I could write a real long post on this subject. There are hundreds of ways you can do it. But you’re busy.
So I thought why not share with you the fastest way!
I’m going to let you know that resource in a bit. But I want to explain the psychology behind having lots of followers. and why it will help you get more.
Social Proof
You probably think that more Twitter followers means more retweets and shares right? Well, not so fast. Chances are good many of the followers you get will not be in your geographical area. Therefore how can they buy from you? Unless of course you run an e-commerce website.
I’ll assume you run a brick and mortar store though. Now even though many of your new followers may not be in your area, they alone will help you get others to follow you.
Just how to get more Twitter followers though?
Social proof.
Having lots of Facebook likes can lead to getting people to like your page simply because lots of other people liked it. Read more about social proof in my Facebook marketing post.
So the definition of social proof is:
Informational social influence is a psychological phenomenon where people assume the actions of others reflect correct behaviour for a given situation.
But social proof is online and offline.
Here’s a quick offline example.
Last month I went to a baseball game. When my friend and I arrived at the gates to buy tickets we noticed two line-ups. There was no signage saying “buy tickets” on either line.
So everyone who got to the line-ups was relying on what the other people were doing.
Of the two line-ups, one had 15 people in it. The other only had three people.
Naturally we were excited to watch the game so we went to the smaller line. Surely enough we got out tickets in under a minute. The other line had hardly moved though.
Remember that there were no signs for both these lines. Without any direction people had to rely on what others were doing. So they blindly followed the actions of others by lining up in the larger line. That line was bigger and they assumed that was the correct and only line to purchase tickets. They figured the smaller line was for role call.
Social proof works online too.
If you’re on Twitter and you see someone with over 2000 followers, you’ll probably follow them. You’re essentially following the actions of others by following that person. After all since lots of people are following them, you should to right?
Having a large number of followers can lead you to getting more people to follow you much easier. They won’t second guess following you because you only have 300 followers. Nope. They’ll see you have 3000+ followers and think you must be important.
How To Get Them Fast
Alright. I’m still going strong with my content strategy of writing about the 10 best free Internet marketing tools.
The tool I am about to share with you lists 2000 Twitter users who are very likely to follow you back.
Pretty cool right? I’d give yourself a good hour to go through and see how many people you can follow.
Let me know how many followers you get from using this tool.
PS. In my next post I’m going to talk about another free tool that indicates how influential people are on social networks. Be sure to signup for my email newsletter so you don’t miss that post.
Email is far from dead. People think that just because there is so much spam mail nowadays that people hate email.
Some do. But everyone still checks his or her email. In fact I really think that because people hate spam mail so much, they’ll only give it out if they really want something. So if someone joins your email list, they want more useful content from you.
Sure your email subscribers might not grow to match your Twitter followers or Facebook. With Facebook EdgeRank choosing if your posts are being seen or not and the average life of a Tweet being fairly low, email is a great alternative to avoid the clutter of social media posts.
If you happen to think email is dead or not useful in your business then this post isn’t for you. But you should still be trying to generate leads from your website!
If you want to increase your email marketing, read that last link and use Mailchimp to start out. Mailchimp is another free Internet marketing tool aside from Google Analytics and Webmaster tools. Obviously using something for free to test the waters with is a great way to do it.
Why Mailchimp rocks!
Mailchimp is great because it almost all the capabilites of Awber (affiliate link) which is what I use. With Mailchimp you can:
Use pre made email templates
Customize and brand your own
Create web forms to capture email address
Track and analyze visitor impressions of web forms
Integrate your blog feed into a email newsletter
Send automated emails after a certain day people joined your list
Track and analyze how many people open your emails
Set up different email lists
Their online support is fairly decent as well. But I personally think a how to video is better if you have no experience with Mailchimp.
Last week I broke out of my comfort zone and went to a networking event.
Normally I hate these things. Most of time I find people aren’t really concerned about you and simply want your business card so they can add you to their email list.
But this event I met a couple of interesting people from different industries. One of which was a local realtor named Scott Garman. He and his brother run Garman Group.
Scott made the jump from Vancouver to Victoria to start his real estate career. He had been away from Victoria for close to 15 years. He couldn’t rely on his old network of people since he lost contact with many of them.
What was he to do? He turned to Twitter.
His start in real estate happened around the same time Twitter started. He found the community of Victoria users to be very close at the time. They were lots of meet ups offline which helped really grow connections.
Since Twitter was new, there weren’t many other realtors on Twitter. Jumping into something new with little competition is a great way to grow.
But it was the most overlooked benefit of Twitter that helped him more than anything. One of the few marketers I look up to Gary Vaynerchuck also credits this benefit as the main reason his family wine store’s sales grew to record numbers.
Eavesdropping
I’m a notorious eavesdropper. Especially when the conversations involve business.
Well the advanced search function is a way you can eavesdrop on peoples Twitter conversations.
Unlike Facebook you can zone on what people are saying about your industry, products, services and competitors. This is a great way to get involved in the conversations. Doing so allows you to become the local go to source in your industry since most people are asking questions on Twitter. You’ll also be able to spot out potential business opportunities as well.
Here’s what you need to do:
Develop a list of keywords related to your industry, product, service or competitors
Type one of your keywords into the “all of these words” form
Add the city you’re located into the “near this place” form at the bottom
From there you will get a list of Tweets over the course of the last few days from people who have mentioned your keyword within your targeted area.
