share this information with their friends.

Selling on the front porch is not new. For years I have been encouraging my clients to engage their customers with a website with a strong landing page offering relevant conversation and value-added information.

Rather than focus initially on products or service offerings, first provide free information around your products and services. If the potential customers request more information and you collect their contact information, then you have a lot more space to work with them until they are ready for a sale.

The goal, once you pay for a click, is to begin to build a relationship with a customer, one where they like you, appreciate your expertise, and want to purchase from you.

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3 Ways to Use Social Media to Build Rapport With Your Customers

These days, prospects and customers have more information thrown at them than ever before. From phone calls and snail mail to emails and social channels like LinkedIn and Twitter, each new way for a person to initiate contact makes it harder for companies to break through all the noise.

With sales -- and any industry, really -- the base of a strong prospect or customer interaction is a relationship. But how can you build a lasting bond when the people you’re trying to connect with are constantly bombarded with other requests and information?

One solution is a practice called social selling. Between LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, customers and potential new clients are everywhere online -- and salespeople should be, too. Today’s prospects don’t want a traditional “discovery call.” They want their sales representatives to have an understanding of who they are personally and what they need, and social media can help with this.

But how does an individual practice social selling? And how can an entire sales team implement a social selling strategy? Here are three easy steps to kick off your social selling program the right way.

1. Get to know your prospects.

With social selling, a sales representative’s job is to understand the individuals they’re targeting on as many different levels as possible. Maybe you both went to the same university or grew up in the same hometown. These tidbits of information make for a stronger initial engagement and can help build a lasting relationship.

Using a variety of social media networks in your investigation is important, and keep in mind the strengths and weakness of each. LinkedIn is great for finding commonalities and historical data, but is rarely the most up-to-date platform. Twitter, on the other hand, is often used several times a day for everything from announcing colds to career moves.

With social selling, it’s also necessary to find the right balance between too much and not enough information. No one wants a complete stranger to know everything about them! Find logical bonding points and easy ways to bring them up naturally in conversation, as opposed to abruptly dropping in information. Noticing you both grew up in the city may be an easier entrance than the fact that you both enjoy yoga.

2. Let your prospects get to know you.

When implementing a social selling strategy, you need to show not only that you understand where your customers are coming from, but also that you’d like them to know you better, too. When dealing transactionally-only, it can be easy to forget the individuals on both sides of a sales interaction are, in fact, regular people.

As salesperson utilizing social selling, you should have an active online presence, where you thoughtfully interact with various groups and gain an understanding of different digital communities. Social profiles allow prospects and clients alike to get to know you better from afar, which builds trust and shows them who you are as a person, outside of your one-on-one interactions. Most of all, it makes the individual on the other end of the phone or email more willing to engage with you as a specific person, as opposed to “The Company” that you represent.

3: Organize and analyze.

What good is information without organization and analysis? Just like any type of data, social media insights are only truly helpful when there’s a level of understanding and interpretation behind them.

Just as you would sync direct contact with a prospect into CRM, make sure to track your social insights and interactions closely. Tools like TweetDeck can assist with segmenting social streams to help keep new, up-to-the-minute information organized, while creating a timeline within your CRM platform allows you to have all the pieces of puzzle readily available when initiating contact with a potential client.

Once you’ve got all your informational ducks in a row, it’s time to analyze. Do you have enough of a basis to create a warm outreach, or is it better to wait until you’ve learned more about this individual and feel like you can build a meaningful relationship? Understanding whether you need to gather more information is extremely important, since an unprepared initial outreach could ruin a potentially advantageous relationship.

Communication is a big part of analysis among the sales team. Teammates will benefit greatly from bouncing ideas off of each other and asking for advice. For example, a sales person could ask a teammate, “My prospect just tweeted that she’s going to be really busy this month. Should I wait until next month to pitch her?” or “My prospect just posted a picture of his lunch of Instagram. Is it awkward to tell him that I share his love for burritos?” Having a team member or two weigh-in can help speed up analysis and provide clarity on what’s most appropriate.

Salespeople are known for being social, but in a field as competitive as sales, it can be easy for representatives to isolate themselves at the office. Sales managers should encourage sharing across the team by instilling a feeling that when the team succeeds, everyone succeeds. Sharing advice and best-practices can help each individual on the team learn and grow from the experiences of their teammates. Not only does social selling help with the initial engagement of a prospect, but the insights and connections you can gain from this technique will help set up the basis for more meaningful, fruitful engagements long-term.

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