Theme 7: Ask for Help
Your seventh theme for social media marketing (and the last in this series) is to let people help you.
When you ask people for small favors – that they can easily do – you are helping them feel good about themselves. And then they also feel good about you.
I know, it sounds odd – ask for a favor and people will like you better – but that works.
So ask for favors!
Just make them extremely simple and painless to do.
It’s even better if you can ask a favor where helping you makes them look good too – where they can both help you and show their own knowledge and experience.
For example, if you ask for a suggestion for a restaurant in Boston, people get to show that they know Boston and have knowledge of the good restaurants there. That’s pretty cool!
If you ask for suggestions about whether to get an iPad or one of the newer tablets, people get to show that they have a lot of knowledge about the products.
So ask for advice.
You can look for business help:
- Vendors
- Tools
- Services
- Consultants
- Equipment
- Methodologies
- Techniques
- Coaches
- Seminars
- Training
You can also ask for personal recommendations and advice:
- Restaurants
- Shows
- Hotels
- Gadgets
- Tours
- Gyms
- Camps
If there are only a couple of choices, it can be fun to set up a poll and let people vote.
A couple tips… Only ask for one favor at a time, and keep it simple to do. Ideally it should be something they can do in a couple seconds – it shouldn’t require a lot of thought. You also don’t want to ask them to put themselves on the line in any way. It shouldn’t be risky.
But do ask regularly. People love to help, and if you make it easy you will find that you can grow your circle substantially. What are some ways you’ve asked people to help?
Theme 6: Show a Bandwagon
Everyone wants to be part of a success. So use social media to let people see that what you do is working – that others are excited about what you offer and are jumping on it.
You don’t have to wait for big wins to do this – share the small triumphs too.
Talk about what a great response you are getting to your marketing or advertising.
Be excited about milestones as you achieve them. If you just landed your 40th customer or exceeded your revenue target for the month or hired your first employee – yay!
Share quotes and testimonials. You don’t need to have formal quotes – simply forward nice things people say about you in social media.
Tell anecdotes about your customers’ successes. You don’t have to name the customer – you can say “a big hotel chain” or “a mom of two” or “a high-school track star.”
Talk about new partners, new deals, new customers, new hires. Introduce them if you (and they) are comfortable with that. If not, just say you hired someone or got 2 new customers.
Tell stories about how your business is expanding and growing. If you need more space, are joining a coworking group, need a bigger garage to store your merchandise, talk about it.
Thank people for referrals – always! Public thank-you’s are wonderful. They show your appreciation and validate for everyone else that you have people referring business to you.
How can you show that more and more people are buying your products and services, getting involved with you, and supporting you?
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