I did a little experiment with a friend that asked for a little advice on their social media strategy and I thought I would share what ended up happening.
I am sharing this because I have noticed two things when speaking to entrepreneurs and solo-preneurs that have used social media to try to grow their businesses.
Many of the entrepreneurs either stop using social media for their business because they couldn't justify the time invested.
Or they have let social media take over their lives making it hard to get many of the other very important business activities done in an efficient manner.
In this article I am going to share with you how a friend of mine has used social media for under 45 minutes a day to effectively grow the sales of her business.
She was able to close sales without a huge list of followers, friends, likes or previous connections.
We did this by focusing on becoming a conversationalist instead of a broadcaster.
Broadcasting is sharing information using your social media account as a (one to many) platform of communication.
As you might guess being a conversationalist is actually reaching out and connecting with people.
We wanted to test out primarily using conversations to sell a 97 dollar product.
At the time of writing this I don't have permission to share the client companies name but just know they are a small business that never successful used social media to sell a product online.
She asked me not to share her company information because she was concerned that sharing her business or niche would be creating competition in her market using the same strategy.
Now that I think of it its probably better to keep it general because it forces me to explain this process in a general way.
Which might make it more helpful for the majority of people that read it.
A lot of people end up wasting a lot of time using social media because the people that they are talking aren't the people that can help them sell more of their products and services.
The owner of this business was no exception.
She told me that she used social media for a while but gave up because it didn't help her.
A big part of the reason nothing came from it was because she wasn't speaking with a targeted audience.
Thats why we started by first describing who she wanted to connect with.
We ended up describing two basic kinds of people that would be a benefit to connect with for her business.
The first was her ideal customer of her business.
If you do this it's important to go into as much detail as possible.
Because the more you understood your ideal customer the easier it is to uncover where they are hanging out, how to get their attention and how you can provide value for them.
When describing your ideal customer for your social media marketing list out the different things they would be interested in talking about, learning and sharing with others they care about.
We then identified the people and brands in their space that had the most attention on twitter, Facebook.
After we identified them we started to watch these people and brands.
We kept our eyes open for opportunities to enter into the conversation that they were having with their followers.
It doesn't matter what the primary social media platforms is that your ideal customers use.
Look for the people that are already have the attention of your target market and find ways to become part of the conversation that they are leading.
Then we used Twitter real time search and Facebook real time search to keep an eye on the conversations we could ad value to.
You can also use LinkedIn open Groups to listen in on relevant conversations that you can add value to but her market wasn't there.
When we did enter into conversations with her ideal target market we made sure we where polite, helpful, real and fun.
Simple really, the only call to action that we provide was with more details on solving their solution with good how to information that was provided on my clients blog.
Its important to not here that when someone was talking about a challenge with here keyword phrases we used in real time search we didn't just respond with a link and a call to action.
What we did was answer the question in about 200 characters.
When they respond with a thanks or further questions we kindly guided them to the blog post with more information.
On the top right hand side of the blog post was an offer for a detailed understanding on this topic in a free report.
This is still a new project but 1 out of 35 conversations she has is turning to a into sale of a 97 dollar product.
The Reminder.
You don't need a big list start making money online with your blog.
You don't need a ton of traffic.
You don't need a big budget for advertising.
All you need is to start down to the road to success with your own online business is.
1.
An understanding of who your ideal customers are and what they want.
2.
The ability to be at one of the places they are talking about or looking for information on the problem you solve.
3.
The ability to communicate in a way that gets your ideal customers attention and makes them feel comfortable enough with you to buy when they are ready.
4.
A product and a shopping cart so people can give you money.
5.
A strong enough desire to work out the details until you succeed.
I am sharing this because I have noticed two things when speaking to entrepreneurs and solo-preneurs that have used social media to try to grow their businesses.
Many of the entrepreneurs either stop using social media for their business because they couldn't justify the time invested.
Or they have let social media take over their lives making it hard to get many of the other very important business activities done in an efficient manner.
In this article I am going to share with you how a friend of mine has used social media for under 45 minutes a day to effectively grow the sales of her business.
She was able to close sales without a huge list of followers, friends, likes or previous connections.
We did this by focusing on becoming a conversationalist instead of a broadcaster.
Broadcasting is sharing information using your social media account as a (one to many) platform of communication.
As you might guess being a conversationalist is actually reaching out and connecting with people.
We wanted to test out primarily using conversations to sell a 97 dollar product.
At the time of writing this I don't have permission to share the client companies name but just know they are a small business that never successful used social media to sell a product online.
She asked me not to share her company information because she was concerned that sharing her business or niche would be creating competition in her market using the same strategy.
Now that I think of it its probably better to keep it general because it forces me to explain this process in a general way.
Which might make it more helpful for the majority of people that read it.
A lot of people end up wasting a lot of time using social media because the people that they are talking aren't the people that can help them sell more of their products and services.
The owner of this business was no exception.
She told me that she used social media for a while but gave up because it didn't help her.
A big part of the reason nothing came from it was because she wasn't speaking with a targeted audience.
Thats why we started by first describing who she wanted to connect with.
We ended up describing two basic kinds of people that would be a benefit to connect with for her business.
The first was her ideal customer of her business.
If you do this it's important to go into as much detail as possible.
Because the more you understood your ideal customer the easier it is to uncover where they are hanging out, how to get their attention and how you can provide value for them.
When describing your ideal customer for your social media marketing list out the different things they would be interested in talking about, learning and sharing with others they care about.
We then identified the people and brands in their space that had the most attention on twitter, Facebook.
After we identified them we started to watch these people and brands.
We kept our eyes open for opportunities to enter into the conversation that they were having with their followers.
It doesn't matter what the primary social media platforms is that your ideal customers use.
Look for the people that are already have the attention of your target market and find ways to become part of the conversation that they are leading.
Then we used Twitter real time search and Facebook real time search to keep an eye on the conversations we could ad value to.
You can also use LinkedIn open Groups to listen in on relevant conversations that you can add value to but her market wasn't there.
When we did enter into conversations with her ideal target market we made sure we where polite, helpful, real and fun.
Simple really, the only call to action that we provide was with more details on solving their solution with good how to information that was provided on my clients blog.
Its important to not here that when someone was talking about a challenge with here keyword phrases we used in real time search we didn't just respond with a link and a call to action.
What we did was answer the question in about 200 characters.
When they respond with a thanks or further questions we kindly guided them to the blog post with more information.
On the top right hand side of the blog post was an offer for a detailed understanding on this topic in a free report.
This is still a new project but 1 out of 35 conversations she has is turning to a into sale of a 97 dollar product.
The Reminder.
You don't need a big list start making money online with your blog.
You don't need a ton of traffic.
You don't need a big budget for advertising.
All you need is to start down to the road to success with your own online business is.
1.
An understanding of who your ideal customers are and what they want.
2.
The ability to be at one of the places they are talking about or looking for information on the problem you solve.
3.
The ability to communicate in a way that gets your ideal customers attention and makes them feel comfortable enough with you to buy when they are ready.
4.
A product and a shopping cart so people can give you money.
5.
A strong enough desire to work out the details until you succeed.