Leveraging Social Media for Business, Fun and Profit (Book Excerpt)

This is a chapter from my upcoming book Leverage: Work Less and Do More Than Everyone Else in Business (5 or More Children Not Required). Your feedback is much appreciated and will have a direct impact on the final version of this book. ;)

I love me some shiny objects, and the best time to find shiny objects is when you are trying to figure out ways to get more customers through the door. There's software, high-priced training courses, new strategies and tactics, and a whole bunch of other ways to waste a ton of time without getting results. I am very, very guilty of this.

As my lovely wife started popping out more and more kids (I'm still not sure how that happened) more and more constraints on my time and my family's well-being were popping up. Once again I was forced to start focusing only on those things that grew my business or saved me a ton of time. One of those things was social media.

Don't get me wrong, you can waste a ton of time on Twitter, Facebook, and so on. However, if used properly, social media can be such an amazing way to build your business without having to spend a lot of time with it.

Ready? Let's do this…

Why Leveraging Social Media Can Be a Gold Mine

Do you use social media for your business? When you do, do you spend most of your time liking people's posts, tweeting a bunch of nonsense, or sending people spamming messages? If you do, please stop immediately - you're losing a ton of customers and wasting valuable time.

Social media is a reflection of what goes on in real life. People do not by from anyone unless they trust them, have a relationship with them, and see you as a solution to their problems. That's why it is extremely, extremely rare for people to get new customers from social media alone. In the 5+ years that I've been using social media for my business I have yet to have a single customer that came to me because of something that I tweeted or shared.

Is that surprising? Were you expecting me to say that you need to spend an hour a day posting all over the place? (Okay, I admit that with my information product business I get customers this way - but never for my consulting side of things).

Here's the deal, the power in social media is meeting people face-to-face. Every single client that I have in which there is a social media connection came from first meeting them at a social media event. Subsequently they've introduced me to their friends, family, and other colleagues. Remember when I said that social media is a reflection of real life? Well, when you meet somebody and build a relationship with them social media allows you to continue that relationship forever and in a way that not only builds further trust with them, but also with people that they are connected to.

On top of that using this strategy will save you hours and hours of time. I was giving a panel talk at the Social Media Summit in Orange County and one of the things that surprised people was that while I predominantly used Twitter for my business I very rarely ever tweeted anything at the time. When I did tweet it was either re-tweeting somebody that I already knew or talking directly to somebody that I knew from a previous meet up. Even though I hardly did anything, what I did do spoke volumes to the people that know, like, and trust me. (With Hootsuite I've since added some curated content because it takes less than 15 minutes to curate a week's worth of content)

So the goal of this section is to show you how to stop wasting time on social media and make it as effective as possible by getting out and meeting people. Sure, it might be a little scary - but I assure you that it will be very worth it.

Finding a Meet up

This is probably the easiest part of the this section. Finding networking events that you know for absolute certainty that everybody in the room is on social media is key. So in order to do that we need to search using social media. I suggest using Twitter as your search platform and you can either use Twitter directly, or you can use a third-party program like HootSuite (hootsuite.com) (this is what I use - it's the bomb). I usually search for something like this:

• OC tweet up
• OC tweetup
• Orange County tweet up
• Orange County event
• Orange County networking

You get the picture. The idea is to first start with social media terms and then move out from there. You want the highest concentration of people who are utilizing social media when you're going out and meeting them so that's why start off with tweet up. If you can't find any events near you using this type of search, you can always default to meetup.com and just look for networking events in general.

What to Do at the Meet up

Now here's the most important part, actually talking to people. Listen, we all want a ton of business - I know that - but you will never ever get customers by trying to meet everyone in the room and handing them your business card. People want to feel important, and the only way to do that is by giving them your undivided attention. That means that rather than trying to meet 30 people at a time, if you want to be effective you'll spend your time with 1 to 3 people per each meet up. I know this sounds crazy, but it works. (All my introvert friends out there let me hear you say "aww yeah!")

Back in 2009 I attended my very first tweetup. It was at a small Italian restaurant and there wasn't a single person there that I knew. Needless to say, I was nervous. I had never been in a setting where I knew that I needed to talk to people in order to get business while feeling completely and utterly alone and vulnerable. The people putting on the event were a wonderful husband and wife team that welcomed everyone and gave them a name tag and after about 10 minutes of mingling they had everyone form a big circle and encouraged individuals to enter the center and introduce themselves. To this day I still can't remember what I said, I was so nervous. All I know is that I mentioned the birth of my second daughter and that I did IT work somewhere in the babble.

The rest of the evening was spent primarily with one person, Neal Schaffer, an author and foremost expert on the social media platform LinkedIn (he also runs one of the largest social media blogs in the world www.maximizesocialbusiness.com). We seriously spent a few hours chitchatting before I knew who he was, and somehow ended the evening by creating a Flip Cam video with him that he was making for Penelope Trunk from Brazen Careerist.

Some would say that this was a waste of time spending the entire evening talking to one person. On the contrary, that single evening ended up bringing years of referrals, opportunities, and projects that I never would've had otherwise. The best part is I have a friend for life that I never would've met had I thrown a business card at him.

This was not an isolated incident. Over and over by spending time with one to three people my business has doubled, tripled, quadrupled simply from making the other person feel like the most important person in the world.

Reengage on Social Media

Now, here's where the power of social media shines. After you have met someone in person, it's time to reengage them online. A simple tweet, a like of their post, or sending them a direct message goes 100 times further than if you were to do the same without first meeting them. While this may seem like a superficial way to keep a relationship alive, think of your friends whom you haven't seen in years and how a simple email to them can rekindle the connection you once had. Doing a little thing on social media tells the person that you are thinking of them and that they are important enough to maintain a relationship with. On top of that, by sharing their content (especially their business content) you are essentially endorsing what they do to your followers.

I know this seems simple, and that's the point. Why waste hours and hours posting nonsense, when you can meet new people and make amazing and profitable connections. (Besides, there is software like like the aforementioned Hootsuite that you can use to do this that takes less than 15 minutes to do a week’s worth of curated content). The same three hours that you spent curating content manually that leads to a few likes can be used to make three new connections that lead to 10 or more opportunities over the next few months.