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A game plan to generate a thousand social media leads.

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I have a goal and a plan to attract 1,000 leads in the next 30 days.

Six months ago I launched my Gitomer Certified Advisor program. It allows others in the coaching and training field to use my brand and sell my classroom training and my online platform along with their offerings – or by itself.

After a very successful (but limited) launch, I want to take the program to the next level and need to find interested and qualified people to do so.

THINK ABOUT YOU AS I TELL YOU ABOUT ME. Before I get into the strategy and actions I’m going to take, I want you to understand why I’m writing about the process. I want you to compare it to how you attract, how you prospect, and how you connect with willing buyers.

  • How do you get leads?
  • How do you prospects?
  • What is your strategy to socially involve and attract?
  • Is your personal platform strong enough to attract?
  • What is your social media lead-conversion rate?

The answers to these questions will significantly impact results.

BIG PICTURE: The strategy for this ‘attraction campaign’ is to use every form of social media and electronic outreach to find interested people, and offer them multiple ways to connect with me. The goal is to give information immediately without a barrier of registering or giving me their information. I want to get my messages BOTH responded to and passed along.

THE TARGETS: In order to get 1,000 leads, I am going to mass mail my contacts and connections AND specifically target existing coaches, existing sales trainers (corporate and independent), and anyone looking to start their own sales training business that wants to use the Jeffrey Gitomer brand to increase authenticity. As a Gitomer Certified Advisor, I provide them with the content, the brand, and the training to make it happen.

TIMED SOCIAL MESSAGES: Posting time and frequency are directly proportionate to the audience reached and their likelihood of response. From my personal experience, my social media consulting expert, Joe Soto, and the article, The Scientific Guide to Posting Tweets, Facebook Posts, Emails and Blogs at the Best Time in The Huffington Post, the best times to post on social media are as follows http://blog.bufferapp.com/best-time-to-tweet-post-to-facebook-send-emails-publish-blogposts:

Facebook. Best post times are between 1 pm and 3 pm Monday through Friday; engagement rates are 18 percent higher on Thursdays and Fridays.

Twitter. Tweet later in the day. Re-tweets on Twitter are higher at 5 pm compared to any other time during the day; the best times to post are between noon and 6 pm. This same study found that people are on Twitter 181 percent more during their commute. Think about it. Aren’t you more likely to be all about your life and how to improve it before or after work?

LinkedIn The Media Bistro suggests LinkedIn is most often used right before and after work hours (specifically on Tuesday and Thursday, but no one knows exactly (except maybe LinkedIn).

Blog readers read in the morning, with the ‘sweet spot’ being Thursdays around 11 am. But that’s a subjective opinion as well.

YouTube has no ‘best time.’ By comparison to others, its visitors are more search oriented, so I intend to be both searchable and findable. And my new video posts will go out to all my existing subscribers.

CRAP SHOOT REFINED: No one really knows. All messages are different, and all experts are flawed. (I’ve been proving that for years.) I believe that content is a bigger key than what time you post it. And key words will get you found. So that’s where I’m concentrating. I’m going out to my audience, and asking them to go out to their audience (re-tweet, repost, forward, like, comment, and anything else that spreads the word organically).

My overall goal is to generate at least 1,000 leads by May. You may think that is an aggressive goal, but highly achievable through social media and email. Generating 1,000 leads will create a pipeline that will lead me to one sale per day by June 2014.

And I am going to give you the complete detailed outreach plan for you to use as a guide to creating your own game plan for new leads – next week.

If you’d like to see the exact email and subject line I’m going to use, go to www.gitomer.com and enter the word ADVISOR in the GitBit box.

Reprinted with permission from Jeffrey H. Gitomer and Buy Gitomer.

About the Author

Jeffrey Gitomer is the author of The Sales Bible, Customer Satisfaction is Worthless Customer Loyalty is Priceless, The Little Red Book of Selling, The Little Red Book of Sales Answers, The Little Black Book of Connections, The Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude, The Little Green Book of Getting Your Way, The Little Platinum Book of Cha-Ching, The Little Teal Book of Trust, The Little Book of Leadership, and Social BOOM! His website, www.gitomer.com, will lead you to more information about training and seminars, or email him personally at [email protected].

