Mattison Web Blog

I had a very interesting discussion with another business professional today and was asked a question that is on the mind of most fellow LinkedIn users. How to create quality leads without becoming just another salesperson online? One of the main business goals of any business person using a Social Media platform; referring to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or a Blog here, is to create and increase our sales leads. Due to outside pressures, salespeople can often become trapped in the mindset of feeling the need to generate large quantities of contacts and then turning them over into a sales quota. Generating new leads is an important tool for business growth, and having a large network base will help with this statistically. We will address the topic of quantity and becoming a LinkedIn Open Networker later in this Blog. For now I think we should instead focus on the more important issue. What strategies or tools we can use to create strong relationships with our other LinkedIn members, thereby creating a cyclical lead generating machine. Don’t put on the blinders and worry so much about the quantity of contacts, but instead let’s focus on the quality. Let’s create strong relationships with fellow members who become invested in you. Have no fear; during the relationship building process the products and/or services you sell will become readily apparent. If done correctly you won’t even have to ask for new sales leads, they will start coming to you!! There are several different strategy tools that we can use to accomplish this process.

Our first step to building stronger relationships within our network group is to thank and introduce ourselves to newly connected LinkedIn members. When you begin a meeting with a new client, what is the first thing you both do? Introductions!! Thank you for meeting with me. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to meet with you. My name is Joe Smith of Business Name. I think you get the point here. LinkedIn is no different than meeting someone face-to-face. Intro’s and Thank You’s are the only appropriate initial response to a new LinkedIn connection. The introduction will not only give a good first impression, it will also lead us into the next tool that we have at our disposal. The unselfish offer to help others build their business leads.

The more you give, the more you will receive. If you have the chance, observe several of the more successful members of any networking group. Whether it is LinkedIn or some other networking group. There will be one factor that is common in them all. They are all great givers!! They have reached a higher level of networking than the other 95 percent of us. They don’t focus on receiving a sale during the moment of introduction. Instead, they work on giving or creating new sales and leads for others to use. And what is it that they receive as a result? They are building future lead generators. Who are those generators? Us!! We are all more than happy to go out of our way to refer, promote, or even use the person directly responsible for putting money into our pocket. They have created a situation in which we, the recipient, now have an unconscious desire to “spread the word” and network for them!! Give out enough referrals and you will never have to worry about generating leads. They will be generated for you. This leads us into our next step for growing our network relations. Creating continued interest.

Once we have made our initial introductions and commenced with our lead generators, our next step is to promote a continued interest in what we do. This can be one of the more difficult aspects of maintaining a strong presence in any networking group. But it can also be one of the more fun aspects as well. This is the time for you to become creative! When I say be creative, I do not mean you have to come up with a brand new and exciting way of advertising (although it helps!!). When I speak of being creative I mean that you should find a unique way of promoting the products and/or services for your industry. Create a contest, promote a sale, introduce a feature no one else has. Whatever your strategy, try to make it unique. At Mattisonweb, an Internet-based web design and marketing company, one of our unique promoting tools is the very Blog you are reading right now!! The Blog itself is not a unique tool, but hopefully the information you gather here is. Every industry has something unique they can Blog about. So be the one to get that information out there! Once you have enough posts created, start spreading the word inside your LinkedIn network. This will do two things for you. One, create new interest from members you don’t have a relationship with yet. And two, renew interest from the lead generators you already have. Don’t forget the people you have built a rapport with. After all, they are the more likely to generate new sales or leads for you than a new contact. With the introduction of a Blog, we enter one of the final steps in building strong member relationships. Directing your generators and new members outside of their comfort zone.

LinkedIn offers us a great platform to connect, make introductions, and create a new clientele list. But do not limit yourself by only communicating with your members while on LinkedIn. They will only see one perspective of your business. Instead, use LinkedIn posts to direct your network out of their comfort zone by sending them to your other on-line activities. Other social medias, Blogs, associations, and related sites while give them more chances to “get to know you”. Try using Facebook for informality, Twitter for advertising, a Blog for information gathering, and your other sites to fill in the gaps. You will quickly begin to see a stronger relationship and greater interest from your fellow members.

