Social Media Profits
Strictly a book dedicated to powerful business strategies and tactics to take your social marketing to the next level.
By Randy Schrum
Welcome to this Social Media Quick Start Profit Guide. This guide is straight and to the point. I am not going to waste your time or spend too much time on anything that doesn’t begin to help you right now, build funnels that strengthen your business or goals with Social Media. So with that said, this guide is broken down with one key thought or strategy building on another. After the building blocks I will share additional bonus resources to help you as well. Additionally some of the strategies I share will require some additional cost, but they are the vehicles I use everyday to generate massive exposure to my professional goals and business. The main social spaces we will cover will be LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. In addition, the other platforms are noteworthy, but as one person managing your social spaces you only have so much time. I will share near the end of this book a way you can manage more than these three platforms putting in no additional time and strengthening your efforts. Randy Schrum
This ebook is broken down into 5 Main Chapters that are short and to the point: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
A Strong Profile Building Your Community Capturing Your Audience Engaging Your Audience Streamlining & Resources
Conclusion
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1 A Strong Profile So we begin, everything I share will be absolutely critical to truly leveraging the four Social Platforms I will cover: LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, & YouTube. In addition this book is a guide to generating business and professional results using Social Media as a marketing avenue. You will not find additional fluff in this book, just black and white basics to make you successful. The first thing we need to address is your profile strategy for all your social spaces. While people may argue they need to be different that is not the case when it comes to you having the same ultimate goal and that is business and professional results. So your profile needs to be consistent across all Social Platforms if you want professional results. People are looking for a consistent message and will judge you on it or the lack their off. This includes your: • Picture • Headline • Summary • Links • Professional Experience Picture: this needs to be more professional vs. picture of you on a plane or something else. Remember this is for your business or professional strategy.
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Headline: this headline needs to communicate what you do and tell others how you can help them. In addition it needs to be keyword rich, meaning what are the most used words to search for you or your services. Most social platforms are driven by keywords, when people search using the platforms www.mycorporatemedia.com
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search application they will have results based on whats in people’s headlines, summaries, and professional experience.
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Summary: the summary needs share why on you’re on the social platform and what you can offer, it needs to be truly authentic to create any type of real engagement. Again, this needs to be loaded with your industry or business keywords. ( words that people would use to search for you or your company) Links: in each of your profiles you have the opportunity to provide website links. Be sure these links are listed and titled if necessary such as on LinkedIn you can name your link’s.
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Professional Experience: this would be the critical area to write as a resume, as people will look at this experience and judge you accordingly in the professional setting. Again make sure its loaded with keywords that relate to the experience. This could lead to opportunities that you may want to take a look at. The profile, while a preliminary topic is critical to your success with the other areas we will cover.
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2 Building Your Community You are on the Social sites for business right? At least that’s what this book covers, the business side of Social Media. While many people have different views on growing connections, I can tell you if you’re serious as a business professional. Then there is no room for a philosophy, that says you do not connect to those you don’t know. In business you are always looking to grow your reach and create more leads or opportunities. Now the only way to do that is to meet those you do not know. I am going to show you how to grow your connections LinkedIn, Twitter, & Facebook through a couple of simple, but MUST use strategies. Here is why you MUST do this, with each invite you receive to connect you get the opportunity to respond to those invites with a short bulleted, but well written message and hopefully a link to capture more information from them. I will talk more about capturing your audience later on. Now a few of these things I share will cost you money, but they are things I have paid for myself and these tools are what has taken my business to the next level. If you’re serious about your profession you too will get these tools. So here is how you can grow your followings on auto-pilot and receive hundreds of invites a week to connect. Open Networker, formely Top Linked. By signing up for this service you are put on a weekly announcement list of those along with thousands of others who are open to professional connections.
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This service runs $49 per year, you can sign up here
Just as in networking you need to meet new people to grow your opportunities and Open Networker does that for you on auto-pilot across ALL major social platforms. Later I will share how you can build your professional presence (if so desired) across all major platforms and it not take you any more time than you already invest. I often paid several hundred dollars a year to belong to local professional networking groups with the hope to gain some avenue of business. Now, I pay the $49 per year and receive a limitless market of warm leads or those who can help me find opportunities. I do recommend if you haven’t already. You need to invite everyone in your professional database to connect. Past this you MUST grow your connection base consistently in order to properly leverage this median. (no acceptions)
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Next, join www.topfollowed.com to grow your twitter connections. This service is free.
