3 Tips for Making Standout Friend Requests

May 13, 2010 By 10 Comments

I am always amazed at how many friend requests I receive on social media sites that contain absolutely no context.  In some cases there may be mutual friends that we share in common, but beyond that there is often no other clue as to why the other person wants to connect with me.

Many times it will not make or break whether I accept the request, but it is always nice to know the reason why someone is reaching out.  Because it is such a simple thing to do, I encourage people to take the brief moment it requires to explain a bit about what has prompted their request.

With that in mind, here are a few tips that will help you stand out from the pack:

Always personalize.

This applies especially to a site like LinkedIn.  There, you can send your request with the option of leaving the canned, generic response in the message body.  This is something along the lines of “I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn.”  It’s pretty unremarkable, right?  However, the majority of requests I receive use it!  It seems to say that the person couldn’t be bothered to add a personal touch to their message.  At the very least, address your request using the person’s first name.

Explain why you want to connect.

This is probably the most important part of a request.  Online, it’s common to associate with people you might not necessarily know “in real life.”  This is all the more reason to let the other person know why you think it’s a good idea to connect.  A simple message saying you noticed you have several mutual friends, or you admire their work, or that you are interested in finding out more about their industry will suffice.

As long as you are shedding some light on your motives, the other person will usually be more than happy to accept.  It’s just good social etiquette.

Follow up after the acceptance.

This tip is for bonus points.  Don’t let your interaction stop after your request has been accepted.  Take the time to comment on or send a message regarding your newly formed connection.  This can go a long way towards making you stand out from the rest in the other person’s mind. They are more likely to remember someone who expressed appreciation for your new-found relationship–instead of simply boosting their number of connections, never to be heard from again.

Now that’s building “social capital.” :)

Photo credit: ROFLRAZZI.COM

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My 6 Steps to Social Media Success

February 28, 2010 By 2 Comments

These six steps were born out of common frustrations I hear from people about understanding how to market online.

Does this sound familiar? “I know I need to figure out all of this social media stuff, but it’s all piecemeal now and I just don’t know where to start!”

You may have noticed how some small business owners seem to attract clients and customers online almost effortlessly—while others struggle to keep their business afloat. The reason is that they are following a proven business model to market their business.

The six steps outlined here not only incorporate that proven model, but show you how you can supercharge it by adding social media tools and techniques—leading to more clients, customers and sales.

Without further ado…

Step 1: Understand what social media is and the benefits of using it.

It was important to me to make this first step the foundation of the entire system. Social media marketing is not “hard selling.” It’s businesses having conversations in the online communities where their prospective clients and customers hang out. Why is this so beneficial? In a nutshell, it’s a no-cost way to connect with your customer or client base, establish expertise, drive traffic to your website, and communicate your value.

Step 2: Get a blog.

Think of your blog as your social home base. You can be out utilizing all of the social media platforms in the world, but if you don’t have anywhere to send your friends and followers to outside of those platforms, your efforts will be in vain. Blogs are ideal because they tend to rank higher in the search engines and help foster a sense of community around your business.

Step 3: Build your social media profiles.

You don’t need to have a presence on every social site under the sun! There are only a few sites that I encourage most business owners to have a presence on: LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. You may find that some of these are not a good fit for you while others are. That’s ok! Know that if it is working for you, then you should continue using it. These sites are simply the ones that my clients and I have had the most success with and the ones I feel are a good representation of the social media landscape.

Step 4: Make your blog social-media friendly.

Having a blog is a great step in the right direction if you are looking for ways to dive into social media. However, there is a lot more that you can do once you’ve got your blog up and running. You can think of your blog as a hub connecting all of your social media activities—and you’ll want to encourage visitors to interact with you socially in as many ways as possible. Some of the ways you can do that include badges, buttons, widgets, an RSS icon, commenting tools such as Disqus, and of course—good, share-friendly content.

Step 5: Build relationships with your target market.

