Chapter 9
Anti‐Social Media

60 Second Summary

You want to know which social media platforms make the most sense for you to use to position yourself. This chapter has everything you need to know.

You cannot ignore social media but you also cannot invest all of your time with it because it can be a black hole. I don't deal with “maybe” when it comes to sales. I focus on giving you “sure things.”

This chapter delivers the straight scoop on social media for sales superstars.

What's in This Chapter for You?

You'll discover why YouTube is essential and how you can leverage it to attract new prospects in droves.

You will also find out how to use LinkedIn for research and to target your best business prospects.

I try to dissuade you from investing time on Facebook or Twitter unless you have unlimited time and an advertising budget. But I share the one Facebook tool you should keep an eye on.

We also discuss who should use Instagram and who should not, and why.

The key concept you will discover in this chapter is why you should never get into an argument with someone on social media. You can be controversial. You can take contrarian positions. But you shouldn't intentionally single people out and argue with them. This one concept will help keep you from losing lots of business and allow you to maintain your professional reputation.

Don't jump on social media until you read this chapter.

Is This How We Make Friends Now?

During the late summer 2007 I began experimenting with social media as a tool for relationship development. I had a LinkedIn profile since 2005 but I wasn't using it for relationship development purposes. In 2007, I started connecting with interesting people on Facebook and Twitter.

While the growth of social platforms in general increased at a dramatic rate, my use of Facebook and Twitter was heavy but the growth of the “audience” was small. I was having actual conversations with people on both platforms. On Facebook I connected with people from my past. I reengaged in relationships with people from high school and former jobs. This was, and to this day continues to be, gratifying.

Twitter was a different story. Twitter was like an ongoing debate. It was a running kibitzing session much like a tailgate party at a football game. Sometimes people debated news stories, other times it was about industry trends, but most often it was just lighthearted personal barbs exchanged among relative strangers in (at that time) 140 characters. For people who don't value relationships, this would be considered a waste of time.

Living in Miami and being a New York Jets fan is like wandering through a lion's den covered in a steak suit. In August 2007, I engaged in a running debate with several Dolphin's fans about who had a better football team. This pointless exercise served as my introduction to a Miami lawyer named Brian Tannebaum.

Tannebaum and I placed a friendly wager of a lunch on the Jets vs. Dolphins game played September 7, 2008. The Jets won, and a couple of weeks later, I met Tannebaum in person for the first time. In the decade‐plus since that lunch, we have referred thousands of dollars in business to each other. We have spent time together socially. We've partaken in one another's life events. And we've become good friends. This is a relationship that never would have happened if not for social media.

Don't Start Fights on Social Media

As I write this, people are aggressively savaging each other on every platform. Fake accounts, known as bots, amplify political messages and, with pinpoint accuracy, those messages antagonize people into arguments with their “friends.” The result: People hide behind a keyboard and verbally assault folks they grew up with because of an opinion about a political candidate.

You will never know about most of the business you lose because of social media stupidity. Here is a case study that provides a stellar example.

A client reached out to me and invited me to lunch. The topic: Investing in hotels. My client represented a businessman who invested in commercial real estate. This investor wanted to break into the hotel industry and he wanted a relationship with Marriott. The lunch was great, and my client and his client were cordial and professional. I agreed to reach out to my contacts in the hotel business and with Marriott and surface some opportunities.

About two weeks after that lunch I was scrolling through Facebook when I stumbled upon a particularly heated “discussion” about politics. I was shocked to discover the investor represented by my client verbally blasting people for their political opinion. He wasn't making a fact‐based argument. He was launching into a personal attack, complete with profanity, on a public Facebook post.

This is not someone I want to be around. It is definitely not someone I want to introduce to my contacts at a conservative company like Marriott. Why? There are many reasons but the most important is his lack of judgement. If this man is willing to personally berate someone in an open forum, he will do it to my friends, clients, and other investors. I'm not willing to expose my contacts to that possibility.

I passed on the business opportunity and the exposure to a potentially volatile personality. I told my client the reason but I'm sure he didn't share my thoughts with the investor.

