5 Strategies for Building a Bigger Network on LinkedIn

When it comes to social media marketing, you have a lot of different options.

Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, LinkedIn…

And the list goes on.

Despite being not quite as big as Facebook, LinkedIn is often a better choice for businesses.

It provides you with an opportunity to connect with professionals and engage with them on a personal level.

Here’s something I bet you didn’t know:

Over 80% of B2B leads generated from social media come from LinkedIn.

That’s pretty incredible.

Although there may be less traffic on LinkedIn, its users are much more open to learning about products than Facebook users are, who just want to see pictures of cats.

In one particular set of results, LinkedIn produced more leads than even the company’s blog. 

No, that doesn’t definitively mean that marketing on LinkedIn is more effective than blogging, but it shows you the power it can have.

While LinkedIn is smaller than some other social networks, it’s still pretty huge. It has more than 300 million users and is still growing.

And more importantly, those users are buyers. Businesses are 50% more likely to buy a product if they’ve already engaged on LinkedIn.

In case you haven’t noticed yet, I’ve been referring to businesses as customers.

LinkedIn is mostly a platform for B2B (business to business) companies. In other words, it’s for companies that sell directly to other businesses.

It makes sense when you think about it. People go on LinkedIn for reasons related to their professions. They’re looking for ways to further their careers, not for products for their personal lives, like a new computer or toaster.

So, if you sell your products directly to consumers, LinkedIn probably isn’t right for you.

But if you sell products to businesses, LinkedIn provides a massive opportunity to generate more leads.

The basics of using LinkedIn for business: The goal with LinkedIn should almost always be to generate leads (and subsequently sales).

To do this, you start with your network on the site.

The larger your network, the more potential you have to engage with someone in your network, who might become your customer.

That’s why I’ve dedicated this post specifically to strategies that will help you build the most effective network possible, both in size and quality.

1. Determine with whom you should be trying to connect

If you do some reading about LinkedIn marketing on other sites, you’ll find that there are two general opinions.

First, you can reject anyone you don’t know or who doesn’t work in your industry in some form. The idea behind this is to keep your network as “high quality” as possible.

But unlike on other social networks, you don’t get penalized by having a large number of people in your network. So, even if you have a large network of “low quality” connections, it shouldn’t harm your results.

The second approach is to grow your network to include as many people as possible. This means that you accept invitations to connect from everyone and actively look to add more people to your network.

Here’s why I like the second—the bigger the better—approach:

1. Even if someone isn’t in your industry, that doesn’t mean they won’t be in the future.
2. Even if someone isn’t in your industry, that doesn’t mean that their connections aren’t. Being connected to that original person will make you show up higher in their connections’ searches and possibly in their “suggested connections” as well.
3. The more connections you make, the more likely you are to show up in “most viewed profiles,” which will lead to even more invitations to connect.

Other than simply being more open to connecting with people you don’t know well yet, you can implement this strategy with just a few simple steps.

Step #1- Learn to recognize spam profiles: Once you start to get a decent number of connections, you’ll begin to get a lot more invitations to connect.

Some of these will be from spammers.

They create accounts, try to connect with a few hundred people, and then start spamming with products or promote scams in various places on LinkedIn.

This is where having “low quality” people in your network can hurt you. You don’t want to be associated with spammers in any way.

If someone sees the spam and then sees that you’re connected with the spammer, you could lose your connections or even potential sales.

Sometimes, you might get fooled, but it’s pretty easy to spot 95% of fake profiles. Take a quick look at your new connection’s profile before you accept them.

In particular, fake profiles usually:

• don’t have profile pictures or use stock photos (usually of an attractive man or woman)
• have very limited or no information
• use a company name instead of a personal name (to market your business through LinkedIn, you need to make connections as a person)
• use a logo instead of a profile picture

Spammers typically create hundreds or thousands of these profiles at a time, so they all look very similar.

Now that you know what to look for, you’ll be able to spot a fake profile in just a few seconds.

Just report these invitations as spam and move on; there’s not much else you can do.

Step #2 – Start by connecting with everyone you know: When most people create a LinkedIn account, they begin by connecting with people they’ve worked with.

For some, this can be hundreds of people, which is great. But if you’ve mainly worked in small businesses or don’t have a ton of experience, this could be under 50 people.

If this is the case, you’re not “popular” on LinkedIn yet, which means that people won’t be as eager to connect with you.

In practical terms, it’s a lot easier to go from 300 to 350 connections than it is from 50 to 100. That’s why the more people you can start with, the better.

Beyond your work acquaintances, connect with:

• friends
• family
• peers (other students or people in your profession)

As long as they know who you are, don’t worry if you know each other very well.

The only thing you want to avoid is sending tons of invitations to people you don’t know at all because that’s how you get reported as a spammer.

Step #3 – Encourage people to connect in all possible places: Like I showed you earlier, LinkedIn is often one of the most effective, if not the most effective, lead generation channels.

It makes sense to focus on LinkedIn in your marketing strategy.

You can build your network both on and off LinkedIn.

First, add your LinkedIn profile to your email signature. If you send a lot of emails, you’ll get a regular stream of new connections just from this.

Next, make it clear in your LinkedIn profile summary that you’re happy to connect with just about everyone. If you check out my LinkedIn profile (go connect with me now!), you’ll see this in my summary:

Finally, add your LinkedIn profile to every page of your blog.

2. Sharing content does more than drive traffic

Building a bigger network should be one of your main goals, but there are a few others as well.

For one, you want to use LinkedIn to build relationships with your followers and turn them into leads/customers when the time is right.

One thing you need to be doing is sharing content on LinkedIn.

When you make a post on LinkedIn, it will be shown to anyone following you or connected with you.

Unlike other social networks that have way too much content as it is, LinkedIn will actually send notifications to your followers when you make a new post so that they don’t miss it.

What and when you should post: Don’t worry much about the specific time when you post. Although there is an optimal time, it doesn’t make as big of a difference as it does on other networks.

The most important thing in regards to when you should post is that you post consistently. I’ve adopted a once a week schedule, but you could try posting more if you have the time.

Another important question is: what to post?

While you can post personal status updates about your job, you want to post about things that your target audience is interested in. This is one aspect where LinkedIn marketing is the same as marketing on any other social network.

By doing this, you are right away positioning yourself as an expert in your niche/industry.

You can post content created by others, or you can post links to your own content—it doesn’t really matter when it comes to this specific function.

However, it does matter if you’re interested in all the benefits you can get from regular posting.

Benefit #1 – You stay at the front of their minds: We just talked about how posting content about your niche positions you as an expert.

When you consistently post content about your industry, your connections keep seeing it. Every post is a new reminder that you take your work seriously and pride yourself on being on the cutting edge of the industry.

Say you’re a nutritional consultant. And let’s say an HR manager (your connection) is looking to hire a nutritional consultant to help their business’ employees eat better.

Guess who they’ll immediately think of? That’s right, you.

