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!!

So I was in serious Twitter mode last night and noticed my hand was starting to cramp! Thought to myself “am I giving myself carpal tunnel with all the following/unfollowing that I am doing?”. So I decided to sit back for a while and think about this until I realized that I could add a million followers to my Twitter account and it would not do myself any good if no one is going to pay attention to what I am Tweeting. Do I want to have a lot of followers with a very low percentage of people actually reading my posts, or should I instead go for a lower number of followers and build a community of avide followers? The answer was apparent to me almost immediately. I want fellow Tweeters that I can build a good relationship of trading information with.

This made sense to me for several reasons, the first being the fact that I will save my “clicking” finger some serious Twitter Tendinitis. Building a vast following of Twitter users along with LinkedIn, Facebook and my Blogs were chewing up some serious time that I could better use to expand my other business areas. Network luncheons, Chamber functions, and other non-Internet business matters were being taken up by my boss (a.k.a. The Wife) more and more. These areas are also essential to a well run business. So I decided to reassess my Social Media time and find a way to apply my Internet Marketing skills to build that community of likeminded users.

Instead of mindlessly adding a larger broad group of followers (And there is nothing wrong with this at all, percentages do have an effect!!), I took a different path and have actually started to find businesses in my field. Businesses may not be your focus, instead it may be a certain area of interest or a hobbie. Whatever it may be, find that main group of people that find your posts interesting and interact with them. A smaller group that is actually talking to one another and commenting on your posts will create the one thing you have been striving for “interest”. Once you have a good solid group of similar users, then start reaching out to those outer masses. You’re going to have a smaller group inside that large following that are commenting on your posts. It will show others that you have something to say!! And drive them to you.

After a while you also will also notice other things. One, that your time spent on trying to add new followers will be cut down dramatically. And two, that the extra time you now have can be spent on more productive things (such as this Blog post) to attract the followers you really want!! And I can tell you right now, I was getting seriously tired of the endless droning of following/unfollowing users. This is much more enjoyable for me to write a Blog and get my thoughts out there to the masses instead.

So when you are tweeting today and happen to notice (and hopefully read) this Blog post about Twitter Tendinitis, know that my mission is complete. I have now started to apply my new strategy of getting great readers and fellow Tweeters to interact as a community!! Since it is Fathers Day and I have run out of time, I will add any updates at a later date. Until then, find those like minded people by doing searches on your Twitter account and start adding them to all your Social Media Platforms. You will find that more time is avaiable to you and other creative ideas will happen!!