How To Bring Your Team Online Without The Overwhelm – Part 2

7 Strategies for getting your team started on Facebook


Get people excited by demonstrating how powerful the platform is

A lot of people still have the same resistance to Facebook as they do to Twitter. They’ve heard it’s a social site where people do meaningless mundane updates on what they ate for lunch. The fastest way to change their perception is by showing them your own account. Since most people are visual, the best way to do this is by doing a Skype screenshare. Give them a quick tour of your wall and the walls of other successful marketers so that they can see the powerful interactions going on and the relationships being formed. Let them watch over your shoulder as you go in and post updates and engage with people. Demonstrate the strategy behind tagging people using the @ symbol.

Walk them through their profile set up

It might sound like a no brainer, but not a day goes by where I don’t see someone on the Social Networks without their profile and bio set up. Even worse, a photo that’s not their own! Do not let anyone in your team become a ‘Fakebooker’! Talk to them about what they want to be known for in their industry and develop a branding strategy around that.

If they are employed full time, it’s critical that you walk them through the basics of the privacy settings so that their marketing posts don’t end up on google for their employer to see.

Brainstorm their niche

Find out the persons likes and interests are so you can help devise a friend adding strategy relative to their niche. E.g if one of the benefits of the product they promote is enhanced athletic perfomance , it sounds logical to go out and friend other athletes. But this is only true if they have a passion for the topic itself outside of any marketing. Help them find a match between their target market and what they’re naturally passionate about talking about. While having 1000 friends might sound powerful, it’s meaningless to have 1000 friends who have no interest in what you like to talk about.

Targeted friend adding and building relationships with influencers

This strategy has two components:

  • A general but targeted friend adding strategy
  • A more focused strategy based on connecting with people of influence and potential JV partners

The first step is to use the import your email list and skype contacts feature.  This is the fastest way for a new person to go from no friends to some friends almost immediately.
The next step is to start making connections with like minded people through groups and pages. As an entrepreneur, some of the best places to start with are the ones created around well known authors on the topic of their niche. For example, if you do a search on Facebook for Robert Kiyosaki, you’ll find close to 200,00 people have liked this page. Are you kidding me! Over 200,000 budding or established entrepreneurs to connect with! Are you loving how powerful this is yet?

As Facebook doesn’t publish the daily limit on friend requests, play safe and stay with around 30 a day

In order to create a super responsive and engaging friends list, I would suggest only actively seeking out and sending friend requests until you have your first 100- 200. The purpose behind this strategy is that once you are actively engaging with your initial community, friend requests from their friends will start naturally flowing in on a daily basis. When people request to be your friend because they liked the valuable comment you left on one of their friends pages, the connection is immediately more powerful. Growing an ‘organic’ following on Facebook is key if you want powerful connections, rather than numbers.

The second strategy is more targeted and focused. This is about concentrating on specific relationships with people of influence or thought leaders in your niche. So as well as the general friend adding strategy, you want to be actively friending and directly connecting with 3-5 people a week that have influence in your industry. The bulk of your time should be spent building solid relationships with these people.

Always include a personal note letting the person know why you would like to connect. If you can include something you both have in common before you send the request, you are planting the seed for a powerful future relationship.

What to post in Facebook status updates

For someone brand new, this is actually quite a daunting question.

  • How personal should I be?
  • What do I post about?
  • Do I let everyone know about my business opportunity?

Ok so lets address the first one. If you are on Facebook as a marketer, you need a balanced approach to how personal you should be. It’s a social site so by all means be social and be yourself. Afterall, it’s the human side that makes this platform so powerful! Having said that, you will eventually have an audience of thousands of people potentially viewing your status updates. Is it going to benefit your brand if you post every detail of your pending relationship break up? This is not about being false, it’s also about respecting others. People don’t log into Facebook to be burdened by problems they might already be facing in their own lives. Sure if you’re having a bad day, post it but add some sort of engaging or light hearted twist to it. Just be mindful of posting negative personal updates that draw people into any drama.

So what do we say in our status updates? A good question here would be, what do you like to see in other peoples status updates? I’m guessing this would be anything that is entertaining, educational, enlightening or engaging. There are no rules here and don’t forget people love controversy!

From what we know about Facebooks News Feed algorithm (more details in the next post), links and videos are favored over status updates. Some of the best places to find interesting posts to link to are:

Don’t get too hung up on what to post, after all it’s you people are connecting with.

If you are posting about your opportunity, remember the 90/10 rule of value vs marketing.  Provide value and people will become naturally curious if you keep your opportunity posts less blatant.  E.g. “Wow check this out myopportunity” vs “Totally excited about some of the new marketing strategies my team are testing out.” It also goes without saying that you shouldn’t be falsely friending people with the intention of spamming people with private ‘my opportunity’ messages.

Set up a Facebook support tribe

While engaging on Facebook might seem like second nature to some of us, it can still be daunting for a new person. Imagine being brand new for a minute and every time you do a status update, not a single person replies or engages with you…

The fastest way to get a new person into the groove and generating buzz quickly is to set them up with their own mini tribe

Get them connected with a small inner circle of others who agree to comment on each others updates. This is also critical if you want to be showing up in your friends newsfeed. One of the reasons people post updates that have zero likes or comments is because the update hasn’t appeared in your friends News Feed. As Facebook doesn’t favor new people, it’s very easy to become completely invisible in the news feed until your affinity score increases. Although Facebook doesn’t reveal the exact details on how the score is calculated, inbound activity plays a huge part. Just as Facebooks NewsFeed algorithim favors links and videos over text updates, comments are also favored over ‘likes’.

