When you are face to face with a client, you have to get them to feel comfortable with you.
They need to trust you, believe in your ability to help them with the problem that your product or service solves, and it really really helps if they like you as a person.
There are volumes of books written on the subject of how to communicate person to person, but how do you create the same feelings of trust, confidence in your product or service, and a personal connection between your customer and yourself if you can´t talk to them face to face?
How do you build a virtual relationship with your customers online?
How To Communicate Effectively Online
Communicating online is much more than posting useful information. We have Wikipedia and eHow for that.
It´s about building a relationship.
That relationship must be with you personally. That way, anything you sell now and in the future can be based upon that relationship you are building with the customers on your list.
Getting Started:
If you don´t have an email list yet, make sure to read our post on how to start building a list for virtually nothing.
Once you have an email newsletter list connected to an offer of some kind, you are ready to start building an email list.
Your offer can be on your website, on a landing page, on your email signature, on your business card, or on social media.
Step 1: Get People to See Your Offer
There are many ways to get people to see your offer, and they all revolve around how you are going to create your message.
You can drive traffic to your offer with:
- A Blog
- A Website
- A Newsletter
- A Landing Page
- Advertisements
- Social Media
- Search Traffic
- Affiliates and Partnerships
Many of these platforms require existing traffic to drive sales. People have to be coming to your website or landing page.
If you have no traffic:
A. Use keywords to drive traffic to your website and blog posts (SEO = Search Engine Optimization)
- Research Keywords relevant to your product or service using Google´s free keyword search tool
- Try to use keyword phrases that have low competition (they are easier to rank high on the search pages)
- If you are just starting out you should focus on LOCAL keywords using your city or area
Or…
B. Buy advertisements on Google Adwords or Facebook
Or…
C. Promote your offer on Social Media
The best and fastest way to get people to see your offer is to post it on social media.
These people already know you, and they are connected to thousands of other people on social media who can see what they comment about on your posts.
If your post is interesting, funny, or inspiring enough, those people might actually take a moment to see what you are all about.
Social Media Strategies:
Use Facebook, Google+ and any other social media platforms that you enjoy like Twitter or Instagram to interact with your ideal customer.
1. Make sure your posts target the pain points and dreams of your target customer
2. Educate, entertain, and inspire (all at once if possible)
3. Quality is more important than quantity. No one cares that you have a Facebook page. They only care if your content is relevant to them and worth seeing.
4. Your content must create an emotional response inside of them.
5. Use Social Proof. The best social media posts show the success of others. Prove that your system works by showing your best client testimonials, or your personal testimonial.
Download Our Free Social Media Strategy Guide for more ideas.
Step 2: Creating an Emotional Response
Communicating online is about creating an emotional response from a viewer.
- Think about the funniest, most beautiful, most fascinating, most inspiring things you have read or seen on social media.
- Think about the things that captured your imagination for a few minutes, the stories that you just had to finish reading even though the post was ten times longer than usual.
- Think about the images and ideas that have caused you to LIKE or SHARE a post.
- Think about what our target audience values and enjoys most.
That is the kind of emotional response that will get people to pay attention to what you are saying each and every time.
Should I Start a Blog?
Yes:
- You want to become a local expert in your industry.
- You have information, pictures, and success stories that will be interesting, entertaining, and inspirational to others.
- You have no problem updating a website regularly by yourself, or you can easily hire a friend or family member to do it for you.
- You can tell a story and make it lead into your free giveaway or a sales pitch for your services.
No:
- You don´t plan to update your blog at least weekly or monthly.
- You plan on just copy and pasting other articles from the internet onto your blog.
- You think that writing a single blog post will generate thousands of new leads for you automatically.
- You hate the internet and all things digital and it´s tough enough to check your email let alone manage a blog.
Note:Having a blog doesn´t have to be difficult or expensive. Save yourself time and energy by using a service like HireWriters.com to write basic content for you for a few dollars that you can edit to fit your voice and your needs.
Helpful Tips:
- Post something at least twice a month, but once a week is best.
- Plan and write your blog posts (and social media posts) at least 1-2 weeks in advanced so you don´t burn out.
- Connect your social media posts and newsletter to your blog, and vice versa. Use them to promote each other.
- If you are just starting a blog, take your time and create 3 very powerful posts that guide readers from one to the next and into your sales pipeline.
- Let your blog posts lead the reader into a free trial or special offer for one of your products ( but don´t make your post a hard selling sales letter).
- Learn a little about SEO and Keyword Phrases and how they can help your blog attract more readers organically.
- Use lots of powerful images. Stock photo sites like iStockphoto.com are very useful for this.
- Write for other blogs and make friends with other bloggers. Blogging is a social tool.
- Hire a freelancer or a company like HireWriters.com to write content for you.
- Have fun. If you aren´t enjoying the material, your readers won´t either.
I don´t have anything special to share…
Then do what the news and television does – talk about what other people are doing:
- Become THE local expert in your area who lists everything happening in your field locally.
- Let your clients speak for you. Share their stories and strategies that helped them.
- Share what you believe in. Talk about what you want to accomplish, rather than pretending that you have accomplished something huge already, or that you represent a giant company.
- Be authentic. Be yourself. Get people to join your dream.
Newsletter Options:
A. I am starting from scratch.
You don´t need a monthly or weekly newsletter yet.
What you need is a powerful auto-responder campaign that automatically follows up with the prospects after they sign up for your free giveaway.
- They get the free giveaway.
- They get a follow up message that teaches them more about you and your program and leads them to their next step. (Example: Setting up an appointment for a free phone consultation with you?)
- They get additional follow up messages that tie in the free information you gave them into your product and service offerings. (Examples: success stories, motivation, recent developments in the industry, local events, etc.)
B. I have a list of 100-500 people that I can email
You should have a quarterly or monthly newsletter that highlights your accomplishments and the accomplishments of your clients on your program over the past month or quarter.
With this small of a group you should have a fairly good grasp of who these people are and what they are looking for. Your newsletter should provide them highly targeted information that leads into an offer for your service, and positions you as the local expert on your topic.
The newsletter can lead people to your blog, social media, or to special offers.
C. I have a list of 500-2000 people that I can email
At this point you should have a monthly or weekly newsletter promoting yourself as THE expert in your local community, including detailed information about local events and stories, recent news and trends in the industry, and information and education on how to take advantage of these tools and knowledge.
Your newsletter newsletter can also provide some entertainment, stories, videos, and special offers, and highlight the best of your social media, blogging, and speaking.
D. I have a list of thousands, tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of people.
You should have a weekly or bi-weekly newsletter that provides information, entertainment, stories, videos, and special offers, and which highlights the best of your social media, blogging, and other media appearances, and that gets your fans and clients involved sharing their stories and successes.
At this point you are presenting yourself as a national or even worldwide expert in your industry. Your newsletter. blogging, and social media posts should make mention of things happening on a national and worldwide scale in your industry.
Other Useful Tips:
- Create a catch phrase for your program to use on your site, newsletter, and posts. What 3 words describe what you do and how you help people?
- If you want to merge your corporate Facebook pages into one professional page: Read This Article on How to Merge Your Facebook Pages
- Hate writing? Got a video camera? Make videos instead and create a YouTube Channel! (these can easily be embedded in your blog posts)
- Time Management: Take 5 hours per week to plan next week´s newsletter, blog post, and social media posts. Prepare them before you send them. It´s done!
- Link everything to everything else. Your newsletter should have a link back to your website, blog, and social media page (link to an advertisement for your event, or 8 week run, etc. ), and vice versa.
- Check out Tidbitts and other micro-blogging platforms
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