Client Magnets Official Blog

Posts Tagged ‘Networking’

Have you ever wondered what your clients are saying about your business? Would you love a direct line into your clients’ minds; to know what they really want and what they’re willing to buy?

Social media is a place where you can really get into the mind of your buyer.  You can dialogue with your clients and listen to what they are saying -  not only to you, but to each other. It’s the perfect place for you to find out what your client’s REALLY want.  And when you discover that, you can go to it – providing it to them!

1.  Identify “Hot Topics”
By listening and engaging in social media conversations you will quickly identify the “hot topics”.  What are your prospects asking?  What do they need help with?

2.  Respond to Demand
Once you have the “hot topics” in mind, it’s time to showcase how you can help your prospects.  Use these hot topics to create the content for your blog and social media updates.   Give your prospects the answers they’re looking for.  Position yourself as someone who is in-the-know who understands popular concerns. Demonstrate your expertise in a way that inspires people to use your business or services.  Give your prospects what they want, when they want it!

3.  Create a “BUZZ”
Social media gives you a ready-made channel to generate buzz about your new content and offerings.  With platforms like Twitter, you can use “hashtags” to incite and track conversations about specific subjects and groups.  There are also search tools available that will enable you to easily track what people are saying about you, your “hot topics” and your content and offerings.

4.  Track and Evaluate Market Response
By tuning into the various social media platforms you make it easy to evaluate the response to your new product, content and business presence.  You can use the information to review the effectiveness of your offerings and continue to craft better-tailored content in the future.  It’s also a way to determine what formats and delivery methods work best to reach your prospects and clients.

Facebook, Twitter, Digg and other social media networks are ready-made tools to help you in the quest to get inside the mind of your buyers. Use social media tools to track what people are talking about, and create timely content to demonstrate your expertise and the fact that you’re ‘in-the-know.’

Bernadette Doyle is a marketing specialist who helps entrepreneurs become client magnets and attract a steady stream of their ideal clients. If you’d like to receive invaluable tips and advice on how to attract clients with ease, register at http://www.clientmagnets.com

Social media provides a way for you to differentiate yourself from your competitors and other people in your industry. When you establish genuine relationships with clients and prospects, you become more than just a business; you become a friend and a partner. To fully utilize social networking and skyrocket your business, don’t just provide a product or service; become integral to the lives of your clients and colleagues. This translates directly to business success in ways you can’t duplicate through other techniques.

Over-Deliver to the Value of Ten
When you use social media to communicate with clients and represent your business, you can’t just put in the minimum effort. To be truly successful in social media, my friend, Carrie Wilkerson recommends over-delivering to the value of ten. Invest in people. Pour value into their lives. Make your clients feel like they’d never dream of doing business with anyone else. Become so invested in your clients’ personal and business success that you establish yourself as an irreplaceable resource.

Offer information, helpful advice and genuine caring. People can tell when you’re being genuine or whether you’re just saying what they want to hear. Providing genuine value to people – over-delivering that value – is the fastest way to win them as lifetime customers. Provide your clients with connections, resources and information. Don’t just meet expectations and deliver the bare minimum. Over-deliver to the value of ten to really get people in your camp and build a loyal, reliable customer and colleague base.

The Law of Reciprocity
The Law of Reciprocity all depends on attitude. Under the Law of Reciprocity, you provide a ton of value to potential clients and business colleagues. When you do it in a way that feels genuinely connected, your clients and business colleagues will reciprocate. They’ll come to you when they have something they can offer, or when they need something you offer.

The Law of Reciprocity is the spirit of giving. It isn’t about asking “how can I make this work for me?” or “what will you give me if I give you this?” Instead, it’s about giving to others, because this sort of genuine giving will inspire others to give back to you.

