By Taylor Garland
Social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are a lot of fun, and certainly have a way of keeping people on their sites for long periods of time.
But let’s get real: Can they really attract quality prospects that convert into money for your business? The answer is “yes”, but it’s a qualified yes: Only if you have a process in place for filtering out all the random tire-kickers and finding the real customers amid all the social media noise.
So, in this article, I am going to reveal exactly how we filter out those tire-kickers so that we can focus on converting our qualified prospects into happy customers that refer lots of friends. (Ironically, this often happens right on social media sites.)
Step 1 – Create your list of social media keywords
Before you do anything else, spend an hour or so brainstorming and then tightening up a list of keywords that your prospects are likely to be searching for when they are on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Your goal is to end up with a reasonable list of 10-20 keywords that make sense and also show “signs of life” in Google’s Keyword Tool. (More on that below.) This list is going to be a partially overlapping, but somewhat different list from the type of keywords that you might be buying in a Google AdWords campaign. For example, when Google searching, a prospect might type “rolling stones tickets cheap”, but on social media, they might type “rolling stones facebook group” or “rolling stones fans”.
Here’s a Google site that will help you speed up your brainstorming massively: Just do a Google search for “keyword tool external” and click the first search result. Google’s Keyword Tool External will generate a couple hundred related keywords after you type in a few obvious primary keywords for your product or niche. For example, if you type in “classic car” and “auto show” into the keyword tool, it will return related and similar words like: muscle car, hot rod, automobile show, classic car show, classic car parts, classic auto air conditioning, drag racing, nascar, formula 1, antique car repair, custom coachwork, car auctions, etc.
Then, you just need to go through the list and eliminate the ones that are not actually relevant, or those that have relatively small numbers of Monthly Search Volume (number of people typing it in). While it may seem strange to use Google’s keyword tool to find social media keywords, don’t worry about that, it’s still a very helpful brainstorming tool. Also, be sure to eliminate words that are not related to whatever you are hoping your prospects will do once they find you. For example, if you are trying to sell a training course showing people how to invest in apartment buildings, you should eliminate phrases like “apartment for rent” or “cheap apartments”.
Step 2 – Pre-Schedule Your Social Media Publishing For 30 Days
You know how it is in small business. If you don’t put it on the calendar, there’s a good chance it won’t get done. This is a pretty simple, but extremely useful thing to do.
First, pre-scheduling massively increases the chances that you will have consistent social media content being dripped out into Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, because you won’t be faced with having to do a creative task every morning.
Second, by writing all of your social media content in one session, you can create a flow that makes sense to the prospects that are seeing your content. If you try to write Facebook status updates or Tweets every day for a month, not only will you possibly lose your mind, but you will have trouble remembering the subject and tone you were on yesterday. This becomes a real pain and leads to a strange and choppy experience for the reader of your status updates or tweets.
From personal experience, I plead with you, block off 2 hours and write 30 Facebook status updates and 30 Tweets once a month. (By doing it once a month, you are still able to make adjustments if you have promotions or special events you want to mention. That’s why you shouldn’t write a year’s worth of social media content at once. That and the threat of carpel tunnel syndrome!)
Step 3 – Filter Your General Inbound Prospects To Create A Smaller Hot List Of Prospects That Are Qualified And Ready To Move Forward
This is really the step where the magic happens. I mean, even if you had no desire to do social media as a lead generation source, but you did have money to spend in your budget, you could rent a list from a company like Macromark or Nextmark and then drive these prospects to a website or phone operator who would sort the hot leads from the tire kickers. So, this stuff about identifying the hot leads from your general leads is really something that applies to all areas of your proactive marketing.
Okay, here’s how it works: You offer something that would be considered VERY compelling to your specific type of prospects that you are trying to attract in exchange for them providing more full contact information to you, or making a small initial purchase that will get the ball going in the relationship between you and your new prospects. For example, if you decided to mail a postcard to your prospects, you could have the postcard direct them to an 800 number where operators would ask a series of questions to see how interested and qualified they are to buy your product/service.
Or, you could direct them to a website that offers something compelling in exchange for the right to contact them more. This is also known as a “squeeze page” in internet parlance, meaning you are squeezing the desired information or action from the visitor to the website. Don’t worry, it doesn’t have to be painful like it sounds! A good squeeze page is simply offering a fair trade: something valuable in exchange for the right to contact again by phone, email or mail. In most cases, the squeeze pages I have signed up for, I am glad I did because it is how I keep track of what is going on in my industry and how I know about cutting edge new strategies and tactics. Usually, someone sends me an email saying “hey, check this out…” So, if the right thing is offered to the right prospect, like in my case, squeeze pages create win/win situation for both company and prospect.
Now, integrating this with social media? Well, it’s pretty simple. You could just put a link in a Facebook status update or Tweet taking prospects to a page that explains more about your company. Or, more effective, you could take them to a squeeze page that offers something compelling to them in exchange for their email address. Better yet, especially inside Facebook, you can have a link take someone right to a page inside Facebook, like one of mine at: facebook.com/MakeItHappenMarketing. Marketing research companies have found that people are even more likely to click through on a link if they stay within whatever social network they are on. So, having prospects land on a custom Facebook Page from within Facebook is a way to slowly build trust with them before asking them to leave and visit a site that is new to them on the Internet.
While there is a lot you COULD learn about lead generation for your business, whether it’s online or offline, there are only a FEW things you actually need to DO to start generating a flood of targeted, hungry leads.
Why spend months becoming a lead gen expert when you could spend a couple of hours and learn the insider secrets the pros are using to generate tons of targeted, pre-qualified leads right now, even in this economy?
Work smarter, not harder, and learn from the pros that are in the trenches, making tons of money in a wide variety of niches right now! http://budurl.com/targetedleads
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