Targeted Twitter Following by the 10’s of 1,000’s I have taken multiple accounts from a couple hundred to tens of thousands of targeted followers in a very short period of months. The power of twitter is clear, but in order to create lead generation you have to have not just a following, but a targeted following. Using the HummingBird Application, I have managed to do just that practically on auto-pilot. Using this program I can quickly identify my target market and begin to follow them and secure usually a 30% to 50% follow back ratio. You already know who your competition is on twitter and who has created the strongest audience, so how do you get them to begin following you, without spending countless hours following your competitions followers? Use Hummingbird for $97 you can grow a targeted twitter following on auto-pilot.
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I will not say any more on the subject, but I can tell you that the strategies and techniques I share will have their strongest results if you utilize the very services, I too have had so much success with. Grow your following through targeted groups, as you join target specific groups in the social platforms such as LinkedIn and Facebook. From time to time invite others to connect with you from those groups. Since these are target specific groups your chances of developing more “target� specific connections increase. Again the steps within this book are in order to create the maximum affect on your efforts so please do not skip over the steps and jump to the next.
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3 Capturing Your Audience So you have optimized your profile picture and headline and you have begun to build your community. So what do you do with them once you have them? What is the good of having these connections if you have not really captured them as an audience? In this chapter we will discuss strategies to both capture them as an audience and how to communicate to them. Now, lets first talk about responding to invitations to connect. You are now signed up on open networker and will begin receiving hundreds of invites per week to connect. So what will you do with these connections when you accept them? You need to create a short bullet point message, that will grab your new connections attention and will cause them to click through a link you provide to re-capture their email into an auto-responder system. Let’s break it down, You will need to great a short bulleted message that says something like: “Thank you for the invite, I specialize in Sales and Marketing. Here is a link to a free (xyz guide, report, webcast etc….) http:// bit.ly/3wzq9Q If I can be of any help, please don’t hesitate to contact me. ~Randy” When you create the response, save it in a word document so you can just copy and paste the response to all your invites. You want this link you create to go to an email opt in, auto-response system such as Aweber, Constant Contact, etc…that requires the prospect to enter their email to receive the info they request. The reason why, Is you want to pull all your online connections into one contact database/ email system so you can communicate with them. I point my link to a sign up page on my site for the Fast Start Guide to Linkedin. You receive an email sign up box from your email management system such as Aweber that you can you use. When someone signs up for book they get an auto-response back that I created which welcomes them and provides a link to the book, which I have housed on http://box.net for free. Next, do you have a website or blog? If not, you need to start. You can get a free blog at http://wordpress.com .
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This site should have informative articles created by you or you can just syndicate others writers from other sites. The only important point to this is you must reference them and give them the credit for the article, besides get their permission. Most importantly on the site is a place to opt-in to get a free something? This again will go into your auto-responder. So to recap, capturing your audience: •
You need a short bullet point message to respond to all invitations with that includes a giveaway and link to opt-in to receive it.
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Next, you need an auto-responder system such as Aweber. Click here to learn more about Aweber
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You need a blog or website that includes the opt-in link as well. In addition you need articles.
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What can you give away a report, webinar, ebook, article(s) etc…Just create perceived value for free.
Next we will talk about engaging your audience and you will find that we will use the free giveaway opt-ins & website link frequently to capture more “target” specific potential customers or leads.
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4 Engage Your Audience Once you have mastered capturing your audience lets talk about engaging them and also talk a little more about additional techniques to capture them that relate to engagement. Now through the various social platforms such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and others you can utilize some of the following to engage your market: • • • •
Status updates Groups Q&A Event/ Calendar Applications
With that we will cover how to utilize these various applications and the strategies you can use to make them work for you. Remember this, when engaging prospects in the social community remember to bring value and offer resources to the community at no cost. A great rule of thumb is a 12:1 Ratio, meaning offer and engage 12 tips, thoughts, articles etc… before you promote your brand 1 time. This communicates authenticity and value that will cause your community to keep up with you. So keep in mind the more value you bring the more they will pay attention. Status Update Engagement: this is the place to keep your community up to date on you and your industry along with anything that you feel would interest them. All of course in the context of what I shared in the previous paragraph. These updates should provide links that allow people to take the “status update” further and enter the story or conversation of what you just mentioned. Some things you can do with status updates: • • •
Promote Events Promote a free Webinar that sends them to your website or blog (this is a good opt-in builder) Promote an opt-in for some giveaway, such as a guide or report that is industry related that sends them to your website or blog. (very smart idea)
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• •
Talk about industry news Promote a group you created through LinkedIn or Twitter. Haven’t created a group yet? This is the time. Create a group that is industry related to you and then begin to invite your connections to join, thus creating another pool to keep your target market in. In addition you can include this group as a mention in your message response to invitations. If you so desire or put it in your auto-response to those who opt-in to one of your giveaways. The key is you constantly want to be re-capturing your audience and meeting their needs. Groups are a great way to grow your target market audience in social media.
