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ОглавлениеChapter 2 – Your Online Presence
When you reach out to people online who don’t know you, what do you think happens? Depending on the quality of your messages, they may simply delete them and never reply. Depending on the recipient, you might receive a general, “thanks but I’m not interested” brush off. Some might look at your online presence to help them decide if you’re credible, but remember that “cold calling” often returns a “cold shoulder.” That’s why we recommend that you warm things up through your online presence first.
We all like to think that our wonderful messages about our great products are read by everyone we contact—even though we know we don’t read all the same type of messages we receive. A 2016 study revealed that an average email open rate in North America is only 30%. This includes messages from people who are known and trusted, newsletters subscribed to, and so on. So, let’s start by understanding that your messages have a 70% chance of never being read. That’s why it’s so important to do your research about potential buyers and to craft compelling messages that are specific to them. Even more important than the content of your messages, though, are the subject lines you use. We’ll talk more about email subject lines chapter five.
With a well-crafted, curiosity-building message, you may pique the buyers’ interest enough not to delete your message, but in the world of scammers, phishers, and fake profiles, it’s likely they’ll do some research to see if you’re “for real,” before taking any action. For that reason, it’s important to build an online presence that matches your desired image before you start soliciting business.
You may offer the best product and service in your industry. You may represent the best brand in the world, but who are you online? You see, people buy you first. They have to be interested in, like, and trust you before they’ll open their minds to the benefits of your products. Do your profiles show you as being a credible expert in your field—someone your contacts should listen to? Or not?
The internet is a virtual open book where anyone can view your public, and sometimes your private, information any time they choose to look for it. In other words, you are transparent online whether you like it or not. So, give this some thought: What do people see when they look at your profiles? Do they see a professional? An expert? An industry leader? Or something else?
As of 2016, over 60% of all employers check social media before hiring a candidate. That’s an important point to note. Also, when you’re selling products or services through online platforms, you are literally being considered for hire by every new potential client who also might look you up online. That makes sense, doesn’t it? So, the question remains: Are you effectively selling yourself on each of your social media platforms?
Ask yourself, “What are people seeing about me online? Am I being perceived as a professional or is there something that is being seen that might negatively impact someone’s desire to work with me?” Answer those questions and if you don’t like the answers, it’s time to fix your social profiles.
Here is a perfect example. A young lady was interviewing for an administrative assistant position. She had been out of college for about two years and had decent qualifications for the position.
After reviewing her application, and before the interview was to take place, the potential employer looked for her on Facebook. Well, somewhere around the fourth photo, there she was with a bunch of her friends. They were in a smoke-filled room passing a very large pipe of some sort. Now, we’re taught not to prejudge people, and it was, hopefully, a legal substance, but now red flags had been raised. Employers need to know what they’re getting into with new hires. After all, the actions of employees become a reflection on the business—like it or not. (Doubt it? Refer once again to the 2017 United Airlines incident.)
Is this message starting to hit home?
Before you even begin to think about reaching out to your online audience or connections, take a long hard look at every public and social footprint you have out there from their perspectives. You may be greatly surprised at what you find when you look at yourself through a potential client’s eyes.
If you’re not certain you can handle this task objectively, ask some trusted friends or associates to search your profiles for anything that might be misconstrued by someone who doesn’t already know what a fine individual you are. Ask for honest impressions and guard yourself against being offended by anything they say. The goal is to have your online reputation be one of professionalism, integrity, and expertise. Offer to do the same for those who invest their time in helping you.
The Most Searched Social Media Platforms
With over 20 popular social media platforms available worldwide, it’s important for you to know three things.
1. Which platforms your ideal candidates for business use
2. Which platform employers and potential clients use to search for information on your credibility and expertise
3. How to properly and effectively use the platforms your clients use
You may be a big fan of Instagram and be very comfortable using it to communicate with others. However, depending upon the type of business you represent, your best clients might be found on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, or another platform. Not having a presence on those other platforms could hurt your chances of doing business with great clients. You simply won’t be found. And, by not having an account with those platforms, you won’t be able to reach out to your client demographic on it.
When you think about finding leads for business on social media, it’s just like fishing. You must fish where the fish hang out. Take a look at the demographic of those using each platform before choosing where you create your presence.