Like me! Why should I like you? Eh, I have no idea!

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If you can remember that far back in Facebook history (2007), it started as a ‘fan’ page. Then one day (way back in 2010), out of the blue, Facebook decided to change it to a ‘like’ page.

Why did they change it? Here’s their reason: “To improve your experience and promote consistency across the site, we’ve changed the language for Pages from ‘Fan’ to ‘Like.’ We believe this change offers you a more light-weight and standard way to connect with people, things and topics in which you are interested.”

Huh? Oh, that’s corporate-speak. What it really means is to create a business page where your customers or fans can go and interact. Kind of like what it was.

REALITY: It’s hard to make fun of the third largest country in the world, so everyone went along – me included.

And then the begging began. PLEASE LIKE ME! Or LIKE US ON FACEBOOK! The signs were everywhere. Still are.

And many people did:
Zappos – 833,000 likes
Elvis – 8.5 million likes
Lady Gagam – 53.5 million likes
Chevrolet – 1.9 million likes
Tesla – 234,000 likes
Jeffrey Gitomer – 35,451 likes (Not bad. But not as many as I would like. I try to give people a reason to like me, rather than just ask.)

What about your business? Who is liking you? And why? What’s the reason customers would like you beyond the beg?

Want more ‘likes’? Consider the process, not just the ask. Asking for a like gives me or anyone else little or no incentive to do so. Can you imagine this conversation, “Honey, as soon as we get home, let’s like them.” No, not gonna happen.

Here are a few thoughts to get your mind wrapped around the “like” process and help you understand how to attract and earn more of them:

  • Maybe remind people WHY they like you. If you love our service, share the love on Facebook. Facebook.com/yourbusiness THANK YOU!
  • What’s to like? Ask yourself WHY people like you and talk about that.
  • Where’s the value? Like me – and my 10 best ideas for summer weekend getaways will be yours!
  • Where’s the one on one? Interacting with customers one-on-one will get people talking about you on THEIR Facebook page, and liking you.
  • Maybe if you LOVE me, then you’ll be more likely to like me. Your passionate customers are the ones who will like you.
  • Maybe if you’re LOYAL to me, then you’ll be more likely to like me. The customers who buy from you over and over are the ones who will like you.

STRATEGY: Instant like in your store or place of business. DO IT NOW! Where’s your iPad? Why aren’t you asking people to sign in at your cash register or welcome counter and like you on the spot? I mean really, do you think your customers head home and say: “I really gotta ‘like’ the dry cleaner as soon as I walk in the door.” Not likely.
STRATEGY: Smartphones can improve like. Ask customers to like you at the register. Give a coupon.

Okay, so they like you. THEN WHAT?
Like is a one-time click, what’s my reason to post, interact, and return?

STRATEGY: Instead of just asking people to like you, ask them to tell you WHAT they like – or WHY they like it. Or better, why they like YOU. Get people to post something, not just click a button. Expand the like so that others can see your value and your reality.

The value of like is undeniable. Lots of people liking you gives peace of mind to new and prospective customers. Like is proof – social proof that you are ‘safe’ to do business with.

Like is a vote of confidence to the business, not just other customers.
Like is a source of pride and affirmation of self-worth.
Like is reputation building.

PLAN A STRATEGY. You now have some additional awareness of both the value and the strategy of ‘like.’

If you invest a few hours with your team, and maybe an outside professional (we use www.onesocialmedia.com)…
1. You’ll attract more people
2. You’ll become interactive with them
3. You’ll make more sales.

That I guarantee you’ll like.

Reprinted with permission from Jeffrey H. Gitomer and Buy Gitomer.

About the Author

Jeffrey Gitomer is the author of The Sales Bible, Customer Satisfaction is Worthless Customer Loyalty is Priceless, The Little Red Book of Selling, The Little Red Book of Sales Answers, The Little Black Book of Connections, The Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude, The Little Green Book of Getting Your Way, The Little Platinum Book of Cha-Ching, The Little Teal Book of Trust, The Little Book of Leadership, and Social BOOM! His website, www.gitomer.com, will lead you to more information about training and seminars, or email him personally at [email protected].