Archives for March 2014
Content Types for Social Media and When to Use Them
You’ve probably noticed by now that there are numerous types of content being shared on social media sites. For example, cat videos continue to dominate the Internet. While sharing silly videos with your friends is part of the appeal of social media, business users need to share content with a purpose. Below are several types of content you can use to get your messages across.
1. Informational content – Sharing informational content helps to show your followers that you are informed on a given topic. Thus, you are more likely to be seen as credible. For example, if you are jewelry designer who specializes in working with precious metals, sharing information about precious metals will reinforce your expertise and show that you know what you are talking about. Examples of informational content include magazine articles, news stories, special reports, industry reports, industry statistics, infographics, and videos. Note that you don’t have to be the author of the informational material in order to share a link to it. If you want to build even more credibility, consider writing your own articles, blog posts, or reports. When to use informational content? On a regular basis, but try not to bombard 
your followers with an endless stream of it.
2. Conversational content – This isn’t rocket science. It’s all about being social. Ask questions, join conversations, answer questions, share an anecdote, and interact with your followers. When to use conversational content? All the time! Make sure to engage on social media on a regular basis.
3. Funny content – Let’s face it, cat videos get the most shares. However, humor is hard to pull off as it’s too easy to unintentionally offend someone. Keep it clean, keep it relevant to your product or service, and use sparingly.
4. Promotional content – On social media, you really need to balance promotional content with everything else. The fastest way to lose followers is to bombard them with promotions. That said, if you build strong enough relationships with your followers by sharing great information and interacting with them on a personal level, they will be more receptive to your promotions and may even look forward to them. Keep in mind that promotions can be fun and engaging. For example, holding a photo contest related to one of your products or services is a great way to get your customers to promote your business for you. This approach also takes advantage of the word-of-mouth effect. When to use promotional content? Use sparingly. The general rule of thumb is 80 percent non-promotional content and 20 promotional content.
Text, photos, videos, animated GIFs, and cartoons are all different types of content. However, each of these content types can be categorized as either informational, conversational, funny, or promotional.
It’s your turn. What’s your favorite type of content to share on social media? Which type generates the best response?
Watch out elephants! This slayer of business challenges comes with 30 years of record breaking sales, marketing, operations, training and leadership experience . He has worked face-to-face with 100’s of small business owners as well as large firms. His love of creating, communicating, developing and executing results for clients shines with each project, publication and training event. His entrepreneurial spirit, passion, industry experience, education, problem-solving prowess, charismatic personality and been-there-done that attitude leads his client focused approach.
Keeping an Eye on Your Social Competitors
You can learn a lot of neat tricks from your socially-savvy competitors. In fact, you may need to if you want to keep up. While your competitors are not likely to sit down with you and share all of their secrets, a little social espionage may be all you need to get inspired to take your own social efforts to a higher level.
How to Spy on Your Social Competitors
It’s not necessary to skulk around under cover of darkness or hack your competitors’ websites. Everything you need to know is publicly available. Start by checking out their websites, blogs, and social media profiles and take detailed notes. Are they posting regularly? Can you detect a pattern? What are their primary messages? Which keywords are they targeting? Are they holding contests on Facebook? Are they sharing information and special reports? Are they hosting webinars? Are they building e-mailing lists? How large are their followings? Are they adding fans regularly? Are their fans interacting by commenting, liking, or sharing their posts?
In addition to observing and recording your observations, consider opting into their email campaigns or listening to recordings of their webinars. This allows you access to even more intimate portions of their marketing campaigns. Again observe and take notes. 
While you are checking out your competitors efforts, pretend that you are an actual prospect who follows your competition and your business. Where does the competition shine? Where does the competition blow your company away? Where does the competition struggle? Ask these same questions of your own efforts.
By now, you should have a pretty good idea as to the social strengths and weaknesses of your competition and your own business. Using these insights, identify the following areas:
- Areas that you absolutely must beef up simply to compete
- Areas that you should improve in order take advantage of your competitors’ weaknesses
- Great marketing ideas you would like to implement
This exercise should give you several ideas. If you want even more, consider using a free tool such as Social Crawlytics to find out even more about what type of content your competitors are sharing and where. This tool can also help you to identify which content is most engaging. That in turn can give you ideas for creating content that may also be highly engaging with your own followers.
