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?