As of the writing of this book, Facebook is the leader in popularity when it comes to social media platforms. Other social networks worldwide ranked in the order of number of active users are:
QZone
Tumblr
Baidu Tieba
Skype
Viber
Sina Weibo
LINE
Snapchat
yy
VKontakte
BBM
Telegram
We confess to not having knowledge of all of these platforms. Some we’d never heard of until doing research for this chapter. This reminds us of how important it is to keep abreast of changes in the social platform arena. Heaven knows that were we to discover that many of our potential clients are using a platform we’re not familiar with, we’d make a quick study of it and establish our expert presence there. Or, hire someone who does have knowledge of its workings to set us up properly. It’s wise for you to consider that same practice.
With so many platforms available, it’s important to analyze the top three or four where your clients are most likely to be found. Managing a presence on all those listed here would require a team of social media managers. Our personal experience has been with a select few of the platforms and we’ll be using those for our examples. Most of the strategies we’ll be covering should translate to other platforms as well.
1. Facebook
According to WhatIs.com, Facebook is a free social networking website that allows registered users to create profiles, upload photos and videos, send messages and keep in touch with friends, family, and colleagues.
The site, which is available in 101 languages at this writing, includes public features such as:
Marketplace - allows members to post, read and respond to classified ads.
Groups - allows members who have common interests to find each other and interact.
Events- allows members to publicize an event, invite guests and track who plans to attend.
Pages - allows members to create and promote a public page built around a specific topic.
Presence technology - allows members to see which contacts are online and to chat.
Within each member's personal profile, there are several key networking components. The most popular is arguably the Wall, which is essentially a virtual bulletin board. Messages left on a member's Wall can be text, video or photos. Another popular component is the virtual Photo Album. Photos can be uploaded from the desktop or directly from a smartphone camera. There is no limitation on quantity, but Facebook staff will remove inappropriate or copyrighted images. An interactive album feature allows the member's contacts (who are generically called "friends") to comment on each other's photos and identify (tag) people in the photos. Another popular profile component is status updates, a microblogging feature that allows members to broadcast short Twitter-like announcements to their friends. All interactions are published in a news feed, which is distributed in real-time to the member's friends.
Do you have a Facebook profile? Do you use it strictly for personal communications? Facebook personal pages are usually used that way, personally. If that’s the case with you, it’s wise to limit who can see that profile to your close friends and family. Be cautious about who you include in your list of accepted friends. Take advantage of Facebook’s Privacy Settings and consider the setting where only the friends you have accepted can see your posts. Or, create separate lists of your contacts and use Facebook’s list feature to determine who sees which postings.
If you are in a type of business where you do business with friends or the typical demographic of people on Facebook, this may not be an issue for you. If it is, but you do want to communicate with potential and existing clients via Facebook, consider setting up a Fan Page separate from your personal page. Fan pages can be a better option for businesses, brands, and organizations. It’s not a bad idea to keep your personal posts personal but keep a separate presence on Facebook for business purposes. After all, when you have a powerful, positive presence online you do want to be found. If your company already has a Facebook Fan Page, learn the company’s policy on who can post and what can be posted there, and watch what’s posted there. There’s little worse than having a potential client ask you about a recent social media post and you not knowing what they’re talking about.
What would you post on your own Facebook Fan page?
Your company logo (if the company you work with is ok with that)
How to contact you directly and the hours you’re available
Pictures of your products
Photos of yourself in business settings
Interesting information about your industry
Fun facts about the benefits of your product
Testimonials from satisfied clients
New product information
Videos relating to your business or services
Special offers your business is running. Coupons, discounts, and so on.
Awards you or your products win
Personal accomplishments that apply such as if you represent health products and have achieved a personal health goal using them
Questions you would pose to existing clients to get and keep them talking positively about your company or products
Facebook allows room on a fan page for what they call a “cover photo.” This is where you’d want to show yourself or your product in action, or perhaps provide a great testimonial from a happy client over a professional photo. Creating something like this takes a bit of graphic design experience, and possibly the use of some graphic design or photo software. If you’re not confident in your skills, ask around. There are bound to be some people in your sphere of influence who can direct you or maybe even do it for you. There are online services such as Fiverr where designers offer services very economically and can complete projects quickly.