Over-Delivering Leads to Developing Business
When you firmly entrench yourself in someone’s life and business, it becomes a natural next step for them to look to you when business opportunities arise. If you’re already providing value to people, they’ll naturally turn to you when they have an opportunity related to your field. It isn’t because you’ve been asking them for their business. It’s because you’re proving that you’re invested in their success, and people like to help people with whom they have a good relationship.

Over-delivering in social media is a way to differentiate yourself from your competitors, and from the other people in your industry. Build a personal relationship with prospects and colleagues; become indispensable to their lives; and watch your business success skyrocket!

When you become the go-to person in your clients’ lives, you’ve created a successful business that will translate to new opportunities for you. Provide useful information, make connections and give to your clients selflessly, and you’ll find them giving back to you!

Bernadette Doyle is a marketing specialist who helps entrepreneurs become client magnets and attract a steady stream of their ideal clients. If you’d like to receive invaluable tips and advice on how to attract clients with ease, register at http://www.clientmagnets.com

Start connecting and building relationships with twitter conversations.

Social media platforms provide a great opportunity to build a rapport with potential clients or business partners online, even when you can’t communicate regularly in person. You can use Twitter to build a rapport with people you’ve never met, or to stay in contact with people you meet at an event or conference. Twitter, in particular, makes it easy to have low-pressure conversations, get to know people, and expand the networking you can do at conferences and conventions.

Build a Rapport Before You Meet
One of the best things about Twitter is that it provides you with an easy way to build a rapport with potential clients or business contacts before you ever meet. You can network with people via Twitter weeks or months before an event, and you may even schedule an event because of your connections via Twitter. When you do meet at an event, you don’t have to go through the awkward “getting to know you” phase – you already have an established relationship with the person you’ve been chatting with via Twitter.

If you’re meeting a potential client, Twitter provides you with a great advantage over your competition because you can establish yourself as a person and an expert in your field via social media before you ever meet your client. With prior association, clients and potential business partners are more likely to make a decision to do business with you.

Use Twitter to Follow Up with Contacts
Twitter is also a great way for you to follow up with contacts you meet at conferences and events. These networking events can be challenging because you’re trying to meet and talk to as many people as possible, and you have a limited amount of time to spend with each person. The people you meet are also trying to meet people, and they, too, have a limited amount of time to spend with you. In the past, this has meant that you sometimes miss out on valuable networking opportunities because you spent too long with someone, and didn’t have enough time to spend with someone else.

You can meet and talk to someone for a few minutes, and then follow up via Twitter. You can send a message the next day or days later, and continue your conversation online. This enables you to build a deeper relationship with people than you typically can at a conference, and it also gives you an opportunity to talk with more people.

Twitter is a Great Low-Pressure Networking Tool
Because Twitter consists of sending short messages, it’s a great low-pressure networking tool. You can send short messages to everyone on your list, or even have conversations with an individual via Twitter. Most Twitter exchanges are one or two sentences long due to the character limitation. This means you don’t have to be brilliant to shine in a Twitter conversation, and you don’t have to worry about carrying on lengthy exchanges.

So starting today.  Let me encourage you to devote a few minutes per day to Twitter.  Start building relationships with twitter conversations and I promise you, you will see a reward for your time investment.

Twitter is just one of the methods I use to attract a steady stream of new clients.   If you’d like to know more about attracting new clients and achieving real business success I invite you to join me for my upcoming free teleseminar series – “7 Secrets for Attracting New Clients”.  Register for FREE here:   “7 Secrets For Attracting New Clients”.

Have you ever wondered what your clients are saying about your business? Would you love a direct line into your clients’ minds; to know what they really want and what they’re willing to buy?

Social media is a place where you can really get into the mind of your buyer.  You can dialogue with your clients and listen to what they are saying -  not only to you, but to each other.  It’s the perfect place for you to find out what your clients REALLY want.    And when you discover that, you can go to it – providing it to them!

Here’s my four step formula for using social media to “get into the mind” of your prospect…

1.  Identify “Hot Topics”
By listening and engaging in social media conversations, you will quickly identify the “hot topics”.