What if Your Competitors are Spying on You?
Just as you can freely opt into your competitors’ mailing list, they can do the same to you. They also may be checking out your website and social media pages as well as using analytics tools to learn more about your keywords and content strategies. Keep that in mind. While you may be tempted to become protective of your efforts, consider adopting a mindset of showing your competitors how it’s done. Be the leader. Be the innovator. Be the one that impresses prospects and customers first and you won’t have to worry as much about what the competition is doing.
Watch out elephants! This slayer of business challenges comes with 30 years of record breaking sales, marketing, operations, training and leadership experience . He has worked face-to-face with 100’s of small business owners as well as large firms. His love of creating, communicating, developing and executing results for clients shines with each project, publication and training event. His entrepreneurial spirit, passion, industry experience, education, problem-solving prowess, charismatic personality and been-there-done that attitude leads his client focused approach.
Listen to and Counter Your Prospect's Objections
The best politicians know their opponent's positions as well as their own. The best athletes know their opponent's weaknesses down to the slightest flinch. It's the same in sales; sales people need to be aware of every potential objection that a customer has to a pitch, and be prepared with a response.
Here are some tips for how to counter any objections that you encounter during a sales pitch:
· Listen closely to what your customer is saying. When your customer is talking, you should listen closely and let them explain exactly what's bothering him or her. People can tell if you're waiting to speak rather than actively listening, so be polite, make eye contact and do not interrupt.
· Repeat what your customer is concerned about. This repetition will show your prospective customer that you understand their concern and that you were listening as they told you about it. It helps to build a sense of trust right off the bat, and also gives the customer a chance to clear up their concern in case you misunderstood what they were saying.
· Determine the root of these concerns. Ask questions to help determine why the customer has their specific concern. By figuring out the cause of these concerns, you can give them a better response to their objection and offer a more appropriate solution to their worries.
· Make your counter. After you have a full understanding of the customer's objection, now is when you can give your response. Use relevant statistics or stories from previous customers to back up your position and to alleviate any fears that they have.
· Follow up. Give the customer a moment to think about the counter so that you don't come off as being too pushy. Then ask if you have properly answered the question by saying “did I explain that well?” or something similar. If there are any additional concerns that the prospect has, then repeat the process.
· Get back to your pitch. Once you have cleared up any objections that the prospect has, seamlessly transition back into your sales pitch and get back on track.
Remember: the key here is to be personal, understanding and empathetic. Customers hate to feel like they're being pressured into a purchase, so listening closely and determining the cause of the objection are extremely important steps to take.
For more tips about countering objections, contact us today at Viral Solutions!
Thomas von Ahn | Chief Elephant Slayer | Viral solutions LLC
Watch out elephants! This slayer of business challenges comes with 30 years of record breaking sales, marketing, operations, training and leadership experience . He has worked face-to-face with 100’s of small business owners as well as large firms. His love of creating, communicating, developing and executing results for clients shines with each project, publication and training event. His entrepreneurial spirit, passion, industry experience, education, problem-solving prowess, charismatic personality and been-there-done that attitude leads his client focused approach.
Listen to and Counter Your Prospect’s Objections
The best politicians know their opponent's positions as well as their own. The best athletes know their opponent's weaknesses down to the slightest flinch. It's the same in sales; sales people need to be aware of every potential objection that a customer has to a pitch, and be prepared with a response.
Here are some tips for how to counter any objections that you encounter during a sales pitch:
· Listen closely to what your customer is saying. When your customer is talking, you should listen closely and let them explain exactly what's bothering him or her. People can tell if you're waiting to speak rather than actively listening, so be polite, make eye contact and do not interrupt.
· Repeat what your customer is concerned about. This repetition will show your prospective customer that you understand their concern and that you were listening as they told you about it. It helps to build a sense of trust right off the bat, and also gives the customer a chance to clear up their concern in case you misunderstood what they were saying.
