Following on from yesterday’s blog post, here are the remaining four ways in which any business owner or professional can win business regularly via twitter:

4. Be visible

Twitter is a highly visible medium. You have to be active, and daily active, to generate any meaningful marketing presence. So, what does this mean? In an ideal world you need to be tweeting at least 5 times a day.

5. Provide a balance of interesting, personal and valuable content

I think perhaps the biggest trick to winning work via twitter is getting the right balance of your content. Too much conversation and it’s difficult for people to strike up a conversation with you personally. Too little conversation and too much broadcasting gets very boring. Too much work work work, starts to feel as if you are stuck on selling mode. So, provide a balance of content – but remember to show your followers that you understand them, their problems and know how to fix some of them.

6. Be helpful

I think that the principle of karma, does hold true on twitter. If you spend the time helping people on twitter – whether that be connecting them to others, answering their questions or queries or just saying hello in the morning – you will find others much more prepared to help you. Often that help may be a referral coming your way.

7. Have a strategy

It sounds simple really, but know why you are on twitter. What do you want to happen as a result of all these tweets and conversations? Off line phone calls? Increased traffic to your website?

What else would you add to the list?

I generate over 90% of my new business via people I have met on twitter. Now, I realize that I am not a typical business owner in this regard. However, I am still regularly asked, how DO you win business via twitter.

Here are my seven ways (in this and the next blog post) to win business via twitter, which any business owner can replicate:

1. Identify your introducers and ideal clients

Before you can use twitter to win business you have to know who you want to be talking to. This is nothing new here. Any business development exercise always starts with, who do we want to meet – and how will we meet them. Whilst your ideal client may not be on twitter, I can bet you a huge amount of money, that other suppliers and introducers to these clients are definitely on twitter. So, find out who these people are and get chatting to them.

2. Don’t expect to close business on twitter

Twitter is a great place to start the business development process and a lousy place to finish it. So, what do I mean by this? Twitter (generally) will not close the deal for you. You probably still need to have the phone call, do the client fact find BEFORE you get your prospect to sign on the dotted line. That’s no different to any other form of marketing. However, what twitter does is allow you access to the prospect or introducer in such a way that you can warm up the prospect. So that, when they are ready to buy, they arrive almost with cheque book in hand.

3. Use lists to always maintain contact with the people who matter to you

Not everyone is created equal on twitter. Just as not everyone on twitter will buy your product or service. Therefore, do use lists to segment the people you follow on twitter. Make sure you have a list which is called, something like, ‘people to stay close to’ which includes, current clients, introducers, prospects and highly influential people in your network/industry. Now, remember to check and have a conversation with people in this list daily.

This blog post is continued in part 2.

You are busy sorting out a tricky bit of drafting which you need to complete before you can leave for the end of the day…. Then the telephone rings… it’s your partner, requesting your attendance at a networking event downstairs. They are a little short of bodies and want the room to look a little busier. (However, there isn’t space for you to actually sit down and listen to the speaker they have lined up…) Does this scenario sound familiar?

Yep, you’ve just been asked to ‘fill in’, and being polite and charming at a networking event is probably the last thing you want to do today. So, how do you turn the opportunity you’ve been given to ‘fill in’ into a positive and beneficial experience?

The first thing to realise is, you’ve been chosen to be at the event, because they trust you. Well, trust you to mingle with potentially important people and make the firm look good in the process. That’s a vote of confidence in you, and something you need to remember before you go down to the event. Otherwise you may go down with a frustrated mindset, from the fact you’ve been taken away from your desk, and STILL have to make up the chargeable hours that you have lost by being at the event.

Before you head down ask reception for a list of who is attending. Have you got anyone from your client’s organisations attending? These would be great people to have a chat with so you can extend your web of influence within these organisations. You never know a conversation at one of these events could mean that you get asked for by name to work on a client’s next assignment.

Do take a couple of minutes to quickly scan the news and industry news, so you have some conversation starters ready for when you need them.

Take notice who the partners are talking to, these are probably the more important people at the event. If you see one of these get stuck with someone or left on their own, take the opportunity to speak to them. It will gain you brownie points with the important people and partners, but also help increase your profile with them.

Try not to introduce yourself by your job title – as many people at these events will only want to talk with the partners and at a push senior associates/directors. If asked, talk about the type of work you get involved in, rather than the fact you are an ‘auditor in the xxx group’ or ‘property lawyer’. Don’t take it personally if the person you are talking to decides that you are too junior to warrant talking to. (I’m afraid that this happens) But, do ask them who they would like to meet and would they like to talk to partner x or y.

How do you manage to make the most of your ‘fill in’ opportunities?

But, BNI (or insert name of any formal business breakfast networking group) is not for me I hear you wail…. it’s too structured for me.