The key here is to listen and learn. What are your prospects asking? What do they need help with?
What topics are the most popular?

2.  Respond to Demand
Once you have the “hot topics” in mind, it’s time to showcase how you can help your prospects.  Use these hot topics to create the content for your blog and social media updates.   Give your prospects the answers they’re looking for.   Position yourself as someone who is in-the-know, who understands popular concerns. Demonstrate your expertise in a way that inspires people to use your business or services.   Give your prospects what they want, when they want it!

3.  Create a “BUZZ”
Social media gives you a ready-made channel to generate buzz about your new content and offerings.  With platforms like Twitter, you can use “hashtags” to incite and track conversations about specific subjects and groups.  There are also search tools available that will enable you to easily track what people are saying about you, your “hot topics” and your content and offerings.

4.  Track and Evaluate Market Response
Facebook, Twitter, Digg and other social media networks are ready-made tools to help you in the quest to get inside the mind of your buyers. By tuning into the various social media platforms you make it easy to evaluate the response to your new product, content and business presence.  You can use the information to review the effectiveness of your offerings and continue to craft better-tailored content in the future.  It’s also a way to determine what formats and delivery methods work best to reach your prospects and clients.

I encourage you TODAY to start “tuning in” to what your customers REALLY want!  If you listen to their conversations through the various social media platforms, they’ll tell you.  You can then use that information to give them what they want – and then everyone wins!

When you meet someone for the first time, you have a chance to make a real connection, or you can just pass on your name and be forgotten. Successful relationship-building requires more than just handing out business cards. To build long-lasting, solid and mutually-beneficial relationships, a little homework and a little thoughtfulness goes a long way. Here are my tips for making an impression that brings lasting results …

Research the People You’re Meeting

If you’re meeting someone in particular, research the person or people you’re meeting. Lots of resources exist that can give you both professional and personal reference material. The Web is a source of myriad information, with things like company websites, personal bios, work histories, resumes, portfolios; depending on who you’re meeting, you may be able to find a wide range of information about your contact.

If the Web doesn’t yield any useful information, you could check with the company where your contact works, to see if they have any marketing information containing professional info about your contact. You could also check periodicals, such as magazine stories, newspaper articles or professional interviews. Depending on how public the person is that you’re meeting, you may be able to find everything from the name of a spouse to the first place he or she worked out of college.

Use the information you find when you meet your contact. Talk about common interests, such as being dog owners, adoptive parents, yachters; whatever common bond you can form with your contact can help you form a good relationship. Ask about things near and dear to the person’s heart – not just business talk – and you’re well on your way to forming a real connection.

Ask Questions and Show Genuine Interest

Get to know people to form real connections. Ask questions about everything; not just their professional life, but their personal interests and family life, too. The more you can show that you understand, know and really “get” the person, the better your relationship will be, and the more business opportunities you’re likely to gain. Be a real person to your connections, too – if your new business partner volunteers information about his wife, talk about your wife. The more personal you can make your relationships with people, the better your long-term success with those relationships will be.

Have Fun Making Connections With All People

Everyone can have fun building good relationships – all you have to do is be genuinely interested in people. Enjoy getting to know your business colleagues, or even that woman you met on the street the other day. Forming connections with people can help in all aspects of your life, and even random connections can help your business in unexpected ways. You never know when someone will refer a key contact; an affiliate who may have great products for your prospects, or a business or distributor that could make your product a high-demand success!

Don’t just see people as stepping stones to a better business. Form real, legitimate connections by getting to know people, and I promise good business will naturally follow.

Social networking platforms, such as Twitter and Facebook, give you a powerful new tool for connecting with potential prospects, clients, sales leads and new business partners. Because of the nature of social networking, successful social networking is about more than just creating a marketing campaign and sending it out into the ether. Social networking is a social process, and it works best when your personality shines through to your social networking contacts. With the right techniques, you can build your personality on social networking platforms and improve your social networking success.

