Tag Archives: LinkedIn

Social Media

Are Your Social Media Standards Too Strict?

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A couple of weeks ago I had a post and video titled What Will You Do For More Followers? I asked at that time whether you’d go for the gusto to get more followers and thus more publicity with the possibility of more influence or whether you felt that wasn’t what you wanted to do at all.

Talk Nerdy To Me #2
Constantine Belias via Compfight

This time I’m asking you about your social media standards; what will you do, what do you do when it comes to social media in general. This question supposes 3 things:

1. That you have standards;

2. That you know what your standards are if you have them;

3. That you have good reasons for those standards if you have them

Yes, that’s kind of a challenge, because if you don’t have standards then it’s hard for you to be a part of the conversation, although I suppose not having standards can be freeing. If you have them but you don’t have any reason for them other than “because”, well, that’s your right but it’s certainly not informed. But if you have standards and have reasons… that’s when things get interesting.

This is a question I ask myself all the time because I do have standards and I have reasons for those standards, and sometimes I wonder if I’m holding myself back in some ways because of those standards. I mean, is it legitimate for me to hope to get tens of thousands of followers on Twitter when I’m following less than 900 people? Is it right of me not to connect with people on LinkedIn because they don’t have a picture on their profile, or because I can’t figure out why they think our businesses are compatible? Is it right of me to not just accept every friend request on Facebook when they know at least one other person I’m connected to? Is it right that I don’t just automatically follow people on YouTube or Instagram that are following me?

Some weeks back I made a comment on a post by Marcus Sheridan titled The Fleeting Title that is “Social Media Expert”, when he asked what makes someone a social media expert. I stated that I tend to believe that most of the folks put on lists were anointed by someone else who really had earned it and thus had the banner passed onto them without having had to work for it. I stated that I looked at a list that was recent at the time, checked out many of the names I didn’t already know, and saw that this blog was ranked higher than a lot of them, had way more content, and was written at least as well as those blogs, or not better (trying not to be conceited), and that the only real difference I saw between myself and those folks was that they had been anointed, put on a list, and given a boost that I’m not sure they deserved.

Then I looked at other numbers and, well, that’s when you get to thinking about things. These were people connected to tens of thousands of people on Twitter, thousands of people on Facebook, and well connected in other places as well. I’ve never really played the numbers game so I don’t compete well on this level. I do know that numbers mean something, but I’ve always been more about engagement and interaction, figuring that worked well with my mores.

Are your social media standards strict at all? Are mine? I’ll share mine; tell me what you think:

Twitter – If you don’t talk to anyone except to say “thank you” or to share links, I’m not following. If your politics are not only different than mine but your statements come across as hateful, I’m not following. In general, if you don’t really interact with others, I’m not following. If you AutoDM me after we connect, I’m immediately unfollowing you. I have some other standards as well but these are enough for now.

LinkedIn – If you don’t have a picture and I don’t know you, I’m not following. If your business isn’t compatible with anything I do and I haven’t talked to you in a group and you’re not local, I’m not connecting with you.

Facebook – If you ask to connect with me as a friend and you don’t have a picture, it’s not happening. If I don’t know you and you don’t know a lot of people I know, I’m not connecting with you. If I know who you are but we’ve never talked anywhere before, I’m probably not going to add you. And, sad as this might be, if I start getting irritated by stuff you’re putting up all the time because of its negativity, I’m hiding everything you post from that point on, possibly removing you from my friends list.

YouTube – if you don’t have any videos on your channel I’m not following you. If you have some videos but they’re not yours or you’re not in them, I’m not following. If they’re horrid… well, you know.

Instagram – I’m still relatively new to Instagram so I’ll admit to not really having a standard there yet, which is fine. However, I figure that for those people I have checked out that I haven’t added there’s got to be something in my mind that’s repelled me, and once I figure that out then I’ll have a true standard to uphold.

Am I too tough with my standards? Are there any you’d like to share? And is it possible our standards hold us back, and if so is it worth it?
 

Marketing

Real Marketing – A Slow, Steady Process

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Two weeks ago I started talking about this process of real marketing. I thought it was a good time to give a quick update as to how things are progressing, if they’re progressing. Actually, I tend to believe that any time one is trying to move forward it’s progress, even if one isn’t quite sure that’s what it is.