The art of engaging on Facebook

This topic is so important it literally deserves a separate post as even fortune 500 companies are still struggling with getting this right. What a lot of people, and companies view as engagement is a form of shout marketing. In the case of a company this would be constant updates that aren’t that dissimilar to an ad. Online entrepreneurs also fall into this trap by constantly posting updates that don’t invite people into the conversation. Facebook is a Social Media platform, not a Me Me Media platform!

The simplest way to get people engaged is by asking questions. Not only do people love to answer questions, but by inviting people into a topic you give them the chance to shine in front of your audience. And people love to hang out where they can look good! Once you do have an engageing update happening, it’s important to make the contributors feel valued and acknowledge. If you like some of the replies, take a nano second to click the like button. Acknowledge as many of the commenters as possible with an @theirname reply and if it makes sense, draw them back in with another question. People are missing out on a huge amount of rapport building because they sit back and ignore an update once it takes on some life.

The same goes for joining conversations on other peoples updates.  If you are late to the party, take the time to read through some of the other comments before you join in. If you like what someone else has written, start your reply with a response to @friend1 before you offer your own comment. I continually receive friend requests (often within minutes) of using this strategy.

None of this means anything if you are not taking these friendships and relationships and building them offline

While public interactions on Facebook are incredibly powerful for rapport building and positioning, behind the scenes is where business really happens. As soon as you click with someone, send them a message asking to connect on Skype or the phone. The great thing about connections that start on Facebook, is by the time you do speak to someone offline, they already know, like and trust you. Now thats a powerful basis to start any potential business relationship from!

In the next post I’ll be going into the in’s and out’s of Facebooks NewsFeed optimisation, and why it’s important to understand how it works.

If you enjoyed this post or have some tips to share that I’ve missed, please leave me a comment below. If you think this information might help others to get started, don’t forget to share it on Facebook.

Michaele

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14 thoughts on “How To Bring Your Team Online Without The Overwhelm – Part 2”

  1. Great post Michaele, it’s easy to forget how scary things are for new people. I reckon you’ve covered everything here, for someone who’s just starting online.

    Have a fun day! Julieanne

  2. Hi Michaele,
    I remember reading somewhere that a good “general” formula for Facebook posts is 30-30-30:

    30% Perosnal Updates
    30% Inspirational Quotes or Sharing Other Content
    30% Business-Related or Promotional

    (The post never did say what to do with the remaining 10% — I suppose it could be a free-for-all? LOL)

    Anyway, this post shows anyone new to Facebook how valuable it can be for many reasons. It is arguable the greatest human resource site in the world right now, and only getting bigger by the minute. The key to Facebook success is no different than networking success elsewhere — be authentic, be genuine, care about others, form relationships, and let things develop naturally.

    Thanks for doing such a thorough job of explaining the benefits of using Facebook and how to do it with style and grace!

    LOL (lots of love) :)

    Mary Lou

  3. WOW Michaele!

    I’m going to use this as a training reference! :) You’ve got what appears to be ALL the bases covered… and in such a methodical fashion.

    There have been instances when I find someone who thinks that they can just tell their team to simply come onboard. I wish I had this post then. To think that they’ll be effective online without some kind of gameplan such as these guidelines that you’re sharing is foolish at best.

    Thanks for putting the time in to provide us with such a structured package of great info.

  4. Yet again another stellar post Michaele’

    Facebook by far is my favorite social tool, relationship building tool, and business building tool. Theirs so many neat functions that make working online and meeting new people and enjoyable experience. I love the fact that it’s almost rude to talk about your business on facebook, or at least your personal profile..The 90/10 rules sounds right on the money to me.

    I often wish to send out private messages to all the friends that slam my inbox daily with their opportunities before we’ve even said 2 words to each other to put in to practice this 90/10 rule you wrote about so eloquently. Instead I’ll post your post….Theirs so many great techniques to use to connect away from the site as you mention.

    Your great Michaele’

    Love that my tweet friend Natalie Louise shared you on twitter

    • Hey Gebrina,

      Oops! I usually go through my akismet spam folder regularly to see if it’s captured any legitimate comments by mistake and I haven’t done this for the last 8 weeks.
      Unfortunately your awesome comment was one that it captured. Grr!

      That said, I totally agree with the temptation to send private messages to uneducated spammers. And guess what? I do! I always try educating first as I know I was among the ignorant when I started. Although thankfully I wasn’t on Facebook then.

      I made a Youtube video where I talk about spamming and losing credibility on the social sites that I send to spammers. Sometimes I receive a hostile reply to the video BUT, the few that take the coaching and ‘get it’ usually apologize. Now those people are the gems! They are ones that I’m happy to engage with and help in anyway possible.

      I’m so glad we connected through Natalie as she is such a valued trusted friend and ally in amongst all of the online noise.

      Thanks for stopping by Gebrina, I appreciate your contribution here :)

      Michaelé

  5. Michaelé I love the detail you have here and I agree with Julieanne this would make a great eBook. It would be good if it was compulsory reading given some of what we see. lol

    We do forget how overwhelming it can be. Last week I was helping a friend set up a page and a group. She was so confused about the differences between her profile, page and group. Maybe that can go in your eBook :-)

    Excellent information and thanks for doing this.

    Sue

  6. Hi Sue,

    I’m a bit late back here! Thanks for the e-book suggestion. I did think about doing that down the track given the length of some of the posts in the series lol!

    And I agree on how quickly we forget how overwhelming it can all be. I get a really good reality check on this every time I speak to people offline. It’s so easy to get caught up in our online world where everyone appears to be so tech savvy.

    Appreciate you stopping by :)

    Michaelé

  7. Great platform. Your details about it is very well said and I really appreciate it. This is another applications for facebook and I love to learn something new again. Thanks for sharing this and more blessings to you!

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