Don’t just jump in and start “selling”

The anonymity of the Internet has made people feel comfortable with just letting it “all hang out,” but that can come back to bite you big time if you’re trying to use it to promote your business.  For one, you DON’T want to be anonymous if you are a business.  You want people to know you and to trust you; you want them to depend on you for your expertise, and you want them to be comfortable with you as a “person.”  The more comfortable they are with you, the more likely they are to buy from you when the time comes.

Lurk first, then introduce yourself respectfully

One of the best things you can do when you sign on to social media to try to promote your business is to hang back and watch how things work first.  You’ll notice, for example, that people who try to spam are generally removed quickly from discussion — and even if they’re not, they may be flamed (made fun of, called out, and generally harassed) for their behavior.  If you want your business to succeed through social media, you will want to avoid the hard sell and direct spamming.

Instead, lurk to see how things work, and then introduce yourself respectfully by joining a discussion about a topic you‘re somewhat of an “expert“ on.  It should have to do with your niche, and the advice you give can certainly be related to the product or service you sell.  However, it should NOT directly “sell” your product or service, and instead should simply be advice related to the question asked.  Give away something for “free” with social networking — namely, your advice — and you’re much more likely to gain loyal customers quickly.

Promote indirectly

One of the best things about social media is that you can promote yourself indirectly, without overtly saying that you sell something.  You do this by putting your website address and any other relevant information about yourself in your profile and/or your sig. line, as applicable.  Once you come in on conversations and begin to participate (again, offering honest advice, and not trying to overtly sell anything), you’re indirectly advertising yourself simply by posting your signature line below your posts, and/or including information about your business and about you in your profile.  At least some of the people you’re participating with are bound to be curious about your website and about you and will go take a look.  And certainly, the people who are seeking your advice would likely go check you out and look at your profile, go visit your website, etc.

What’s great about this is you never have to engage in hard selling.  Instead, you gradually establish yourself as an expert, someone people can turn to for advice in your particular niche.  As you gain a reputation and a “brand” yourself as an expert, you can move on to the next area of social networking; that is, you’re actually going to put out content (videos and text) that will tell people more about your business, effortlessly, through viral marketing.

There’s something you have to do if you want that to happen, though. It’s all well and good to get the word out about your product or service, and to let people know that it’s available. If you don’t establish yourself as an expert who truly wants to help people, though, it’s not likely you’re going to get much of a customer following. The key, then, with social networking is that you have to establish yourself as an expert in your field. Once you can do that, and once you have clearly aligned your online persona or your “brand” with that expertise, you’ll have success.

How do you establish yourself as an expert through social media?

Although social media can make something happen instantly, in that you can literally get a particular message to thousands or even millions with the click of a mouse or the push of a button, establishing yourself as an expert is going to take some time and effort. Therefore, build slowly from the ground floor up and establish yourself as an expert before you try to push your product or service too much.

• Start slowly, offering advice on forums and other social media pages

Depending on what your particular business is, you can begin to frequent like-minded forums and other social media pages and venues. Post frequently and often, including your signature line or the website address for your business — but don’t try to sell anything. Instead, honestly answer people’s questions and offer advice for “free.” Your ultimate goal, of course, is that you will attract customers, but your intent at this point should simply be to help people. In turn, that will raise your profile as someone who is an expert in your field.

• Write articles and blog posts, perhaps graduating to videos

As you are offering advice to others on other forms of social media networks, you can also be writing blog posts and articles on your area of expertise that you will then post to various article directories and blog sites.

Now, again, this has to be genuinely quality content that gives people something for “nothing.” We see poorly written articles or badly produced videos all the time that don’t really offer anything. They’re clearly simply meant to entice people to buy something. That’s misguided though, and doing that is not going to help you become an expert in other people’s eyes. They’ll simply see you as a shyster interested in their money, and nothing else. Then they’ll go look for somebody who truly is an expert and is willing to help them. Your articles, blog posts and videos should be of the best quality you can produce, with the true intent of helping people with a problem they need to solve. At the bottom of these articles or blog posts, or at the end of these videos, you can certainly include your website or contact information so that people can find you, but selling something should not be the central focus. Post these videos, blog posts and articles to directories or your website, encouraging people to share them by putting easy to use links to Facebook and Twitter on the pages your posts or videos appear.

When you do this, you will slowly become well-known as a true expert in your field, which will encourage people to turn to you for advice and yes, buy your products or services. (Incidentally, you can do this even if your business is a local-only business. You’ll still gain a lot more traffic to your website and therefore attract more customers by doing so.)

Sounds good, right? But before you get started, there are a few things you should know about social media and how it works.

