Social media has made it incredibly easy to meet influencers. The simplicity of reaching out to anyone is a double-edged sword – it can either help you cut through the clutter and reach influencers, or it can hurt you. Social media influence is powerful. It can help you become sought after, make more money, and make sales faster than ever.
Networking with Facebook with other influencers is also a fast-track to hacking influence. Meeting famous people online can be like adding a jetpack to your journey to becoming influential. By using Facebook without ads or a website, I’ve been able to use my page to meet UFC Hall of Famer and Heavyweight Champion, Bas Rutten. Now, I don’t say any of this to brag – I tell you this to help you understand that I’ve had success with building influence and profits thanks to social media. In the same token, I’ve also made almost every mistake in the book.
If you’d like to build influence, social media can help you and give you a fast track to making a name for yourself. While it can help you, if you do it wrong, it can also hurt your success quicker than you can say hello. This is why I’d like to share with you the three most common mistakes people make when they approach influencers on Facebook (and any other social media channel for that matter).
Facebook Mistake #1 – Hunting For Business In Messenger
Not a day goes by that I don’t get pitched. Personally, I don’t mind being pitched if it’s highly targeted, extremely tactful, and it comes with an offer that is hard to resist. Sadly, most pitches on Facebook Messenger are not focused, thoughtful, or enticing in any way.
Using Messenger, I’ve personally closed easily over $50,000 in sales. Do it right, and you’ll make a lot of sales. Doing it right is not ‘going in straight for the kill.’ The proper way to sell on Facebook Messenger is by first creating a conversation, just like you would in person. It seems like common sense that most of us – online or in person – would first like a ‘hello’ before you ever sell to us. Unfortunately, there are countless people on Facebook who start with messages like this:
“Hey, I just saw your profile. It looks like you’re an entrepreneur. I help people with SEO, social media, podcasts, blogs, YouTube, and anything that makes them money. I want to help you.”
That’s an easy skim, delete and unfriend for me. First-time messages that start with an ‘I help entrepreneurs’ are not good messages. As a matter of fact, they’re the best way to turn someone off and make them hate you. When talking about this kind of message, one of my friends on Facebook put it this way:
“If you approach me like you’re hunting – I run away instantly.”
Another one of my peers had this advice:
“If you want to do business with me, think of it more like cultivating a garden. To reap a harvest, you want to nurture the relationship. Think long-game, not short-game. I am not someone to be hunted, I am someone to be nurtured and someone to have a relationship with. Anything else and I’ll unfriend you.”
Those words summarize what to do and not do pretty well. Don’t approach people on Facebook like copy and paste prey that you just want to sell to. Social media is not a car sales lot; people aren’t initially there to do business; they’re there to socialize first and foremost.
Lots of business can be had on Facebook. In fact, a recent study by Hubspot found that 74% of Facebook users are there to do business. I just want to add that if you’re interested in doing business on Facebook, you have to do it in a way that supports the social platform that Facebook is.
Facebook Mistake #2 – Copy And Paste Messaging
Messages that are copy-and-paste can work. Most people just do them wrong.
Long messages that are copied and pasted make my filtering system quite simple. I see a long message that isn’t for me, but for anyone, I won’t read it – I’ll delete it and block the sender.
It’s easy to spot a copy-and-paste message, which is why they don’t usually work. I’ve sent my fair share of copy and paste messages and every time I’ve gotten responses like:
“I don’t feel like this message was for me. Thank you, but no thank you.”
Or:
“I hate spam messages. Please don’t ever write to me again.”
That gives you a pretty good idea of how most people feel about copy and paste messages. Even messages that are intended to help will usually elicit an immediate repulsion from the reader if they’re copied and pasted.
My advice is, don’t send copy-and-paste messages. If you want to add value, you need to connect and start a dialogue. Start simple. Say hello, ask a few targeted questions, then lead your conversation to where you wanted to steer it.
Lastly, if you’re hoping to blanket your Facebook friends with copy-and-paste messages in hopes of creating synergy, making a sale, or networking, it’s a strong indicator that you need to be more targeted in who you reach out to. It’s also likely that you’re selling a cheap product.
If you are selling a high-ticket, highly targeted, and unique product, you won’t have to copy-and-paste your message. You can spend more time to cultivate the sale, nurture the relationship, and the payoff will be worth it.
Facebook Mistake #3 – Posting Stuff Only You’d Like
If I went to your Facebook profile and scanned it, what would I find?
Would I get pulled in? Would I look at your wall and think, “This person seems cool. These are interesting posts?”
Or, would I be repelled, bored, or swayed away from you?
These are all important questions. If you want to have influence online and offline, your Facebook wall makes a difference. It tells people about who you are, who they can expect to relate with and, like a book cover, gives them something to judge you by.
If you went on my wall, here’s what you’d find: Pictures of me traveling the world, links to articles I’ve been featured in and am published on, like; Influencive, Huffington Post, Entrepreneur Magazine, Good Men Project, Mind Body Green, Elephant Journal, Inc. Magazine, and various other publications. You’d also see posts about being adopted, my programs, tips I have for people who want to use digital marketing and writing for their business growth – all the kinds of things I want a particular type of person to connect with.
Now, my posts may not be for you specifically, but they are for many of the types of people I want to attract. They also help to repel the kinds of people I don’t want to connect with online.
Many people make the mistake of posting super random things. Foods they eat. Things they bought at the dollar store. Their headaches, political rants, links to movies they watched, stories about being at the mall and their purchase of a pair of shorts on sale… all kinds of things that only someone’s mom and best friend would care about.
If you want to be an influencer, you can’t think about your small circle anymore – you have to curate a Facebook feed that helps you influence, attract, inspire, and motivate an audience.
My tip here – care about your wall and post content that helps you create influence, inspire, and motivate. Display the types of content you want your audience to see – not stuff that only your mom and dad want to know about you.
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