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?

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 40^th 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?

Your fifth theme for your social media marketing is to show who is connected with you. This is the whole point of social media!

If you can show that other people – particularly people your prospects respect – have checked you out and decided to get involved with you, then it’s easier for them to make the same decision.

So find ways to let people see that you have important people in your network, great customers, talented people working with you, respected people who refer business to you.

On Facebook, make your featured likes people your prospects will recognize and respect.

Retweet what influential people say.

Comment on blog posts of influencers.

Interact with customers or partners (especially those who are well-known and respected).

Talk about employees and subcontractors – if they have impressive degrees, I’m sure you can find a way to work that into the conversation from time to time.

Mention your board, advisors or investors.

Talk about really good sessions at conferences or webinars you attended.

Quote people your prospects respect.

Be grateful for any honors or awards you receive (or are nominated for).

Think about who your prospects and customers respect, and look for ways you can show connections with those people.

How do you build credibility by showing that you are connected to people your prospects recognize and respect?

If you haven’t heard about Fiverr you need to check it out!

It’s a website all about things people will do for $5. You can search gigs – people who have posted what they will do for $5 – or submit your own requests, saying what you would like to have someone do for $5.

Of course there are lots of weird things, lots of useless things. But there is a lot of cool stuff there.

Here are 5 ways you can use Fiverr in your marketing…

Buy inexpensive gifts for clients

If you want to find low-cost gifts you can send by email to your clients, you can find an amazing array of options on Fiverr. For example:

-          Have your client’s name written in the sand of a New Zealand beach (I bet that becomes their new desktop background)

-          Have a poem written about your client

-          Get their photo turned into a cartoon (I bet that turns up on their mobile phone)

-          Have someone sing Happy Birthday to them in a video

Get better known throughout clients’ companies

When you want more people inside your client’s business to know about you, one way to do it is to have something unusual done with their business logo. For example:

-          Have someone put their logo on an umbrella and take a video of someone walking in the rain with that umbrella

-          Have a video of a parakeet walking across a page with their logo

-          Have someone do speed coloring of their logo

-          Have the logo put onto a picture of a pumpkin (like we did here)

-          Have a bunny eat the logo

-          Get the logo stenciled on the foam of a capuccino

Seriously, you can get all of those things on Fiverr right now for $5. And you just know those videos are going to get forwarded throughout the company.

Add funny videos to your YouTube channel or Facebook page

There are a fair number of people who are offering to do a video for $5, and a couple who are offering multiple videos for $5. You can do all of the same things listed above for clients for your own company instead – those are funny, quirky videos that will engage your visitors and get them to comment on your posts.

Get feedback on your website or blog

If you want a man-on-the-street opinion from someone you don’t know, want it fast, and don’t want to spend a lot, try Fiverr.

Buy opinions from 5 or 10 people and you’ll have some interesting feedback for a fraction of what it would cost any other way.

Buy Facebook fans

If you have just launched your Facebook page and you want it to look lived in right away, buy a couple hundred fans for $5.

They won’t interact with your posts or buy your products – all they do is like your page – but that’s enough to allow you to get a branded URL for your page (Facebook currently requires 25 likes before you can get that).

Check out the site – I’m sure you can come up with dozens more ways to use Fiverr to promote your business. If you’d like to share them, comment below.

People do business with people they know, like and trust.

So let people get to know you better. Let them see that you are a nice person – the kind of person they would be comfortable doing business with.
Show some of your personality – you don’t have to share everything with the whole world, but you can pick and choose a few things to let people feel like they know who you are:

• Like your favorite sports teams
• List your favorite singers or bands
• Quote from your favorite books
• Mention a TV show you are addicted to
• Do you do yoga, pilates, rock climbing or zumba? Share that
• Talk about visiting your favorite restaurants
• Show photos of cute things your pet did

This helps people connect with you – it gives them topics of conversation, ways to interact with you online and in person.

You can also use social media to show your character and your ethics:

• Share links to causes that you support
• Ask for donations to charitable events
• Apologize when you mess up
• Stand up for people who have been wronged
• Be helpful and give advice where you can
• Show that you support your friends

Let people identify with you. Even if you’re the CEO of a huge company and wealthy beyond most people’s dreams, you probably have issues. Right? (Please say yes.) Talk about your efforts to lose weight, quit smoking, exercise more, get healthier, find cute shoes.