This post has gone on for a while and I have only begun to scratch the surface for creating relationships to sell effectively. I think we will finish up by talking about the quantity of your LinkedIn network membership here. I’m going to play devil’s advocate by telling you to grow the largest LinkedIn network you possibly can. That’s right, if you’re not currently a LinkedIn Open Networker [LION], become one!! Do not limit yourselves to a specific industry membership and ignore all the others. Remember, business people and owners have networks that reach across many different kinds of industries and they all love to talk shop. Whether about themselves or interesting people they have met. By building strong relationships with as many new contacts as you can, you will soon be that person they talk about.

Let’s all thank Becca Gilberg of Doc Events for the great question by clicking on Becca’s profile and getting LinkedIn. Let’s watch her implement the strategy of building strong relationships to create lead generators on LinkedIn. Balls in your court Becca, have fun with it!!

Peg and I (a.k.a.Mattisonweb) held a great free presentatiion on Social Media earlier this month at our public library. We sat down and discussed what medias we would talk about and decided to keep it as informal as we could. LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Blogging topics were of course going to be the most popular topics by far. So what we tried to concentrate on was not how to build a huge base of followers, but on the basic elements a person needed to get there. The old sayings “building a large pyramid (cheesy but true) starts with a strong base” and “the importance of first impressions (also cheesy but true)”, quickly came to mind. Since Mattisonweb is a company and a lot of business owners were going to be at the presentation, we used my profile on LinkedIn as the guinea pig for what makes a good public profile. http://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremymattison

Keep in mind several factors that went into my LinkedIn profile. One, we are almost exclusively a business-to-business company. Two, we believe in building strong relationships with our clientele. And three, we wanted to build a group of like-minded business people that love to network!! Now these may seem pretty straight foward factors to a lot of you out there, but to the new user who is first getting connected to LinkedIn they are important items that will decide how they build their base for a profile. Let’s go over some of the basic sections of your profile and how they should be used.

Your profile picture. This one is easy. Put a professional picture on there! This is a business oriented social media platform, so keep the profile professional. Use Facebook for the informal side of things. I can’t count how many profiles I have seen that have a boat, cartoon, or kids in the picture. These are all things that a person may love (I love my kids too), but they are not business related and shouldn’t be used here. There are better ways to show you are a personable business person, such as responding and interacting with the connections in your network. I may sound a bit harsh about this but let’s remember what LinkedIn is for and keep a professional looking profile.

Next up are the main areas of Positions and Education. Just like a resume (and that is what your profile is!!); if possible, list several positions whether current or past that promote your current position(s). As a business owner I have several hats that I wear, so I have listed each area as a separate position. This shows my versatility and experience in the areas of Mattisonweb that I specialize in. Your situation may be different, you may have switched job positions or work for a different company, but the objective is the same. Use old positions , and the merits that come with them, to promote your new positiion(s). The education section has a very similar purpose and can be just as useful. You want to list all post high school education received. I went to the University of Iowa for college and also went to a business college to learn more about Information Technologies. While neither is in my field of expertise, they do show that I am an educated professional. Having a Microsoft Certified Professional certificate (which deals with computer systems) really has no applicable advantage for Internet Marketing. But it does show I am able to communicate effectively with professionals in that area.

The Websites section should list all sites used to promote your business. At Mattisonweb, we have our main business website listed, Mattison Web. But we also have both of our Blog sites listed. Say What?? and Owners Diet. Our Blog posts (such as what you’re reading now) are a great way for us to self-promote the services and topics we have to offer. The main purpose for this section should be to drive users/clients to learn more about your business and build interest. This would be a good time to add your other Social Media sites that promote your business. Twitter, facebook, Blogs and more can be added here.

