​Getting Started with Social Media Part 2: 7 Steps To Drive Leads

The main assumption in this series of articles on Getting Started with Social Media is that you are using social media to increase your online visibility and more importantly, hoping to increase leads to your website and business. If this is not the purpose of your desire to use social media for your business, if instead you are trying to increase your customer support outreach, as an example, then I would direct you to different approach than the one we will be discussing here.

 

In the first article in this series we talked about How To Pick The Right Platform to start with, and yes, pick only one to start with, get good on it, and then move on to the next one… And of course, the most important consideration in picking the right platform was identifying who exactly your target customer is. 

 

So in this second article, we assume you have chosen your platform, and to get even more narrowly focused, I am going to assume we are talking about either Facebook™ or LinkedIn™ since the recommended approach of both is the same, and most companies choose one of the two as their first platform to become active on. We will discuss the other platforms in later articles.

 

Although both LinkedIn™ and Facebook™ differ in how you optimize your profile and business pages, the basic plan of how use them them to drive business is the same.

 

Here are the assumptions:

1.   You have a website.  

2.   You have a blog on your website: check out the article on Bodacious Blogging if you need help on         blog article ideas.

 

Here I the outline of the plan:

 

1.    Create your personal profile

In both LinkedIn™ and Facebook™, you must have a personal profile. They serve different functions on these two platforms, but in both cases remember, if you are using social media for business, then this profile is about your business. It is not to chat with your friends and relatives, so if you are already using a personal profile to do this, you must either change the plan or create a different profile to use for business.

 

2.    Build your business company page 

Business pages are called a fan page on Facebook™ or company and showcase pages on Linkedin™. In both platforms, you must have a personal profile first, in order to build your company page. 

 

3.    Join groups 

Join groups where your potential customers hang out: This is important - these are not groups centered around your hobbies, passions, nor other businesses like yours. These are groups where your target customers are members. This is what will enable you to connect and have visibility to thousands of potential targets that are not your current customers.

 

4.    Post interesting valuable content 

This is where your blog comes in. Write interesting blog articles that are based upon subjects your target customers are interested in, think about, worry about, etc. These articles are published on your website. When you post them to social media, you are posting a sentence that i a hook to get the person to want to click to read the entire article and of course, you include an image as well as the link to the article page on your website.

 

You are posting initially once a week, on your personal profile, your business page, and most importantly, in all of the groups.

 

Why? Because this gets people to your website to read the article because it interests them. And once there, they just might look around to see what your business is all about, or opt in to your mailing list, etc.  

 

Posting Guidelines

 

• (85/15) - 85% content of value, and no more than 15% promotional or salesy.

• Share Content That Matters To Your Customers

• Learn From What Works and What Doesn’t - look at the analytics to see which articles got the most engagement (likes, comments, shares) and were most read.

• Do More of What Works

 

5.    Offer Deals And Discounts

This is the 15% where you are blatantly selling and that is okay - as long as it is only 15% maximum and the other 85% is content of value. we will be writing an article later in this series on offering deals and discounts through your social media platforms.