Ok, you have at least one or two social media profiles set up and you’re ready to rock—but what now? The next step is to start using social media as a way to facilitate relationships with people who might potentially become your clients or customers or your strategic alliances. It’s easy to get caught up in all of the technical details involved in social media, but you want to remember that at its heart, it’s really all about people.

Step 6: Show me the money: turning friends and followers into clients and customers.

Twitter and Facebook are not the only game in town. To achieve the best results, you will want to have a varied mix of marketing tools in play all at once. Online, much of your job centers on driving traffic to your site so that prospective clients or customers can find out more. One of the best ways to increase the chances that someone will eventually buy from you is to build an email list. Essentially, you want to have a way to capture a person’s email address and name so that you may keep in touch with them, build trust, and make offers in the future.

Social media is only one way to drive traffic and build your list. The idea is to be a “well-rounded” marketer. Using sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube along with the other online marketing strategies will maximize your results—and more traffic, more subscribers, more clients, more sales and more money will certainly follow.

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10 Ways to Publicize Your Event Using Social Media

February 25, 2010 By 5 Comments

Social Media is a terrific channel to use for spreading the word about an upcoming event.  However, I find that small business owners are often hesitant to do so for fear of appearing too promotional or “spammy.”

There is definitely a bit of an art to it, and as a general rule you want to keep about 90% of what you share in social media non-promotional.  But that leaves a full 10% where you can let your friends, followers and contacts know about that chock-full-of-benefits product, teleseminar, workshop or sale you’ve got cookin’. :)

Here are some of the specific ways you can do that.

1. Update your personal Facebook status. If you prefer not to use your personal Facebook profile for anything business-related then this might not apply to you, but it’s worth thinking about all the people your friends and family might know and could refer to you. The real power of status updates is the fact that they go out into the News Feed, which means all of your friends can see it there as well.

2. Send a message to Facebook friends you think would be interested. Proceed with caution with this one.  Blanketing all of your friends with an invite or message isn’t always appropriate.  Stick to those you think might have a genuine interest in what you are offering.

3. Blog about it. Once in a while it’s a good idea to let your blog readers know about your upcoming events.  You could also then link to the blog post and share it with your social media contacts so they can visit and find out more.

4. Update your LinkedIn status. Just like Facebook, LinkedIn lets you add status updates to your profile.  They have also recently introduced the ability to send your status updates to Twitter simultaneously.

5. Create an Event on your Facebook personal profile or Page. The Events application comes in handy because you can use it to fill in all the details about your event, post it to your profile and even send the event invitation to your friends or those who Like your Page.

6. Update your Facebook Page status. Don’t be shy about letting the people who Like your Page know about what you have going on—after all, they are there to support your business and they want to know all the ways you can help them.  This includes your offerings.

7. Tweet. Don’t forget to use Twitter to let your followers know about your latest offerings.  If some of them re-tweet the message about it for you, all the better.

8. Send an update to your Facebook “Likers.” One of the benefits of having a Page is the ability for you to update all of your supporters at once.  Take advantage of this and use it to keep them in the loop.

9. Create a LinkedIn Event and send an invite to your contacts. LinkedIn has Events just like Facebook, and you can send the information about them directly to multiple LinkedIn contacts at once with the click of a button.

10. Upload a short video to YouTube about it. You can make your video as short as 30 seconds, and include a call to action regarding what you are publicizing.  Tell viewers where they can get more info and be sure to include keywords about the event in the video’s description.

Don’t leave your event a best-kept secret!  Start using a few of these methods today to get the word out on the social web.

Any methods you use and would like to add?

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Using LinkedIn Groups For Connections and Visibility

February 13, 2010 By 2 Comments

By now you know that we can all benefit from networking online with experienced business professionals, just as we can offline. LinkedIn is one of the best places to do this, and it currently has over 53 million members [Update: January 2011--over 90 million] in over 200 countries—and grows at a rate of one new member every second.

