How To Get Your First 1,000 Social Followers

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Today, we’re going to look at one of the biggest questions we get sent here at The Social Wrap. How do you get your first followers on social media? Now, I sympathise with this question. And I firmly believe that those first 1,000 are the hardest to find. Once you hit 1,000, the process snowballs a little. We’ll focus mostly on Facebook and Twitter, but the tricks are applicable to all the social sites. Ready to get your socials off the ground? Let’s take a look.

Put links everywhere!

We’ll start with a simple and easy option. Start putting links to your social media sites everywhere. The first 100 or so followers should come from your existing connections. In other words, friends, colleagues, or acquaintances. Put links in your email signature, and in all your correspondence. Stick a Facebook ‘like box’ on your website, so visitors can quickly follow your feed. Do the same with the ‘follow’ button for Twitter.

Set up a social strategy

If you’re going to hit 1,000 followers, you need to be strict about your social strategy. Social media, like any other marketing strategy, requires goals, plans, and commitment. So, let’s get started by creating a content calendar. What are you going to post, and how often? Start by committing to perhaps two blogs a week to share with your followers. Fill in the gaps by posing questions, posting images and videos, or curating content. The important thing is that you stay active and engaging.

Connect with others

This is a strategy that works particularly well on Twitter. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that building 1,000 followers on Twitter is much easier than Facebook. The reason being that most people follow others on Twitter with less resistance than Facebook. Start by following others in your niche. Follow the tastemakers, and identify the most active Twitter users in your sector. Follow them, reply to their tweets, and introduce yourself. It won’t take long to build up those first few exchanges, and your numbers will grow.

Get some help from the pros

If you’ve tried some of the above tactics, and progress is slow, you can always bring in help. There are plenty of social media agencies out there with the skills and resources to grow your presence. Take a look at some social media services pricing options, and see what works for you.

The shortcut

There’s always a shortcut when it comes to marketing online! However, as always, it costs money. You can skip the slow, laborious process of gathering followers one-by-one with advertising. By using social media adverts, you can quickly drive lots of relevant people to your page. Facebook is well set up for this, and you can target a very particular audience with your ads. Use your best piece of content, and fine tune your ad copy for the best results.

Using these tricks and techniques, you’ll land your first 1,000 followers in no time! That’s the hard part over, now for 10,000!

Category: FaceBook, Social Media, Twitter | No Comments »

Here’s How Businesses Are Using Social Media To Get To The Top

Social media has plenty of uses. Recently, we’ve started to see it being used more and more in the business world. So, I thought I’d write a short piece on how businesses are using social media to get to the top:

Social Media Marketing & Advertising

Most businesses will primarily use social media for marketing and advertising purposes. Social media marketing is one of the top marketing techniques around right now. People are noticing how successful it can make their marketing campaigns. As seen here websitepromoter.co.uk there are agencies that offer social media marketing services. The purpose is to give you as big a presence as possible on social media. This includes upping your follower count on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Google+. Every main social networking site you can think of. If you amass a large following on social media, it puts your business in a good position. You’ll be more well known, and the public will start to recognize your company more often.

Social media advertising is all about using adverts on social media. Yes, you could probably guess that based on the name! It’s a very popular method of advertising one’s business. Why? Because there are, literally, millions of people on social networking sites every day. Displaying adverts on Facebook or Twitter is a tactic destined for success. On Twitter, you can also promote your tweets so more people can see them and follow you. But, you can also have adverts placed that seamlessly blend into people’s timelines. Facebook is similar; you can promote your business page or get your adverts shown on people’s Facebook timelines. Like I said, it’s a very effective way of advertising your business to a mass audience.

(Image provided by Flickr: https://flic.kr/p/e9Hsgr)

Customer Service & Engagement

Another huge way that businesses use social media is for customer service purposes. There’s nothing wrong with providing all your customer service over the phone. Some companies still do this, but social media provides you with another option. It gives you a way to communicate with customers and answer any queries instantly. In fact, loads of big businesses have accounts set up purely for customer service. These are accounts consumers can talk to, and they’ll help them out ASAP. It’s a fast and convenient way of dealing with any customer issues.

People like this type of customer service because it’s quick and easy. They don’t have to spend ages on the phone trying to get through to an advisor. All it takes is a couple of seconds to tweet or post a comment, and you’re sorted. Of course, there are a few tricks to providing customer service on social media, as seen here www.zendesk.com. It brings me onto another mini point here too. Businesses use social media to engage with customers. It’s a fine way to open up a channel of communication between both parties. Businesses can keep their customers updated with any goings on and news.

Now you can see the main ways in which businesses are using social media to get on top. It’s further proof that social media isn’t just a place for teens to mess about and abuse celebrities. A lot can be done with it if used in the correct manner.

Category: FaceBook, Relationships, Social Media, Twitter | No Comments »

Have You Been Social Selling All Along? by Susan Marshall

Chances are, you’ve read a blog post, joined a webinar or attended a conference that celebrated the “social selling” revolution. Supporters of the social selling movement claimed that LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and other social sites would bring an end to the stereotype of pushy, disconnected, quota-hungry salespeople and give rise to a new breed of relationship-first sellers who use social media to seek connections instead of transactions; who share valuable resources instead of pushing products; who listen instead of talk.

Yet despite the promise of social selling, just one in four salespeople know how to use social media to sell, and a mere 31 percent of reps report using social media at all in their sales process.

The meager adoption of social selling, however, isn’t because it doesn’t work. In fact, 73 percent of social salespeople strongly outperform their traditional selling peers. The problem is that the concept of social selling is woefully misunderstood.

