Free Lead Generation Series - Social Media Marketing
Posted by Reyn | February 21, 2009
This is the second part of the article series on free lead generation.
Social media is a real gold mine in this web 2.0 era.
Sites like Twitter, Facebook and Myspace are gathering millions of people everyday who are actively interacting with each other. And among them…tons of potential leads for your business.
First thing first, if you want to market your business through social media, make sure you understand that it’s called social networking, NOT social spamming.
Think social media as gathering or party. There are huge amount of people from all walks of life coming together in one huge ballroom and they’re all wanting to extend their network of friends.
Networking like real people is what you should do. Don’t bother with advertising upfront, it will just kill your business in no time. Never think that your offer is so compelling that everyone will be thanking you for telling them. It just won’t happen. On the contrary, they will get seriously pissed off.
Imagine coming to a birthday party and you suddenly being approached by an insurance agent offering his latest life insurance policy. Well, that’s the same annoying act if you try to message your facebook friends saying: “Hey, I’ve just found the latest amazing opportunity to make money online. Check out here…”
To effectively harness the power of social media to build your business, here’s the action steps you need to take:
- Have fun!
Nothing more intimidating than being near a geeky businessman who only talks about business, business and more business. Go wild, tell jokes and rock the house! Even if you can run a successful business, no one will stay around you for long if you’re labeled as ‘not fun to hang out with’.
- Be yourself
First of all, always use your real name and pictures. You’re here as a real person, not as a business opportunity. Let your personality shines and attract like-minded people. People are not drawn by the attractiveness of the opportunity, but by the people they’ll be working with.
- Make friends
Be proactive and add many friends. Automate your friend building with a software is OK. What you do after you’ve added them is what matter. Friendship over the net works the same way as in the real world. You need to first introduce yourself properly and build relationship over time.
Wait…I don’t see any part talking about marketing here…
Not yet, because with social media marketing, you only market your business at the back-end… after you’ve done the first three above - building relationship. After you’ve build a solid presence among your friends, it’s time to market your business to your social media friends very subtly.
First, you need a separate website where you can direct your friends to know more about you and your business. And you have to make sure that the website is NOT a sales letter…unless your friends specifically ask you to join right away. A blog would be the perfect one as it’s highly informative and not ‘pitchy’. The information on that blog is what will make your friends go to your lead capture page and become prospects on their own.
Marketing this way is a bit longer, but you usually get highly qualified prospects. Moreover, as they act upon themselves without you specifically order them to do it, it will put you as the position of an expert. They’re drawn to you because of your knowledge and expertise which will make them very likely to listen to what you have to offer.
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Posted in Internet Network Marketing Leads Generation |
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5 Responses to “Free Lead Generation Series - Social Media Marketing”
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I agree to what you mentioned about directing your social network traffic to a blog first. That’s why I don’t really agree with rebrandable attraction marketing lead system to just get opt-ins for the sake of list building.
Maybe it is still okay for internet marketing, but for network marketing, I think its a straight no-no. Network marketing is a people business. So we must first build relationships then if they are interested and wanna know more, they will automatically ask you.
There’s no need for hard selling or pushy pitches. Just make sure you get the front-end marketing and relationship building right, and everything will follow.
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Rebrandable lead generation system may not be suitable for social traffic. However, it’s very effective for other traffic like PPC and article marketing. Relationship building can then be done via autoresponder.
But again, even if you’re using autoresponder, make sure the emails are personal (writing style) and valuable. Just pitching your offer endlessly is not gonna get you good response.
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I definitely agree to your post.
To ensure optimum results from social networking, we must building the relationship with them. There’s no shortcut there…
Regards,
Jane Quek
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I agree. I think I’ve even bought something through affiliete link from some guy on facebook. But it was mostly because we talked I told him I need a new external hdd and he provided me with an appropriate link. I bought it from there he got his commision and everyone was happy.
However if we weren’t “socialising” and he’d just send me a link I wouldn’t even click it.
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