Your visibility on LinkedIn is determined by your connections. For those of us in business, it’s to our benefit to be connected to more people rather than less. Fortunately, once you take a few minutes to search LinkedIn, you’re bound to find lots of contacts from your current and prior companies or employers, clients, vendors, and schools. All of those contacts have the potential to help you grow your business or connect you to potential clients or customers.

LinkedIn is known for having a large number of groups, many of which are very active. Groups are great for connecting with people who share similar expertise, educational backgrounds, interests, professions and more—so you will want to think about the types of people you want to connect with when deciding which terms to search on.

For example, when I type “massage therapy” into the Groups search box, it returns 113 results in order of number of group members. Some of the groups returned include “Associated Bodywork & Massage Professionals (ABMP),” “American Massage Therapy Association (AMTA)” and “Massage Instructors” to name a few.

LinkedIn limits your membership to 50 groups and generally, the more you join the better, but keep in mind that you only really benefit if you actively use them on a regular basis.

So what can you do to get the most out of Groups? Your best bet is to use Groups to:

*Start and engage in discussions
*Submit news items
*Demonstrate your expertise (the discussions you participate in show up on the other group members’ home pages)
*Research people in your field

You can also create your own group by clicking on “Create a Group” from the Groups drop-down menu in the top menu bar. Once you do so, you can then send invitations to your LinkedIn connections, invite people via email or pre-approve people who will automatically become confirmed members when they request (or accept an invitation) to join your group.

You can start and view discussions, add news articles, manage your group (including requests to join and sending an announcement to all of the members) and more. Here are some ways you can take advantage of your own group:

*Create a group to attract members of your target market. For example, I might create a group entitled “Social Media Help for Small Business Owners;” a virtual assistant might create one called “Virtual Assistance Resources for Entrepreneurs.”
*Perform research about what your market wants and needs help with by regularly asking them questions (for example, “what is currently your biggest challenge in your business when it comes to X?”)
*Send an announcement letting members know about any events you have coming up with a link to the sign-up page
*Encourage members to connect with you on other social media sites, visit your blog or website and sign up for your newsletter list

One of the best things about LinkedIn is that it is a very “target-rich” environment. What this means is that most of the people there have disclosed what they do, where they work now, where they’ve worked in the past and what types of connections and opportunities they are looking for. I encourage my clients to have a presence there in order to take advantage of being connected to this vast professional network, and to use Groups to help find new connections, boost their visibility and drive traffic back to their site.

Do you use LinkedIn?  What questions do you have about it?  If you’d like to connect there, you can find my profile here.

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Leverage Your Time by “Linking” Your Social Media Sites Together

February 11, 2010 By 18 Comments

I find that one of the biggest sources of stress for my clients and students when we first begin working together is the belief that you need to be omnipresent.

Fortunately, this is not true—in fact, you could really sabotage your efforts if you started focusing on building a presence on every social site and platform!  Talk about exhausting!

Let me let you in on a little secret: the most successful people in social media, the ones that appear to be everywhere—and connecting all of these “everywheres” seamlessly, to boot—are doing so by way of a few specific, focused strategies.  You could call it “social leverage,” and I am going to share with you exactly how you can do this too (and no, it won’t take up all of your time either!)

Here are a few specific methods from my own 6 Simple Steps to Kick Start Your Social Media Success System™ to “cross-link” like a pro:

To send your blog posts to Twitter:
Twitter Tools plugin for WordPress at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/twitter-tools
Import your blog’s RSS feed into Hootsuite at http://hootsuite.com

To display your latest tweets on your blog:
Twitter Tools plugin for WordPress
Twitter’s own widget at http://twitter.com/goodies/widgets

To send your blog posts to Facebook (personal and/or Fan Page):
Facebook’s Notes application
Facebook’s NetworkedBlogs application at http://www.facebook.com/networkedblogs