Groups: Groups can be a powerful lead generator and sales funnel. You can both start new industry, interest, or product related groups or join ones that fit your target market. I recommend doing both. Starting Groups: By starting your own LinkedIn group you can then capture your own audience who has interest in your group. Some keys with your own LinkedIn and Facebook Groups: • • • • •
Make sure the profile is keyword rich towards your target market, so your group appears in search results when people you are targeting search for your group. Be sure to set featured policies in place for the group on spam. Make sure to utilize the autoresponse feature with LinkedIn for when people join the group. This is a great way to drive them to an opt-in or free report. Be sure to post thought provoking questions and great resource information in relation to the group. Utilize the once a week announcment service provided by LinkedIn, it will send a mass email to your entire group. Very powerful to generate more targeted opt-ins.
Joining groups: You will want to join groups that will have your target market. So think strategically about which groups your market may be in. Use the group search buttoms on Facebook and LinkedIn to find them.
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Here are some guidelines on joining Groups: • Make sure they have a good following (size does matter, you can only join a limited number of groups, make it count) • Be sure to join active groups. Post Quality Discussions and utilize the news feeds. Be sure to post quality questions in the discussions with well written headlines that will catch readers attentions and also post useful information and resources that relate to the group. The discussion area is not the place to directly advertise. However it is fine to mention what you do. Utilize the News Feeds and drive traffic to your articles written on your website or blog. The great thing about this traffic is its free and very targeted as you have joined groups that relate to your target market visiting your website or blog. You can literally generate thousands of targeted visitors a week using this technique.
Post Quality Answers and Questions: When engaging your target market whether on LinkedIn’s Q&A section or on Facebooks groups or status updates, be sure you post quality answers to questions that set you apart as an expert. Doing so on LinkedIn can result in your peers voting you as an expert in the field of answers you respond to. This goes a long way in the way other professionals view you.
Also, be sure to ask questions you may ask in your qualifying process of generating leads as you normally would and watch the leads flow in. You can also provide links to articles on your website or blog that maybe relevant or useful to questions or answers as well driving additional traffic. Using the Events & Calendar Applications: This is a great way to generate leads and buzz around something you or your company is doing whether on LinkedIn or Facebook. On LinkedIn you can create an Event that can be a webinar, conference, meeting, etc… that people can respond to that they are joining. These are my Event Tips: • Make sure the event title and summary is keyword rich as with LinkedIn it can end up highly placed on Google.
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• •
Make sure you post a mention of this event in your status updates and groups to generate registrationa and create event buzz. Be sure to ask others to communicate it as well.
These tips will help you generate event buzz and leads for upcoming events and allow you to schedule appointments accordingly. Even if you are not the event organizer you can post them, this gives you the keys to the treasure chest, so to speak.
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5 Streamlining & Resources Some tools to help you track, create, and streamline your processes that are no cost. http://Bit.ly this website is a free URL shrinker that also allow you to keep track of stats, click throughs on your unique URL you create. I recommend on all you do, to use this service to track in real time clicks and the result of your efforts. If needed this will help you recognize quickly if you need to adjust your message, before you put to much time into it. http://jingproject.com this software will allow you to record videos or your computer screen/ screencast as some call it, up to 5 minute frames at no cost. This is great to create content or tips for your audience and is easily upload-able to youtube. http://ping.fm is a great single source status update system, by integrating your accounts very simply to the ping interface all you have to do is an update on ping and it will send it to all your social media accounts you program it for.(one time programming and it does the rest until you change it)
Recommendation: In addition to using the above services I have mentioned in Chapter 5 along with the other services, I would recommend if your serious and do not have a lot of time, then secure the services of a virtual assistant to manage your day to day task. For as little as $300 per month you can secure a virtual assistant to manage your Social Media Accounts (not strategy, just follow through with standard task of responding to invites, posting news feeds, sending out email or inmail messages etc‌). MyCorporateMedia can help in this area as well, just read below.
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In Closing I hope you have gained practical insight on how to begin effectively generating profits with Social Media for your business. If you would like to learn more on how MyCorporateMedia can help you and your company, please contact us at:
support@mycorporatemedia.com Include in the subject: “Social Media Services Inquiry� Phone: 1.314.226.8889
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