Prospect Intelligence
Once you’re connected to someone on LinkedIn, for example, what do you look for? How do you use their social media profiles to find out about them? Where do you look?
Obviously, you can read over their profile and see what they are doing now, how long they have been there, where they have worked in the past, where they went to school, and what groups they belong to.
You can get their email address.
You can see who they are connected to, and you can see what connections you have in common.
Most people have links to their blog and website.
You can see how active they are on the site, whether they are connecting regularly with new people and posting updates.
If they have the apps enabled, you might be able to see what they are reading, what trips they have planned, what events they are attending, and what presentations they have uploaded to Slideshare.
That’s already a ridiculous amount of information.
If you want more, do quick searches in Updates and Answers.
Then go into a couple of their groups, find them in the Members section and look at their recent activity and discussions.
You will have a much richer picture of what interests and appeals to them, what they are trying to find out, what they are proud of, what is worrying them. That’s information you can use to help them and connect with them at a deeper level.
What are your best tips for information gathering on LinkedIn?
6 Ways to Get LinkedIn URLs
If you have decided to add social media information to your CRM so you have permanent contact information for your prospects, clients and partners – congratulations! That’s a decision that will benefit you for years to come.
The simplest way to start is to add the fields to your CRM, and input the information manually for each prospect. It usually only takes a couple minutes for each prospect.
But if you have hundreds or thousands of people in your contact database, those minutes add up. And you may not want your sales people taking the time to do this research. If that’s the case, hiring a virtual assistant or giving the project to an intern might be a good solution.
It’s important to note that getting links to social media profiles can be a little more complicated than you would expect. Some people are very easy to find. But none of the social media platforms have perfect search, and it can be surprisingly hard to get to the right person.
We’ve been doing this for clients, and here are some tips:
- Start with LinkedIn’s search. A simple search will turn up the right person most of the time. If the person has a common name, use the advanced search to narrow your options by geography or company.
- Go to the person’s website or blog. Many people have links to their social media profiles there.
- If you have an email from the person, check their sig file. There may be a link to their profiles there.
- Google them. You may turn up a website that has links to their social media profiles.
- Use software to do the matching. IKO System (www.iko-system.com) and Fliptop (www.fliptop.com) will match your contacts to their social media profiles. Neither comes close to delivering a 100% match rate, but they can save you a lot of time.
- Start using Bump (www.bu.mp) to import the social profiles directly into your phone – no keying needed!
Do you have tips for finding social media profiles? Please share them in the comments.
Easy ROI for Social Media: Permanent Contact Information
If you are in social media, I guarantee people are saying to you “I just don’t know if social media is worthwhile for my business.”
Here’s what you say back…
How much time and effort do you spend keeping your contact data up-to-date?
How many opportunities do you lose each year because your contact’s email changed?
What if you had a permanent way to stay in touch with people?
Even better, what if you had a way to keep an eye on what was going on with your clients and prospects? If you got a heads-up when they received a promotion or changed jobs, if you knew what was worrying them or what they were excited about…
That’s what social media does for you.
First, you get permanent contact information. People change their email addresses constantly. But they don’t usually change their LinkedIn profile or Facebook page. If you are connected to them in social media, you are connected to them permanently.
Second, even if your contacts are not particularly active in social media, you can keep an eye on the big changes in their life. Most people will keep their job information fairly current on LinkedIn. You can set your alerts to let you know when their title or company changes.
If they are active in social media, then you can get a whole lot more information. You can see what groups they are involved in, what questions they are asking, who they are connected to. That gives you a lot of information about what their current issues are, what is motivating them, what is keeping them up at night. This is insight about your prospects and clients that you never had before. Or at least not without a whole lot of work.
If you are getting started with social media, here are two important next steps:
- Start by connecting to all the people who are important to you on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Make sure you send invites to your clients, your partners, and your prospects.
- Add social media to your contact database. If your CRM doesn’t full support social media yet – and a lot of CRMs don’t – then use custom fields. Put LinkedIn URLs in one field, Facebook in another, Twitter in a third. If other platforms are useful to you, add them too.
What are your thoughts about having permanent connections with your clients, prospects and partners?
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?
Subscribe by RSS
Connect with Me
-
