A Foolproof Approach to Social Media Selling by Joe Pulizzi

Yes, you can leverage social media to sell more. Better yet, you can develop a social media process that positions you as the "go-to" expert in your industry, so that prospects and customers actively call you instead of you having to call them.

What if customers sought out your expertise on a consistent basis, leading to better relationships and more sales?

It’s possible…but not easy. It means not positioning yourself not as a sales rep, but as a true industry consultant.

Here is the social selling action plan.

How to Transform into an Expert Consultant

1. Make sure you have a clear focus whether it be product-based or industry-based. Once that’s established, it makes the rest of this easier to execute. A sales generalist will have an impossible time leveraging social media for sales, so pick a niche area in which you can truly excel.
2. Make a list of the top blogs and websites specific to your target audience (your customer). 10-15 is a good number. These are blogs and media sites where your customers are hanging out on a regular basis. Using tools like Google Alerts, Twitter and customer surveys will help you do this (talking to customers works best).
3. Start commenting on those blogs. Nothing sales-related. Add to the conversation in a helpful way that will work to position you as an expert.
4. Start the content process. After you get a good feel for helpful commenting, you need to launch your thought leadership platform. That most likely means creating a blog for yourself. Set a schedule. Posting at least twice a week is a good start. Add the time spent on this into your normal sales process. After a while and when ready, start telling your customers about your blog.
5. Start distributing the helpful content through your Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts on a defined schedule. Develop a simple email newsletter where customers can sign up to receive your expert insights.
6. Continue for six months, then review the results. Who's signed up to get your enewsletter? How did they find your blog post? Are people in your "new" sales database reaching out to you?

In my experience, most salespeople who start this program stop after a month or two. The majority of sales leaders don't understand that this type of selling is core to their success. Consistency is key. Yes, developing valuable and compelling content for your customers is critical, but most social selling programs fail because of lack of execution.

For those of you that "work" the program, this is what you will begin to see.

1. Social Sharing: As you begin to position yourself as a true industry resource, more customers, prospects and industry influencers will begin to share your content on the web. They will begin to do your marketing for you.
2. Exclusive Invitations: If the content is relevant, valuable and consistent (which it should be – you are content expert), you will begin to get invited to present on webinars and in-person industry events.
3. Expert Consultant: Customers will start to rely on you as a source of expertise by calling/emailing for advice on a regular basis. These calls will lead to a number of sales opportunities that would have never been possible.

No, this is not Fantasy land…it can actually happen.

For example, Marcus Sheridan(pictured right at Content Marketing World) has been consistently blogging about fiberglass pools for years now. And yes, he's a sales guy, not a writer. By giving away amazing information in a defined niche (fiberglass pools in the Virginia area), he helped take his company from fifth in his market to the #1 seller of fiberglass pools in the entire United States (during the Great Recession).

Now companies from all over the world call Marcus to have him present on his sales methods.

If you stick to the above process, like Marcus did, it WILL happen.

Once it does, just think of how your sales process (and your life) will change.

Joe Pulizzi is founder of the Content Marketing Institute, which runs the industry's largest content marketing event, Content Marketing World. He is also overly passionate about the color orange.

5 tips on Building Customer Relationships for your business

Never underestimate the value and reach of a loyal, repeat customer. Keep customers coming back for more--and bringing their friends with them--with these smart tips.

Money can't buy one of the most important things you need to promote your business: relationships. How do customer relationships drive your business? It's all about finding people who believe in your products or services. And when it comes to tracking these people down, you have two choices:

You can do all the legwork yourself and spend big marketing dollars. But that's like rolling a boulder up a hill. You want to drive your business into new territory, but every step is hard and expensive. There's another less painful--and potentially more profitable-way...

You can create an army to help you push that boulder up the hill instead. How do you do that? You develop relationships with people who don't just understand your particular expertise, product or service, but who are excited and buzzing about what you do. You stay connected with them and give them value, and they'll touch other people who can benefit your business.

Powerful relationships don't just happen from one-time meetings at networking events--you don't need another pocketful of random business cards to clutter your desk. What you need is a plan to make those connections grow and work for you. And it's not as hard as you think. Here are five essential tactics:

1. Build your network--it's your sales lifeline. Your network includes business colleagues, professional acquaintances, prospective and existing customers, partners, suppliers, contractors and association members, as well as family, friends and people you meet at school, church and in your community.

Contacts are potential customers waiting for you to connect with their needs. How do you turn networks of contacts into customers? Not by hoping they'll remember meeting you six months ago at that networking event. Networking is a long-term investment. Do it right by adding value to the relationship, and that contact you just made can really pay off. Communicate like your business's life depends on it. (Hint: And it does! Read on.)