You’ve been posting content about how good eating translates into better lives for workers and more productivity for a long time. In most cases, they won’t even look for an alternative.

Even if you are not connected to this HR manager, you might be connected to one of their coworkers or friends.

When the manager mentions the idea to your connection, they’ll light up and say, “I know the perfect person for you.”

Staying at the front of someone’s mind, once you’ve positioned yourself properly, is a long term strategy that pays off.

Benefit #2 – You drive traffic: When you post your own content, you immediately drive traffic to that content.

It’s not as good as email marketing in this regard, but it can still drive a few hundred to a few thousand visits, which isn’t too shabby.

Obviously, you don’t get this benefit if you post other people’s content.

Your first concern should be posting things that are genuinely useful to your connections who are interested in the topic.

Ideally, you’ll post your own content, but if you come across something great that your connections would appreciate, share it with them.

Traffic should be a side benefit of posting, not the only benefit.

Benefit #3 – You have the opportunity to engage: Remember that one of the main things you’re looking to do on LinkedIn is build relationships.

If you ever needed something that a close friend sells, wouldn’t you go to them first?

By building deep relationships (as deep as possible) with the right people, you can achieve an insane conversion rate, when your connections convert into customers.

And the right people present themselves to you when you post something.

They’re the ones who are most interested in your content and who ask questions or add stories in the comments.

Then, you can start a dialogue with them, which can lead to further conversations through private messages on LinkedIn or even email.

Direct communication is always how you build strong relationships, so look to not only respond to comments on your posts but take discussions further.

Benefit #4 – Some content will help you convert connections into customers: Yes, some connections will just wake up one day and say, “I need what you’re selling.”

This is awesome.

However, some leads won’t be sure if they really need what you’re selling, or they won’t know how it could help them.

This is where the content itself comes in.

The majority of content (from a marketing perspective) should be educational. It teaches the viewer many things, one of which might be how your product could fit into their lives.

Content such as webinars (see NeilPatel.com for an example) and case studies are both specific types of content that help convert people who are unsure into customers.

3. The one element of networking that LinkedIn users often forget…

It’s not fair to say that only LinkedIn users do this when it comes to networking.

In fact, it’s one of the most common mistakes people make in real life as well.

Have you ever gone to a networking event, handed out a ton of business cards (like everyone else), and then wondered why it never led to anything?

Don’t feel bad if you have; just about everyone has gone through it at one point or another.

It happens because people don’t truly understand what networking is all about.

They think that it consists of one step:

1. Meet new people in your industry

They don’t realize that networking actually has two steps:

1. Meet new people in your industry
2. Build relationships with those you meet

The people who find networking events useful aren’t the ones who pass out business cards and call it a day.

They’re the ones who go to dinners with their new acquaintances or give them a call/email after the conference is over.

They find ways to give value to these new people they’ve met to deepen the budding relationships, which paves the way for future favors and business.

That’s how you truly add someone to your network, and that person becomes someone you can call upon when needed.

How to do real networking on LinkedIn: A lot of attention is focused on getting more “connections” on LinkedIn.

That’s equivalent to the first step of networking.

But don’t stop there!

Now, you need to start developing relationships with as many of those new connections as possible.

Being able to show them your posts (content) is a big help. We already went over the benefits of doing that.

But if you only do that, you won’t engage a large part of your potential network.

Instead, a better approach is to do something for them first (also known as “adding value”).

Once you do, the reciprocity principle will kick in, and they’ll want to help you out as well. This can go back and forth as long as you’re willing to participate in this exchange. At the very minimum, you’ll develop a professional relationship with someone.

Here are some ways in which you can give value to someone you’ve connected with:

• leave thoughtful comments on posts they share
• share things they post
• send them direct messages asking them if there’s a way you can help them out

It’s hard to give specific advice here because everyone appreciates different things.

For example, some users will post questions on LinkedIn when they’re having problems with their work. If you know the answer, don’t just type a response, but create a short video tutorial for them.

Go the extra mile to help someone when it looks like they could use it because that’s what really gets attention.

If you have a large network on LinkedIn (over 500 connections), you could spend all day doing this.

I strongly recommend that you take a bit of time to go through my guide to being efficient on social media so that you are able to do all this without spending too much time.

4. An underused area of LinkedIn for growing your network

I touched on the concept of a high quality connection earlier.

It’s someone who is very likely to become a lead in the future.

While there’s nothing wrong with having other people in your network, ideally, you want as many of these high quality connections as possible.

If only there was a way to find these types of connections in one place!

You know I wouldn’t ask a question like that without giving you the answer. There is a part of LinkedIn that is amazing for finding high quality prospects:

Groups.

Users form groups around things they care about.

Marketers join marketing groups on LinkedIn; personal trainers join fitness, nutrition, and personal training groups; and so on…

They go to these groups specifically to learn about new developments, people, and even new products in their fields.

Groups are the fastest way to make hundreds of connections and then engage with them.

It was found that 86.3% of conversations that eventually led to a sale from LinkedIn came from a conversation in a group.

It is by far your most effective avenue to begin building real relationships if you follow everything else I’ve covered so far.

How to use groups to expand your network and generate leads: One option is to create a group from scratch. That automatically positions you as an expert to all the people in the group.

Also, just about all members will be happy to connect with you.

But that takes a lot of work and time to build up.

The better option for the majority of people is to simply join existing groups that have already done the hard work of building a large active group.

To find these groups, search for the topic you’re interested in at the top. You can either search only for groups by picking the group option from the drop down menu to the left of the search bar, or you can click the “Groups” filter on the results’ page.

You’ll find that most of the biggest groups are typically full of spam unless the creators moderate them strictly.

You’ll see several posts per day where members just share their own content, but no one engages with it in any way.

When there are tens of thousands of members in a group, but not a single person is engaging with any of the posts, you’re unlikely to have any meaningful conversations in the group.

Ideally, you’re looking for groups that have at least a comment or two on every other article. The more the better.

Again, you’ll notice that the biggest groups aren’t usually the best ones to join.

Instead, look for groups that are more specific.

This group, “content marketing for financial institutions” has a razor sharp focus. Even though it has fewer members than the general “content marketing” groups, it has more engagement.

Unfortunately, you’ll have to go through every group manually to see if it’s good or not.

The best groups usually require permission to join and browse. Click the button on the group to ask to join, and you’ll usually be approved within a day as long as your profile is filled out.

You can always leave a group later if it turns out to be a dud.

How to behave in groups to grow your network: Any fairly large group will have a large portion of inactive members.

Your goal should be to engage with and connect with the active portion.

The members who actively post content, share it, and comment on it are the highest quality leads you will ever find on the network.

Then, you can use all the other strategies we’ve covered to start building your relationship with them.

So, what’s the best way to do this?

When you first join a group, you don’t want to start posting content right away even if you think it would benefit the members. It’s easy to come off as a spammer if you do.

Instead, spend the first week or two commenting on the content other people post. You can also “like” and “share” it as a bonus, but that doesn’t do much on its own.