Lurk before you participate

New social media networks are popping up all the time, but some of the most established are Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn. (Google Plus is the “new kid on the block,” and isn’t quite as well established, but you can visit there too, and just hang around and get a feel for it.)

Visit each of these social networks and do a search on your particular business niche. Chances are, you’ll come up with groups and pages specifically devoted to your business; you’ll find both people looking for opportunities to expand their own small businesses, and people looking for the products and services you offer.

Both of these groups are important to you. Those who are more experienced than you in your niche have had their small businesses for a while and can teach you something about success. By lurking, you can find out a lot about what makes them successful without either imposing on them (bad form, in many cases) or unnecessarily opening yourself up to some pretty stiff competition. Just lurk, take notes, and learn.

The second group, those who are looking for your products and services, are important to you too, of course. Here, you have a ready-made customer base.

• Why lurking is important

It’s important to lurk before you participate because you want to learn just how things work before you get involved. If you get started too soon, you’re going to show yourself as a complete newbie, which is usually not beneficial to your business. It may get you taken advantage of, for one thing, and you’re certainly not going to look professional to your potential clients.

The other thing is that social networking really has a language and “community” all its own. It has etiquette and rules as to what “good” and “bad” behavior are. Step on the wrong toes, act improperly, or simply show yourself to be inexperienced, and you are likely going to damage your reputation, something you may not be able to fix later.

Join a few groups, and participate

After you’ve lurked for a while, you can join a few groups and participate. At this point, refrain from setting up your own page or group. Instead, you simply want to join existing groups and get involved in some good discussion.

Don’t spam

When you participate, make sure you follow etiquette. Some of these groups or pages will have rules specifically spelled out that you should follow, in which case you should be sure to do so. If they don’t, though, a general rule of thumb is that when you participate in social media, you should never spam. Instead, comment on ongoing discussions honestly. You can usually include your website, Twitter feed, etc., in a signature line or profile posting that will be clearly visible. People can see who you are and visit your website if they so choose, which will indirectly get you more traffic and ultimately, more customers.

Start your own group and/or set up your own page when you feel ready

Once you’ve learned the rules of the road for the specific social media network(s) you have studied and participated in, you’re ready to set up your own page or group. Again, this is a great way to bring like-minded people together to talk about topics related to the product or service in question. It’s also a way for you to post special deals, etc., you have going on for a new product or service just as a matter of course, to keep people informed. When you do it this way, it’s not “spamming.” It’s simply posting information that group members and customers will find useful.

Use social media to direct traffic to your small business website

It’s never a good idea to simply jump into any social media venue (Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn are a few well-known examples) and start advertising your business willy-nilly with a lot of spamming. That’ll just irritate people, and it may even get you banned.

However, you can use social media subtly to direct traffic to your website and attract more prospective customers. Once there, prospective customers are much more likely to convert to actual customers if you’ve enticed them with social media commentary and content, and then have followed up with quality content and products or services on your website thereafter.

Use viral content to spread your small business message — fast

Viral content (not to be confused with a virus, which would be a bad thing) is basically something (a message, video, or article) that becomes so popular that it spreads like wildfire throughout the Internet. Come up with a clever video, for example, that advertises your product or service in a commercial or non-commercial format. Make it enjoyable to watch, and you’re suddenly not just selling a product or service. You’re actually entertaining people. The more people that enjoy your video, the more they’ll pass it on, and the more people will see it; in turn, that will bring people to your website to find out more about you. Once they arrive at your website, the more likely they are to be interested in your product or service.

Post as a participant on social networking sites to create organic back links to your own small business website

Search engines these days are very savvy to manufactured “back links.” That is, fake back links that have been bought and created specifically to give you a higher search engine ranking are very easy to spot, and are likely to get you blacklisted so that your site won’t show up on search engines at all.

However, search engines absolutely love organic back links. Organic back links are those links that are created because you have legitimately posted throughout social networking sites and on forums, etc.. Whenever you participate in a conversation on a social networking site and do so honestly (not just to spam, but to give actual advice, honest commentary, and the like), that post will generate at least one good back link. Make it really good, and other people will pick it up and pass it on so that it creates a number of back links.

 Use social media for small business targeted marketing

Coupons aren’t just those things you clip out of the paper anymore. With social networking, you can create and distribute “coupons” on the fly, targeted to a specific audience for your product or service. For example, let’s say you sell a product or service on your website (or locally), and you decide that you’re going to give anybody with a specific coupon code 10% off their next purchase. Post this information on your website, distribute it through your profile or sig line on social networking sites, and put it on your Twitter feed. You can even create a text message that you can then send out to a targeted (opt in) audience. When those people visit your website or your establishment, all they have to do is enter the coupon code into the proper space or present it to you at purchase, and they get that discount. And again, this is something that the word will spread on, so that others will come to you to use the same discount. It’s word-of-mouth that has really gone high-tech through social networking, and it only bodes well for your business.

