Imagine Your Reality

The majority of the time that I get invitations from Linkedin, I usually get the generic invitation, “I’d like you to join my network on Linkedin.” No details are provided as to why I might want to connect with this person, or what s/he wants help with, or what s/he thinks I want help with. When I get these generic responses, it indicates to me that the person is lazy, or is too afraid to tell me what s/he wants, or just doesn’t get the social aspects of social media and thinks of the invites as a function of the technology, as opposed to a genuine invite.

Usually when I get these responses, I do accept the invitation, and I follow up afterwords with a personalized message, thanking them for connecting with me and asking them how I can help them. Sometimes I get responses, and most times I don’t. When you decide you want to connect with someone on Linkedin, I offer the following suggestions, when writing your introduction:

1. Make the time to write an actual introduction. Don’t be lazy and use the generic invitation. Delete the wording for the generic invitation and then write.
2. Tell the person why you wanted to connect with him/her. What is it that prompted you to decide to connect to this person? Was it an article s/he wrote, a service you need, or a service you think s/he needs, or did you meet him/her somewhere? Whatever it was, write that down.
3. Tell the person what you want from this connection. Do you want a meeting, or a phone call, or something else? Provide some context to the invitation, and open the door for the invitation to go past just being a virtual introduction.
4. Once you’ve actually started a conversation, move it off the social network and into a phone call or one-on-one meeting. You can use email, but email is a lot easier to ignore. While a social network is an easy way to connect and you can have some conversations on there, moving it beyond the social network is helpful for turning the connection into more than just a online meeting.

And if you do get generic invitations, what I wrote above can apply to writing responses to them. I always write a personalized response and while I don’t always get a response back, the responses I do get tend to be more personalized and we learn a bit more about each other.

What do you think? Do you prefer getting personalized invitations, and what would you add to the list above?

Previous installments in this series have dealt with audience and their needs, business model, and goals for using social media. Once a business has answered these questions and established there basic strategy for social media, there is a final component to consider, namely what social media tools you are already using and what ones you will need to integrate into your marketing, as well what skills you will need to learn to use social media effectively.

Many people, for example, are on Facebook. But being on Facebook doesn’t automatically mean you’ve incorporated it into your business. You may be using it to stay in touch with friends and families, but may also need to look into creating a fan page for your business, as well as determining how to keep your clients separate from your friends and family.

And being on social networks isn’t really enough. Many business owners think of social media as Linked, Twitter, and Facebook, without realizing that these are just examples of social networking sites sites. They don’t even begin to encompass what social media or how to use it. They are popular and to some degree necessary in developing your strategies, but business owners should spend some time learning what social media is, as well as how all of it can be incorporated into their marketing.

E-newsletters are another example of social media that some businesses already incorporate into their model. I include e-newsletters as social media, because increasingly the technology is bring brought into social media, where you can share your e-newsletter with social networks, and even feed your blog into e-newsletters. Business owners should still use e-newsletters because they reach a targeted audience and are an excellent way of retaining existing clients. At the same time, those same businesses will want to also incorporate a blog into their social media strategy, because it will allow them to reach out to an audience that otherwise may not know they exist.

Effective social media strategy recognizes the value of all social media technology and actively integrates it into the business model. This integration may happen in steps, but social media can’t be ignored for too long, not only because of how the technology will continue to change, but also because more and more people will use it as they discover its usefulness for helping them research services and products they need. And when people can’t find you, they will find your competitors.

When integrating social media into your business model, focus on one area of social media at a time and make sure as you learn it, you also ask yourself how you will apply it to your marketing and customer service. Don’t be afraid to experiment to see what you can learn and do with social media, and don’t hesitate to ask others what they are doing and what works for them.

For further information about social media strategy and what social media is, please go to my site and look at some of my videos.

The latest episode of Social Media coach asks What is social Networking? Next week’s episode is on blogs.

Upcoming Events

I have two upcoming events.

Social networking for Businesses 101

Already have your social networking profiles setup and optimized to market your professional identity? GREAT!

Then PLEASE forward this message to your colleagues who are overwhelmed by invites to social networking sites and have only the bare bones of a profile set up on the sites they are on.

But if you want to leverage your social networking profiles on Linkedin, Twitter, and Facebook, and other social networking sites to market your business, this message is for YOU:

Join us on Monday October 26th, 2009 at 1pm for a special 4 hour class on how to set-up and optimize your social networking profiles, where you will learn the following:

• How to claim your personalized url for Linkedin and Facebook, and why it’s important to do it.
• How to optimize your social networking profiles for search results and as a way to market your business.
• How to connect your social networks to each other.
• The key to developing effective connections on different social networking sites.

And that’s not all!

Social Networking for Business also teaches you how to write profiles that get you noticed.

You’ll learn how to:

• Organize your thoughts, pick a key message
• Use current events to keep your status updates relevant.
• Write DREAMY, attention-grabbing copy

Social Networking for Business: One half day delivers killer writing and optimized social networking profiles!

For more information and to register please visit the Events page for IYR.

Eight Steps to a Successful Social Media Marketing Plan

This is a 12 Week Webinar for Business Owners who are great at what they do, but feel overwhelmed when it comes to Social Media Marketing

If you’re like most business owners you’re frustrated by social media technology and having to fit it into your already busy schedule. Additionally having to learn how to market yourself on social media can be intimidating because it also involves learning the correct social media etiquette as well as the tools.

You feel discouraged because you know social media is becoming more important for marketing a business but don’t how to use the technology or you do know how to use it, but wonder why no one ever responds to your posts.

How does the Eight Steps to a successful Social Media Marketing Plan webinar work?

We meet twelve times over four months and will go through the 8 steps to a success social media marketing plan. You’ll work on setting up your social media presence and gradually develop a successful social media marketing plan.

You’ll be part of a powerful group of entrepreneurs who own businesses, just like you, who want to get unstuck with social media. You’ll learn the technology AND the marketing together.

The sessions will be a very focused combination of teaching, sharing, feedback, and support.

At the end, everyone will have a completed social media marketing plan and presence to take into 2010!

Begins October 30th and ends January 22nd (no class December 25th and January 1st) We meet Fridays 11:30-1 PST on the phone and website. Every class will be recorded, but you can call in from anywhere and access the website from any place with an internet connection.

This seminar includes:

• Training on the technology for the social media sites. You’ll learn how to optimize and automate your social media presence.
• The Social Media Marketing Plan handbook.
• One individual 30 minute coaching call with me.
• 12 group sessions over four months.
• Seminar Discussion Blog where you can share information and ask question with each other.
• Feedback from other professional, motivated business owners.

You know you need help with your social media marketing presence, and you are also smart enough to know that all successful people get help!

For more information and to register for this class, please go to the Events page on IYR.