Even though we are online, relationships are still the most important thing for you to build. Without a positive relationship you cannot reasonably expect someone to do business with you. So for this lesson we are going to start a three lesson series on building relationships through social networking sites, specifically: Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. These are the three crucial places to be if you take your online marketing seriously.
But it’s not enough just to have an account and be active on it, in fact, if you are active on these marketing sites and you don’t know what you’re doing you could actually be harming your online image and tarnishing those vital relationships.
You have to follow some simple rules when navigating social networking. First understand that you are part of a community, and in order for the community to accept your presence and welcome you, you must add something of value to that community.
Second, social networking is not for overt sales. Of course we want to pitch to people about our opportunity, that’s what we’re there for, but it has to be subtle, non-abrasive and within the context of something else that has value. A good rule of thumb before posting to any of these sites is to ask yourself: Does this post have value for the people who will be reading it? Is it useful to the community or only to me?
With these rules in mind – let’s get started.This first step might seem obvious AND you already should have a profile set up on Facebook. However, there are some key elements in your profile that I want to discuss. First and foremost you need a profile picture of YOU.
People are on Facebook to connect, and they want to connect with a person – not a product, a flower, your dog or even your cute baby. It’s ok to have pictures of these things elsewhere, but your profile picture should be a professional (or at least decent) photograph of YOU. Remember who we’re branding? Right. Second, fill in your basic information. You should have a short bio talking about what you do and possibly mentioning your business. You should also have your contact information so that people can get a hold of you. There is a website section on your profile and this is NOT the place to put a lead capture page or your replicated site, remember no overt selling right?
What you should put here is a link to your personal website, ya know the one we just finished slaving over?
And if you have a separate blog that has different content on it than your website you can always include that. There is also another section for information such as favorite books, music and TV. You should have at least a couple of your interests filled in, but don’t feel obligated to add in everything. Remember, this is not your personal Facebook account. Although it’s nice to include a personal touch so people feel like they’re connecting with a real person, your favorite movie of all time is probably not an essential bit of trivia. Only share as much as you’re comfortable with.
As far as pictures are concerned, pictures are good as long as they’re the right ones. Remember, appropriate and professional. It’s nice to have a couple pictures of your family up or other such interests. Pictures that will help give your business some extra credibility might be travel pictures (to show that you do, in fact, have an enjoyable lifestyle with your business) and pictures of you attending conferences pertaining to your business.
It’s good for people to see that you take your business seriously enough to continue your training and education, just like in any industry.Now that you have a spiffy profile, let’s get some friends who can look at it! Obviously, since this is your business profile we are not going to want to invite all
of our “real” friends to our profile, so how do we make connections? One of the
easiest ways I have found to do this is by having something in common, like a
group or a page.
Find a page, preferably one where you might find “targeted leads” or people who are also interested in network or online marketing and join (or like)! For me, I would rather like pages than join groups, but that’s just me. Now you have the ability to see who else likes that same thing and you can send them each a friend request.
For best results, when sending friend requests, always send a message with it. People are much more receptive if they know why you are connecting. Usually I
just say something like “Hi (add their name)! I see you like such-and-such page.
So do I! Let’s connect.” Friend twenty or so people a day and you’ll have a
sizable group of friends in no time.
There is also another great strategy I use that most marketers don’t even consider. Instead of trying to turn your “friends” into leads, why not turn your leads into friends? This is what your AWeber list is also great for. If you have leads in your AWeber at this point (if you don’t, don’t feel bad sometimes it takes a while!) take their email addresses and search for them in Facebook, then you can add them to your friends list.
This is a great way to turn yourself from a mere advertisement to a real person. If you can’t find their address on Facebook try LinkedIn and Twitter as well. There really isn’t a need to add them to more than one of your social networking sites though. The idea isn’t to be annoying, it’s to connect.
Here is a final extra step that very few people are taking advantage of: the video greeting strategy. Upload a video to your Facebook profile welcoming your friends to your Facebook Friends. Briefly introduce yourself and what you do, and invite them to check out your website or send you a message if they have any questions.
Once you finish the video tag all of your new friends in it! This video will then show up on their profile wall which means all of their friends will also see your video. This becomes especially handy when you friend an established marketer on Facebook who has hundreds of targeted leads viewing their profile regularly.
Every once a week or so untag some of your older friends and put your newer friends in.Now, if you’re thinking that this is difficult to pull off – it really isn’t. Most digital cameras today come with a video option and you can have someone take a video of you. Or, if you have a webcam, it’s even easier. Simply go to your Facebook homepage and select video. It will give you the option to upload or shoot, choose what you want and if you want to shoot a video it will take one of you right there and automatically update your feed. It literally takes 30 seconds.
Now, I am not a marketer who specializes in videos, but this is one video that you absolutely should have. Not only will it spread your influence, but seeing a video of someone makes them even more real, personable and approachable. A video will work on building those valuable relationships in a way that pictures really can’t.
In order to set yourself up as an expert on Facebook, you need a Facebook Page. To get one of those go HERE. You are going to want to create a page for a “Public
Figure” in Business. A Facebook Page is good to have not only because it helps to
brand (guess who?) as a leader but also because you can add an opt-in form on it
and be more marketing oriented with it than with your main page. You can get
some ideas for your Facebook Page HERE and HERE.
You are going to want to add the FBML app to your page so that you can create custom tabs for your opt in box and whatever else you will want to do with your page. You can get your opt in box from your AWeber account and to customize fonts, colors and sizes you can simply copy and paste HTML code from a post draft on your WordPress site.
Remember, as always, you want your page to provide valuable content for your contacts so that you are building positive relationships.Having your own Facebook Page will do several things for your business:
· Your Facebook Page updates will show up on your contact’s page feed when they “Like” it.
· It will be promoted on the right hand “suggestion” column of your contacts’ friends when they join.
· Pages can be seen by non-Facebook users.
· They can be crawled by search engines as any other static page would.
· You can capture leads from your Facebook Page.
· And you can be setting yourself up to look like an expert in your field! And also, now that you have a Facebook Page, you should add it to your Posterous account! I don’t recommend sending it to your Facebook profile, but your page is the perfect place to showcase all your new blog content.
Make sure to take advantage of all Facebook’s great potential for your business! It is the second-most visited website besides Google, and you need to optimize
your presence there if you are serious about online marketing.