Within our million dollar referral system, we have five marketing channels: our partner channel, our network channel, our social channel, our live and leverage channel, and our re-targeting channel.
Let’s consider the social channel. Whilst it’s absolutely valid to add value by generating and sharing high quality, meaningful content, and to take the position of a thought leader and subject matter expert, this is only half of it.
Unless the engagement and interest you’re cultivating can be translated into leads, and subsequent growth, what’s the point? Our social circle has to be about more than being an expert. The question is, how do we ensure our exposure generates more new clients?
The answer is to break down social activities into the following four categories:
Establishing an ‘expert’ position. This first step is about making daily posts that offer great insights and valuable, meaningful information. You need to make it very clear you can offer solutions to their challenges through your unique expertise and services.
Using Promotional Tools In Posts. These allow people an opportunity to access a free tool. Your tools are only interesting to people if you have successfully positioned yourself as an expert. So the first steps go hand in hand. Whether you’re offering a webinar, a training manual or a white paper, this generally needs to be available over the course of a week. Whilst expert posts are needed daily, a promotional posts is required twice a week. This helps fill our leads bucket and CRM.
Personal posts. These are important and speak to the fact people need to see that you’re real and that you’re relatable. These can be done on an ad-hoc basis when an appropriate opportunity arises.
The most common mistake is to focus on only one of the above 3 categories, which results in lots of ‘likes’ but no new business. Balance is key among expert, promotional and personal posts.
Remember at all times that the key within our social circle is filling your leads bucket with qualified people who are interested in the problems you solve.
The fourth element to our social circle is conversations. In very simple terms, if you’re not creating conversations within your networks, you’re not creating opportunities.
So have a look at your social right now. Do you have a clear plan? Are you taking people from social media into conversations or into your leads bucket? And if not, why? What can you do differently?
As with anything, your social media activity need a clear structure and process, balanced across all 3 categories and styles of posts. It also needs consistency. Without a clear plan and consistency it simply doesn’t work.
Have a quick look at your social. Are you on the right platforms? Do you have the right description? Do you have the right content plan, promotional plan, personal plan, and conversation plan?