Scott mentioned his list of keywords included:
realtor
house for sale
home
moving
I may have made a couple of those up but you see where I’m headed.
Gary Vaynerchuk being in the wine industry obviously had a larger pool of keywords. He could choose all the brands and grapes he wanted. He could also simply search the term wine and join in on people’s conversations. And that’s why his business and personal brand grew.
Do you see how beneficial this could be for your business? Instead of spending a hours every month Tweeting and finding content to Tweet, you can do this and see a better return on your time.
Back in days of telephone books, we had no way to tell if the business was trustworthy. We just went through a page at a time and made our decision based on very few things.
So there was no first impression outside of a logo and advertisement.
However the internet has given everyone a voice. And with that voice people can say what they want about anyone. Including businesses.
When people find any Google Places business listing, they want to see what others have to say. Especially if they’re a first timer. It’s why Urbanspoon and Trip Advisor are so big.
Reviews are like a comment card. But everyone can see them. It’s not like the old days of comment cards when management were able to discard the bad reviews.
To sum it up, your reviews are your business’s first impression.
More the Merrier
Having just a few reviews is fine. But just about every Places page I see has 0-5 reviews. I believe the more reviews you have, the higher your social proof.
It also means that your business must be pretty remarkable. Especially if your competitors have very little reviews. If people love your business and take the time to write a review, you’re doing something right!
The more reviews you have the easier it is to stand out from the competition.
Getting More Reviews
I started this post off by saying all you have to do is ask. And that’s what I want you to do.
If you’ve been in business for over six months, chances are good you have repeat clients. Those are the ones who would be willing to write a review.
All you have to do is ask them.
There are only two ways we communicate (outside of body language) so here are the two methods you can ask for reviews:
1) After checkout (verbally)
If you have a physical storefront, you probably have a computer with a POS system. When they’re finished their checkout ask them how their visit was and if they have a Google or GMail account. If they enjoyed it (I’m sure they did) kindly ask them to write a review on the spot.
This might be hard for some of you to do. I suggest asking those repeat clients whom you’ve built a good rapport with.
When you do this, make it really easy for them. Have your browser on your Google Places page and be sure you’re logged out. Then all they have to do is click on the “Write a Review” button and they’ll be asked to sign into their Google/Gmail account.
Easy!
Some people might not know their password. But you can ask them to follow step two.
I have embedded a line in my signature that states:
“Reviews are important for local search engine rankings. I was hoping you could write a quick review on my Google Places page.”
When it’s embedded in your signature, you won’t forget to put it in every email.
When doing so, make it really easy. So either screen record how to do that with a voiceover or use my method of taking screenshots for step by step instructions like I did in this post.
As I said be weary of doing this for Yelp. If you have an influx of reviews on Yelp, they filter them.
But Google Places pages don’t have filters. So get out there and ask for them reviews!
This strategy will allow you to rank quickly for targeted keywords. Great news for those who are in a crowded marketplace and have too many competitors’ websites to leap frog in the search rankings.
Continue reading to learn about an SEO strategy that will have profound results for your lead generation.
The Cookie Cutter SEO Strategy
Everyday people are turning to Google. They’re looking for your service.
Most business owners and service providers know that. When they think SEO, they think people are searching for providers like “Los Angeles divorce lawyer” or “Pittsburgh life insurance”.
People are searching those terms. A lot of them too. But the price and time to reach the top search results for those terms (keywords) is high.
Also this strategy is cookie cutter in my opinion. Everyone targets those keywords. And that’s why it’s so competitive.
You should aspire to stand out. Not follow the crowd.
Let me introduce you to the SEO strategy that will yield profound results. I’m 95% certain your competitors aren’t using this strategy.
Answer My Question Google!
Yes people are searching “Los Angeles divorce laywer”. But they are also searching to find out answers to their questions and problems.
What you do next is simply answer that question by writing a blog post about it. The keyword you then target is that question.
So simple. What’s extremely beneficial about this is a qualified lead is landing on your blog post. They get their question answered and their happy.
It doesn’t stop there though. Perhaps this question has other questions tied to it. If you have a ‘recommended posts‘ plugin or links to other blog posts in the blog post they landed on, they can read more of your blog posts.
I read a great post on Marcus Sheridan’s blog last month. The topics were blogging and content. In the comment section I saw a wonderful testimonial for this SEO strategy.
My next example comes from Insurance Agent and internet marketer Ryan Hanley. He did the exact same thing I’ve explained in this post for his companies blog and the results are astounding.
And lastly I want to show my Peerless Golf blog’s Google analytics report for July 2012.
There is a slight problem with this SEO strategy which is known as targeting longtail keywords. But it can be easily overcome.
You’ll be targeting people from all over the world. Here’s a screenshot of the visitors locations.
Not exactly targeted. However I can easily change my settings through my Google Webmasters tools account to target searchers in a specific country.
If you don’t have Webmaster tools setup, do it know by reading this post.
So you’ll receive visitors from all over your home country. But in the example a few images above, Ryan Apsy and his shoulder pain found a Doctor who blogged about shoulder problems in his city. Depending on your average bill of sale or the lifetime value of a client, the ROI on even 5 people doing business with through your blog is massive.
The Ball Is in Your court
I’ll leave you with this. Write down every question you can think of when it comes to your business or service. Then get blogging!
“Why didn’t you just ask?”