Offer Advice: One way you can get real personal, real fast with your contacts is to offer advice or even just sympathetic comments. Listen to what people say, and respond to them even when it’s not related to your business. This is a fast and easy way to form personal connections with people, which can lead to unexpected business opportunities. Additionally, by offering advice or sharing information about related things in your life, you’re letting people find out more about you as a person and letting your personality shine through your social networking.

Share Personal Information: Share personal information via Twitter and Facebook. For years, people have had distinctive mindsets of “this is business” and “personal is for friends.” Let your business contacts be your friends, too. When you share information about your diet, or struggling with the conflicts of being a parent and business person, you’re sharing personal information that lets other people see that you’re not just a faceless business – you’re an individual.

The things that you share might resonate with your followers, and give them a reason to keep following you beyond your business information. People are also more likely to refer friends to other friends for business opportunities than to faceless strangers, so if you and your business can become a friend, you’ll get more business opportunities.

Find Ways to Blend Business and Personal: Find ways to blend business and personal updates. If all of your updates are personal, your followers who aren’t particularly interested in your business might just go away. If you share personal information, too, your followers may be interested in you as a person and continue to follow, even if they don’t find your business particularly interesting.

By blending business with personal updates, you can share information about your business without being blatant. For example, you could say something like “Going to Ireland to speak for business, and taking my husband along as an anniversary gift.” This lets people know that you’re a successful business person who travels and speaks, but also shares information about your personal life – that you and your husband have an anniversary.

Be Genuine: The most important thing about sharing your personality through social networking is to be genuine. Don’t give fake updates tailored just to get a reaction from your followers; be forthright and honest, and people will respect your integrity. If you let your personality shine through to your social networking followers, you’ll find yourself with a bigger pool of followers, which potentially gives you more business opportunities.

Bernadette Doyle created Client Magnets Ltd to help self-employed people solve one of their biggest business problems: attract a steady stream of clients. If you’d like to receive invaluable tips and advice on how to attract clients with ease, register at http://www.clientmagnets.com

As a business marketing tool, you’ll only get out of social networking what you put into it. If you only put a few minutes per day into your social networking efforts and aren’t particularly invested in the platform, you won’t get a lot of return. However, if you put a genuine effort into your social networking, and work to help your associates and contacts, you can get a real return on your investment. One of the best ways to succeed via social networking is to become a great relationship builder.

Building Connections Helps the Relationship Bank Account
Building connections among your social networking community puts a lot into your relationship bank account. You might connect two people who would be great for one another because of a business venture or shared interest, and that might have no direct impact at all on your business. But both of those people will appreciate you connecting them, and that puts a lot into your relationship bank account. The next time one of those people sees something they can do for you, they will, and that can make a great difference to your business.

The Secret to Relationship Building
Relationship building is about paying attention to what people say and do, what they have to offer and what they’re looking for. If you know that John owns a plumbing business and Sally had a pipe burst, you can connect John and Sally and they both benefit. Sally gets her pipe fixed, and John gets some business. They’re both grateful for you because they both benefited, and if they can do something to help you or your business, they’ve got a personal reason to do it.

You don’t just have to connect people who have overlapping niches or a business interest in one another. You can also connect people who have something in common faith-wise, or family-wise; people who have shared interests but don’t know one another. This helps them because it gives them someone else who shares their interest, and it also makes them like you more because you paid attention and noticed this about them. Again, this puts a lot of money in the relationship bank account, even if it doesn’t impact you directly.

To practice good relationship-building skills, try introducing at least four people per day to one another via Twitter or some other social networking platform. If the connection is helpful to them, it puts a lot into the relationship bank account in terms of gratitude to you for connecting them. Even if the connection isn’t helpful, people will appreciate the effort and it will put some money into the relationship bank account because you went out of your way to make an effort on their behalf.