Don’t just write “nice post,” but actually put a bit of time into making a thoughtful comment. You want the poster to appreciate the comment and reply to it.

After you’ve had a short discussion through comments with someone in the group, try to connect with them.

From there, look for opportunities to add value by using methods we looked at before.

Once you’ve been in the group for a bit, you can start to post your own content occasionally. When people engage with it, ask them to connect.

Other than that, just keep spending a bit of time commenting like you did from the start.

Keep in mind that you can join multiple groups. Look for 5-10 that you can be active in on a daily basis. If you have more time and are having success, you can join even more.

5. Influencers can put you in touch with almost anyone

There are influencers on all social media sites who have tons of followers or connections.

Because they have so many connections and typically know a lot of people, they have an in-depth understanding of LinkedIn that no typical user can match.

There are two ways in which this can help you grow your network.

The first thing you should do is try to connect with them or, at the very least, start following them.

Find at least 10-20 influencers in your niche, and then connect or follow them.

That will add all their posts to your home feed.

Unlike what happens in some of those other groups we looked at, followers of these influencers do read what the influencers post.

Not only that, they engage with this content.

This gives you a great opportunity to get your name in front of a lot of users. When you comment on one of the influencers’ posts, a decent percentage of their followers (perhaps in the thousands) will also read the comments.

But again, don’t just say “nice post.” That doesn’t do anything for you.

Instead, leave a thoughtful comment, and try to find a way to mention that you’re trying to expand your network.

For that article pictured above, a good comment might look like this:

I completely agree with that list of traits, especially networking. I’ve been connecting with as many smart entrepreneurs as possible lately, and I’ve noticed that the more I grow my network, the more opportunities come my way.

People reading that comment will know that you’re open to connecting with them, and you can pick up a handful of new connections with every such comment.

Will an influencer help you out? The second strategy that revolves around influencers is a lot more difficult to use but can produce some great results.

The basic idea is to get the influencer to do you a favor and introduce you to a few people in your niche.

For example, if you told me you were interested in expanding your network of small business owners, I could easily give you a list of 10-20 that I’m already connected with.

You could then send them a message saying that I recommended you connect with them. You get the chance to not only grow a relationship with them but also impress them with getting a referral from an influencer.

The hard part, of course, is getting an influencer to do you a favor like that.

And I’ll be honest, it’s not easy, and you need to prepare for a lot of rejection.

You absolutely have to find a way to provide them with some sort of value beforehand, whether it’s based on something they’ve posted about on LinkedIn, on their website, or wherever.

This isn’t something that I can break down for you. You need to first investigate their business, find a problem, and go above and beyond to solve it.

This tactic isn’t necessary to succeed on LinkedIn; you’ll do just fine with all the other ones we’ve looked at. However, it is an option and can be a powerful way to grow your network with high quality contacts.

Conclusion

LinkedIn is probably the biggest social media opportunity for businesses.

It has a relatively huge user base, and users are focused on improving their professional lives. This makes LinkedIn a great platform for B2B sales.

I’ve given you five detailed strategies you can use to not only grow your network but also build relationships that will eventually lead to sales.

If you have any questions about these strategies or have an interesting story about LinkedIn you wouldn’t mind sharing, leave them in a comment below.

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13 Social Media Marketing Stats of 2015 To Help You Strategize In 2016

Looking at the surprising facts and figures that are revealed in this article, marketers will be looking forward to embracing social media marketing more intensely in their marketing mix. 2016 will take several leaps ahead as far as social marketing is concerned and marketers are sure to observe something that is beyond what they had ever imagined.

The following statistics prove that the only way that brands could engage with consumers is through mobile and digital social media communications. Customers want to build relationships with the brands and for this, they want to ensure that the brand is trustworthy. Thus, brands need to ensure that they present themselves as an authority and influence the decision making process of the customers.

We’ve gathered the most interesting facts that are very important from a marketers point of view and have broken them down so that they could be easily consumed by businesses and also by social media marketing service providers. This is not just some useful set of information, but the facts could help you in planning your future communication strategy on social media platforms.

• 54% of B2B marketers are generating leads from social media.
• LinkedIn is the only professional platform that is considered to be effective by a majority of B2B marketers.
• 60% of all the social media traffic on business websites comes from Facebook, Twitter, & LinkedIn.
• U.S. Based B2B marketers are predicted to spend more than $100 billion on social media advertising by 2017.
• 93% of the buying decisions of online shoppers is dependent on social media.
• The highest share of revenue generated by social media is contributed by Pinterest and Facebook.
• Customer service requests through “eService” channels, including web and chat are expected to grow to 53% in 2015.
• 90% of the enterprises say that they respond to customer’s service inquiries on social media.
• YouTube drives the most highly engaged website of all the social media websites.
• In the U.S., YouTube reaches more 18-24 aged adults than any other cable network.
• The number of brands having Instagram accounts has gone up by 71% in comparison to the last year. The percentage of brands is 86% in 2015.
• Tweets that have images, received more clicks and favorites and 150% more retweets.
• When a brand is followed on Twitter, 72% of the followers are likely to make a future purchase from that brand.

Social Media Marketing In 2016

As we are all set to enter 2016, marketers are starting to forecast what’s in store for them in the new year. Everything from the social media marketing strategy to the allocation of budget is being determined to ensure maximum benefits from one of the hottest online marketing property on the web. On studying the considerations of many brands’ social media strategy, we have compiled some of the best social media marketing practices to help you in 2016.

• Compare the benefits over spend: The first thing you should know is how important social media is going to be in the achievement of your goals and whether it is going to provide any value for the amount that you’ll be spending. While all the platforms and other components entailed with a social strategy might not provide the same benefits, it is a good practice to check out the options and their justification for the budget that is alloted to it.

• Think Beyond Facebook And Twitter: In previous years, most of the social media budget had been allotted to Facebook and Twitter. However, with the popularity achieved by other social networking platforms like Pinterest and Instagram, there are a whole lot of social media marketing opportunities for brands. It is important to think ahead and invest money on varied channels to know which one is effective.

• Invest In The Content That Is Sharable: Is your brand producing valuable content? If you are not getting the desired amount of engagement on social media, the odds are that you are not having a collection of great content on hand. The truth also lies in the fact that it is very hard to create content that people are looking to share naturally.

Conclusion :The lead generation power of social media is optimum. However, you need to ensure that you are engaging with the prospect with the right kind of content to get the best results from your social media marketing initiatives.

Author Bio: Daniel Clark is a blogger and works with Clickmatix, a social media marketing agency helping clients achieve their business goals through the help of the best social media marketing service provider.

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Does Twitter’s New Share Button Mean Less Sharing? The Data Suggests So: Here’s What You Can Do About It

Social networks are always making updates and tweaks to their platforms.

And in a recent update, Twitter removed share counts from their Tweet buttons, affecting many bloggers and publishers.

As some data has started to emerge on how the has change affected content sharing on Twitter, we wanted to dive below the surface of this update and see how this change could affect marketers.

