Making Time for Social Media When You have 1000 Other Things to Do

There are two common complaints I hear from business owners about social media:

1. It’s confusing
2. It takes too much time

I couldn’t agree more. As a business owner (and solopreneur), I’m responsible for marketing my company including participating in social media. With Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, blogs, video and social bookmarking sites, it’s enough to make your head spin. And then comes Pinterest. Oh dear.

So how do you keep up with social media and still run your business?

The 2011 Social Media Marketing Industry Report (from Social Media Examiner) released last April sought to address that and other questions. The study was conducted among 3,300 marketers across industry sectors and included people from the self-employed crowd through to people in major corporations. The study looked at a variety of issues facing social media users today, many of which have been tracked since 2009.

According to the study…

- 90 percent of marketers see social media as very important for their business.
- 88 percent believe the number one benefit of social media marketing is business exposure
- Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and blogging were the top four social media tools
- 58 percent of marketers spend 6 or more hours on social media tasks per week and 34 percent invest 11 or more hours per week (That’s a lot of time!)

While this information is helpful and interesting, it still doesn’t answer the question as to how you can manage to communicate through social media, run a business and have a life. Here are some suggestions:

Know Where your Clients are Hanging Out
You wouldn’t go to a business party if you knew your current or prospective clients weren’t going to be there – it would be a waste of time. So why utilize social media sites if you know your clients aren’t there? The first step is understanding what they use and are interested in regarding social media. If you run a business that caters to other businesses, you might think twice about using Facebook (which is trying to be more business focused but isn’t there yet) as much as LinkedIn, which has a purely business objective. There is no point in wasting time in one part of the social media universe if no one will see what you’re doing.

Utilize Tools that make your Job Easier
If you still go to each site individually, you are taking more time than you need to update your social media sites. That being said, you don’t want to automate everything you do on these different sites. Twitter has different needs than Facebook or LinkedIn – and that doesn’t just mean the character count. Twitter users know they must be quick, punchy and almost headline-like in their delivery. Facebook and LinkedIn allow for much longer-form writing that can express an idea more fully. Another reason to not automate everything is the loss of social interaction. After all, social media is about being social.

Tools to investigate include: Hootsuite, Tweetdeck, Seismic and Ping. These aren’t the only ones, just the ones that have gotten more press and been used frequently by social media marketers.

Make Time for Social Media
Easier said than done, right? If you look at social media as a big, hairy monster, it will seem overwhelming. But you can do a lot in 10-15 minutes each day, if you have a plan. How do you get a plan? Well, truthfully, it means carving out specific time to consider topics to write about whether that’s for a blog or social media. Consider making a list of different topics that cover the gamut of your expertise. For example, look through old blog posts (if you have them) for ideas or lines you can use in posts. Create a Google reader to compile blogs you read regularly in one place. This saves you time and gives you one area in which to gather new ideas.

Enlist the Help of Someone Else
If you can afford to hire someone to run your social media, then this might be the best option if you just can’t seem to get to it. You don’t want to ignore social media or do it in a haphazard way – your potential and current clients may see that. Plus, it’s highly likely that your competition is on social media. Nothing could be worse than being left in their Twitter dust.

 

© 2012 Sarah Wood

 About the Author: 
Sarah Jo Wood is founder of Evolving Advisors Inc. and author of ‘How to turn a No or a Maybe into a Yes!”  And producer of “Magnetic Phrases.” Her forte is in copy enhancment, a gift allowing her to enhance already written copy thereby keeping the owner’s original voice, while magnetizing and making the copy sizzle with persuasion at a fraction of the cost of a copywriter. She can be found at www.evolvingadvisors.com

Jan Marie Dore

Here I was, beginning with a coach once again…I knew as a coach I had to be coached. It simply is a belief I have. To keep things in perspective. For when I get a rough client, for when I feel too alone, to keep me accountable, to keep me with fresh ideas and to keep me on the rails otherwise I flit from here to there without making progress. But honestly, deep down, I thought I would get the same type of coach I had had 20 years ago. You know the type. What are your goals, 1 yr., 3 yr, 5 yr, income wise, I realize that all of this is to make one aspire but it has been around for 25 years and you would think they could come up with something more original by now. And what are my visions…what do I want to own? I am not putting that down. I think it is important to have a vision board with pictures of what I want to attain. But that kind of coaching is so cliché anyone can do it, it doesn’t require anyone special to do it. It really requires an administrator not a coach if you know what mean. It has a lot of forms to fill out and projections to create.