You would build your fan base through promotions and by invitation. Inviting existing clients to “Like” and “Follow” your fan page allows them to see the information you post in their home feeds. You might also create some promotions to capture the interest of potential clients and get them following your fan page as well. Look to the examples of big corporations in or related to your industry for other ideas of how to grow your fan base.
Who’s on Facebook?
According to Statista, as of January 2017, the distribution of Facebook users in the United States was as follows:
| Ages | Percent of Facebook Users in this Age Group |
| 13-17 | 1% - 2% |
| 18 – 24 | 9% |
| 25 – 34 | 13% |
| 35-44 | 9% - 10% |
| 45 – 54 | 7% - 9% |
| 55 – 64 | 2% - 5% |
| 65+ | 4% - 6% |
If your ideal client is in that 25 – 34 age range, you may find them, or get their attention there.
One of the great features of Facebook advertising is the ability to define your demographic. In Tom’s case, an example of that might be 25-to-34-year-old Entrepreneurial men a specific geographical area where he holds training, whose primary language is English, and who have an interest in Sales. The result using the city of Phoenix, Arizona as an example is approximately 45,000. Depending on who you are and how large your business is, that might seem to be an extremely large number. However, the quick search we did narrowed Facebook’s approximate 1.73 billion users down quite a bit, didn’t it?
2. Twitter
Again, referring to WhatIs.com: Twitter is a free social networking microblogging service that allows registered members to broadcast short posts called tweets. Twitter members can broadcast tweets and follow other users' tweets by using multiple platforms and devices.
When you set up a Twitter account, you give yourself a name which is called a “handle.” In the cases of your authors they are: @TomHopkinsSales and @DanPortik. If your name is common, it may already be taken as a Twitter handle by someone else. You may have to add a number or identifier, as Tom did, in order to establish your place in the world of Twitter.
Millions of people rely on the instantaneous nature of Twitter for news and updates on people and causes they care about. If, among your group of friends on Twitter, you enjoy sharing commentaries, be aware that the default settings for Twitter are public. Your comments about religion, politics, and sometimes sports could be viewed negatively by clients. Granted, you’re entitled to your opinion and to express it. Just decide whether you’d speak what you tweet if you were in a room with your ideal clients. If you have strong feelings that might alienate potential clients, consider having a separate Twitter account where only your close friends who share the same feelings know and use that Twitter handle when they reference you.
Regarding photos, Twitter offers space for both a profile photo and what they call a “header photo.” The “header” is like Facebook’s “cover photo” mentioned above. However, they require high resolution images in specific dimensions. You’ll need to comply with their specifications or your photos won’t upload.
Twitter also has options for reaching your audience demographic. Once you establish a pattern of following certain people, such as public figures in the sales training or marketing industry like us, Twitter will start making recommendations of similar profiles for you to consider following. On Twitter, you can search people out by hashtags as well. A hashtag is a word or phrase, preceded by a hash or pound sign (#), that is used to identify messages on a specific topic. If your ideal clients are all neurosurgeons, you might do a hashtag search of #Neurosurgery to find people tweeting about that subject. Or, if you’re posting great tidbits of information about your product that neurosurgeons need to know about, you would include that hashtag in your tweets so they’ll be likely to see them.
Since the number of characters in tweets is limited, you will want to include links to other places online where people can go for further information. Below are a few examples from our actual tweets:
An activity plan defines activities & tasks you must complete to achieve your outcome goals. #successhttp://ow.ly/B1Dm30ccjNH
Sharpen your sales skills here: http://ow.ly/zVeO30bmSy4 No charge!
$699 Summer Video Special! https://youtu.be/bka_NQZ7zM4 via @YouTube
Fun project with music legend last night. https://t.co/wcfZHtagnA
3. LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a networking site designed specifically for the business community. The goal of the site is to allow registered members to establish and document networks of people they know and trust professionally.
A LinkedIn member’s profile page, which emphasizes skills, employment history and education, has professional network news feeds and a limited number of customizable modules. Basic membership for LinkedIn is free. Network members are called “connections.” Whatis.com
THIS is where you’ll make money with business-to-business sales—when you “do” LinkedIn well. While LinkedIn is an incredibly helpful tool for sales and business professionals, few use it well. Our experiences on LinkedIn were a big part of the initial conversation when we decided to write this book. We’ve both generated a lot of business through LinkedIn connections.