Let’s get started.

Meet Twitter’s new share buttons

Like other recent Twitter changes, this one appears mostly cosmetic on the surface. Share buttons still function exactly the same. They just have a new lick of paint as you can see below:

The key difference is that share counts have been removed from the new buttons as Twitter announced in a blog post on October 6th, and from that date share counts started to disappear from the platform’s social sharing buttons.

Below you can see the updated share button on the Buffer blog:

At a first glance this may not sound like an earthshaking development. However, for many the share count data was a useful guide point on post performance and also a way to promote content with readers by showcasing its popularity.

Do share counts influence Twitter sharing activity?

We wanted to dive in and find out if removing the share count has had any effect on the number of people sharing to Twitter?

This is where the new update gets really interesting. Shareaholic pulled together and analyzed sharing activity data generated across the 300,000+sites that use their product.

Here are the results:

The data shows that sharing activity to Twitter has declined by 11.28% since November 20th.

The decline in sharing is in the ‘share of voice,’ the percentage of Twitter shares, relative to other sharing destinations available such as Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc.

Are people still posting to Twitter through Buffer?

After seeing this data we decided to hop into our own Buffer data and check the number of post being shared to Twitter through Buffer before and after November 20th and as you can see below, there’s been no significant change:

What does this mean for publishers and site owners?

Share buttons have been synonymous with blogs and websites since social media started to break into the mainstream, and since the beginning the share count has usually been at the core of each button (I remember when I first started blogging I’d often turn to the share count as my first validation of a post succeeding).

Out of everyone, the removal of share counts from Twitter’s social buttons will likely have the most effect on publishers and bloggers.

One of the big advantages to having the Twitter share count was the social validation that other people have also enjoyed and shared the post. This is something that Slate’s vice chairman Dan Check explains more on over at Digiday:

“It’s meaningful to us. Having share counts along comment counts is a strong way to underline that there’s a conversation around what we’re written. We want to signal to readers that that conversation is happening.”

How to show social validation without share counts

Studies show that we unconsciously look to others to guide us. When we can see a post has been shared hundreds or thousands of times before, this social validation makes us more likely to share.

And with these updated Twitter buttons, some of that social validation has gone missing.

Thankfully there are a few ways you can show social validation and conversation around a post without relying on share counts.

Embed a Tweet sharing your post

This is something we’ve done at Buffer before and I could see it becoming a more common tactic now that Twitter share counts have been removed. Here’s an example:

If you are looking for new places to learn about marketing, we offer you 43 picks! https://t.co/FpIop32FCf http://pic.twitter.com/GyeKxIRAtW

— Buffer (@buffer) January 3, 2016

The embedded Tweet will show readers the number of Retweets and Likes the Tweet has received and go some way to replacing the social validation lost with the updated buttons. 

Embed a search

If you head over to Twitter Search and run a quick search for the URL of your post, you’ll be able to collate all the Tweets where someone has shared your post.

To embed this search within your blog post, simply click ‘More Options’ from the results page and then select ‘Embed Search’ from the dropdown menu.

  You’ll then be taken to a page where you can configure and edit your search:

Once you’ve configured your search, click ‘Create widget’ and you’ll be given some code to copy and past into your blog post.

Here’s how an embedded search looks:

Tweets about http://ift.tt/1SrJt1p

Experiment with different buttons and locations

While Shareaholic data suggests that Twitter sharing numbers have dropped since the share counts have been removed, not everyone is finding that the case, as New York Magazine’s Digital GM, Michael Silberman, explains:

“We have some evidence that the premise — share counts encourage more sharing — isn’t even true. And of course on mobile, for our site and many others, you can’t even see the share counts unless you tap to share. (And most sharing is happening in the address bar on desktop or iOS share sheet anyway.)”

On their blog, Crew editor, Jory MacKay, shared some of their findings about share buttons after some experimentation.

Crew found that readers are more likely to share using the buttons at the bottom of a post, compared to the ones at the top. MacKay believes there are a couple of reasons for this trend:

• The share buttons are more obvious and recognizable at the bottom.
• People are more likely to share a post that they’ve read through.

In his post, MacKay also refers to the importance of prototypical elements:

In the most basic terms, this just means we like what we know. When we expect to see something on a website in a specific place with a specific style (like sharing buttons at the top or down the lefthand side of a post) we feel good when they’re there and disconnected and unsure when they aren’t.

These findings suggest that while share counts can be useful, you can also boost your sharing numbers by experimenting with different styles of buttons and layouts.

Over to you

The loss of share counts doesn’t feel like a cause to panic about the future on Twitter sharing for publishers.

Even with a potential drop in sharing, we may soon see things pan out and sharing return to normal levels. And with more reason to experiment with new layouts and ways to encourage sharing, it could even lead to new findings and increased sharing.

Have you noticed any difference in the amount of shares your posts have received since Twitter removed the share count? Have you tried any new ways to encourage sharing? Let us know in the comments.

The post Does Twitter’s New Share Button Mean Less Sharing? The Data Suggests So: Here’s What You Can Do About It appeared first on Social.

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10 Ways To Revamp Your Customer Service For Your SMB

If you run a small and medium-sized business, you’ve likely already crossed an important threshold: the point where you can no longer have personal relationships with each of your customers. With every growing business, there comes a time when you’ll have too many customers and too many employees to manage them all on an individual basis. Though your SMB is growing, it’s still small enough that every customer counts, and you don’t want to lose customers just because you haven’t scaled your customer service alongside your business.

If you can’t have personal relationships with your customers, you still want to make them feel comfortable with your business. In order to do that, you have to create an illusion of familiarity and recognition with them. The best way to make customers comfortable and satisfied is through a customer service that is accessible, friendly, and above all, helpful. If you’re looking to revamp your customer service for your SMB, here are ten ways to do it.

1. Create a uniform service across all channels.

As an SMB, you now communicate with customers via multiple channels, including phone, email, in person, and online content. Make sure that each of these channels uses a consistent tone and approach when addressing customers. Establish the core traits that you want your customers to experience, whether it’s warmth, humor, humility, or friendliness, to name a few, and stick to them. Users feel more comfortable when they know what to expect from an interaction.

2. Engage with customers on social media.

Social media has long been downplayed as a form of communication by most businesses. When’s the last time you saw a business’s Twitter account reply to a customer’s tweet? It happens, but it’s rare. And that is a missed opportunity. The average Facebook user in the US spends 40 minutes daily on the social platform. Why not try to reach your customers on the social media platforms they are so active on? Be active on social media with compliments, replies, news updates, or just fun videos. Remind users that you’re out there and keep them engaged with your business. This is an easy way to make your SMB seem more personable to customers. You’re not actively selling anything or helping customers use your business. You’re just keeping them updated with things both serious and casual, much as you would your customers when there were only a small handful of them.

