The 3 Best Social Media Ideas for Improving Your Sales You’ll Ever Read
Leads are like molecules. They’re a billion of them, but all so small and insignificant you don’t even pay attention to them.
Leads are like molecules in another way, too. Without molecules, you wouldn’t exist. Same is true for leads.
But maybe you don’t have a billion leads coming in. Would you like a billion leads over a years time? If so, one way to get there is by doing lots of microprospecting.
What’s microprospecting? Just another way of saying “prospect small, and often.”
Microprospecting is sending a personal email to a satisfied client. Crossing the street to meet a stranger. Microprospecting works in the digital world to, like social media.
You can fill your macro funnel with leads by laying hundreds of small social media prospecting lines. And the cool part? Is doesn’t take a lot of time.
In the case of social media, here are the 3 best–and fastest–things you can do everyday that are guaranteed to grow your pipeline.
The Best Blogging Idea You’ll Ever Read
The most obvious choice here is to start a blog. If you haven’t a blog yet, it’s imperative you get one now.
What can you do daily on a blog that will improve your sales? Write short, meaningful posts on the state of your local market.
But I have a much better idea.
Write short, meaningful posts about people in your community. Become a local journalist.
Every time you are in the car, on the phone or in a meeting with someone, find out something interesting about them. And then ask them if you can blog about them. Keep a notepad and build up a pool of stories.
Once you start posting these stories, email the person to let them know. Then they tell all their friends and family. Pretty soon you’ll have a large swath of people eyeing your blog to see if they made it on there yet.
In fact, you do this good enough, and strangers will go out of their way to meet you, hoping you “interview” them.
Why is this effective? Because people like to see themselves in print.
I got this idea from the book Made to Stick, where Dan and Chris Heath tell the story of a city newspaper that had a readership rate over 100%.
What was the secret to the newspaper’s success? The editor summed it up in three words: names, names, names. He and his reporters focused on the people of the town–not the events.
You should do the same.
The Best Recommendation Idea You’ll Ever Read
The next best social media idea is to give people recommendations. But not just any old recommendation.
How can you do that? Join LinkedIn if you haven’t already and search out people you’ve worked with in some capacity. Then, recommend them.
But say something positive and unique about that person. Unique is key. Zero in on something about that person that makes them stand out. Give the recommendation teeth.
I’ve given several recommendations where people have returned with “wow…that really pops out of the page.”
You can learn how to write a good LinkedIn recommendation. It’s really easy and involves a 15 minute investment.
Give one recommendation a day for 30 days and you’ve made 30 people smile. Hopefully you’ll get 30 recommendations in return. That’s not always the case, but 20–even 10–is better than none.
The Best One Night Stand You’ll Ever Have–and the Only One You’ll Ever Have
This goes without saying, but to make the best use of social media, you have to be social. Like Dustin Wax at Stepcase Lifehack said:
Building relationships starts with a friend request or invite — it doesn’t end there. Get to know the people you are connected with. Answer their questions, send them a link or piece of information now and again, and read their profiles.
But if you look at social media as a one-night stand–you’re doomed for failure.
You’ve got to love people. Everything about them. Like Leo at Zen Habits–who I swear doesn’t have a bad bone in his body. He is truly interested in everybody.
[Just follow him on Twitter to see what I mean.]When you fall over yourself to get to know people–one person at a time–becoming popular is inevitable. And that means you have to spend more than one night with them.
The 90 Day Social Media Challenge
Social media is out there to help you. And it’s perfect for what you want to do–generate leads. Where else can you have access to millions of people in the matter of a few clicks?
So, my challenge to you is this: for the next 90 days try and do these three simple social media ideas everyday.
At the most it should take you an hour and a half. But that hour and a half maybe your best time investment as your social network grows exponentially.
Disclaimer
By the end of that 90 days you won’t have a billion leads. Probably not a million. Or even a thousand. But a hundred isn’t far-fetched.
And if you have one hundred new leads, and got just one lead from each person, your leads just doubled without you having to do anything.
That’s the beauty of compound marketing.