It’s true not everyone likes or gets structured networking groups for many reasons:

1) turning up regularly (or getting a sub) gets to be a bit of a bind
2) doing an elevator pitch regularly is scary
3) with the one profession rule, there are never enough of my target market in the room at anyone time
4) it doesn’t work for me and my business
5) I don’t like all the rules

Let’s unpick these five reasons:

1) Turning up regularly only becomes a bit of a bind when you are either not getting any business success. Or you are not clear about how a formal networking group fits into your overall networking structure. In fact the regular attendance at one of these groups is often key to their success – visibility. Seeing the same group of people weekly or fortnightly is a great way for them to really get to know you and your business – vital if you are going to get any business froma group like this. Regular attendance also shows you are committed to the group, which helps others work to find referrals for you.

2) Like many others I hated doing my elevator pitch. My heart rate would quicken and palms get sweaty when it was my turn. In fact my nerves and adrenaline often took over. So, why was this? Particularly as I train people on presentation skills. It was normally because I hadn’t taken the time to really think through what I was going to say and rehearsed it a few times. If I had been clear on my networking strategy it would have been so much easier to identify meaningful messages for my 60 second. The more you deliver your elevator pitch, the easier it becomes.

3) With these groups you never want to sell to the people in the room. You want to sell through them. You are using the combined power of their networks to find new business. So, stop trying to sell to the room, and start asking them for introductions to named people you really want to meet.

4) More often than not, I hear people saying ‘structured networking doesn’t work for my business’. Very often these are the people who either don’t have a networking strategy or haven’t thought about how to use these type of groups to win business. Sometimes one group isn’t right for you – have you looked around and tried different groups?

5) I can’t change all the rules of these groups. They all have them, and they all have them for good reasons. But before you decide that a group is too structured for you, have you actually gone and experienced it first hand? Or are you just going on hearsay?

You just have to look at the sheer amount of formal networking groups to realise that formal/structured networking can work, and work exceptionally well for many many businesses. It’s not uncommon to find that some business owners get all their business from these groups.

Isn’t it about time you put your prejudices to one side and tried them out for your business?

I am very fortunate to have gained over 8000 followers – and I appreciate every single one of them (well maybe not the bots). However, I also follow just over 4000 people on twitter.

As you have rightly guessed, it is impossible to closely follow all 4000 of them. It’s just not possible. Not every follower is created equal, and the skill on twitter is being able to stay close to those people who do matter to you.

So, who are the people who matter to you? Chances are that they will include – current clients, past clients, prospects, current introducers, potential introducers, journalists specialising in your area and people who you enjoy talking to. That still could be a large amount of people.

The trick to keeping close to the right people is to forget about the twitter timeline and focus your energies on lists you create. I recommend that you create these lists for yourself:

“People to stay close to”: This is a list of the people who you want to keep close to on twitter and will include current, past and prospective clients and introducers.

“tweetmates”: This is a list of people you chat to regularly and can be automatically created for you by Formulists

“content providers”: This is a list of people who create content which your followers enjoy reading. This list provides you with content to retweet regularly without you having to look too far.

The final lists will either be “local businesses” and/or the sector/industry/profession who you want to meet on twitter.

Once you have created these lists then either remember to check them daily on twitter, or use them in a dashboard programme such as tweetdeck, hootsuite etc. If someone has tweeted something interesting then use it as an opportunity to make yourself visible by retweeting it, commenting on it or starting a conversation with them based on what they have tweeted.

How do you use twitter to stay in touch with people who really matter to you?

Five great ideas on what to talk about in LinkedIn, so you come across the way you want to.

LinkedIn can help you find new prospects and discover more about them before you even think about “selling”. In a previous article I talked about using LinkedIn groups to get more business. I recommended using groups; commenting on discussions and creating your own discussion threads. These are good ways of letting your contacts know you better, as well as making new contacts.

Firstly get into the habit of visiting groups that are rich in the type of people that you want to be known by.

What should I say in discussions?

It’s important to add to the discussions in the groups, rather than simply looking (lurking?). But many people when I first train them say things like:

“What should I say on LinkedIn”

“I’m not sure what to talk about on LinkedIn”

Respond to discussions where you have some knowledge, or experience; maybe answering a question on something you know a lot about, or have tried in the past (whether it worked or not), maybe you can recommend somebody that knows the answer.

Remember that you need to provide interesting content to your target market. If the content is boring, full of advertising, or not something you’d find interesting – don’t use it.

What discussions should I start?

If you blog, using some of your blogs (not every blog) as the basis for a discussion and providing a link to the blog is a great technique.

Putting links to industry news that is related to your business and starting discussions on them. This is great as it doesn’t involve you in writing material! Finding that material can be quite easy too:

• LinkedIn news (on your menu bar) shows interesting things
• Twitter can be a rich source
• the BBC is a good source…..

How should I write?

This is a common question:

1. Be natural. Think of discussions that you have face to face, how do you answer those questions? People get to know you through your style, that’s good.
2. Think about what you want to be known as/ for. If you want to be known as positive, don’t be moaning about things in the discussions; “a techie” might think of technological angles in your answer; want to be known as well thought through and balanced, reflect that in your answers. I recorded a short video clip in an article called “what do I put on Twitter”, which is as true for LinkedIn as face to face communications.