And just be nice.

• Send holiday greetings.
• Thank people at every opportunity.

What are some of the ways you let people get to know you? Share them here…

Are you looking for a few more clients?

The easiest way to have a steady stream of leads is to set up a simple nurture marketing program designed to get referrals.

Most small businesses are built on referrals.

They are the easiest leads to close. They tend to close faster, and they usually buy more than leads that come in cold.

You can set up an inexpensive program that will reach out to people who could refer business to you on a regular basis. You can use email, you can use social media, or you can do it with regular mail.

You can do it for less than $100 a month (you can do it for free if you need to).

And if you do it consistently, you will be generating a steady stream of leads.

If you would like to have a program like that for your business, sign up for our new Nurture Marketing Workshop.

New Nurture Marketing Workshop

This is a 2-hour online workshop where we teach the basic concepts behind nurture marketing, and then go hands-on - walk you through the steps to design a nurture marketing project for your business.

At the end of the workshop you will have a project plan, ready to work on or hand off to your assistant.

You can use the workshop to design whatever kind of plan you want – you can focus on referrals or you can nurture leads, customers, the press, or whatever group you want.

You can use email, social media, SendOutCards, postcards or letters.

You’ll get a comprehensive introduction to what to do, then you’ll actually create your own project plan.

At the end of the workshop, you’ll have a list of topics for emails/mailings or an editorial calendar for social media posts. You’ll have a starter mailing list. And you’ll have a list of action items for what needs to happen next.

We will share resources – where you can get inexpensive writers (if you need that) or find a good virtual assistant (if you don’t have one yet).

Bring a friend for free

The workshop costs $197, and you can bring a friend for free.

So if you are a business owner, you can bring the virtual assistant who will be helping you with the nurture project for free.

If you are a virtual assistant you can bring a client for free. (Or get the client to pay for it and you come free.)

If you don’t have an assistant (or a client) yet, this workshop will be a good place to meet one. We’re going to have online chat throughout the workshop so you’ll have the opportunity to network with the other participants.

First Workshop

The first workshop is Sunday, November 20, from 2-4pm Eastern.

I hope you can join us.

If you can’t be there live, sign up anyway. You’ll get a link to the recording plus all the materials, templates and worksheets.

There is more information about the workshop, including the agenda and list of handouts and workshop materials that you will receive at

www.proresource.com/nurture-marketing-workshop

If you know anyone else who might be interested, please share this with them.

A third theme for your social media marketing is quality.

Let people see that you care about quality and excellence. Everyone wants to know that if they buy from you, you will deliver as promised, and they will get good results.

Show them that you care about delivering a high quality product or excellent service.

You can do this in a lot of different ways…

You can respond quickly whenever any problems surface. Twitter is good for this – if anyone complains or has problems, you can let everyone see how quickly you respond and how helpful you are.

You can share customer quotes and testimonials that talk about how pleased people are with the quality of work that you do.

You can congratulate employees, subcontractors and partners who go above and beyond to deliver excellent results.

You can talk about what happened on those rare occasions when quality was not up to par – what did you do? How big a fuss did you make? How did you fix it?

Something that is very easy to do is to appreciate quality and excellence wherever you encounter it. If you received excellent service at a restaurant, share that. If your coffee was made perfectly, tell people. If you met someone who absolutely delighted you with their service, tell the story.

Talk about your initiatives to improve quality. Maybe you are a Six Sigma fan. Maybe you are a process fanatic. Maybe you are all about continuous improvement. Let people see that you care and that you are always working to improve. That impresses people!

Know your numbers – let people see that you monitor quality and track results. Talk about the improvements you see.

An extremely easy way to do this is to share quotes from people who talk about quality and excellence, like W. Edwards Deming.

The most important message here is that you care about making sure your customers have a good experience – that delivering quality is important to you. How do you let people see that excellence matters to you?

A second issue people have is that they wonder what it will be like to do business with you.

Social media provides a great way to invite people into your business and show them what your company is like. Let them get comfortable with who you are and how you do business.

You can do this in many ways…

On Facebook, introduce team members. Upload a photo and say what each person does for the company.

You can tweet about projects you are involved in for clients.

You can also use Twitter to provide customer service – show how quickly you respond, how courteous and helpful you are, how much knowledge you have about your products and services.