2. Communication is a contact sport, so do it early and often. Relationships have a short shelf life. No matter how charming, enthusiastic or persuasive you are, no one will likely remember you from a business card or a one-time meeting. One of the biggest mistakes people make is that they come home from networking events and fail to follow up. Make the connection immediately. Send a "nice to meet you" e-mail or let these new contacts know you've added them to your newsletter list and then send them the latest copy. Immediately reinforce who you are, what you do and the connection you've made.

You rarely meet people at the exact moment when they need what you offer. When they're ready, will they think of you? Only if you stay on their minds. It's easier to keep a connection warm than to warm it up again once the trail goes cold. So take the time to turn your network of connections into educated customers.

3. E-mail marketing keeps relationships strong on a shoestring budget. Build your reputation as an expert by giving away some free insight. You have interesting things to say! An easy way to communicate is with a brief e-mail newsletter that shows prospects why they should buy from you. For just pennies per customer, you can distribute an e-mail newsletter that includes tips, advice and short items that entice consumers and leave them wanting more. E-mail marketing is a cost-effective and easy way to stay on customers' minds, build their confidence in your expertise, and retain them. And it's viral: Contacts and customers who find what you do interesting or valuable will forward your e-mail message or newsletter to other people, just like word of mouth marketing.

4. Reward loyal customers, and they'll reward you. According to global management consulting firm Bain and Co., a 5 percent increase in retention yields profit increases of 25 to 100 percent. And on average, repeat customers spend 67 percent more than new customers. So your most profitable customers are repeat customers. Are you doing enough to encourage them to work with you again? Stay in touch, and give them something of value in exchange for their time, attention and business. It doesn't need to be too much; a coupon, notice of a special event, helpful insights and advice, or news they can use are all effective. Just remember: If you don't keep in touch with your customers, your competitors will.

5. Loyal customers are your best salespeople. So spend the time to build your network and do the follow-up. Today there are cost effective tools, like e-mail marketing, that make this easy. You can e-mail a simple newsletter, an offer or an update message of interest to your network (make sure it's of interest to them, not just to you). Then they'll remember you and what you do and deliver value back to you with referrals. They'll hear about opportunities you'll never hear about. The only way they can say, "Wow, I met somebody who's really good at XYZ. You should give her a call," is if they remember you. Then your customers become your sales force.

If real estate is all about location, location, location, then small business is all about relationships, relationships, relationships. Find them, nurture them, and watch your sales soar.

Cheers!

5 Secrets to Increasing Customer Retention -- and Profits

One-time customers aren't going to fuel the continued growth of your business. Retaining customers is crucial to your long-term success. According to Gartner Group, a 5 percent increase in customer retention can increase business profits by anywhere between 25 percent and 125 percent.

Understanding how to actively engage your customers across the channels they are active on can help your business tap into a high level of retention. Every business should have an extensive customer retention strategy in place since it is a worthwhile investment for generating revenue for the future.

Here is a list of some of the best-kept secrets when it comes to increasing customer retention:

Related: How to Give Your Customers Exactly What They Want (Infographic)

1. The 'freemium' model really works.
Successful companies like Rovio (creator of Angry Birds), Dropbox, Buffer App, Skype and others offer either a free trial or a free versionof their product offerings to allow users of different levels to test and utilize their services to determine whether they're beneficial. The freemium model can help convert users into paying customers if your business offers a 30-day trial allowing customers to test the value of your product, a free version of your offerings limited to only certain features or free incentives if a user invites friends to sign up via email or social media.

2. Personalization can lead to loyal customers.
Users often leave web pages within 10 to 20 seconds, but pages with clear and relevant value propositions can hold people's attention for much longer. Relevancy is key, and that is where personalization comes in.

You can start personalizing your experience from a user's very first visit to your site based on the referring source. For instance, altering product pricing and promotional offers, images on landing and product pages, or the amount of text on a page to make an experience as relevant to a user has possible.The added relevance can intrigue visitors to stay on your site longer, but the big engagement increases come from altering your offerings based on each user's behavior on your site. A/B testing to ascertain what is effective for each segment of your audience will help your business personalize your site's experience to attract and retain relevant customers.

3. Smart surveys contribute to retention in the customer lifecycle. 
A survey is a tactic for effective follow-up marketing after a sale is made to gather accurate feedback about a customer's experience. According to research from social-media service Hootsuite, follow-up marketing often results in the cycling of customers back into the top of the sales funnel.

Surveys give customers the satisfaction that your business is actively communicating with them. Taking reasonable suggestions into mind will help make customers happy and increase retention rates. Be aware that surveys alone don't paint the full picture. The feedback from surveys acts as directional data to be paired with revenue metrics from your existing customer base.

