Social Media Networking Process

Increasing the number of conversations you have with folks in your target market is the surest way I know of to increase the quantity and quality of your leads.

One relatively painless way to stimulate conversations is to connect with interesting people on social media.

For most of my students, LinkedIn is the best network to use for this. If your audience is somewhere else, you can adapt the following process accordingly.

After updating your profile to be “you focused” instead of “me focused”, go like this:

LinkedIn Process

1. Generate a list of people (e.g., do a search, view someone’s connections, etc)
2. Click every Connect button in the list - don’t add a note, don’t read their title/profile, stop after 10-20
3. Go to your “Connections” page and sort by most recent
4. Send a TY message to as many new connections as you have time for (i.e., “Thanks for connecting! I hope you are well”)
5. If someone replies to your TY message, spend a minute or two searching their profile for something of interest to comment on or ask about
6. Send a “permission to ask a question” message (e.g., “I’m sorry to bug you but... I saw on your profile that you are an expert at specialty. Would it be okay for me to ask you a question about that?”)
7. If they say yes, ask them a smart question that you are genuinely curious about.
8. Ride the conversation from there

Example questions

• Q: What software do word they use for folks/businesses like them typically use to manage projects?
• Q: Have you been to industry conference recently?
• Q: Does specialty present any novel challenges from a workflow management standpoint vs managing a adjacent specialty project?

Goals

• Learn more about current events in the industry
• Learn their language
• Understand the considerations made regarding alternatives to what you do
• Discover nuances between things that you thought were essentially the same
• Uncover pains/dreams/opportunities
• Increase the number of connections you have in the industry
• Refine profile to become more attractive/compelling to ideal buyers

Dos and Don’ts

• DON’T SELL!
• Do adopt a posture of genuine curiousity
• DON’T SELL!
• DO look for easy ways you can help people for free
• DON’T SELL!
• DO point people to things you think would be helpful
• DON’T SELL!
• DO think of new connections as friends you haven’t met yet
• DON’T SELL!

Questions? Shoot me an email at jstark@jonathanstark.com.

Yours,

—J