3. Make your customer service visible and proactive.

You never want a customer to feel frustrated because they don’t know how to solve a problem. To that end, a link to your business’s contact information should be visible on every page of your website and in every email you send out. If they are having trouble, they should immediately know where they can turn for help. Not only should your customer service be visible to users, but be proactive when contacting them. If you are updating the service, adding a special deal, or trying anything new, let customers know, so they don’t find that out on their own. Your SMB’s customer base is now too large for you to know them all, but it’s still too small for the world to know about them. Help your customers as much as possible, and you’ll turn them into loyal evangelists who will tell their networks about your business and why they should be using it too.

4. Offer a live chat.

Not every SMB needs a live chat, but for certain businesses, a live chat can be a great tool to interact with customers on your website. Technically, this is more complicated, and you’ll likely need to hire a solid front-end developer in order to create a live chat. That being said, a live chat is a great way to talk to your customers in real time and make sure they have all the support they need. A live chat will also help customer service employees multi-task as engaging customers via a text chat is less demanding than speaking on the phone. If your SMB needs to keep the customer service team on the smaller side, a live chat is a great way to free up hours on the phone, allowing your employees to get more done in the same amount of time.

5. Understand what the consumer wants to accomplish.

Understanding your customer is the simplest way to provide the best service possible. This is where user research comes in. Research the market and what your customer wants to use your product for. Then conduct usability studies and find out where customers struggle to use your product or service. Once you understand what your customers want and where they have difficulty, you can better cater your customer service to assisting their needs.

6. Let the customer be in charge.

As an SMB, recognize that you won’t always be able to respond to customers immediately, and customers don’t expect you to. What they do expect is that you will provide them tools so that they can solve the easier problems on their own. An effective customer service provides self-help tools, such as a help desk, guides, and FAQ’s, to preemptively fix a customer’s problems. While this takes some effort up-front, in the long run, there are numerous long-term benefits to self-service support, including reduced workload for customer service employees and increased efficiency. Not only will your customers be happier with these tools, but your employees will be too.

7. Leave automation behind.

Automation may be cheaper, but it undermines what you are trying to accomplish through your customer service. People prefer a human touch, so give them one. Your SMB is now big enough to have a lot of specialized employees, so hire someone specifically to talk with customers on the phone. Can automated emails and phone calls still help your business? Sure, but not as much as when they are done by an employee. Hiring employees to handle these tasks is expensive, but it increases personalization within interactions. Ultimately, having your employees speak with customers will increase customer retention, and as a result, will increase your sales in the long run too.

8. Document all customer interactions.

Speaking of personalization, document customer interactions as much as possible. For one thing, it will allow you to quantify the success of specific interactions and identify the best ways to engage customers, which will ultimately improve your customer service. Documentation serves another purpose as well. It will allow you to personalize future interactions with those customers and provide a sense of continuity and a relationship between your business and them.

9. Train your employees in customer service.

An SMB has a significant number of customers, and that means your employees will be engaging with a lot of them on a regular basis. With so many interactions occurring between your employees and your customers, make sure your employees know how to communicate with customers. This means having people skills and being polite, but it goes deeper as well. As much as possible, you should train your employees to handle all of a customer’s questions. No one wants to hear “do you mind if I put you on hold while I ask my boss?” It’s better to avoid those scenarios as much as possible. Also do your best to make sure your employees are happy. People are happier when they are talking to a content person. Don’t just focus on making your customer happy; make sure your employees are happy too.

10. Pick your customers wisely.

Keep in mind that not all of your customers will be happy, nor can you make them so. Do your best to provide the best service or product you can to your customers, but if they aren’t satisfied with what your business provides, recognize that maybe they aren’t the customer for you. At some point, trying to accommodate a troublesome customer isn’t worth your time or resources. Yes, you don’t want to lose customers, but as an SMB, you can afford to lose a few customers along the way. Your customer base is now large enough that a few losses won’t harm your business that much. There’s a lot of potential customers out there, so don’t be afraid to focus in on the customer base you truly want to tap into.

Conclusion

A happy customer is one of the surest signs of success in a business. If you can please one customer, then all you have to do is figure out how to scale that experience. Start your SMB out on the right foot by creating a satisfied user base from day one, using these tips to help you do so.

from Darlene Milligan http://ift.tt/1OKu9t7 via transformational marketing
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What Is the Value of an SEO Audit?

You can find a mountain of information online about how to perform an SEO (search engine optimization) audit. An SEO audit can offer insight into your website’s SEO performance to help you identify strengths and opportunities. Conducting a thorough audit of your site and developing an SEO strategy based on audit results will keep you one step ahead of the competition. Following the basic fundamentals of SEO will ensure that Google’s algorithm changes don’t have apocalyptic consequences for your rankings.

Helping You Get Mobile-Ready

By now, you’ve probably heard that Google implemented a mobile-friendly algorithm update, Mobilegeddon, on April 21^st. Sites incompatible with mobile took major hits in search rankings as a result. A search engine optimization audit involves a comprehensive analysis of your site, and it works just as well for mobile as it does for desktop.

Generally, more than 50 percent of searches now happening on mobile devices, meaning a mobile-optimized site is a must. A mobile SEO audit will evaluate, measure and report on the variables that influence your mobile search rankings. An audit will reveal how much mobile traffic you get, what visitors see on different mobile devices and browsers, and where you fall in mobile search rankings, to name a few.

Spotting Link Assets and Liabilities

Search engines use the links on your site for several purposes. First, links tell search engines how pages relate to one another. Second, search engines rely on backlinks, or inbound links, to judge the relevance, authority, and popularity of your site.

During an SEO audit, you’ll perform a backlink analysis that will help you gauge the quality and quantity of inbound links to your site. You can then compare your backlink profile to that of your competitors. Additionally, you can do a toxic link analysis to see if your backlinks are coming from the web’s sketchy parts of town—the link farms, private blog networks, and spammy websites eschewed by search engine algorithms.

Calibrating Content for SEO

A lot of companies bounce from one vendor to the next without realizing that some were practicing black hat SEO, or shady SEO tactics that violate the rules of search engine algorithms. Such tactics can devastate your search rankings, but you’ll never know about them unless you do an SEO audit.

Similarly, an audit will identify opportunities in your site’s content for changes that can quickly boost your rankings. For instance, you will see how search engines interpret your website based on the current content, such as the keywords present. Even just a few minor changes can turn your site’s SEO performance around. Additionally, a content audit will help you determine the efficacy of your current meta descriptions, title tags, URLs, and other site characteristics. Again, just a few tweaks here and there can have an enormous impact on your rank.

Conducting an SEO audit is one of the single best things you can do for your search rankings. Becoming mobile-friendly, strengthening (and checking the toxicity of) your backlink profile, and optimizing content and keywords are just a few of the things an SEO audit can do for you.

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Generate Leads from LinkedIn Through 6 Simple Steps

Everywhere you look, you see articles about social media tactics you can use to get more traffic or leads for your business.

And while tactics can be useful, you need to combine them in a cohesive strategy if you want them to be effective.

Some marketers have no problem doing that.

