Hello my dear, good evening to you from here, how is life with you over there, what a nice and sparkling smile you have on your pretty face, actually I was looking for an old friend of mine in Facebook and I came across your profile, I got entangled in that wonderful smile, I couldn’t pass by but to express how I feel and I care about it, I could not take my eyes off such a beautiful lady, that is why I am saying hello. Please always wear this smile, no woman has ever caught my heart so deeply as you do, if you don’t mind can I be your friend, hope to hear from you soon.
When I didn’t answer in 20 seconds, he messaged me again asking if I was there.
For real.
Report. Block. Delete.
But this got me thinking – I tend to want to do this in my business! Ok well not the creepy compliments and stalker-ish feel, but when I see someone I know I can help, I instantly want to pitch them what I can do and how I can best serve them to success. I don’t hold back.
I really started thinking about how I am perceived with prospective clients that I connect with on Facebook and social media in general.
[Tweet “How are you perceived by prospective clients you connect with on social media?”]
People need to get to know you first. They need to realize, on their own terms, that you are worth their time. How do you facilitate that process? Why social media of course!
4 Ways to Approach People on Social Media
Here are 4 ways you can be a blockbuster success while still approaching people in the right way, not in the creeper-I-want-to-sell-you-something way.
1. Be a real person, not an auto-bot.
By that I mean, get on your favorite platform and start posting real time, real life good stuff that actually happens to you. Be real and authentic. Talk about the trials and tribulations of being a business owner, talk about what you believe in, talk about the funny things that happen to you in your day (ie Facebook creeper who actually taught me something!). We are drawn to people who are real and you would be surprised the people who show up with you decide to drop a bit of the veil and go for it.
2. Strike up a conversation with someone who is saying something you love, talking about a topic you are interested in, or just being real (see #1 above).
Spend some time getting to know them and how you can help vs how they could help (ie Facebook creeper guy was all about making ME do something to make HIM happy) Genuine interest in how you can help someone is generally perceived as… Genuine Interest!
3. Write about who you are and what you do so people can find it and read it at their leisure.
This means regularly blogging on your website, LinkedIn long form posts, Tumblr, or whatever platform floats your boat. Show up, be consistent, and give a lot of value for free. All of this builds trust and trust is what turns you from being a “salesy-pitch” into a “caring offer of help”.
4. Foray into real time video and conversations via Periscope and Blab.
(Check out my blogs on each of those platforms here and here) While these two platforms are different, both of them allow for you to show up as who you are, interact with people interested in what you have to say, and find new ways to connect and give value to your prospect clients. No big pitch or creepy vibe, it’s just you and a video and a chat stream, or you and a few other guests talking about something important. Show up in real time and get the benefits of an audience that has now seen you (possibly in your pjs), heard you (possibly with a beer in your hand) and starts to really like you because you speak to who they are as well.
Enter with social media, exit with trust.
It honestly doesn’t take a lot, it just takes a little bit of bravery (to put yourself out there) and compassion (to really want to help). The rest will come.
What do you think of my Facebook creeper? Have you dealt with one before? Don’t swear off social media, just swear to make it better for those you choose to connect with.
Need help figuring out what to say? Want to construct a template for introducing yourself on all different social media platforms? Join me in my LinkedIn group and we will figure this all out together!
I know I often talk about the social media machine, posting up to 22 times a day (that’s for Twitter) and engaging, engaging, engaging.
But what happens when you need (Yep I said need) to go on vacation? As business owners and Entrepreneurs we all should make a point to step away from the craziness of building and running our own businesses. (Yes I am giving you permission!) Vacations are so important because these breaks keep your energy flowing, your creativity boosted, and ideas jumping so your business can expand, grow and thrive.
So my post today is about 5 important steps to take so you can feel happy and carefree heading out on a healthy vacation with your family or on to a solo relax-cation.
[Tweet “5 Important steps to take on social media for a carefree vacation.”]
5 Important Steps to Take For a Carefree Vacation
First: Schedule those posts ahead! I hope you are already using a scheduler to make your social media life easier. If not read my posts here and here that talk about my favorite apps to use and how to use them. Scheduling not only takes the bulk of social media posting off your plate, it allows you to focus on building engagement and the more organic posting that comes from finding trending information that crosses your radar each day. Make sure to schedule a lot of posts that are foundational in nature, meaning they are evergreen, they never “expire”. You can talk about this stuff for weeks and months because it is related to your business why, who you serve, how you serve them, and what they can expect when they hire you or buy from you.
Second: Be honest. I really preach the value of being super authentic with your crowd of prospects and followers. Here is an example of that. It’s really simple – just tell them you will be on vacay and you love them and you will miss them and you will try to check in on them a few times, but you really need the vacation and… ok no. Say “Hi all! I’m heading to the beautiful beach with my family for a week long vacation, so my responses will be delayed. Post all the funny stuff that happens while I’m gone! Have a lovely (week/weekend) I will “see” you soon.”
Or something like that.
The aim here is to just be truthful and direct. If you are a one man show advise what the turnaround time might be for an answer to a question if a customer posts on social media. Give yourself some extra time in case of snafu (kids sick, hotel wifi out, too many margaritas by the beach) Your fans will appreciate this knowledge especially if they need to reach you for a customer service reason. You wouldn’t want to inadvertently create a frustrating customer service scenario where there doesn’t need to be one.