Quite frankly, how the heck do I know where my income will be in 5 years? For someone like me, I have no idea. Does it require an algorithm that I should know? How do people figure that out? I could probably figure out two years, but one year is enough for me. I have enough problems figuring out one year and implementing it. I know I am supposed to work backwards. Figure out the income I want and then fill in the programs and products required to make that income happen. But let’s get real. What comes first? The chicken or the egg? I have to start somewhere and how is that going to be at six figures. Unless I have the luxury to write 6 niche-driven books and teleseminars and have three rock star coaching programs to start and drive a list up to 3000 within a month. I have to start at the beginning. Which for me is an ebook. And three coaching programs. Before my website is up. And I am so lucky to have that because of my coach.

But I digress from coaching. See that is the thing. I really lucked out. I wouldn’t have the book if it wasn’t for her. In the beginning she talked about branding, target markets, niching, and it all went over my head. I figured I would ignore it until we went on to another topic that I was more interested in. She kept pummeling that without finding my strength or passion I would not be able to write a book. I would not be able to give a teleseminar. I probably wouldn’t be able to coach. My throat went dry and I paid attention.

I thought to myself, “What is my passion?” I knew my pets were my passion but what did that have to do with business. I felt like a bore. Nothing came up for me. I went back over my life to the time of having a lemonade stand and knew I had been a little entrepreneur, a little on the serious side, always evaluating, and then I started searching through my careers. I had discovered at an early age that I could not work for anyone else but myself, but how was that strength? There were millions of people like that. So what! What was I passionate about in my business career? What had I been really good at? I kept coming up empty handed and more and more frustrated. My coach kept encouraging me telling me these nuggets were there…that we all had many passions, they were forgotten and we had to keep searching to remember. It eluded me. I felt like the proverbial dumb blonde. My brain was blanking even. My mind frame was becoming negative and I knew I would never, ever get it. This was for the luxury of writers and really successful people, not me.

She reminded me of how successful I had been in my career in sales and suggested that some kind of passion must have come out of that…so I thought and thought. I knew I had been good at negotiations but wasn’t passionate about it. As I dug further I asked myself why I had been good at negotiations. On analysis, I realized I had been really great at overcoming objections. As a matter of fact, I loved overcoming objections. I even received compliments on this ability. My heart made a connection and I knew this was my passion, my strength.

Once I found it my world changed. I wrote a book about it. That sounds easy…”I wrote a book about it.” Let me re-phrase it. I spent 6 months working 10 hour days writing a book about it, sometimes anguishing and fretting, waking up at all hours to edit copy. In the process of doing this I gained a great deal of confidence. I knew I had a message to share with others. Before I started the book, my coach assured me that her coachees complained to her that they didn’t know how to answer objections and there was a real need for such a book. I did an SEO search and there were no other books for sale for coaches according to that program , only many articles on objection handling. So I knew I had a targeted niche.

But once again I digress. I really want to talk about the qualities of having a great coach who doesn’t coach according to the a,b,c’s. Almost from the very beginning, she had me searching for the very visceral components of “who I am” in order to create products to sell. So not only do I have an ebook to sell, but I have a companion class to go with it-a teleseries. As if that isn’t enough I have the confidence to know that I am an expert in the field, a specialist, a go-to person. When I think of the woman going into online coaching early in 2011, I was really quite cynical expecting very little change. What I got is like 10 Christmases. I am so excited. I can really help people with my product. I have my coach to thank. Her name is Jan Marie Dore of www.femalepreneurs.com

 

© 2012 Sarah Wood

 About the Author: Sarah Jo Wood is founder of Evolving Advisors Inc. and author of ‘How to turn a No or a Maybe into a Yes!”  Her coaching program teaches entrepreneurs like you to overcome objections so you can sign up all the clients you want, fill your practice, and increase your bottom line.  To begin supercharging your sales, download your complimentary sales package today at www.evolvingadvisors.com.

Selling: The New Marketing?

In days past, selling and marketing were two very different business animals. Marketing was all about communications and the messages about your business. Namely, what you needed to say to your target audience to get them to check you (and your business) out. Selling was all about, well, making sales.

The lines have blurred considerably between selling and marketing today. Knowing how these two business roles have morphed, and even merged, is the key to keeping your business top-of-mind with prospects and current clients and making more sales.

This doesn’t mean the old ways aren’t still used. It’s just that the old ways of doing selling and marketing don’t work nearly as well in the new economy, especially with digital mediums such as social media in the mix.