My purpose for addressing this phenomenon with you is strictly from a business development standpoint. I'm focused on helping you develop relationships. I want you to sell more of whatever it is you sell. That's why I can say, with peace and love, STOP PISSING PEOPLE OFF on social media!

Follow the advice of Vito Corleone in The Godfather: “Never tell anybody outside the family what you're thinking again.” You don't sell products and services to people by arguing with them about politics, how to raise their kids, or religion. You wouldn't go up to someone in a sales meeting and say: “I heard you voted for that idiot governor. What were you thinking? You must be stupid. He's a criminal.” Yet I see people do that everyday on social media.

Want to know what's worse? When you do it on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter and a prospect does a search before meeting with you, sees it, and decides you're too irrational to work with.

I love freedom of speech. I love the Bill of Rights. But arguing with someone on a volatile subject on social media will hurt your income if you're in sales. There are no two ways about it.

How to Develop Relationships with Social Media

I'm going to share the value of a few social media platforms for the purposes of relationship development. That's what the 60 Second Sale system is all about (Figure 9.1). Make no mistake, you can completely destroy a relationship on social media in 60 seconds. Consider the guidance here to be your guide to relationship initiation and growth. However, much like a doctor, your underlying credo must be to, first, do no harm.

Flowchart illustration depicting how social media creates curiosity.

FIGURE 9.1 Social Media Creates Curiosity

YOUTUBE

We can all have our own television station. Setting up your own YouTube channel is fast and easy. If you've got a mobile telephone with a camera, you can upload a video to YouTube in minutes after you finish shooting it. But treating video on YouTube like a television show would be a mistake. On YouTube, you should have conversations with the people in your audience.

Following the MAD (message, audience, delivery system) formula and the results of your Ideal Relationship Targeting 21 interview, you should highlight issues of concern to your ideal clients and have conversations with them on video. You should also have conversations about issues in your RaporMax® system calendar. Any topic appropriate for an article is also good for a video.

There is a distinct advantage to YouTube compared to other video platforms. YouTube is a fantastic search engine. Each day people search YouTube for things directly related to the value you provide. If you want to find a great starting point for relationship development with YouTube, make a list of the most frequently asked questions you receive. Answer those questions, one at a time, one video at a time.

If you need more material, look through articles you've written in the past and break them down into smaller pieces and record videos on each of those topics. One or two videos each week is a great way to keep your channel active.

If you find you are good at making videos and you enjoy it, you can create a video each day and leverage this platform as one of your key relationship initiation tools. Here is a step‐by‐step guide to using YouTube for relationship development in less than 20 minutes per day.

Step One: Create a content calendar.

Monday is FAQ day. That's the day you answer the most frequently asked questions you've received. Each Monday, answer a new question.

Tuesday is value presentation day. This is the day you present the value you provide for your clients. Each Tuesday you cover an additional way you provide value.

Wednesday is industry update day. Each Wednesday, you discuss something happening in your industry. Share your opinions.

Thursday is timesaving Thursday. Each Thursday you share a tip about how to do something that saves time. It doesn't matter if your product or service has nothing to do with time management or productivity. You are a successful business leader and people always want keys to success. Time management is one of the things that plagues most executives today. Help people save time. Those videos will always be in demand.

Friday is fun Friday. Each Friday, record a video of you having fun. This is a chance for you to demonstrate your humanity. People like to be in other people's business. Give them a chance to live vicariously through you.

That is an example of a content calendar I created for a client who owns an event planning company. This person shoots 20 videos each month, all in one day. The videos are about 2 to 3 minutes in length. It takes about 3 hours to get the month's videos shot. Editing is minimal and takes less than 5 minutes per video. That's 15 minutes total time invested per video.

Step Two: Write a detailed description of your video for YouTube. This description should be about 10 sentences and should be exactly what the video is about, why it's valuable, and what's in it for the viewer.

At the bottom of the description, always include a link to your Primary Internet Presence and an offer of your honeypot via a link to a dedicated page with opt‐in information.

Step Three: Create a special video that offers your honeypot. In that video, “sell” the free information in the honeypot to the viewer. Why do they need this information? What's in it for them? What bad things will happen if they don't receive the information in the honeypot?