Over the past 2 weeks I’ve made a lot of phone calls. Some potential clients I’ve called twice. From my initiating things I haven’t landed anything yet, including anyone who even said “Yes, I’d like to talk more”. I did have a couple that asked me to send more information, and I’m taking that as a positive step. I also had one call that I thought would go better than it did, someone I’ve talked to before, and that one disappointed me so much that I not only didn’t make another call on that day, but was encouraged to write a post on my business blog about the disrespect independent consultants seem to get.

Now, what has happened is that I got a call from a hospital in another state asking me to submit a proposal to provide a couple of the services I do in health care, and that’s a good thing. You might not see these things as related but in my mind, when you start taking positive steps positive things start to come your way. Yes, I do believe in the laws of attraction. 🙂

Next, let’s talk about LinkedIn. I mentioned how I had reached out to some folks over there, and I’d only heard from one person. I can’t say that anymore. I did finally hear from another person who said that she’d been looking for someone who provides my services because she’s been asked in the past to find someone who does what I do, and that I’d be kept in her files the next time the request comes up. Good news once again.

See, the thing about real marketing is that you might not land the contract immediately, or make a sale then and there, but you start processes that, in some fashion, will get tings going and hopefully will work out in your favor later on. You may have to be patient, but eventually things will work out in some fashion.

Facebook? Lost cause for now, but that’s okay; I’ll keep plugging away at it. 🙂 How are your marketing efforts going?
 

Marketing

Marketing – LinkedIn

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LinkedIn is supposed to be used for business purposes. The very idea of LinkedIn is to be able to network with other business owners or people in certain industries to discuss business, or to network. Therefore, the way I see it, LinkedIn is a very viable place to try to make connections within your industries.

I have around 450 connections there. I know maybe 100 of them well enough so that I wouldn’t have to reach out to them again, which left me with about 350 contacts that I could look at and try to determine if there was some way I could work with them. I set about the task by starting at the beginning of the alphabet and looking at each name and what it is they did. I knew I wasn’t going to contact everyone the first time around; some, based on what they do, I won’t contact at all.

Going through this process was going to serve two things for me. One, it was going to help me determine who I should contact. Two, it was going to help me determine who I should drop. Some people theorize that the more connections you have the better. I’m not that guy, and as I’ve talked about culling the number of people I follow on Twitter based on how they use it and what they have to say, I’ve never really done the same thing with LinkedIn, and I’ve been there longer. So, as I started going through the list, I knew there were some people I was going to eliminate early, and some people I was going to eliminate later. What do I mean? I’ll come back to that.

In this case I didn’t create a list ahead of time. I figured that since I was on the site at the present time, and since you can’t send a group message to just anyone you’re connected to (actually you can but your message should be tailored to each individual so it doesn’t look like spam; LinkedIn hates that), I’d just go ahead and send my message. I created a couple of different scripted messages, but then I never used them. No matter, since the process of scripting helped me decide what I wanted to say anyway.

This was a 2-day process of going through all the names. In the end, I sent messages to close to 35 people, and I deleted around 30 people I was connected to. To date I’ve only heard from one person, someone I actually know who I hadn’t talked to in years and yet is in my field, so that doesn’t really count. The others…not a word. And if I don’t hear from any of those people within 2 weeks I’m going to my sent folder so I can identify them and I’m removing them from my list. I figure that if it takes that kind of effort to respond to a message on a business networking site then they’re either not really interested in that kind of thing, haven’t been to LinkedIn in awhile and thus don’t know what to do with the message, or really aren’t interested and don’t want to bother with me. In any of those cases, why stay connected? Agree or disagree?

And yes, this is marketing, online marketing but in a way more like email marketing. I made each message more of an introduction than a sales pitch because truthfully I figured I really didn’t know these people, no matter what it says on their LinkedIn page. After my first year on the site most people have connected to me first, so I figure it’s well within my right to try to connect with them now, since I added them when it was requested. But culling my list will take place, and I figure that when I go through the next round that I could be closer to 300 connections total. From where I sit, that’s not bad if I know those people.

And so it goes; thoughts?
 

Marketing

What Is Real Marketing?

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Yesterday I said it was time to start talking about real marketing. You might ask “if you haven’t been doing real marketing, then just what are we talking about?” Good question; let’s get right into it.

telephone marketing
via Flickr

Real marketing is what real businesses do. It’s not just throwing up a website, optimizing it as good as you can, collecting email addresses and bombing people with sales messages, trying to get them to buy products that, for the most part, you didn’t create on your own and don’t have anything else to offer. I’m not dismissing that as a way to make money by the way, but it’s not marketing. It can lead up to marketing, but it’s not real marketing.