My Blogging time is about up so I will talk about one last item that is important and often overlooked in your profile. That is the recommendation. Beg, borrow, or steal for as many recommendations as you can get. One of the most interesting ways to verify that a business person knows their trade is to read Testimonials. Review my testimonials and you will see several companies describe the traits I felt are important to the business. Personable, experience, knowledge, and drive!! I can post on LinkedIn and talk about how great Mattisonweb is all day long. But by having good recommendations listed I am showing that their are others who think so too!!

Remember that a good LinkedIn profile will lead to a strong network. Take the time to completely fill out your profile with all the useful information fellow LinkedIn networkers want to see. Time is getting short, and I will write more about LinkedIn at a later date. If there are any items for LinkedIn that you would like to learn more about, always feel free to contact me. Visit my profile and send me a message. Let’s get LinkedIn!!

Have you been having trouble drawing users to your web site or Blog? Do you feel like no one is “getting” the point of what your site does or can offer them? This is usually the result of building first and planning second. Everyone (including myself) has gotten caught up in the moment and been so excited that they just jump in and start on a project right away. This is definitely a good thing!! It shows that you are passionate about what you are doing and are going to give 110 percent. Just watch out for that one major pitfall. Not taking the time to map out a strategy. know first what your objectives are going to be and how you are going implement them. Without a pre-planned web strategy to ensure you success, your project may turn into a hit or miss.

I have to issue a warning before we go to far here. There is no singular strategy plan that exists for the many different web platforms out there. But you can use a basic planning strucure to ensure your chances of success for any project. For the WWWeb, just make sure it is one that will focus on your users and their browsing habits. A person usually has a good idea of what they want to show or sell to the cyberworld, but users (your clients) can often get distracted or just plain lost in the process. A main tactic to use BEFORE the build is to sit down with coworkers, owners, and your marketing person, or just your best friend, to have a good ol’ fashion brainstorm marketing session. Throw down all of your ideas (even if they are not good ones, someone else may get their creative juices flowing as a result) and decide on a main theme with several complementing themes to support it. Not always as easy as it seems is it? Just keep it a light mood and it can become the funner part of the process!!

Once you have the general idea(s) of what you will present on the Internet and how you will present them, it’s time to focus on the user. That’s right, the user. If you do not know how and where your users are browsing the Net, you are dead in the water. I’ve seen to many projects start off with a bang, just to fizzle and stall after several months of no results or responses. Remember, these projects can sometimes take months even years to take off. Just stick with the strategy and do your homework. Do research and find the areas your future clients like to go. I say clients because that is how all your users should be seen. Whether business related or not, if you treat them as if you are offering a product or service, your approach will always be to draw more clients or users to your site.

Find the areas of the Web that you wish to target and pre-plan your build to cater those types of clients. Chambers of Commerce, Networking Groups, Blogging, and Social Media are just a few of the areas that have many cult followers. Find your industry or area of expertise and do some browsing of your own. You may be amazed at what you find. With a little research, you may find that there are whole sections of users that you didn’t know were there. A good example would be selling shoes. If sneakers are an important area of your sales, then you better be doing research on athletes and their fans. What sites are popular to this type of user, and how will you be able to direct that flow to your site. Starting a Blog about coffee? Find out what kind of news people like to read about while drinking their morning cup of joe. www.acupofjo.com (had to give these guys a plug here, they rock!!). I think you get the idea here.

The important part of a good strategy is the fact that you now have a basic plan of attack. Sometimes that plan will need to change with the environment. It usually does! But you are going to find that you are better able to deal with that change when the time comes. Being able to adapt while having a solid framwork is the key to success.

I tend to ramble on so I will leave you with this. You can have the best business or ideas in the world, but no one will ever use them if they don’t know they are there. A good prre-planned web strategy gives you the ability to present it to the world!!