4. Aligning calls-to-action with your inbound keywords can increase conversion. 
The calls-to-action throughout your website add value to any page or feature. Look at your Google Analytics Search Overview report to determine which keywords are driving traffic and from what specific sources. Like mentioned above, personalization works, especially when paired with actionable data. Personalize some of the calls-to-actions throughout your website with these keywords to cater to your different audiences.

For example, if your analytics indicate that a portion of your web traffic is coming from keyword searches for "eBooks" then it'd be prudent to create a landing page offering eBooks with strong calls to action using the variations of those keywords. Experimenting to see what works is the best approach to gain relevant traffic to your website.

Don't solely rely on these keywords but make sure to continuously test their effectiveness as they contribute to a positive rate of conversion.

5. Gamification helps drive value to activate long-term customers. 
The gamification of usually mundane processes can make a customer's interaction with your offerings more enjoyable. GrubHub, HSN and Coca-Cola have all offered games as an incentive to interact with their company or to make a previous process more exciting.

For example, the success of Nike+ was fueled by a mobile and Facebook app that let users set running goals, earn rewards for reaching milestones and get congratulatory messages from world-renown athletes. The membership of Nike+ grew by 40 percent in 2011 and helped boost revenue by 30 percent in that product category.

Think outside of the box when it comes to the various actions across your website to improve the overall user experience, impacting your rate of conversion.

BY BRIAN HONIGMAN is a Brooklyn, N.Y.-based freelance writer, content marketer and social-media consultant focused on strengthening relationships with brands, startups and their customers. 

social media advice that could trap you

The most popular currency in the world is not the Dollar, Euro or Yen. It’s common advice 

Think about it: Everyone has it in mass, it’s prone to “inflation,” and you can pick it up about everywhere, even if you don’t want it.

I have received my share of “supa-doopa” advice throughout my digital career, especially in the beginning, when I was ultramarine green behind my ears.  I listened, and worse, implemented it all.

I thought, if experts say it, it must be true. If so many other people say the same online, then it has validation.

Ungh, Past Me, I want to shake some sense into you. A whole gallon of it.

I realized much later that most of the sound advice turned out to be detrimental to my success.

Without further ado, I want to show you the most common advice pitfalls that I fell into:

1) Just be yourself.

This sounds good … but is it really true?

Whenever I asked a so-called expert about being successful online, he told me not to worry and just be myself.

What if you’re an obnoxious, boring mofo with no redeeming qualities?

What if you have no people skills and are a pain to work with?

Should you still “just be yourself?”

Not necessarily.

At the beginning of my career, I probably lacked empathy and experienced trouble communicating with clients. A “mentor” told me that was just part of my personality, and that I should find a career style that wouldn’t involve customer communication. Man, what a load of toad turd. It wasn’t a personality trait – it turned out I just lacked the experience and had to learn how to address my customer’s needs. A few psychology books and coaching sessions later, I improved. Drastically.

I wasn’t being myself, but I worked harrrrd on becoming my best self.

If you’re young, learning, or maybe not an absolutely perfect person, maybe being yourself leads to more pain than gain. That’s why you should work on becoming your best version, and get rid of traits that you thought were part of your character.

2) Follow your passion and the money will follow.

Ah, ze timeless classic. I want get into a time machine, travel to the person who set that meme into the world and smack both of his cheeks. With a metal chair.

Why? Because it’s a deceptive feel-good lie.

Take me as an example: My passions are eating Asian food, playing video games, and drawing. But even though I did all of these things PASSIONATELY, I never had a money bag drop on my head. Instead, I had to use most valuable part of passions (drawing) and package it in a way that made it valuable to potential customers. This took compromise. I couldn’t do everything I wanted to do while working hard to meet customer needs. And even that part took me ages to figure out, as I drew unsuccessfully for years until I realized you have to be MARKETABLE, not just PASSIONATE.

Your passion, no matter how strong, is useless as a monetization strategy, if you can’t translate it into tangible value to your target audience.

3) You should do (insert current trend now)

In the beginning of my career, online experts told me I should focus on using video as my content creation tool, because it was popular at the time. Ungh. Headache alarm!

I did those videos but hated it, because I didn’t feel comfortable in front of a camera. I am an introvert, and recording myself on video feels as natural as jogging on nails.

After a couple of tries, I stopped doing them, because I got sick of twisting myself.

Just because a certain type of tool or style of content creation is “in” doesn’t mean you should implement it, especially if it goes against your natural tendencies.

4) Survey (potential) customers to learn about their needs.

I learned from an expert’s online course that I should survey your customers before you sell your products.

I then sent a couple of questions to my email list:

“Would you buy this eGuide?”

“Would you pay this X amount for it ?”

Most often, the answer would be an astounding “Yesss,” which made me jump into ze air. But when I finally shipped the products based on the eager answers, these eager people weren’t so eager any more.