Many salespeople tend to think of social selling as an entirely new discipline: “I know how to sell in the real world, but now I need to learn how to sell on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.” But the simple truth is that social selling isn’t new. The same traits that determine if you’re a good salesperson offline—being honest, helpful, and informative—are what make salespeople successful in the social sphere. Social media are tools. Being a good salesperson is a mindset13. (highlight to tweet)

So, although you may have at first been intimidated by the concept of social selling, understanding the similarities between selling online and traditional selling will help put you at ease. You’ve been social selling all along, and you didn’t even know it.

LinkedIn: Like Trade Shows Without the Travel

Trade shows are a massive investment in time and money. The average attendee travels more than 400 miles to each show and spends more than eight hours meandering through a maze of exhibits in search of leads. The grueling days and hefty travel expenses are worth it, though, if each trade show visit results in new relationships forged on the exhibit hall floor.

It’s that same ability to build meaningful, long-lasting relationships that makes LinkedIn so valuable to salespeople.

Contrary to popular belief, LinkedIn is more than a job-hunting destination—it’s an incredibly deep research and prospecting tool that can be used to unearth new prospects and identify key points of entry into the businesses you’re targeting.

Consider how you select which trade shows to attend before buying a badge. You visit the trade show website, do some research on who’s slated to speak and which companies are signed on to exhibit, and then make a judgement call on if you think it’ll draw the type of prospects you’re looking for.

Finding and connecting with prospects on LinkedIn is even easier. Featuring a variety of search options and detailed profiles, LinkedIn enables you to quickly find the people you want to connect wit2h and makes it easy to ask existing connections to introduce you to their connections to broaden your network.

Following through on our analogy, if you think of LinkedIn as a trade show, thenLinkedIn Groups are the swanky, invite-only after parties. And, just like at real parties, nobody likes a pushy salesman crashing a LinkedIn Group. Groups aren’t a place to hawk your products and services. Rather, they’re a place where you can answer questions, share relevant and informative resources, and engage in conversations. By joining in on these real—albeit digital—conversations, you’ll earn a reputation as an expert whose products or services are worth paying attention to.

Twitter: A Warmer Alternative to Cold Calls

Think those cold calls are working? Think again. According to sales research groupHuthwaite, 91 percent of people never respond to cold calls and, even worse, 71 percent find them annoying2. Even salespeople hate cold calling: 63 percent of reps say it’s what they hate most about their jobs.

Even if cold calling is a necessary evil to filling your funnel, wouldn’t it be nice to know just a little bit about a prospect before reaching out to them? Well, think of Twitter as a tool for making cold calls warmer.

The best thing about Twitter is that you don’t need to tweet a single thing to start seeing its value—all you need to do is start “listening.” Twitter is the perfect tool for conducting some basic pre-sales research, because you can search for specific keywords and phrases to identify prospects. Plugging in a competitor’s name might turn up a Twitter rant from an unhappy customer looking to make a switch. Or, you might find that a prospect is narrowing down their shortlist and looking for suggestions from the Twittersphere. You may even stumble upon some of your own customers requesting (or, in more severe cases, demanding) help.

Twitter enables you to find and engage with prospects at every stage of the sales cycle, and can even help you intervene should a current customer be having a hard time. And, should you be so inclined to share some tweets of your own, you’ll find that the Twitter audience is eager for advice: 73 percent of people trust the information they receive from Twitter.

Now, isn’t that better than taking a shot in the dark on a cold call?

Facebook: A Friendlier Way to Nurture Leads

Potential buyers don’t become customers overnight. In fact, according to MarketingSherpa, 79 percent of marketing leads never convert into sales due to lack of lead nurturing. Conversely, leads that are effectively nurtured make 47 percent larger purchases than non-nurtured leads, according to The Annuitas Group.

Relationships are critical in today’s sales cycles, and the only way to build those relationships is by communicating with buyers throughout every stage. Phone calls and email have been the two biggest lead nurturing mainstays among sales reps, but Facebook presents a unique opportunity for salespeople to connect with prospects and maintain relationships over time.

While Facebook started as a way for college kids and, eventually, friends and family to keep in touch, it has evolved to become an important source of news and information for the majority of adults. Nearly 80 percent of people consume some news when checking Facebook, including a small percentage who consider Facebook their primary news source. In other words, it’s no longer taboo to share information (provided it’s relevant and useful) with your Facebook friends.

Nurturing leads on Facebook is no different than nurturing them on a phone call to check in or an email that includes a relevant case study. Nurturing—using any communication channel—is less about closing the sale, and more about answering and asking questions, providing valuable content, and engaging in real conversations. And because Facebook is a place where people are more inclined to share what’s happening in their personal lives, it can lead to even deeper, more meaningful connections.

You’re Already a Social Selling Pro

Social Selling isn’t a new concept; it’s simply taking the same traits that make people good at selling at trade shows, on phone calls, and throughout the nurturing process and applying them across social channels. If your goal is to provide useful information and forge a meaningful relationship, then you will see your sales spike regardless of if you’re meeting in-person on the trade show floor or on LinkedIn, making contact through a cold call or on Twitter, or nurturing through follow-up emails or Facebook. Simply put: social selling is selling.

For 25 years, Susan Marshall has been building and launching some of the best-in-class professional web and video editing applications including Flash, Dreamweaver, and Final Cut Pro, as well as leading digital marketing efforts for ExactTarget, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, and more. Capitalizing on her past experience at Apple and mobile startups like ChaCha, Susan now serves as the CEO and co-founder of Torchlite Digital Marketing

Category: FaceBook, LinkedIn, Social Selling, Social Selling, Twitter | No Comments »