By Sharon A.M. MacLean who invites your comments following this blog. You can also find more modern marketing strategies for business here. http://bit.ly/1cKPcjn
It’s a rare person in business who’s satisfied spending time connecting with fans, followers, contacts, and connections. Unless there’s an end-game.
Who’s got the time to waste?
Before you abandon the effort, ask yourself about your motivations. Are you trying to boost your credibility among clients? Do you need to establish authority to attract investors? What about a higher public profile to book speaking engagements?
It’s worth your time to answer these 6 questions:
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What do you want to achieve with all those contacts on your lists?
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Have you identified the characteristics of your ideal investor?
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Do your contacts reflect the characteristics of your model customer?
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What exactly do your clients want from you?
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What have you prepared to offer them?
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How will you deliver on your promise?
Next, determine the number of contacts you need to make and work back to see how you will meet those goals.
The 3-D Effect to growing your online business
“Make sure you’ve got the right 5,000 accounts,” says Olivier Taupin of Next Dimensions Media. Olivier owns 100+ groups on LinkedIn with 1.4 million members.
“What’s important to me is that the people make sense,” continues the social media thought leader. “If you were in the energy industry, and there was somebody in the hospitality sector who wanted to connect, it won’t work for you.” He recommends that you evaluate all your invitations by first studying their profiles.
What about those people who’ve viewed your profile. Should you invite them to connect? Yes, says Olivier. If they align with your organization’s mission.
Olivier’s developed his own 3-D process to determine the value of a connection but cautions, “We live in an imperfect world, so each element is flexible.” His go-to tactics among a few others are published here for the first time.
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Industry. Start researching your preferred field of commerce. If you’re having challenges reaching into climate change, for example, discover who is speaking to your targeted client. It might be people selling green energy or solar panels who will give you clues—including potential contacts.
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Function of the people you want to reach. Is the purchasing agent not available to you? Instead, try their colleagues for your second choice: people in marketing, production, or finance who might help get you a connection.
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Geography. Decide the range of your business reach–from local to international. If it’s not possible to connect with HQ, try going through a local branch office to reach inside the company.
Now, you see the chief reason to have an overall strategy that involves your CEO and other key players in your organization. If you cannot connect with a preferred individual, perhaps your CEO can provide an introduction. Or someone else in the organization has a connection to help with the contact. This is where LinkedIn’s Navigator function serves larger organizations well to keep track of team interactions. It’s likely too expensive for small business who can do a lot at the freemium or premium level of service.
There’s also a great opportunity on Twitter to, “Turn followers into dollars,” as Michael Kuwala, CEO of SocialQuant, is fond of saying. Or you can enhance your Twitter strategies by checking out his software service at http://www.socialquant.net.
Do your invitations get accepted? Good. Here’s the 3D Effect that Olivier Taupin personally uses to stay organized.
- Champions are your door openers and influencers at the level of CEO, VP, journalist, politician or industry influencer. Nurture these relationships by retweeting their comments and blogs and generally showing yourself to be a fan. Don’t ask them for favours or introductions to their world before you’ve first shown them a lot of respect.
- Prospects reflect the characteristics of your ideal customers in each of the niches you serve. Same idea here: Don’t ask for their business before you demonstrate your worth to them.
- VIPs are your customers or those you would love to have as customers. Say hello to these individuals on a regular basis and send them salutations. But not too often.
- Fans are people who want something from you. We are grateful for fans because they easily like your posts…share your content…and comment on your insights.
Share respect for people online
“One of the biggest problems I see,” says Mr. Taupin: “People look at who I know and ask for an introduction to someone on my list. But I don’t even know the person asking for the connection.”
This also is the #1 complaint reported by HubSpot from successful people like venture capitalist Mark Shuster and entrepreneur Paul Brunson: “We need to give (many times) before asking for anything. We need to provide value up front.”
Take a look at their L.O.V. Graph showing how to “add value”. HubSpot published their insightful graph that visualizes ways to strengthen relationships. The inbound marketing agency says that sharing value six times gives you a 50% chance of getting some form of response. Increase that shared value to nine times before asking for something gives you a 90% chance of getting what you want.
Here’s some ideas on how to show the love.
Introduce them to someone
Appreciate them
Offer your expertise for FREE
Make them laugh
Add value through social media
Comment on their blog
Feature them in an article you write
Buy them a book (Kindle is easiest)
Give them insightful feedback on their product, company, or work
Final counsel
“Don’t try to sell me today or you’ll get kicked out,” says Olivier Taupin. That’s old style.
Instead, demonstrate your worth by showing you’ve thought about their challenge enough to have worked out a solution beforehand. Give to get.
Mike Kawula ♕ (@SelfEmployDKing)
This is good….real good. Do obviously appreciate the mention, but this is spot on.
Love this: “Make sure you’ve got the right 5,000 account” That is so true and I have this discussion with people regularly. Just the other day I had someone who was in the beauty business for 3 years building a Twitter profile around that and switched to the fitness industry. They were upset they weren’t seeing results on Twitter and said it didn’t work for the fitness industry, yet the followers they built were interested in beauty.
As you said: “Make sure you’ve got the right 5,000 account”
Also love the advice about not initially asking for something. Get to know people before blasting them with an offer which to me is “Spam” if they don’t know me. It may be a great product or service but you’ve got to first earn the chance to discuss it by getting to know who I am.