To send your blog posts to LinkedIn:
LinkedIn’s own BlogLink application or WordPress application

To send your LinkedIn status updates to Twitter:
LinkedIn’s own Tweets application

To send your tweets to Facebook selectively:
Facebook’s Selective Tweets application at http://apps.facebook.com/selectivetwitter

To send your Facebook Fan Page status updates to Twitter:
Facebook’s own Facebook to Twitter application at http://facebook.com/Twitter

To share YouTube videos to Facebook:
YouTube’s own Share button beneath each video
Options–>Settings on your Facebook personal profile’s wall

To share YouTube videos to Twitter:
YouTube’s own Share button beneath each video

To share YouTube videos on your blog:
YouTube’s URL or embed code shown to the right of each video

To update Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and more at the same time:
http://Hootsuite.com, http://ping.fm, or http://hellotxt.com

Finally, to see all of your or others’ activity from around the social web in one place: http://friendfeed.com

Now, you don’t have to set up every one of these tools all at once, but try out a few and see how much your own productivity soars.  As always, be careful not to automate or delegate too much—social media is still primarily about “live” interaction with others.  But by implementing a couple of these strategies you can look forward to making a bigger impact in much less time.

Do you have any tips or tools to add to this list?

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LinkedIn is Worth a Look

May 22, 2009 By 5 Comments

linkedin-logoI’ve had a profile on LinkedIn for a while now, but just as with my MySpace account, I let  it languish for a long time.  I wasn’t seeing LinkedIn as a place to make connections and find others in my target market.  It also seemed heavily corporate, with people looking for employment more so than small business products or services.

Serving that more corporate-type population was why LinkedIn was originally established.  However, over the past 6 months or so, I have noticed more activity among small business owners, entrepreneurs and solopreneurs.  While Facebook offers a more personal overview of someone, LinkedIn has really become a great place to create beneficial professional relationships as well as be found by potential customers and clients.

If you are interested in discovering how to use LinkedIn to help boost your visibility and grow your business, here are a few ways to use it to do just that:

Perform a search for people in targeted fields and positions. Send them a request to join your network and make sure to personalize your message.

Create a thorough profile with your photo, title and websites.  It is a good idea to include past experience, education and positions as well—the more information that you supply, the more ways you allow others to find you and connect.

Answer questions posed by other members in your community which relate to your area of expertise. “LinkedIn Answers” provides a place for you to view open questions that you can respond to.  This is a great way to promote your specific knowledge.

Ask for recommendations of your work as well as offer to provide them for others.  The glowing testimonials you receive can be posted right to your profile.

Develop a targeted group of contacts in your niche and start connecting each other. Make it a point to help others expand their own networks.

Look through your contacts’ networks and regularly select a couple of people you think would be good to know. Request that your contacts introduce them to you.

Similar to Facebook, LinkedIn offers a way to feed your blog posts into your profile. Add the BlogLink application—this supports blogging platforms such as WordPress.com, WordPress.org, Typepad, Blogger and more.

Invite people in your network to join a discussion group or a virtual networking event.

A helpful tip for increasing your search engine ranking with your website listing: when you type in your blog or website address for your profile, you will have several choices available in the drop down menu.  If you choose “other” you have the option to choose the anchor text which will then link to your site.  Choose keywords that you think would best get you found when someone searches in the search engines—it’s instant search engine optimization. (LinkedIn is ranked very high in Google.)

Get some publicity. Many members of the media as well as some top bloggers have a presence on LinkedIn.  Try reaching out to them to connect.  You never know where the relationship will lead.  It goes without saying that you don’t want to spam them.  Send a polite, personalized message and you will have a spot on their radar.

Finally, be sure to add a link to your profile in your email signature. LinkedIn lets you customize the link to your public profile to include your name. It’s a good idea to include a link to your social networking profiles in your signature so that every time you send an email, others have a way to connect with you there.

And as you know by now, connection is the name of the game.

Photo Credit: Weaverluke

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