It turned out that people say “yes” to all kinds of things without ever committing to their words. That’s why nowadays, I only ask people after they made a purchase and watch their actions instead, because it’s wayyy more reliable to gauge people by what they do, and not by what they say.

5) You must behave like a “real” business online.

Ungh, more common advice for the blog graveyard.

I remember one guy telling me: your site looks like Disneyland. People in the marketing/social media realm will never take you seriously.

Consequence? I changed my design, to make it look more serious, and … more bland. Seriously, most people confuse professional with corporate.

Professional means you take your business seriously and you deliver what you promise. Your site can look as crazy / edgy / unique as you want it to be, as long as that corresponds to your preferred target audience.

Conclusion

So-called common advice is often uninformed opinion regurgitated by sheep thinkers.

Most of the time, those sound wise snaps had lead me astray, because the web world is, and always will be, too specific and fast-moving for all-purpose formulas.

Which common advice pitfall did you fall into?

Mars Dorian describes himself as a creative marketeer with a moon-melting passion for human potential and technology. You can follow his adventures at www.marsdorian.com/

Original illustration by the author.

- See more at: http://www.businessesgrow.com/2013/08/14/5-common-advice-pitfalls-that-i-fell-into-and-learned-from/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+markgrow+%28%7Bgrow%7D%29#sthash.kE2K7xL2.dpuf

7 Ways to Use Social Media for Lead Generation

Social media serves as a great tool in most areas of marketing, but many entrepreneurs and marketers find it falls flat when it comes to lead generation. While much of that boils down to common lead generation blunders, the other part of it boils down to social media users not knowing how to reel in new customers through these platforms.

Believe it or not, there are hundreds of powerful ways you can employ social media channels to become a lead magnet. In this post, we look at seven of them.

1. Listen to Relevant Conversations

Use a social media monitoring tool like HootSuite to set up alerts for your brand name, competitors, products, and industry related topics. You can then monitor these streams to identify influencers you should build relationships with, questions you can answer, and problems you can solve. You never know when reaching out to help a stranger will turn into a valuable lead.

2. Take Your Virtual Communication Offline

Sometimes target prospects don’t want to connect via social media. They need that personal touch—the phone conversation or face-to-face meeting that wins their trust. You’re missing a valuable opportunity if you haven’t yet made your offline contact details available on your networking profiles. Set up a schedule of posts to let your audience know the value of connecting with you in the real world.

3. Leverage Social Ads

If there are funds in your budget, consider paid advertising options on social media platforms. Promoted content on Facebook, self-serve CPC ads on LinkedIn, or sponsored Tweets on Twitter can go a long way to increasing exposure for your brand, driving traffic, and generating leads. To get the most out of your social ads make certain you use a strong call to action, a dedicated landing page designed for high conversions, and ad targeting options that ensure you reach a high-quality audience.

4. Use Free Offerings

Promoting free eBooks, guides, white papers, and other branded materials via social media is an excellent tactic that should form part of every good lead generation program. Make sure the link you post along with your promotional snippet directs users to a compelling landing page with a lead capture form.

5. Create Promotions

Contests, sweepstakes, giveaways, discounts, and other promotions offer a highly effective way to engage fans, increase social conversions, and accumulate qualified leads. The bonus is that contest entries will provide a pool of unique, user-generated content you can use for future marketing communications. Make sure you explore all the options available through the social platform you’re using and that you abide by any contest hosting guidelines the site has set.

6. Participate In Twitter Chats, LinkedIn Groups and Google+ Hangouts

A huge part of using social media for lead generation requires you to interact with your audience. If you’re not putting yourself in front of your target market, engaging in meaningful conversations, and building authority, then you shouldn’t expect to run a successful lead generation program.

Google+ Hangouts, Twitter Chats, and LinkedIn Groups are three of the most powerful features you can use to engage relevant communities. As you participate, be sure to identify potential leads and search for opportunities to connect with them. Answer their questions in public, and then follow up with a private message. Whatever you do, get to know the ins and outs of these tools and how you can use them to build strong, long-lasting relationships with qualified prospects.

7. Encourage Social Sharing

Easier said than done, right? The first things you want to look at are ways to increase the virality of your content. When you create pieces that compel people to share with their networks, you effectively amplify your brand’s exposure, boost traffic, and improve your potential to generate leads.

The next thing you want to do is ensure you provide an opportunity to share. Make sure you embed social sharing buttons into your free offerings so readers can quickly and conveniently share snippets of valuable information and a link to the relevant landing page.

Once you start to generate leads through social media, it’s imperative to evaluate and measure your results. Figure out which traffic sources, social media channels, and types of content deliver the highest number of page views. Assess the keywords visitors use, as well as the content they see, before they convert to leads. When you start to understand the conversion path people take, you’ll be able to tie your lead generation efforts with your lead nurturing plan.