Prospecting means listening

It used to be that you could pick up the phone or send an email to connect with clients or prospects. These days, that’s not so easy. But it doesn’t mean that, as a salesperson, you don’t have a tool at your disposal to put you into the communications loop.

Today’s salespeople need to have a social media presence, if only to monitor what their clients and prospects are doing there. Using tools available to keep pace with clients is as easy as using Hootsuite and Trackur to monitor client activity. Branchout in Facebook allows you to connect with just about anyone and tap into the people your friends have connected with, too.

Educate don’t sell

Today, expertise is the name of the selling game. It’s not enough to have a snazzy elevator speech and perfect pitch for a presentation. Salespeople must know, understand and communicate their company’s products and service information in a way that educates their prospects and clients. The hard sell is a thing of the past. While the old sales methods of using manipulation or psychology still exist, the salespeople that use them are struggling.

Insights are for sharing

As part of the education process, salespeople must be able to sift through their and competitor’s information to provide answers to questions prospects have. This means they must be able to anticipate where confusion might exist, explain strengths, weaknesses and points of differentiation in a way that is insightful and (as above) educational. The salesperson who can help clients sift through the enormous amount of data available to them, assisting them in understanding what they’re seeing and helping them make a wise decision, is a salesperson who will do very well in this new sales economy.

Nurture clients through storytelling

Everyone loves a good story. This means that salespeople must be able to weave tales that inspire and illustrate how a client’s needs could be met through example. By taking the client’s issues, coupling them with relevant solutions – and then demonstrating how someone else succeeded in the same way – provides comfort and conveys the salesperson understands the problem intimately. Even if they don’t.

Close softly and develop a good relationship first

As noted above, hard closes are a thing of the past. Today’s salespeople must be able to establish relationships not only with prospects and current clients, but also with others who might be in a position to meet the needs of their clients. Being able to help clients – even outside of the salesperson’s expertise or industry can go a long way in solidifying a long-term relationship.

By using these tactics of marketing, salespeople can enhance their skill set, generate their own leads, enhance the rapport they have with prospects and clients, provide a wider-range of solutions and, most importantly, close more business. And that’s what it’s really about isn’t it?

 

© 2012 Sarah Wood

 About the Author: Sarah Jo Wood is founder of Evolving Advisors Inc. and author of ‘How to turn a No or a Maybe into a Yes!”  Her coaching program teaches entrepreneurs like you to overcome objections so you can sign up all the clients you want, fill your practice, and increase your bottom line.  To begin supercharging your sales, download your complimentary sales package today at www.evolvingadvisors.com.

5 Critical Objections to Consider When Writing Sales Copy

1. “Are You Relating to Me?” Have you branded? Have you researched your target market? This is the critical factor that will make you credible to your audience and make them attract to you. You can never have enough attraction coming your way. You will have researched your target market, knowing what periodicals they read, knowing what their interests are, knowing their concerns and what keeps them up worrying at night. You will be an “expert” at addressing their concerns. You will have the truth about what they know and they will value you as an “expert.”

2. WIIFM!!! What kind of acronym is that? It stands for “What’s in it for me!” You need to know your product, really well and be able to explain why your product is unique so they should buy it. It might sound something like this, “A new way to transform your business and why nobody else gets it.” What makes you unique?

3. KISS. Keep it simple. Describe your product in plain English. Don’t try to impress with big words or techno-babble. Talk about how you will reveal “the best kept secrets,” to rivet their attention. Talk to them in terms of benefits, not only features. Ask them where they want to see their business in a year, something they can envision. Ask them questions such as if they have enough clients or enough income or enough time off or if they are feeling overwhelmed.

4. Testimonials. They are at this point saying “Prove It!” So you have proven testimonials on hand. They will transform any critic’s thinking. These testimonials are written proof that the clients have had remarkable success in working with you, they have improved their income, and their business wouldn’t be the same without you. What else could they ask for?

5. The Guarantee. This is for the prospective client who says, “Yeah, it worked for them but it probably won’t work for me.” It removes all cynicism so they can take the next step forward and carry on through the sale. It lessens all objections and puts everything on a neutral basis. If you make your guarantee for 365 days, even better, it takes the pressure off what a 30 days guarantee does. Most clients will feel relaxed and forget all about it.

Three Tips to Overcoming Objections

Do you stand up when there is a standing ovation?