Here is a short list of things I do on a regular basis to invest in myself:

• I read books and websites on the topics of sales, marketing, understanding people, and faith.
• Taking time out of my business to bring back my focus and clarity. That means time off a.k.a VACATION and mini 1 day vacations.
• Exercise, I haven’t always done this however as of late I do so regularly and this bring increased clarity and energy.
• Walks, often I will just take a walk outside and flat out be with nature and the elements.
• Hunting, once a year I take two weeks to go whitetail deer hunting .  No meetings, calls, deadlines, or even an exhausting vacation and I know you know what I mean by exhausting vacations.

So is this selfish? I don’t think so because all of this makes me a better person in my business, family, and faith.

I hope you find time to invest in yourself as I have, I know I am a better person because of it.

Now, what would you add or better yet what was the best business advice you ever received?

Everything is Bigger on LinkedIn

Here I am at a family camp on Western night having to wear the Biggest Hat. Kinda like people on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn seems to create big egos! There I said it and some of you know exactly what I mean while others haven’t been on LinkedIn long enough to understand this statement. Let me explain, I often run across LinkedIn profiles that make the individual look like Mother Teresa’s mentor.  It starts with a  long list of multiple job titles and a specialist in about 20 different areas you will discover as you read their profile, sound familiar?

You’re Story

I am all about sharing your accomplishments, experience, and expertise. Along with shining an effective well thought out spotlight, but not pulsating Vegas lights that we all know are not reality. Focus on your story and why you do what do. Share that and you WILL have something that grabs people’s attention.

Here is an example using my headline on LinkedIn.

I have to throw this in because it really is relevant, now the video is about 17 minutes and it will set you back the rest of the day, week, and maybe a few months on your own thoughts. However it is really relevant to communicating what, how, and why you do what you do.
(more to read below the video as well)

I told you the video was good!

What is Your Why?

So what do you think are profiles over inflated on LinkedIn? Do you know your why? Please share it.

Here is the link to get Digital Marketer Lab?

If you haven’t seen the video, you need to go watch it
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Please share our bonus offer if you feel it would help your friends and associates.

This lab is extremely useful if you are not frequently checking everyone’s profiles to see what they are up to. This is the case for most people since it may be rather time consuming to constantly look at your large number of connections on LinkedIn. However in not doing this you probably have missed some of these new additions to many people’s profiles. This lab gives you a reminder of whose profile you may want to take a look at and give congratulations to.

There are also some benefits that you may be able to get out of taking a look at this application as well. For those people on a job hunt or looking to switch careers, this is a simple resource to check out. First of all, since this person started a new job then they obviously had to leave a previous position meaning that there is a possible position that he left for the taking. Contacting this person or the company he previously worked for could be a good first step in finding a job. Secondly, this connections new job could be currently trying to create a new team and you could be the perfect person for the job. Just by looking at that person’s profile you may be able to gain insight on how to change jobs and what kind of skills are transferrable to different industries you are interested in. Talking to this person may also be a further investigation into how they made the change in career and any tips they have for you.

Finally, this is a great way to get back in contact with people and to connect with those people who have switched to a job similar to what you do or in are in your industry. It is a great excuse to get in contact with someone by saying “I saw on LinkedIn’s Year In Review that you recently started…”. This application is a great way to highlight people to contact and offer to provide them with your assistance or see if there is any way their new line of business can help you. This lab can lead to a great relationship with someone and strengthen your network.

LinkedIn Labs are experimental, low-maintenance features that were created for use with LinkedIn. They are similar to applications on an Iphone and even look similar in their formatting of icons in boxes. All of the labs are focused on helping to manage and discover new things through a LinkedIn account. The many different projects are not yet shown on the main LinkedIn website but can be found at www.labs.linkedin.com. These labs were built by employees and feedback is greatly appreciated to see which ones are useful and well liked or to identify those that need to be tweaked or deleted. Every month the LinkedIn employees get together to research and produce new and improved functions which are then posted on the LinkedIn Labs page. The new labs are added very regularly but how long they stay varies. Since these projects are experimental, some labs may be deleted after a few weeks or may become part of the main LinkedIn website in the future based on their popularity. The problem with them not being on the main site is that they aren’t seen by enough people to get an adequate amount of reviewing.