Great post and will be sharing with my network.
Cheers.
Sharon A.M. MacLean
Thanks, Michael. We’re finally starting to move from the Wild West of social media to a world of strategic thinking. Thank goodness because I see my clients get frustrated because their actions have no rationale or execution methods to support. Our mission is to get them steered into good planning.
Sherri Frost
Sharon, these are some really great ideas to add value or ‘show the love’ as you call it to our connections. It seems a little overwhelming when you think of doing this with 5,000 connections so I guess that’s where the lists come into play.
Sharon A.M. MacLean
I also like the idea of starting out this way, Sherri. It would save SO much time. 🙂
Beverley Golden
Another great post, Sharon with a very sensible and easy to understand strategy for optimizing social media and making sure your connections, are the ones that you actually want. Although I haven’t targeted a specific group, I always trust that my writing is being found by the perfect group of people. Call me a bit naive, however, I do ask the question often, “Why exactly am I spending so much time on social media when all I really want to do is have “real” conversations with people and write?” Interesting to keep reassessing the whys behind the things we are doing!
Sharon A.M. MacLean
You’re probably right about being found by your tribe, Beverley. It might go a little faster if we help the search along. 🙂
tennisbrat7
Sharon, this is so wonderful, and accurate! Yes, make sure you have the right 5,000 (or 500) clients, as they will be the support to help build you even more. Thank you for the tips! As always, you make this sound so simple. 🙂
Sharon A.M. MacLean
lol –Don’t think anything we do is simple, Liz. Yet, the idea of spending so much time inviting the wrong people to our networks makes me tired. 🙂
rozbeads
Just haven’t figured out how to use LinkedIn. I am sure this info is great for the right businesses.
Sharon A.M. MacLean
What about focusing on fashion boutiques in LinkedIn who might carry your jewellery, Roz?
Gisele Grenier
Great article. I’ve been trying to work on Linked in more and I’m just not connecting with it. When I first signed up, it was when I was only teaching art. That’s where my street cred is. Then when I signed up for the design business, those followers also started to tag me there too, which was unrelated. I should have just kept one account because my commercial clients know about my art biz and my art students know about my commercial work.
Sharon A.M. MacLean
Can you different networks for the different personalities of your business, Gisele? Or do your prefer FB/Twitter for both? .
Kristen Wilson (@k10wilson)
Great point that we need to figure out why we are doing something in the first place.. that is what resonated with me most here. Why am I on LinkedIn, for example, because they said to be, because ? Great points and followed by great tips!
Sharon A.M. MacLean
I also believe it’s the reason for helping those clients who best suit our skills.
carundle
I’ve recently cut back on some social media interaction because I felt it wasn’t serving my goals. I think it’s more important to be focused on fewer things than scattered on many things.
Sharon A.M. MacLean
So agree with you here, Carol. I like the idea of getting really good on one platform at a time.
tradurretranslateblog
Definitely agree, that one needs to give many times before getting, or expecting, anything in return. And trying to always be nice, supportive, give value.
Sharon A.M. MacLean
Yep–we want to do business with people we know something about and, even more, trust.
geiseman
Great comments. I have to admit it is one of my pet peeves when someone sends a friend request and then instantly get a solicitation or they want something. Hope people take this article to heart.
Sharon A.M. MacLean
There’s likely a lot more repitition needed on this subject.
Vickie Maris (@vickiemaris)
Spot on with your suggestions in this post. There was such focus on building a following (numbers focus) in social media at the start. I’m glad to see more people building in strategy.
Sharon A.M. MacLean
I honestly think there’s still a lot of more understanding needed about how to build the right list, too, Vickie.
Jackie Harder (@keydynamics)
Love it, Sharon. An excellent primer with what to do with your oh-so-valuable list. Great points on how to show the love. I need to be a lot more strategic in what I’m doing. Thanks!
Sharon A.M. MacLean
Likewise, Jackie. It’s so much to do with those lists!
Beth Blacker
I started out on LinkedIn connecting with everyone and anyone. Well, that’s not true, I knew there was no value to connecting with a software developer in Pakistan…if in fact that is what he really is. Anyway, I was in a different industry and owned my baked goods company back then. I was trying to take a product nationwide so I wanted to be connected to anyone that I perceived could be a potential corporate client as well as a lot of people in the food industry. But I also spread myself very thin with connections in my community that I thought would still give me recognition and credibility but in the end all it did was clutter my newsfeed with information that didn’t have any relevance or value for my business. I fell off the LinkedIN bandwagon for awhile but now I am working as the Director of Strategic Relationships for my husband’s mortgage company and am on the upswing again. Yeah, big switch. I am focusing primarily on meeting Realtors in Florida especially ones that want to do co-marketing with us. In less than 2 months I have made some significant connections that are providing referrals so I can tell you narrowing down your intent really does work.
Sharon A.M. MacLean
This is such a good explanation of the advantages/disadvantages of networks, Beth. Especially how niches works so well.
Barbara Carr
Bottom line is respect for others in all that we do, especially online as comments can sometimes be misunderstood. Thanks for the tips on how to organize people who follow us. Helps us to respect what they want from our information.
Sharon A.M. MacLean
Respect goes all the way, Barbara.