They’ve already been able to figure out how to generate a constant stream of leads from sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

But that’s a very small minority of marketers.

If you haven’t had great success with social media, I urge you not to give up. You just need to keep learning and testing until you find the right tactics for the right situation. 

I’d like to give you a complete strategy filled with effective tactics that complement each other.

But to do that, I need to focus on one particular social network: LinkedIn.

I’m going to give you a strategy that you can use to produce as many B2B leads as you need (provided you have the manpower to put behind it).

Why LinkedIn? If you sell products to other businesses, LinkedIn is the social network you need to focus on.

That’s where people who are trying to further their careers and improve their job performance go.

With more than 400 million members worldwide, LinkedIn has a huge pool of potential leads in just about every single niche out there.

Additionally, case study after case study revealed that LinkedIn, on average, drives the most customers to B2B companies.

Yes, there are exceptions. But for the most part, LinkedIn is either the best or one of the best marketing channels a B2B business will find.

From that short introduction, you should know whether LinkedIn is a good option for your business.

And if it is, this step-by-step strategy will get you started from scratch. Even if you’ve never used LinkedIn seriously, it will still work.

Best of all, it’s simple. The main thing it requires is time and effort.

As long as you’re determined to succeed, it will work.

Ready? Let’s get started.

Step #1: Optimize your profile for connecting

Any LinkedIn strategy will involve growing your network on the site by “connecting” with other users.

You need to connect initially so that you can communicate with users in the future.

From there, you can apply whatever tactic you choose, and I’ll show you a few here.

For this strategy, you’ll mainly be connecting with people you don’t know. Because of this, you need to make sure your profile is optimized as much as possible, or else you could be marked as a spammer (on top of getting poor results).

What users see when you request to connect: To understand the most important parts of your profile, you need to look at what LinkedIn users see.

When you send an invitation to another user, they can view it in two ways.

In their notifications bar, they will see a mini preview with your name, title, and the start of any message you sent:

Since these people don’t know you, you won’t get many invitations accepted just from this.

In the best case scenario, they’ll want to learn more about you.

First, they’ll click on the invitation to see the full message you sent:

They can also view this directly if they use their LinkedIn inbox on a regular basis.

Take note of the elements in a full message:

1. Name and picture
2. Your tagline/title
3. Your message

You have 3 different ways to make your first impression.

In this section, we’ll deal with the first two—the ones that are part of your profile. I’ll go into how to craft an effective message later.

Element #1 – Your name and picture: I’m guessing you’re pretty stuck on your name, so I’ll let you keep it as it is.

Now, with the picture, you have a little bit of leeway.

Let me be clear upfront: you need a profile picture. No one will take you seriously without one.

Ideally, get a professional headshot done. See my LinkedIn profile (and go connect with me while you’re at it) for an example:

If you can’t do that, find a white wall somewhere, put on a professional outfit, and have someone take a picture with your smartphone. It won’t be the same quality as a professional picture, but it’ll be good enough—phone cameras are pretty good these days.

Element #2 – Your title: LinkedIn calls it your “professional headline.” When you’re logged in, you can click it and type in whatever you want to say:

Typically, you’ll want your job title(s) in here as well as any other impressive titles you hold.

Take a second, and think about the type of people you’ll be connecting with.

If you’re going after smaller companies, you’ll likely be targeting CEOs.

I’ll go into more detail on why later, but for now, know that you want to have a similar position in your professional headline.

So, if you were in fact targeting CEOs, you’d want something like:

CEO of (your business)

If that’s not true, try to find a term that’s on a similar level that describes what you do:

• CTO
• CMO
• Founder
• President

This is a good start, but we’ll improve upon it further in a bit. Save it, and set it aside for now.

Rounding out your profile: Assuming you nail those three aspects of your invitation, the person you invited will likely check out your full profile (not many will connect just based on the invitation).

The main thing they’re looking for is to ascertain whether or not you’re legitimate.

There’s nothing fancy you need to do here other than making sure your profile is completely filled out.

List all your past jobs and the things you accomplished at each of those jobs.

In addition, I recommend adding a line that shows you’re open to connecting with new people. You can even copy mine:

Once your profile looks complete, you can move on to the next step.

Step #2: Create your own group – there’s a huge reason why…

For this strategy to work, you’ll have to create a group.

Then, you’ll have to consistently add the right people to it (I’ll show you how in a bit) and manage it.

It’s a long-term commitment, but it only takes a few minutes a week after you get started.

Here’s what you need to know about the overall strategy at this point:

You’re going to invite potential leads to join the group you created. You’re going to leverage the group to get more connections and get more leads.

Your first step is creating the group, which is pretty simple, but I’ll still show you how to do it.

Before you do that, you need to decide what kind of group you should create. You want the group to benefit your potential customers.

So, if you sell products to marketers, create a group for marketers.

If you sell products to manufacturing companies, create a group for manufacturing leaders.

If you only sell to local businesses, it’s a good idea to add a location to the name of the group as well.

Here are a few sample titles for groups:

• Marketing Leaders of America
• Southeast Manufacturing Leaders
• Texas Financial Marketing Elites

Make it sound prestigious so that your potential customers would actually want to join.

How to create a group on LinkedIn: It only takes a few minutes to create a group from scratch.

Start by hovering over “interests” on your top menu, and then pick groups. Then, from the “my groups” button at the top, pick “create group” from the dropdown menu.

Alternatively, just use this link.

That will bring you to this form:

There are only about 10 fields, and most are self-explanatory.

The only crucial things are the group name (which we just went over) and the group logo.

I highly recommend at least getting a cheap logo for the group made on Fiverr. 

You can change this later though, so you can use a placeholder for now. You won’t be getting members for the group quite yet.

Seeding a group with content: Although you’re not really getting the group fully going yet, it’s not a bad idea to post a few pieces of content (3-5) just to make the group look a little more alive.

The fastest way to do this is to type in your niche into BuzzSumo.

This gives you a list of popular articles. You can make a post in the group for each of them (if they are relevant)—just write a quick intro to introduce each of the articles (e.g., “What do you think when you see manufacturing being relocated to cheaper countries?”).

Once you have your group fully functional, move on to the next step.

Step #3: Create your hit list of potential customers

Now we’re getting to the fun stuff, where you’ll actually start finding the people who will eventually become leads.

The goal here is to compile a list of 500-1,000 potential leads. It sounds like a lot, but remember, LinkedIn has over 400 million users.

In most situations, you’ll be able to find tens of thousands of users who match your buyer’s profile.

To find them, you’ll use LinkedIn’s built-in search function.

Click the “advanced” link to the side of the search bar at the top.

This allows you to get a lot more specific with your searching.

You’re welcome to narrow down the results however you like, but I’d recommend starting with:

• Title
• Location
• Industry

In B2B sales, you’re typically targeting the same level of employee/employer in each company, which is why you add a title filter (e.g., CEO, Founder, Marketing Manager).