· Determine the root of these concerns. Ask questions to help determine why the customer has their specific concern. By figuring out the cause of these concerns, you can give them a better response to their objection and offer a more appropriate solution to their worries.
· Make your counter. After you have a full understanding of the customer's objection, now is when you can give your response. Use relevant statistics or stories from previous customers to back up your position and to alleviate any fears that they have.
· Follow up. Give the customer a moment to think about the counter so that you don't come off as being too pushy. Then ask if you have properly answered the question by saying “did I explain that well?” or something similar. If there are any additional concerns that the prospect has, then repeat the process.
· Get back to your pitch. Once you have cleared up any objections that the prospect has, seamlessly transition back into your sales pitch and get back on track.
Remember: the key here is to be personal, understanding and empathetic. Customers hate to feel like they're being pressured into a purchase, so listening closely and determining the cause of the objection are extremely important steps to take.
For more tips about countering objections, contact us today at Viral Solutions!
Thomas von Ahn | Chief Elephant Slayer | Viral solutions LLC
Watch out elephants! This slayer of business challenges comes with 30 years of record breaking sales, marketing, operations, training and leadership experience . He has worked face-to-face with 100’s of small business owners as well as large firms. His love of creating, communicating, developing and executing results for clients shines with each project, publication and training event. His entrepreneurial spirit, passion, industry experience, education, problem-solving prowess, charismatic personality and been-there-done that attitude leads his client focused approach.
Facebook Profiles, Pages and Groups – What’s the Difference?
When it comes to creating a presence on Facebook, you have numerous options including personal profiles, business pages, and group pages. What’s the difference and why does it matter? Here’s a look at the three most common forms of Facebook profiles so you can choose the right one for your business.
Personal Facebook Profile
You’re likely familiar with the basic personal Facebook profile. This type of account is all about you. This is where you will post your family’s photos, connect with family and friends, and share various forms of content such as recipes, jokes, and funny videos. It’s certainly not where you would post coupons to your business or direct customers and prospects. In fact, most people keep their personal Facebook profiles private and allow access on a case-by-case basis.
Facebook Business Page
Business pages are Facebook’s answer to profiles for businesses. They are specifically designed for business purposes. When you create a business page, your business is the star. No one will see your personal profile, nor will they even know you are the person who created the business 
page. Business pages on Facebook are public. Any Facebook user can view the page and its tabs. While any user can navigate to your page and view its contents, the idea is to prompt users to “like” the page. When someone likes your page, their news feed will periodically display your updates. Thus, when you post a coupon or special offer on your business page, your “fans” will see that update in their news feeds.
Facebook Group
Facebook groups are sometimes used for business purposes, but they do not replace a business page. When you create a group, it can be public or private. Groups are primarily used to facilitate discussions among group members who share similar interests. For example, if you run an independent flower shop in your town’s Main Street area, you would most likely create a business page to promote your flower shop. However, if you wanted to discuss business and tourism issues with other Main Street merchants in your community, you might create a group for Main Street businesses. Within the confines of the group, members could brainstorm ways to bring more shoppers to the area, coordinate special events, schedule meetings, and more.
Each of the above Facebook account types has its place. If you’re just getting started on Facebook, you will need a personal profile. Once you’ve created your own profile, you can then create a business page, participate in groups, or start a group of your own.
As with any social media profile you create, creating a Facebook page isn’t overly difficult, but it can be time-consuming. Make sure to fill in your profile with as much information as possible and upload a professional photo and cover image. Use the timeline to document important milestones in your business as well. Finally, start posting status updates, following other businesses, interacting with other users, and letting your customers and prospects know that you are finally on Facebook!
Watch out elephants! This slayer of business challenges comes with 30 years of record breaking sales, marketing, operations, training and leadership experience . He has worked face-to-face with 100’s of small business owners as well as large firms. His love of creating, communicating, developing and executing results for clients shines with each project, publication and training event. His entrepreneurial spirit, passion, industry experience, education, problem-solving prowess, charismatic personality and been-there-done that attitude leads his client focused approach.