Real marketing is uncomfortable; there, I said it. Real marketing is picking up the phone and trying to get someone on the phone to even talk to you about the services or products you have to offer. Real marketing is writing marketing letters and sending them out to prospects, hoping that the people who receive them will open them up and even remember who you are 5 minutes later. Real marketing is going to networking events and trying to talk to people who could care less about you and what you have to offer because they’re trying to market themselves.

But that’s not all that real marketing is. Real marketing is also working the contacts you’ve met on social media platforms such as LinkedIn, which is supposed to be a business networking site after all. Real marketing is making connections with some of the people you meet on Twitter where they might have businesses that can benefit from what you have to offer, or at least might be able to make a connection for you.

These are the things that I need to start doing as much as anything I’ve done in the past. These are things I’m betting a lot of you probably need to start doing as well. To this end, last week I started working on one of the main real marketing things I absolutely hate doing, yet know I need to get it down, or at least get more comfortable with it.

That would be making phone calls. I hate the phone. I’ve hated the phone for years. I used to love the phone back in the days before we had things like robo-calling, telemarketing, and computers. Oh yeah, I remember the days when it cost people money to make phone calls so you didn’t have marketing by phone. Telemarketing; didn’t happen. Computers… nice diversion, that’s for sure. Once I had other things to do, I stopped enjoying the phone like I had before.

Also, marketing by phone can feel emasculating, like you don’t have any control at all. Even if your sales message is sound, you might not get the opportunity to use it. You may get voice mail; you might get blocked by a secretary. Or you might get someone who doesn’t want to be bothered by your sales call; who can’t identify with that?

Still, it has to be done by some of us. I know I need to work my way through it if I want to succeed. What’s success for me? It’s having the ability to buy whatever I want, when I want, where I want. It’s never having to worry about paying my bills again. I think that’s about it. I don’t want to be a millionaire; I want to be a ten-millionaire!

So, we do what it takes to get there. We all have to be willing to go that extra mile, that next step, to reach our dreams. Yes, I believe in the laws of attraction, but they don’t say to sit around doing nothing and have things come your way.

I ask you; what challenges do you have, if any, in making phone calls to hawk your wares or services? How do you hope to get beyond it, or if you’ve gotten beyond it, how did you do it?
 

Social Media

5 Ways You’re Messing Up On LinkedIn

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Back in April I wrote my first true introductory post about LinkedIn, giving tips on how to use it effectively. Well, it seems that there’s still a lot of folks out there that are using it incorrectly. How do I know? If it’s irking other people then you’re messing it up in my opinion.


by Mattias via Flickr

Frankly, when it comes to your business the last thing you really want to be doing is getting on people’s nerves. Most of these things are minor, but why get irritate people to begin with I always say. So, here are 5 things one should either stop or start doing.

1. Stop going with the default message when reaching out to new people. Goodness, this was my #1 gripe in the last post and it’s at the top again. How hard is it to write something different, even if it’s just “I think we might be able to do some work together so I’d love to connect with you on LinkedIn”, or “I figure this is a good time to connect with each other here on LinkedIn”?

2. When reaching out to people you want to connect with, don’t lie about how you know them. I cringe when I get a connection message that says “so and so says you’re friends” when I have absolutely no idea who they are.

3. Why don’t you have a picture? Unless I personally know someone I refuse to connect with anyone that doesn’t have an image on LinkedIn. My thought is that you’re either trying to hide something or you don’t have enough knowledge to know how to upload a photograph. The idea of LinkedIn is business networking; why the heck wouldn’t you put up an image?

4. Say something in a group every once in awhile. I don’t belong to a bunch of groups but every group I belong to I participate in every once in awhile, sometimes even more then once in awhile. Sure, it’s free, but what’s the point in being in something you’re never going to do anything in? I called people out in one group that has around 1,600 members yet only 10 people ever talk; that’s just a shame.

5. Make your profile more dramatic than a straight up resume. You’re not auditing for a job, you’re hoping to get some kind of business out of it. If there’s a service or product you’d like to highlight, then do it there. It’s a great opportunity to do something a little different that you might not want to do on your website.