Using YouTube tools, embed a link to a honeypot offer into each video. This is different and in addition to putting the information in the YouTube description. YouTube offers the ability to add a link in the video to another video. The video you link to should be the video of you pitching your honeypot. In this stand‐alone honeypot offer video, you give out website information so people can get the honeypot. This way you have two opportunities to capture information from YouTube viewers.

Step Four: Post the video everywhere you can. Embed it on your primary internet presence with a transcript. Send out links to it on other social media websites. Tweet about it along with a link to the video.

These are just a few of the ways you can leverage YouTube to initiate relationships. Remember your goal: Drive people to your honeypot so you can capture their contact information, enroll them in the RaporMax® System, and follow up.

Providing valuable information in video is a great way to start a relationship. I consider YouTube an essential resource for everyone interested in dominating their industry as a sales leader.

LINKEDIN

LinkedIn is an intriguing opportunity for everyone. Here are five steps to leveraging it with a minimal investment of time:

  1. Fully develop your profile. List as much detail as you possibly can about each role you have held and currently hold. Include any video, research papers, and a link to your honeypot right in your main bio.
  2. Research the leaders of your ideal client companies. Try to connect with them on LinkedIn through connections you have in common. Follow those companies and their leaders so you are kept up to date on any news.
  3. Join groups that contain your ideal clients. (These are defined by your Ideal Relationship Targeting 21 interview.) Participate as much as possible in discussions.
  4. Send automatic notifications. Set up your profile to send out notifications each time you post an article on your primary internet presence in real time.
  5. Post entire articles you've written on LinkedIn. Use at least a 30‐day delay because you do not want to confuse search engines on the original source of the content. You can repurpose articles and video from your primary internet presence, your email newsletter, and published articles. Always include a link to where the article originally appeared, and always include a link to your honeypot.

LinkedIn is an extraordinary research tool. Explore it. Please do not use it to send messages to random people. Be judicious in using LinkedIn to communicate directly with people.

FACEBOOK

Facebook is a cesspool of egomaniacal, insular gasbags who enjoy being around people who think and act just like them. This makes it perfect for targeting people who will buy your products and services if you have a budget for advertising.

Don't use your personal page for business promotion. Use your personal page for photos of the kids or connecting with high school classmates with whom you've lost touch. If you want to add those people to your RaporMax® System, go ahead, but connect with those folks personally first – via Facebook Messenger and offline.

Set up a Facebook business page. Then post messages each day using the information gained from your Ideal Relationship Targeting 21 interviews. Keep in mind your message topics on Facebook will need to appeal more directly to the emotions of the reader than messages on your primary internet presence. This is because Facebook has a collection of people who invest time in the platform because they want their opinion validated. This is not a platform where people do research or seek objective information.

Join groups of people who have opinions similar to those folks with your ideal client profile. Frequently invite people from those groups to get your honeypot via a link to that web page. If you want to become fully invested in Facebook, you will want to create a separate and even more focused honeypot to offer to people from this platform.

The one area where Facebook has a significant advantage is in live video. This aspect of the platform is fantastic for creating video (with the same guidelines I've offered for YouTube) but doing it in real time from an event or speaking engagement. Promote this real‐time event well in advance in the groups you've joined and make it a regular event. Think of it as having your own TV show. Make the show happen live at the same day and time each week and you will slowly build viewership. Once the live show is over, it will live on your Facebook page forever as a recorded video.

If you want to invest the time and effort to do Facebook Live video and target suspects with it, this platform makes sense. If you don't want to put in that work, or if you have limited time, Facebook is probably not for you.

The most powerful way to leverage Facebook is to invest in advertising on that platform. Use the information from your IRT 21 interview to target your ideal clients and then work with an expert to create ads they will see every time they log‐in to Facebook. This is Facebook's business model and it works if you have an advertising budget and access to an expert in social media advertising.

TWITTER

I used to love Twitter. Today, not so much. There is a danger that Twitter might be the next MySpace. However, social media is so fickle that this platform could turn around and become hot again.