The industry filter will make sure that the results are in the industry you sell to, and the location filter will make sure that these contacts can actually become your customers eventually.

Below are the results for an advanced search I did for CEOs in the health, wellness, and fitness industry:

As you can see, the results might not be perfect, but they’re pretty much what I’d be looking for with that search.

From here, you can start a list in a spreadsheet. Just copy their full information or even the URL of their profiles.

Once you’ve done that, you can move on to Step #4 to start connecting with them.

Step #4: Make initial contact with each member

You’ve done all the groundwork so that you can finally start taking action now.

The first three steps shouldn’t take more than 4-5 hours to complete in most cases.

This step, however, will likely take longer.

The goal here is to connect with every person on your “hit list.”

Perfecting your first impression: Remember what the basic connection invitation looks like? If not, here it is again:

I couldn’t show you how to create a completely optimized invitation before because there was still more groundwork to cover.

But now, you’re ready.

You have the picture already at this point, but you might be able to improve your professional headline.

Let’s say you sell marketing consulting to manufacturing companies.

Right now, your headline looks something like this:

Neil Patel

President, CEO of Quick Sprout.

That’s good, but think about it from the point of view of the people you’re trying to connect with (CEOs in manufacturing companies).

They see another CEO wanting to connect with them. That’s a plus. They will think of you as a peer, not someone who wants a job from them.

But with that headline, they know you’re the CEO of a marketing company. What does that have to do with manufacturing?

That tells the user that you might just be trying to get something from them, and you don’t want them to have that impression.

So, how else can you show some credibility in their industry?

Remember that group you created? That’s how you establish your credibility.

Now, my theoretical professional headline becomes:

Neil Patel

President, CEO of Quick Sprout. Founder of Southeast Manufacturing Leaders.

Do you see how that makes a big difference to the manufacturing CEOs I would be connecting with?

All of a sudden, it looks like I’m more than just a marketer. I have a professional interest in manufacturing as well, and I’m active in the community. It’s a great first impression to make.

Crafting a convincing opening message: The final part of that initial impression is your opening message.

You basically have two sentences or so to come across as a professional and explain why you want to connect with someone.

Here’s what a good basic template looks like:

Hi (name), I came across your profile on LinkedIn and thought we might both benefit from connecting with each other. If you’re open to it, I’d love to connect. Thanks, (your name).

When you combine that with the other two factors, you’ll get an acceptance rate between 40-60% (in most cases).

If you want to make it even better, look at their profile first, find something interesting that you can relate to, and mention that in your invitation.

Maybe you’ll see that they are located in a nearby city, so you could change your invite to something like this:

Hi (name), I came across your profile on LinkedIn and thought we might both benefit from connecting with each other. I see that you work in Austin, and I’m actually just down the road in Georgetown. If you’re open to it, I’d love to connect. Thanks, (your name).

That message is 258 characters long (maybe a bit longer or shorter, depending on names). The limit for a connection request is 300 characters, so you don’t want to write anything much longer than that.

Sending the invite (incredibly effective tip in here): Honestly, this is the easiest part, but it’s where a lot of people get stuck.

When you request to connect with someone, LinkedIn will show you a form that asks you how you know them:

If you pick most of these options, LinkedIn will ask you for the user’s email address in order to let you send the request. You probably don’t know it, and even if you could find it, it’s a waste of your time.

Instead, pick the “friend” option. Then, you don’t need to enter their email address. You can add your message in the textbox and submit your connection request.

Don’t worry about looking weird to users because you picked the friend option—they will never see it. That information seems to be for LinkedIn only. Your recipient will only see the parts of the invite we’ve looked at so far.

I recommend sending out invites slowly at first until you know how people are reacting to them.

If your messages are a bit “off,” they might get reported as spam (although unlikely if you’ve done everything I’ve shown you). If too many spam reports are filed against your account in a short time period, it could be limited or suspended.

Instead, do it slowly at first, and see if you’re getting an approval rate of at least 40% (aim for higher). Keep tweaking your message, profile, and lead targeting until you start getting above 50% acceptance rate.

Step #5: Continue to engage with each member over the next several weeks

Let’s quickly recap.

At this point, you have an optimized profile and a list of potential leads, and you’ve started connecting with those leads.

Now is the time for some grinding work. It doesn’t take too much skill or knowledge, but it needs to be done.

There are two parts to this step.

Part #1 – Getting your group up and running: Remember that empty group you created? We’re finally going to give it a push and get it full of useful activity.

The main strategy here is to simply invite your new connections.

When you make a new connection, just send them a message like this:

Hi (name), I’m glad we could connect!

I just wanted to give you a quick heads-up about a LinkedIn group I’ve created and am trying to grow. It’s called (group name).

It’s a place where all the members can discuss anything related to (industry of leads). I hope you’ll join if you get a chance.

Cheers,

(Your name)

You won’t get a 100% join rate, especially at the start when there’s not much activity.

But…if you personally invite 100 targeted users, you will have a small, core member group that will be enough to get started.

You’ll have to be active in the group at first, or else no one else will start discussions.

Post content from tools such as BuzzSumo on a regular basis, and monitor the news for any big industry announcements. Just search for your industry in Google News once a day to see if there’s anything interesting going on.

Once you start getting other people posting comments and participating in discussions, don’t stop!

Keep going until you have at least 5-10 regular members who post new content without any prompting on your part.

And while they do that, try to comment on, like, and share everything they post to encourage them to post more.

The more active your group is, the easier it’ll be to attract new members.

At some point, you’ll start getting members you didn’t invite, who will then want to connect with you. Lewis Howes says he gets 15-20 new invites every day from members of his group.

Not all of those will turn out to be leads, but it still helps you keep your group active and expand your personal network.

Tip: Keep track of who does and doesn’t join your group after you ask them to. They may not be interested at first because there’s not a lot of activity.

Invite them again a few months later when you have a good amount of discussion going on. You’ll get a much more favorable response this time around.

Other options to grow your group: If all that sounds good to you, you’re set. That tactic, by itself, will effectively grow any LinkedIn group.

However, there are a few options to accelerate your group’s growth if you’d really like to:

1. Advertising - You can use LinkedIn Ads to promote your group. You can target similar to your hit list people to bring in new members who may end up being leads as well.
2. Group partnerships - I’ve talked about using this tactic on Facebook, but it works on LinkedIn too. Find similar groups in your industry, and offer to do a cross-promotion. You’ll tell your members about their group, and they’ll do the same for you.
3. Posting statuses - When you post a status on your LinkedIn account, it will be shown to people you’re connected with. It gives your new connections (from your hit list) another opportunity to join the group.

Again, none of these are required to grow your group, but it can make it grow faster if needed.

Part #2 – Making personal connections: At this point, I’ve shown you just about all of the overall strategy we’ll be using.

The main purpose of the group is to make connecting with potential leads easier and to establish yourself as an authority in their industry. It may also bring you some leads in the future, but that’s more of an additional bonus.

The main goal now is to turn all those new connections from your hit list into leads.