The different labs vary on their usefulness but are all usually interesting and have at least some entertainment value. Some of them were just made for fun and others could be long lasting successful additions. They range from a lab that makes your connections into blocks and puts them into a Tetris game you can play to a search of your connections with immediate results. They are definitely worth checking out and seeing which of the features work for you.

SpeechIn

SpeechIn is an application that reads headlines from LinkedIn Today out loud in an automated voice. All the most recent news, based on your industry, can be read aloud from either your computer or mobile phone. The headlines are updated every hour so you are always getting the most up to date information. This is great if you have a commute to work or don’t have time to read through the headlines everyday and would rather have it read to you while you do other things. The voice telling you this information is automated and may not be the most pleasant thing to listen to but it definitely gets the job done.

Year In Review

The Year In Review Lab points out those of your connections that have started something new in the last year. At the top of the page it shows the specific number of people with the pictures below of those who have switched jobs, started a new endeavor, or educational experience. This lab is helpful if you may have missed some of these new additions to your connections profiles. This gives you a reminder of whose profile you may want to take a look at and give congratulations to or possibly contact to provide them with your assistance or see if there is any way their new line of business can help you.

Swarm

Swarm is a page showing a picturesque background with a constant flow of words or phrases cycling over the scene. All of the words are things that have recently been searched on LinkedIn. The title of the search function is shown at the top of the screen and changes often. People use the search engine on LinkedIn for many productive things such as finding a job, connecting with people in similar business as you, finding others who can help you and your business, marketing yourself and business, and many more uses. Therefore this application shows you the most up to date topics so you can see what is popular at the moment and what others are looking for through LinkedIn. This lab seems to have some worth but you must be a quick reader to see the fast scrolling words. You can slow it down by putting your arrow over words but then you also risk missing others while it is stopped. The usefulness depends on how much time you have to watch the words pass by and what you are looking to get out of it.

Instant Search

Instant Search is a perfect way to find both people within your connections and new possible connections on LinkedIn based any search terms you use. The page for this lab shows just a search bar but from the moment you start typing people start becoming listed below based on the words you use. The people shown are all either your first or second connections and each person that matches your search has their own box with their name, picture, tagline, and location written. You can use just one word or multiple words and phrases to either have a either a broad or narrowed search.  This application is extremely useful in finding certain people who you would like to contact or in finding new people to become connected with who are only your immediate connections are already linked with.

NewIn

The NewIn lab gives a visualization of new users all over the world joining LinkedIn. It is fascinating to see the vast amount of people joining every minute and even more appealing because it uses Google Earth to show the location of each additional member. It requires having the Google Earth Plug In which you are prompted to download immediately after clicking on the lab if you don’t already have it. This is great for those involved in marketing, however may not be accommodating for anyone else. While it is amusing for a short period of time, it can become dull after a while of staring continually at the Earth with random names being pinpointed. It is also almost impossible to read their entire tagline before moving to the next person.

Signal

Signal is a stream of your connections updates. It shows what they are saying and putting on LinkedIn including statuses from twitter of those who choose to stream those to their LinkedIn page. It is extremley helpful to see all of the most recent news your connections are sharing all in one place instead of going to everyone’s pages separately. There are some very functional components of this lab such as being able to filter people by region, company, industry, etc. Signal also allows you to find new people to become linked with based on who you are already connected with. You can even do searches and save searches within these second connections for specific phrases or terms that would find people you would want to connect with.

InMaps

InMaps examines all the connections on your LinkedIn profile and comes up with a map showing the extensive, intertwining links that have been created through your account. Each person is shown as a dot on the map and is linked with a line. They add some color to identify different networks, make it more organized, and visually appealing. There is also a function that enables people’s personalized labeling of networks. Zooming in and out of the different connections is both entertaining and informative in seeing how many people you are able to reach through one website.

Resume Builder

For those people who don’t already have a resume, or who have a resume that isn’t up to date or professional then this application is for you. This application takes all of the information you have already put onto your LinkedIn profile and makes it into a professional resume that you can use. There are many different template options that include classic, modern, business, executive, law, etc. so you can customize your resume for the style you want to portrait. After picking a template there is the opportunity to edit your information and pick which sections to include. Finally, you can put it into PDF form, have a custom link, or print it to share with anyone you choose. For those who want the simplified way to make a resume, this is extremely helpful.

Connection Timeline

LinkedIn Labs Connection Timeline allows you to see who you have become linked with and when. This lab pulls information from your profile and puts your education, organizations, and jobs on a timeline. When you press play, your profile picture scrolls across your timeline and shows the connections you made during your time on LinkedIn. While it is interesting to see, it may not be vital or extremely helpful.