Here are the most productive ways to use Twitter:

Twitter is a great place to get breaking news – with a grain of salt. If you are in a fast‐moving industry, follow the influencers on Twitter, create a list of them, and run through that feed a couple of times each day. Keep in mind, the information on Twitter comes so quickly it is often inaccurate.

Use Twitter to follow news media personalities and communicate with them. Almost everyone in the media – producers, editors, reporters – Tweet. Follow them and Tweet at them (use their Twitter “handle” in messages). You might be able to create an ongoing dialogue and develop a relationship.

Become a Twitter personality. Use Twitter to send links to the content from your primary internet presence. Once every 10 messages send a link to the web page that offers your honeypot. You can use a service to automate and schedule your Tweets. If you have time, this is a strategy that will drive some traffic to your primary internet presence. How much traffic? That depends on what happens with Twitter as a platform.

Keep an eye on Twitter. If it becomes hot again, jump in. Otherwise, only consider it if you have no other ways to invest your time.

INSTAGRAM

On Instagram you can share photos, photo “stories” (like a slideshow), and brief video.

The value of Instagram to your sales strategy is dependent on your industry. If you work in a visual field, this may be one of your primary tools for sales. I've worked with business leaders and sales professionals in the following industries to successfully leverage Instagram:

  1. Artists: Share photos of your work. Nothing sells like a sample.
  2. Food sales: We eat with our eyes. Feed us with photos.
  3. Event and catering professionals: Photos of people having fun in an elegant setting are attractive to everyone. Who doesn't like fun?
  4. Weight loss and fitness: Use Instagram for before‐and‐after photos, testimonials, and how‐to videos.
  5. Consultants, experts, and coaches: Give your best advice via Instagram video, succinctly.
  6. Day care: Show kids learning, making friends, and enjoying themselves.
  7. Education: Brief, aspirational videos of people graduating and being congratulated inspire action.
  8. Landscaping: Before‐and‐after photos. “See how great your property can look!”
  9. Car detailing: Another great before and after opportunity. Dirty mess becomes a renewed, refreshed, and revived sports car.
  10. Restaurant: Selfie promotion. Show a selfie with a member of the staff and win a free dessert.

These are 10 examples of how I've used Instagram with my clients to attract interest. The key, of course is to offer the honeypot. You do this in Instagram by placing a link in your bio and reminding people, with each post, that they need to go to your Instagram bio and click on the link to get the “Free Report.”

The challenge with Instagram is that the access to the honeypot offer is two steps removed from the media – you have to go from a great photo or a compelling succinct video to a different location – the bio – to get the honeypot offer. The converse is also true. If people work that hard to get the honeypot, they are going to be excellent prospects.

Please keep in mind anytime you use a photo or a video of another person, you should get their permission in advance.

If you are in a highly visual field, Instagram is a good vehicle to attract suspects and convert them.

What about Everything Else?

I left out several other social media platforms. I may have left out one (or many) of your favorites. The reason: time and proof of return on investment.

If you are an individual sales professional, a solo entrepreneur, or an independent professional, you may want to skip social media all together. If you have some time to invest, definitely leverage YouTube and LinkedIn.

If you have a social media team or the resources to hire freelancers, follow the guidance on each of the forms of social media as outlined here. Once you've worked on those, you can look at other social platforms and experiment. The guidance I've included here is based on results I've seen from my business and my clients' businesses. As I've said a few times, when it comes to sales, I like sure things.

60 Second Actions

  • Make a list of the most commonly asked questions you receive about the value you provide, your business, and your industry. Answer them in a video and post it on YouTube.
  • Fully develop your profile on LinkedIn. Update your role and responsibilities as they evolve.
  • Connect your website (primary internet presence) to LinkedIn. Turn on notifications for posts so everyone on LinkedIn knows when you post a new article.
  • Using at least a 30‐day delay, post entire articles you've written. You can repurpose content from your primary internet presence, your email newsletter, and published articles. Always include a link to where the article originally appeared, and always include a link to your honeypot.
  • Use LinkedIn to follow your target companies. Research and connect with people from those companies on LinkedIn.