Social media is all about building relationships. Yet despite the speed of the Internet, relationships still take time to develop. And with the billions of people on the web, creating successful relationships means you need to give and give and give, so you build trust, earn respect and become a familiar friendly resource your connections look forward to hearing from.
With that as a backdrop, here are 3 simple and quick shortcuts to help you generate leads and develop relationships with social media:
1. Ask A Provocative Question
And by provocative, we mean ask questions that provoke strong reactions. This works especially well with timely topics. For instance, say you worked in financial services and specialized in the high tech sector. You write a short blog post titled "Can ya believe Microsoft bought B&N just to get the Nook?" You could tweet/share "Microsoft & Nook. Too little, too late?" and a link to your post. Your post has a call-to-action at the bottom leading them to a landing page with an enticing offer of more detailed, relevant information on investing in high tech stocks in exchange for their email address.
2. Offer a Fremium
Fremiums are free pieces of valuable content. They don't have to be long (eBooks or whitepapers). Some of the most popular and useful items are checklists or a list of resources for hard-to-find information.
- Think about what you do over and over again. Could you create a 10-20 item checklist (or resource list) that your prospects and customers could use to make their lives easier doing the exact same thing?
- Create it, put your contact information all over it.
- Set up a landing page that explains why this checklist or resource list is so valuable.
- Put a form on the landing page that collects their email address in exchange for the fremium.
- Create a thank-you page where they can download their fremium and where you also offer them yet another enticing call-to-action for still more information that's related to the topic.
TIP: Make sure your share / tweet headline focuses on the main benefit of the fremium, e.g. "Make website redesign go faster / smoother with free web inventory checklist" or "List of 20 sources with free print quality photos you can download."
3. Share Someone Else's Interesting Article or Blog Post
If you're like most people, you do a lot of research and reading on the Internet. You constantly discover articles or blog posts that you find useful. In fact, you find them so useful that you immediately think of a bunch of people who would find them valuable as well.
Sharing is easy with these options:
- Most websites are smart enough to include social sharing buttons. These are the buttons that let you share the article/post via email, on Facebook, LinkedIn, or you can tweet it, digg it, pin it, etc. (Liking something doesn't always mean it will be shared.) As long as you're logged into your social media accounts, sharing that article on one (or all of them) is as simple as clicking the appropriate icon.
- If you're using marketing automation software, sharing should also be really simple. HubSpot, for example, has a "Share via HubSpot" button you can put in the toolbar of your web browser. When you click on it, up pops a window that lets you add in your personal message, select which of your social media accounts to share it with, calculates if your message is too long (for Twitter for example), and even lets you specify however many dates and times to share it. Very smart and efficient!
TIP: Don't forget to include a short message. Write a keyword-rich headline that gives them a reason to click on the link. Make it more enticing than "great article" or "thought you'd like this."
While this last shortcut won't immediately capture a lead, it will serve to keep you top-of-mind as someone who shares useful information that isn't always about yourself/your company. By sharing other people's great content, you become a valued, trusted resource. Which means when you do share one of your own articles / blog posts or offer them a fremium, chances are high they'll read your article and download your fremium.
Related posts:
- 13 Steps for Avoiding Social Media Marketing Plan Duds
- Don't Waste Money On A Social Media Strategy