Summary

Discussing things on LinkedIn helps build your profile and helps you build relationships. This is an important step in getting invoiceable business from LinkedIn. What to say and how to say it is not as hard as many people will make out!

What do you think (commenting here maybe a good first step!)

The first impression any networker makes is vital.

No surprises there then! I’m bet most of us would cringe if we met someone at a networking meeting and in the first sentence they were pitched at.

So, why do so many people and businesses do this on social media? I’m not against sending an automated DM to your new followers. It’s the DMs and mentions which go something like this:

“Thank you for following us. Please visit and like our facebook page…. or visit our website for more details”

You wouldn’t dream of asking someone to start to buy your products or look at your website, in your first conversation in real life. So, why do so many people do this on social media?

My take on the situation is many people are applying old world marketing techniques to social media. It just doesn’t work. In standard business development theory, your aim is to always progress your prospect to the next stage of the sales process – i.e. there must be a call to action for each piece of marketing collateral.

This doesn’t work for social media. By following this school of thought on social, you end up doing the equivalent of selling in your first conversation with someone.

Remember your prime aim of being on social media is to build up a relationship with your connections BEFORE progressing them through your sales process.

By all means send a DM or @mention to your new followers – and if you must automate this. However, make sure this message starts to build a relationship and dialogue BEFORE you start pre-qualifying a potential prospect.

what do you think?

Despite the title of this blog post, Twitter is not a get-rich-quick type of medium. Why you may ask? Well, success on twitter is down to meeting the right people for your business, and then building up trust and relationships with these people. All in all, that takes months not days or weeks.

But, what if there was a way to generate new business quickly via Twitter? Without it taking months and months?

Would you be interested?

I believe that there is an easy way which anyone can generate new business (note I didn’t say new clients) through solely using twitter.

I uncovered this method whilst training a group of lawyers on how to use joined up networking to generate new business. The lawyers specialised in charities and when we did a search on twitter for charity, many of their clients featured in the list of charities, which appeared. What’s more many of their clients were tweeting regularly about what they were up too. At this point the penny dropped for both myself and the lawyers, about how they could quickly use Twitter to generate new business. Based on what their clients were tweeting, they realised…

1) They use this to prompt a conversation with the client – which is one of the best ways of generating new business from current clients

2) From what the client was tweeting from time to time, they realised that they would need advice from a lawyer, hence a chance of some new business

So, the caveat to the promise of the blog post is such, that any business can create new business quickly using Twitter. On the proviso that their clients are already on Twitter and using it regularly. If you have been observant you will have noticed that I have not mentioned getting new clients quickly on twitter. However, by staying close to your current clients on twitter is more likely to get you a recommendation and referral from them when one of their followers asks for a recommendation for someone with your skills.

Have you any more ideas about how to generate new business quickly on Twitter?

You enter the room and are met by the sight of a heaving mass of people. The room is filled with the noise of conversations.

All of which you are not part of.

For some people, a big room of people which they have to network in can be a very intimidating sight. Even some highly experienced networkers, like me, at moments like this can feel a small voice saying to them “you’ll never be able to break into a conversation, no-one is ever going to see your 5ft 2″ frame amongst all these 6ft+ men in dark suits….” before you know it, you’ve almost managed to talk yourself into a networking nightmare…

So, how can you conquer this fear?

1) before the event starts arrange to meet some people at the event. This is an easy way of making sure you get to the event and quickly propels you into that first conversation.

2) arrive promptly, so you don’t get presented with a room full of people as you walk in the door

3) give yourself a goal of having 3 quality conversations at the event. That way you wouldn’t be under pressure to feel as if you have to rapidly circulate and talk to everyone – which can give you conversation overload.

4) say a few personal affirmations (e.g. ‘I’m a great networker’ or ‘I’m going to have some great conversations at this event’ or ‘people will want to talk to me’) before you enter the room, as this will help your confidence.

How would you advise someone who finds large rooms of people intimidating?

I was running a couple of networking workshops recently. (well about 12 over a period of two months, but whose counting?)

When I go around and hear what people want from the day, I very often hear the ‘C’ word appear.

Confidence.

It may be confidence to start a conversation, confidence to end a conversation, confidence to enter a huge room full of people….

This lack of confidence is always driven by two things. Either an awareness that a skill is lacking and/or a personal fear. When I hear lots of the C word coming out in delegates learning needs, then I always run a discussion based on what people are afraid of when networking. It’s a very cathartic exercise as most people realise:

1) their fear isn’t real
2) everyone is worried or afraid of something when networking

My irrational fear is simply that as the writer of ‘The FT guide to business networking’ I have to be perfect at networking (stupid I know) and so must get on with everyone.

Some fears that I hear regularly are:

1) what if I say the wrong thing?
2) what if no-one wants to talk to me?
3) what if I get left with the networking bore?
4) what happens if conversation dries up or we have too many awkward silences?

With your rational head on, it’s easy to see that most of these fears are either not real or can be minimised with some networking skill and experience.

Worst case scenario, these fears can hold you back from networking and networking effectively.

What are your fears when networking?