Relationship-building doesn’t have to be a monumental effort. You can do it via Twitter or another social networking platform. All you have to do is pay attention to what people say, and match people who have similar interests or might benefit from knowing one another. It’s a simple process that can yield big benefits for you and your business.

Bernadette Doyle specializes in helping entrepreneurs attract a steady stream of ideal clients. If you want to get clients calling you instead of you calling them, sign up for her free weekly e-zine at http://www.clientmagnets.com

Good marketers know they need to stay fresh in people’s minds to be ideally positioned for that sale, or to form a good business partnership with a new affiliate. People try a variety of ways to stay in people’s thoughts, both physically and on the Web. You may do article marketing, newsletters, email blasts, and media marketing to keep your Web presence fresh. Alternately, you may send postcards, letters, holiday cards, or even birthday cards to build relationships and stay connected with people physically. Most of these methods are getting old and tired, but forming good relationships enables you to connect with people in creative new ways.

Be Creative with Your Connections
Do you send out holiday cards every year to your prospects? So do most businesses. You don’t stay fresh in people’s minds by doing the same thing that everyone else does. Find new ways to be creative with your connections, and catch your clients’ minds in a unique way. By forming good relationships with people, you’ll have a fresh pool of creative ideas to draw upon to keep your relationships dynamic and unique.

Consider this example: Carrie Wilkerson spoke with my Mastermind Group and talked about how she uses social media to build relationships. Carrie mentioned that one of her contacts talks on Twitter every day about how he walks his dog in the morning. He mentions the dog by name, and even the type of dog. When Carrie wanted to make a connection with this man, she didn’t just send him a note or a card; she sent a dog toy for his dog. She mentioned his dog by name, and found a toy that the dog would appreciate, based on the information that this man shared about his dog.

This showed the man that Carrie listened, and was interested in him as a person – not just him as a business contact. This is a fantastic strategy for solidifying relationships, and as a way to stay connected with people that will actually stay fresh in their thoughts. That man probably won’t remember everyone who sent him a card, but he’ll definitely remember the woman who sent his dog a toy.

Use Your Relationships to form Unique Connections
Your relationships with people provide valuable connection opportunities. By building good relationships, you set yourself up for opportunities you might not otherwise have. When you build a good relationship with someone, for example, you’re much more likely to be set up with the friend of a friend as a new business contact. People are more likely to refer business contacts that they like, than pushy sales-oriented people who don’t care about them as a person.

Use your relationships with people to form unique connections. Don’t just be the sales person, or the person with the coaching product, or that consultant. Be a friend; be the person who sent the dog a toy, or the person who’s always asking about the kids or the wife. By building these unique connections with people, you’re getting into their lives in a real and meaningful way, and you’ll be in their minds if a fantastic new business connection comes up, or if they remember that they know someone who might be a good match for your business.

Bernadette Doyle specializes in helping entrepreneurs attract a steady stream of ideal clients. If you want to get clients calling you instead of you calling them, sign up for her free weekly e-zine at http://www.clientmagnets.com

Although starting a blog isn’t really a complex undertaking, it’s still a good idea to do some research so that you know you’re presenting the best site possible. You want to drive as much traffic as you can to your blog in order to keep your internet rankings climbing.

It’s also important to keep in mind that blogging involves more than just writing the posts. You have to consider such factors as user experience, site design, and the software you’ll need to get your blog running.

Here are a few resources you can check out that offer great information for starting a blog.

www.IncomeDiary.com. This is the site where Michael Dunlop, blogging entrepreneur, offers a free e-course that details his process.

www.WordPress.com. WordPress offers the software you’ll need to get started. One of its strongest selling points is the ability to customize features to suit your own needs. There are also many free features you can use to get started in a matter of minutes. It also allows you to track statistics and block spam.

www.UXBooth.com. You want visitors to your site to have a good experience; this is what will bring them back again and again. This site offers tips for creating the best experience for your readers.

