Tag Archives: newhandshake

Sales Meets Social Media

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Recently, colleague Scott Williford of My Interview Link helped me to create a series of video clips that talks about our business services. Scott offers a great service for the job seeker and/or the business professional looking for a professional way to showcase what they offer. When I showed up that morning to film my segments, I was impressed with the professional set up. Brent filmed the segments and did a nice job making me look good:). Check out the 5 vignettes here. At the end of the shoot, Scott asked me to film a couple of blog clips talking about social media. Enjoy the clip posted here.

 

Great Social Sales Skills Are Required

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Today, I’ve got my social sales evangelism hat on, because I sometimes forget that not everyone sees the value in using new technology to augment their sales process. Though by now it’s pretty obvious that social media is here to stay, there continues to be debate about whether or not the use of social media can actually have any impact on your sales. Many sales professionals still view the use of social media as either something that “the kids” are using, or they believe that the use of social media has no real role to play in the sales process. Unfortunately, these attitudes cause many folks to completely ignore the opportunity that social technologies offer them. That, in my opinion, is a shame.

Let’s do away with the first myth right now…that social media is just a kid’s thing.

As you might expect, this sentiment is most often expressed by the boomer generation who’ve not quite accepted that social goes way beyond their kid’s texting about the concert they attended last night. Yes, the younger set has grown up digital, so it’s more natural for them to use Facebook or Twitter to keep up with their social networks. But as evidenced by the skyrocketing growth of LinkedIn, more than 90 million business professionals are using LinkedIn as a viable medium for networking with potential buyers, referral partners and current customers. In fact, did you know that roughly 70% of those LinkedIn users are decision makers? In other words, these are the people who can buy your products and services. Now, it is true that far too many LinkedIn users aren’t using the technology as effectively as they could be, but that’s a subject for another post.

What about the mistaken belief that social media has no role to play in sales?

After hundreds of conversations with business owners and sales executives, I think one main reason many sales people resist using social technology is because they have unrealistic expectations about what social media can do for them. A LinkedIn profile today doesn’t mean an immediate sale tomorrow. Frankly, that’s just as unrealistic as thinking you’ll meet someone tonight at a networking event and by morning will have a deal. The value of social media is about increased exposure with a wider audience of people who can buy from you. I like to say that just because you have something to sell, it doesn’t mean that your prospect is ready to buy. If you aren’t visible in the social space, it’s not likely that your name will rise to the top of potential vendors when the time comes.

Remember…

Your prospects have far more options than ever before. They also spend a fair amount of time gathering information online. It’s cool if you don’t feel the need to have presence in the social space, but your savvy competitors are no doubt there. Are you sure that’s a risk you are willing to take?

Putting A Blog To Work For You

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What a great webinar session I held today with our guest expert, Peggy Duncan. Though I’m a bit of a tech dweeb myself, I picked up some great tips, which I plan to implement immediately. In fact, I’ve already put a few of Peggy’s suggestions into action. Since it was such a power packed presentation, I thought that I would summarize some of her key points. You’ll find a list of the “technology” suggestions listed at the bottom with links to their sites.

  • Benefits include: boosting your search engine rankings (SEO), building your brand and providing another way to reach the masses. These things translate into building credibility, loyalty and increased sales.


  • Email is still a very viable marketing vehicle and should be an integral part of your overall social media strategy.  And on that note, remember that your social media plan can also incorporate things like blogging, webinars, video, as well as using LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.


  • Always remember to provide compelling information that not only showcases your core expertise, but creates value in advance of the sales opportunity. You always want to give people a reason to keep coming back to your blog or sign up for your email list.


  • Write for people. Every day things are happening in your business world that can become a great blog post. As an example, as I’m summarizing the webinar information from our session today, I now have a blog post.


  • What if I’m not a writer? Hire someone to help you. If you are better verbally, get a tape recorder to record your thoughts and then type them up. Also consider a service like www.jott.com for both recording and transcribing. Plus, the service will help push out your messages through your social sites.


  • When you are getting started, consider setting up a “hosted” WordPress blog from the beginning. You can host with companies like Host Gator, GoDaddy or any number of hosting platforms. The benefit to doing this from the start is that you can customize to your specifications. When you run a “free blog” with WordPress.com you are limited (due to security issues) to the number of widgets and gadgets you can add to your site.


  • As you create your content, Peggy recommended that you write about what you know. Talk about how what you do solves problems for prospective buyers. Don’t forget that blogging isn’t just about writing. You can have guest bloggers, video interviews, whitepapers and more.


  • Make those posts sizzle with compelling headlines and don’t forget to incorporate phrases that tell someone how you solve their problem. Remember that when someone has a problem to solve, that’s what they Google. For example, “I need help creating a Twitter background.” If you’ve created your headline to incorporate that message, your rankings improve.


  • Build traffic by promoting to your various social sites. And for you LinkedIn users (and you better be using LinkedIn as a sales networking tool!), you can integrate your blog to feed your LinkedIn profile.

Take Action

As I concluded the webinar today, I reminded everyone of the importance of taking action. What’s the point of sitting in on webinars, whether you paid for them or not, if you never do anything with the information? If you are looking for a low cost learning and coaching option to help your put social media to work for you in driving sales revenue, I’ve just launched a group coaching community that not only will give you the training that you need, but the coaching and encouragement along the way to help you put learning into action. Learn more here. You’ll find other individual coaching options here.

Technology List

Finally, here is a list of the technology that Peggy discussed during the session. I plan to get started with a few of them myself!!

www.viddler.com Incorporate your video into your blog, as well as host on YouTube. You’ll find the vidget tool that Peggy mentioned here http://vidgets.viddler.com/

www.feedjit.com This nifty little tool lets you know when someone visits your site. Remember, just because people may not be actively commenting on your blog that doesn’t mean they haven’t dropped by to read what you’ve posted.

www.linkwithin.com This WordPress plugin increases page views and keeps your readers engaged. The widget links to stories that are relevant and interesting to readers of a particular post, keeping them engaged with your blog, and increasing your traffic.

www.facebook.com Use the notes section (to the left under create group. Note, you may have to expand the list), to drive additional traffic to your blog, webinar or events.

www.google.com/addurl Use this to register your blog URL. Why? To increase traffic of course. If you want more visibility for your business locally use https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?service=lbc&passive=1209600&continue=http://www.google.com/local/add/businessCenter&followup=http://www.google.com/local/add/businessCenter

www.hootsuite.com For managing your content posts, you can use Hootsuite to post to multiple social media sites. The free version lets you post to 5 social sites and/or RSS feeds.

www.postling.com Similar to Hootsuite, but here is the core difference. The free version of PostLing only allows you to post to 1 social media site. The free version of Hootsuite lets your post to 5 sites. Could be Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.