And by “leads,” I mean people who are willing to do a sales call, attend a webinar, or participate in some other event that could lead to a sale.

The first thing you need to do is forget about turning them into leads. If that’s all you focus on, you’ll never get much success.

Instead, take a long-term approach of building a relationship with each and every one of them.

How do you do this?

The best way by far is to send messages through LinkedIn. Now that you’re connected with these potential leads, you can send messages to them without many restrictions.

Let’s get more specific with this tactic:

You should send at least 5 or 6 messages to a connection before asking for a phone call or anything that could lead to a sale. These messages should be solely focused on showing your new prospects something interesting or adding value to their lives.

How often should you send these messages? That’s up to you. I’d suggest only sending them 2-3 times a month. You don’t want to come on too strong when you just met someone.

There are three types of messages you can send:

1. The follow-up – Good to send right after you connect. Thank them for connecting, and invite them to join your group (or do this in a message later on).
2. The resource suggestion - Send them an article or resource that would be useful for them in their professional life (job).
3. The discussion suggestion - Let them know about a particularly interesting discussion in your group, and invite them to jump in.

Out of those 5-6 messages, 4-5 will be a combination of the second and third types of messages.

Your success will depend on how useful those suggestions are. If you send them a case study where they actually take action based on the results, it will solidify your relationship in a big way.

Step #6: Get off LinkedIn!

LinkedIn is an amazing site to make new connections and build relationships, but it has its limits.

You can’t effectively sell products or services on LinkedIn—it’s just not the right environment.

Instead, you need to schedule a call or invite your leads to a webinar. Once you do, you will get an incredible conversion rate (likely over 20% if you have a solid sales funnel).

So, how do you do it?

Well, it’s going to take you 1-3 months to send those initial 5-6 messages.

I did warn you that this is a long-term investment, but it will pay off. Plus, you’ll have many potential leads to whom you’ll be sending several messages a day, so it’s not like you’ll be just sitting around waiting.

After you’ve sent those messages and established a relationship, send them another short message like this:

Hi (name), I’m glad we connected a few months ago. It’s been great getting to know you a little better. I’d love to jump on a quick call sometime soon to see what you’re up to. Does next (day) work for you?

It’s not a pushy sales request, and it reminds them that you didn’t just connect so that you could pitch them a product right away.

What to do when it fails: It’s going to happen. Not every single prospect will agree to a sales call (even though many will).

You could just stop focusing on them altogether, but I have a better solution.

Instead, just put them in a different category of connections. They may still become a lead some day, but it’s clear that they won’t at this very moment.

You should make a list of all these users and keep in touch with them. Send them monthly messages highlighting the best discussions in your group or the best resources you’ve come across.

Don’t put in as much effort as you do with your other prospects, but don’t give up either. There are still some very high quality leads in this group, so continue to nurture them.

Conclusion

LinkedIn is the best social media site for B2B sales.

I’ve just shown you a relatively simple 6-step strategy that you can use to get leads. When you’re done with your initial hit list, create a new one. Keep repeating it so that you have a consistent source of high quality leads.

There was nothing too complicated in the strategy, but it takes a lot of work and time.

Know this, plan for it, and execute the strategy. It will make a huge difference in the growth of your business.

If you have any questions about any of the steps in this strategy, let me know! Leave me a comment below, and I’ll try to clear things up.

from Darlene Milligan http://ift.tt/1JT8yNY via transformational marketing
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Unlocking Your Social Media Potential with Automated Instagram Likes

Unlocking Your Social Media Potential with Automated Instagram Likes  

It is the most talked about social media platform. Every celebrity has some sort of presence and big brands are now falling over themselves to get noticed. Yes, this is how fast Instagram has evolved. Since Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger launched the social networking site in 2010, so much has happened within the five years and analysts reckon it will take a major revolution to take Instagram off its perch.

Rich Customer Potential

For starters the networking site gained 1 million users by December 2010, the same year it was launched and from that moment, it was all systems go. By the time Facebook was buying the platform in 2012, it had already clocked 80 million users. In fact, in 2013, Instagram grew by 23% while Facebook only expanded its user base by 3%.

As of 2015, Forrester Research reports that over 300 million users are using the social networking platform which, as a marketer, should jolt you into action. With 20% of internet users already on Instagram, the potential here is just unlimited. According to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), there are about 3.92 billion internet users giving a clearer picture of the rich customer potential on this platform.

The innovative mobile social platform has also been refined over time with additional features including the Willow filter launched with the v3.2 update. Other updates including v3.4.1 in 25 languages, tagging capability in 2013, updates on Ios7 and Instagram Direct among others have all made the experience even more stimulating. In essence, you are more likely to find your target customers on Instagram as opposed to other social media platforms.

Instagram Social Media Value

A report on Business Insider based on a Nielsen Study shows that over 70% of online shoppers follow their favorite brands on Instagram. In essence, this platform offers more than photo sharing experiences. Marketers are now posting photos of their companies and products to invite relevant comments. It is an ideal way to move away from the bland Facebook comments and instead engage better using photos and short postings.

It also offers you a chance to stimulate your other social media users into engagement by linking your Instagram postings with these networks. The effect is that more people get to see what you are sharing and ultimately, word starts doing rounds. This visibility and online presence is crucial in any online marketing campaign.

Your potential to connect is increased tremendously when you post eye-catching photos and share them on this platform. Instagram can thus form the crux of your social media campaigns. One thing you can be sure of is that internet users love videos and photos especially those with a human element. You need to leverage the wide reach offered by this tool to make a mark in your niche.

In summary your Instagram offers you:

• Greater online reach
• Better engagement with brand followers.
• Easily sharable content
• Flexible exposure for every type of activity, brand or service you have in mind.
• Creative marketing using videos and graphic
• Targeted marketing by using popular niche hashtags
• A learning curve where you understand what excites users on Instagram

By adding your location, you even invite more relevant engagement. eMarketer says there is 79% more engagement on postings tagged with a location.

Getting Your Instagram Likes Hassle Free

It is without doubt a unique and defective way to make your brand visible online but no one should deceive you that opening an Instagram account is enough. In fact, this is where the hard work starts because you must get many likes and follows which later convert into sales.

The best way to get Instagram likes is by automating the process. With an autobot such as Instamacro, you just need to open your account and the software will do the rest for you. The idea here is simple; reduce the time it would take to get many likes by making sure you get such likes from relevant people.

This an ingenious way of getting invaluable likes on autopilot. Once your Instagram account is up and running, you just need to use the automation service which will in turn help you to do everything from liking other photos, following relevant users. You can set your target or even the number of days you want the campaign to run to ensure it doesn’t appear automated.

One thing you need to understand about the other bots in the industry is the fact that some will forge followers and likes and this can eventually lead to loss of your account. To avoid such an eventuality you need to use a service that only gets you the right kind of followers.

from Darlene Milligan http://ift.tt/1PFPZ4i via transformational marketing
from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1OH5agr