If you learn about why you do this, you can use this proven formula in your marketing to reach more clients and make more money . Did you know in some theaters there are professional clacques used to start clapping and start standing up to get the other audience members to stand up for ovations?

Do you look around yourself to see if others are standing up or do you just stand up on your own?

This strategy is called Social Validation. It suggests that 95% of us are imitators and 5% of us are initiators. Here is another example of it. A restaurant in Bejing asterisked certain items on their menu as most popular and at the end of the month they discovered that these items had risen in popularity by a whopping 13%.

I am sure you have seen at Amazon.com when you purchase a book online, It shows you other similar books that are also popular.

So how can you use this in your marketing? I use it in my response to objections. If someone says, “It’s too much money…,” I then respond with something like this: “Many of my clients felt that way at first but changed their mind after…”

See how I said “Many of my clients.” That is social validation. People like to do what other people like to do. They are joiners. It has been proven they like to buy what other people buy also. It makes them feel safe, a secret formula for you to use in you marketing.

Another tip to use when you are dealing with objections is to isolate the objection. By this I mean make sure there aren’t any other objections standing in your way. Here’s what I mean. “Insert Name, may I ask, aside from the price factor is there anything else standing in your way of making a decision today?”

You have now eliminated “I want to think it over; I have to talk to my partner, etc.” You and your prospect are now gaining momentum, without pressure.

Use benefits instead of features. Let’s pretend we are in the stereo store eavesdropping on the sales clerk who is citing off the features of a new stereo system to a young couple. It has turned into a major yawn-fest for the young couple, who are thinking about dinner instead of the stereo unit. If only he would say something like, “Imagine, lying back in your own living room, listening to the Boston Pops, with this unit you would be so thrilled.” The latter statement evokes the senses where as the list of features doesn’t.

Benefit statement sound like “earning more income, taking more time off, adding clients etc.” Try to talk about the benefits in your descriptions. “My last client got a lot of new clients using my product.”

I hope these tips have been helpful for you. They can be found in my book, “How to turn a No or a Maybe into a Yes!”

 

© 2011 Sarah Wood

 About the Author: Sarah Jo Wood is founder of Evolving Advisors Inc. and author of ‘How to turn a No or a Maybe into a Yes!”  Her coaching program teaches entrepreneurs like you to overcome objections so you can sign up all the clients you want, fill your practice, and increase your bottom line.  To begin supercharging your sales, download your complimentary sales package today at www.evolvingadvisors.com.

Joy Bing Fleming

I can’t remember who reached out to whom first when it came to my relationship on Face Book with Joy Bing Fleming but it immediately evolved into a wonderful correspondence and over time into a deep friendship of trust and mutual cooperation and admiration.

I can honestly say that she has gone out of her way for me in helping me out as I navigate the ins and outs of the social media. She is a social media maven and has been cited for her numerous connections on Twitter. How she finds the time to link up with me and make me feel so special astounds me.

She has shared me with her list on more than one occasion and tried to help me enhance my business. So it is my turn to do something in return for Joy.
She is going to share her enthusiastic knowledge in lifepassion.net/increase-your-sales on March 1, 2012. This isn’t just like any other course. Have you ever been to a course where you get way more than you paid for? That is how Joy is as a person.

She goes way overboard in terms of her delivery. She brings you knowledge simplistically so you can understand social media in everyday language and really “get it” to incorporate it on your own pages. She gives you examples that you can immediately relate to. She also gives you great ideas for posting to make you sound creative and get you responses.

She teaches you the fundamental steps of engagement so you automatically acquire friends and fans and begin a social network. She takes all of the guesswork out of it for you. This is what you want! To be building a social community.

She also teaches you what NOT to do. Blunders that beginners and even practiced users are making.

Find out how to persuade your network how to opt-in to your free-giveaway page and become part of your list. How to build the trust. How to develop quality followers on Twitter… How to get retweeted… How to follow influencers and be popular. Learn all about the symbols and what they connote. Learn why you should relate far more than you should promote and Joy will explain how you could lose your followers by not adhering to her special secrets. She has a proven formula for you http://lifepassion.net/increase-your-sales

Haven’t you always said to yourself that you would like to become an EXPERT at Social Media? http://lifepassion.net/increase-your-sales

Most Sure-Fire Proven Customer List Building Tips to Grow your Business!!!

For Coaches, Consultants, Advisors, Mentors, Entrepreneurs who are still confused about which List Building Strategies to use!!!

It’s no secret that building your customer list is one of the most challenging parts of building your business!!