Tweet about deals with customers, partners, investors and vendors.

Blog about advanced tips for using what you sell, so customers can get more out of their purchases.

Thank people who send referrals.

Share results clients have achieved from your services.

Use videos to show people how to use your products.

Blog about the steps prospects should take to prepare to do business with you. For example, if you have a needs analysis as part of your methodology, what information will they need to pull together.

When you post on Facebook, talk about the wide variety of problems you can solve for people – share signs that they need what you do.

Do a top 10 reasons to do business with you.

Get your employees or subcontractors or partners to interact with you – ask them to comment and like your posts on Facebook, to retweet, to circle you.

You can ask customers to participate in videos or do audios about how much they like your company.

If your company has rituals or does holiday celebrations, extend them into social media.

What are you doing to let people feel like they know your business on social media? Share what works for you by posting a comment…

Everyone loves seeing quotes and testimonials – they are a great way to get prospects more comfortable with your business. But a lot of people have trouble coming up with a good quote, so they put off giving you one. Here’s how to make it easier for them…

The easiest way to get good quotes and testimonials is to ask customers to spend 10 minutes on the phone with you, talking about the product or service.

Record the call (with their permission) or take notes.

Then you draft a quote based on what they said and send it to them for them to edit.

That’s all!

The trick, of course, is that you do the work for them. The bonus is that you will get a better quote, since you can work in the points you want most to make.

Here are some other tips for crafting the quote:

• Make sure you include the company or product name.
• Use the customer’s phrasing, not yours. This can actually give you some great keywords.
• Keep it short! Most people won’t read a long quote. If they gave you a long list of wonderful compliments and you want to use them all, create several quotes.

Here is a sample email asking for permission to have that call:

[Name] suggested that I contact you to see if you would be willing to give us a quote about your experiences with [product/company].

Would you be willing to give us a quote we can use on our website?

The way we usually do it is that we schedule a call and spend about 10 minutes on the phone. You just talk to me about your experiences and I’ll take notes. Then I’ll draft a quote or two and send it to you for you to edit.

If that would be OK with you, is there a good time for me to call?

Here are questions to ask during the call:

• How did you first hear about [product/company]?
• What problem were you having at that time?
• Did you look at other products or solutions too?
• What made you decide to go with [product/company]?
• How did things go?
• Was there anything that particularly impressed you about the company or the people you worked with?
• What kind of results did you get?
• Are you planning to do more with the [product/company] in the future?

Here is a sample email to send with the quotes you have drafted:

Thank you so much for spending the time on the phone with me today! I really appreciate it. You gave me some excellent information.

Here are the quotes I have drafted for your approval. Please let me know which you are comfortable having us use – feel free to edit them as much as you like.

Could you please confirm how you would like your name, title and company name to appear with the quote?

To get extra leverage from the quote, ask if they would be willing to post the quote as a recommendation on LinkedIn or share it on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or another social site.

One of the first questions people will always have about your company is “Do they know what they are doing?”

They need to have ways to confirm that you will do a good job for them.

Social media gives you a lot of opportunities to show off your knowledge in your field.

• On Facebook, you could give a series of short tips relating to your area of expertise.
• One virtual assistant has been doing 2-minute videos with office organization tips and shortcuts.
• I’ve seen SEO consultants give tips about choosing keywords and using alt tags.
• Graphic designers give tips about page layout and optimizing your site.
• Social media consultants give advice about getting better results with Facebook or tips on how to use Google+.

In your blog, you can tell stories about projects you have worked on for clients. You can do mini case studies – with brief outlines of what the client’s problem was, how you solved it, and what results they achieved.

You can upload short videos that answer questions prospects commonly ask.

You can tweet when you close a new deal.

You can forward news from industry sources and explain why it matters.

You can quote a statistic from a recent report and say why you think it’s wrong.

You can quote two statistics from different reports that seem to contradict each other and explain why they are really two different ways of looking at the same thing.

You can blog about trends you’re seeing in the market.

You can forward news from others who are respected in your field.

You can share useful websites.

You can do reviews of tools you find useful.

You can compare methodologies and talk about the strengths and disadvantages of each.

This is usually one of the easiest ways to find content for social media. There are dozens of ways to show off your knowledge – if you have some that aren’t included here, add them as comments. I’d love to hear how you do this.