www.SmashingMagazine.com. This design site presents the latest in web design and development. While you won’t need to study design in order to launch a blog, this site can be a useful resource for getting ideas about how your site should look.

www.CopyBlogger.com. This is a good resource for learning how to write blogs that will drive traffic to your site as you build your list and market products.  It offers courses on copywriting, SEO, headline writing and keywords, among other topics.

www.ProBlogger.net. Visit this site to learn about the more technical side of having a successful blog. You’ll find information about blog design, advertising, tools and services, and much more.

www.WarriorForum.com. A forum where Internet marketers talk about their trade, this site can provide useful information about sales techniques. You might even find tips for marketing methods that apply directly to your niche.

www.TaskUS.com. Although this is technically a virtual assistant site, you can use the service to create custom ranking lists and other useful information that you can post in your blog.

Once you’re comfortable with the technical and writing aspects of blogging, you can start drawing visitors to your site.

Remember that if you want to become a great copywriter, you should first be a great copyreader. You can learn so much from reading other people’s copy and applying what you learn to your own niche.

These resources are sure to give you tips and tricks that will help make your blog successful.

Bernadette Doyle specializes in helping entrepreneurs attract a steady stream of ideal clients. If you want to get clients calling you instead of you calling them, sign up for her free weekly e-zine at http://www.clientmagnets.com

More and more businesses are using social networking to share information with clients and prospects. Businesses promote products, news releases, conferences and a variety of business-oriented information through social networking with varying success. The most successful businesses don’t just share sterile updates with their followers, but instead hook their followers with interesting information that promotes conversation.

Avoid Sterile Updates
Some businesses create social networking accounts, but just don’t “get” the purpose of networking. These businesses share sterile updates, like “New article posted today” or “New article posted today.” These updates just aren’t very interesting, and they don’t generate buzz or interest in the way that more conversational updates can do.

Instead of saying “Teleseminar today,” a business could say “Excited about the teleseminar today, with 300 people registered and more openings available!” You’re conveying the same basic information, but in a more engaging way. This more conversational style generates buzz and makes it more likely that people will follow your links or want to find out more about what you’re promoting.

Find Ways to Interest Your Followers
Don’t just share a bunch of self-serving updates whenever you have a new product to promote, or an action you want your followers to take. Find ways to interest your followers, and make them want to know what you’ll share next. This can be interesting quotes related to your business, or just general quotes designed to make people think or give them ideas.

You could also share interesting things that other people have posted on the Web, either via sharing links or Re-Tweeting things that other Twitter users have already shared. You don’t have to spend a lot of time creating interesting content in order to interest your followers; just share interesting content, even if it already exists elsewhere.

Promote Conversation to Build Social Networking Success
One of the single most successful social networking marketing techniques hardly seems like marketing at all: promoting conversations. Promoting conversations, particularly when they tie back in to your business, is a great way to keep and build followers, and even boost sales.

One business that uses social networking to promote conversations is a motorcycle part supplier. Every Friday, they ask people if they’re working on their motorcycles or riding for the weekend. People share information about the repairs they’re making, which gives other people the confidence to make similar repairs, or undertake their own repairs. This translates directly to additional sales for the parts supplier, because people order parts to make their repairs. All of this is because the supplier asks a single question every weekend that promotes conversation.

Bottom line: if you’re using social networking to promote your business, don’t just promote your business. Don’t just share sterile, boring updates. Engage your social networking followers. Share interesting information and links, and encourage conversations. You don’t have to talk directly about your business to boost business performance; in fact, some of the best performance boosts come when you don’t talk about your business at all, but instead facilitate interaction among your followers.

Bernadette Doyle is a marketing specialist who helps entrepreneurs become client magnets and attract a steady stream of their ideal clients. She publishes a free, weekly newsletter for trainers, speakers, coaches, consultants, complementary therapists and solo professionals. If you’d like to receive invaluable tips and advice on how to attract clients with ease, register at http://www.clientmagnets.com