In today’s uncertain economy and in building a business, list-building strategies often spell the difference between failure and success. If you’re like most entrepreneurs, you’ve probably heard gazillion things you can do to start building your customer and client list.

The great news is that entrepreneurs can use several free or low cost strategies that work like a charm- the proven formula is in doing them right. While any of the marketing tips in this series will work independently, combining two or more will skyrocket your results.

• Develop a Social Media Presence-If you don’t know this, it is the best kept secret! Entrepreneurs can create accounts on sites like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and can regularly communicate with prospects. According to Michele Scism, you could have 1000 followers in just 30 days and that’s because it’s an effective and inexpensive way to maintain top of-mind-status with potential clients and customers. A couple of things to keep in mind when social networking:
• Let personality shine. It’s no secret that people want to do business with people, so implementing personal touches is a good thing. From a favorite football team to a favorite pet, prospects will begin to like and trust entrepreneurs they can get to know (and if they don’t they’re probably not an ideal client anyway.) It’s a fact of life that when you are posting you need to give something of value. Suppose you were a color expert you could add that the color blue connotes trust and that is why banks and the police use it.
• Keep an eye on the clock. The ugly truth about writing on social media is that time just flies by. Between creating new posts, checking others posts, responding here and there, an hour can go by in what seems like mere seconds. In other words it can be an effective means for customer list building but not if it means it is taking up more time than it should. The best kept secret is to use a timer and only allow yourself so much time on social media.
• Tie social networking in with other marketing materials. Another best kept secret…Start a conversation on Twitter or Facebook, and direct followers to its end on a blog or a website. Or start a conversation in an article and direct readers to a Facebook post with more information.

5 Places You Can Use Magnetic Phrases for Maximum Impact

Within one day you could be writing like a Copywriter!

Magnetic Phrases – those spellbinding words that attract interest from readers and compel prime customers to complete the purchase – are very powerful tools that can – and should – appear in any business owner’s toolbox. The beauty of magnetic phrases is that you can use them anywhere you need a boost in responses. Most of you would think to use compelling words and phrases in sales copy, but would you think to use them in your blog posts? Or newsletter articles, perhaps?

The fact of the matter is that this compelling lingo can be used to captivate readers of any medium, but here are the top 5 that we’ll talk about today:

1. Sales pages. Of course, anyone who has written or has thought about writing a sales page knows that you’ve got to attract attention, keep attention, and move readers to the sale. So it’s no secret that magnetic phrases would have a place on the sales pages devoted to the promotion of your products and services. Read more

How Top Copywriters “Magnetize” Readers – and Sell Millions of their Products and Services

There’s a secret that top copywriters don’t want you to know about. The secret is that getting more sales with your marketing is all about getting readers excited to step forward and do business with you.

And a major way to do that is by choosing words that strike the right chord with your target market and cause them to respond with enthusiasm – so that they can hardly wait to click that “Buy Now” button or take whatever other action you want them to take.

And when you have a “copywriting toolkit” chock full of compelling words at your disposal, you’re able to :

1. Get your creative juices flowing. When starting from scratch, most of us fall back on our inner database of most-used words to communicate our message. But unfortunately, marketing that is filled with common, everyday language isn’t likely to excite or compel your readers…you’re more likely to bore them right to sleep. (No offense…it’s true of all of us!) Not to mention that when you’re staring at a blank screen, even the best writers in the world sometimes struggle with writer’s block (you know, that sweat-inducing, sheer-panic feeling that rises when you realize you can’t think of a single word to write). But if you know the right words to use, you can… Read more

Do you feel guilty about enrolling????

When most people think of enrollments, particularly in one-to-one enrollment conversations (think free consults), they typically experience a feeling of guilt or shame.

As if they’re somehow duping or manipulating someone else into doing something they want to do. Or they feel self-serving, like making a sale, and reaping the financial rewards, is somehow a negative thing. But I’m here to shake up that line of thinking, and to do that I need to break something to you that might be a bit hard to hear.

Thinking of sales like this, in a way that makes you feel guilty about the enrollment, only hurts everyone:

You – because you aren’t bringing in revenues, and without revenues, your business doesn’t even have a chance of surviving.

Your prospects – because they aren’t getting the help they NEED in their lives.

Let’s face it: the idea of sales as self-serving is actually selfish in and of itself. Because it’s NOT all about you. Yes, selling your products and services will help you, financially and perhaps emotionally (in the satisfaction of helping others). Read more

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