Third: Check your social media a few times. Yes, yes I know. Terrible thing for me to say, and possibly pretty unpopular, but at the end of the day you are trying to grow a business and a sustainable one at that. So my advice? For the first couple years of this business growing phase take vacations where you know you can find wi-fi somewhere, somehow. After that when you are wildly successful and have a team to manage everything you can head off on that African Safari or to the middle of the ocean. But until then, make a plan to check up on your biz and social media at least a few times during your trip. Oh and make sure you pack your cell phone and computer chargers, pack them right now. You can hate me while you are doing it and then you can thank me later.
Fourth: Hire that VA you’ve been wanting to hire. Starting to build your team is the best way to ensure that you can step away for a vacation, or more importantly for a family emergency, and your business won’t suffer. A VA can create, plan, and post to all of your social media sites, can be trained to answer most customer service questions (or at least soothe the customer until a real answer can be found), and most importantly keep your business humming while you are away. Sure you might field the occasional phone call when he or she runs into a roadblock that only you can authorize a solution to, but for the most part a VA can handle a lot of the little details of social media and incoming emails for you. Start interviewing and test-driving a few of these assistants today so you are ready to pack a bag and head out without looking back!
Fifth: Share your photos later. Resist the urge to post vacation selfies of you looking amazing and perfect lounging on your amazing and perfect vacation. Be patient, take a lot of pictures, but don’t post them. Create a fantastic blog post that is peppered with the most beautiful photos of your trip, showcasing a product idea you had while lying on the beach (it’s happened to me!) or take the opportunity to create a personal behind the scenes post. Keep it professional and polished and this post (or posts) can have a nice effect on driving engagement your way.
So what’s the very next step you need to take? That’s right! Join me in my LinkedIn group, where we can all help each other get the courage to take a vacation from our businesses… we can, right group?? We definitely CAN.
This week’s tip is about LinkedIn Endorsements. You know what a LinkedIn endorsement is. It’s those emails you get that says somebody you knew 20 years ago endorsed you for something that you know they have no idea whether you do or not. But you know what? These endorsements can be powerful. I’m going to show you how I use them.
In LinkedIn, and you may have heard me say this before, we really want to pay attention to keywords. Everyone of these endorsements, every one of my top skills are also my top keywords. This is where this becomes important. Because if people are endorsing you over and over for things that are your keywords, it brings more search juice. That’s the first reason that these things can definitely be important.
The second thing I want you to remember is when people go to check out your profile, they want to hire you, whether it’s for a job or service. When they come here and they see that 99+ people have endorsed you for something, it’s social proof that you know what you’re doing. You really want to have an endorsement strategy. And the best way to get endorsements is to give endorsements.
If you’re getting endorsed for things that you don’t even do anymore, you can delete them. If there’s something that you don’t want to be endorsed for anymore you can remove those in the edit function. You can just click the X beside the skill and it no longer shows up in hte list. That’s the first thing.
The second thing I want you to see is you can re-order this stuff. Let’s say I want “LinkedIn Expert” to come up above “LinkedIn Marketing”, I can re-order that. Then the top ten skills don’t have to be the top ten things you are endorsed for. You have control of that.
Subscribe to my YouTube channel to see more videos!
Today we’re going to talk about creating a business page. Now this is like Facebook 101, if you have a business at all, you really need to create a business page. You just come right down here to Pages and go to Create a Page, and here’s why this is important. A lot of people use their personal profile to post, but the reality is, Facebook can shut you down if you are posting only business things or a lot of business things on your personal page if you don’t have a business page.
So as long as you have a business page, it’s okay to post the occasional business thing on your personal page, but you don’t want to do that if you don’t have a business page, because you could get shut down.
The other thing is you can also do all kinds of great advertising strategies with a business page, so you really want to have a business page if you do any business at all on Facebook. It’s really easy, so you just click that “Create a Page”, you just pick what your category is, for me the category is “Public Figure”. You can just pick where you go from there, you can pick coach if you’re a business coach or actually business person. If you’re a local business you want to pick the category business name, you want to use a street address, this is really cool, so people can check in at your local business, very powerful. There’s all kinds of options here. Then once you click Get Started, Facebook takes you through the process of doing this. It’s really very simple.
You really want to create a business page for your business so that you’re not violating Facebook’s rules and so you can take advantage of Facebook advertising.
Subscribe to my YouTube channel to see more videos!
Periscope recently launched the ability to create your own Periscope channel. Now, I can direct people to periscope.tv/karenyankovich which is so cool, right?
When you direct people to this page, you can see the most recent posts that are still live. This is a post that I did right after the Periscope summit talking about whether people that were broadcasting were egotistical or just confident, but it’s a great way to send people to your Periscope page and to your scopes within that 24 hour period that they’re still live.
If you are not Periscoping, I’m telling you, I am fresh off the Periscope summit, and it was so energizing and inspiring to me, and I really think we’re going to see Periscope explode in the next few years, so get in on this.
Create yourself a Periscope channel. All you need to do is connect to Periscope with your Twitter account, download the app on your phone or your iPad, and just start watching other people’s broadcasts, but create your channel now. Grab your name, create your channel so that you’re branded, so that when you’re ready to broadcast your own scopes, you’ve got this already set up.
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