It seems that in today’s increasingly digital world, you have anyone on the planet within a click’s reach. So many social media platforms are designed to make communicating and engaging with others as easy and fast as possible. So, with all this immediate contact at our disposal, why not use it to our advantage?

As a Business Influencer (and yes, you are in fact an influencer), your impact on others is limitless— if you implement your influence correctly. LinkedIn, the leading professional networking and job search app, is a necessary tool for taking social media by the reigns and using it to build business. Yes, connecting with professionals in your industry, whether you know them or not, is great for building your network. But what’s the point of your large network if you are not taking the extra steps to convert these connections into clients? With each accepted invitation to connect comes a whole wave of opportunity. Watch this Social Jack Flash Class!

What is Social Selling?

Social selling is the process of developing relationships as part of the sales process. Today, this often takes place via social networks such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest, but can take place either online or offline. Examples of social selling techniques include sharing relevant content, interacting directly with potential buyers and customers, personal branding, and social listening. Social selling is gaining popularity in a variety of industries, though it is used primarily for B2B (business-to-business) selling or highly considered consumer purchases (e.g. financial advisory services, automotive, realty).

Social selling has become more popular since companies have looked to increase their return on investment of social media interaction. Sales teams within organizations frequently mine data from social media that may help them connect to customers in order to create a more genuine sales lead. The technique frequently focuses on approaching potential clients in a less direct way, meaning they don’t interrupt their daily lives with cold calls and hard sells. Koka Sexton stated that the art of social selling is said to speed up many sales processes, while also improving relationships.

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Let’s take a look at some statistics from the International Data Corporation:

75% of B2B buyers and 84% of C-level/vice president (VP) executives surveyed use social media to make purchasing decisions.

Online professional networks are the number one information preference of buyers in the final stage of the purchase process.

Social buying correlates with buying influence. The average B2B buyer who uses social media for buying support is more senior, has a bigger budget, makes more frequent purchases, and has a greater span of buying control than a buyer who does not use social media. B2B buyers find the greatest benefit of social media is gaining greater confidence in and comfort with their decisions.

How Many Contacts Do You Have That You Cannot See?

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When we think about our social reach, you may be connected to someone directly, through another person or through many different people. What happens is, information gets passed down a line. One person may see what you’re doing online, believe that it may be of value to someone else they know, then connect you to their connection. This opens up an array of networking opportunities

The LinkedIn Network

Even with 500, 400, even 300 industry-related connections, this puts us within degrees of millions of possible connections. When you look at someone’s profile on LinkedIn, you can see how many shared connections there are between you and them. This is the beginning of the formation of “clusters”. It is essential to know how to talk with the people within these clusters, more specifically, find the ones that matter.

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Goal: Prevent Clicking Roulette!

What we want to prevent is “clicking roulette”. It’s normal to go onto social media and begin clicking on every possible prospective client you see, but it’s not efficient or beneficial to us. We may log onto LinkedIn with one goal, but soon find ourselves buying gadgets from the Amazon trending list, or making trades on Draft Kings. This lack of focus is not going to generate appointments.

Personal Challenge: Make it a goal for yourself to set five minutes (and only five) to go on LinkedIn, and make your sole intent to leave with one appointment. Whether it’s a phone appointment, a Zoom call, or just a coffee date, make that your one goal for five minutes on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn Power Moves- Let’s Get Those Appointments!

1) Your Profile = Your Professional Brand

Think about your ideal target and whom you want to start conversations with. Take the time to identify your target audience, then make sure your LinkedIn profile speaks specifically to that group.

Your profile photo should represent who you truly are. It should be current, welcoming, and you want it to portray how you would look if a client were to be seeing you at a meeting or an event. If you put a tie on for professional headshot photo day at work, but you don’t usually wear a tie, that is not a good representation of your personal brand.

Ensure that your profile headline is clear and communicates to people what you do and how you can help them. Putting where you work is unnecessary because it is already located at the top of your profile. You want to answer the clients’ question: “What is your solution that you are bringing to me?”. Your headline is what the potential client will see first when they land on your profile, meaning it should be packed full of keywords (within LinkedIn's limit of 120 characters, of course) relating to your specialties and services. If they were to search for a combination of keywords pertaining to the service you provide, you want to be first on the list of profiles after they press enter.

Joseph has a clear & concise headline of exactly what he can provide to his potential clients. His profile photo represents him well, for if we were to meet him at an event, this is how he would appear. You can see he included speaker and author in his headline-- While this may not be his primary job, he included this service in order to be found via keyword search.

2) Home Page Scan (UNE)

Remember that personal challenge from earlier? When you log onto LinkedIn, use part of those five minutes to scan your homepage. This step is where you literally scroll through your LinkedIn feed. If you’re noticing a lot of content and profiles that don’t apply to you and your goals, you have the wrong network. You can hide this unwanted content, or even unfollow/disconnect to these people that don’t belong in your circle.

Example: If you are hosting an event and have 500 people you know, but 50 of those are the decision makers, those 50 people are the ones you want at your event. LinkedIn, and social media in general, is one huge event. Invite the people who belong, and drop the ones who aren’t benefiting you or your business.

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Above is what your LinkedIn home page looks like. Time to scroll and see who is helping you reach your goals— and who isn't. Remember: Social Media is like an event. Invite those who should be apart of it.

Within two minutes of your homepage scan, you should be able to spot somebody worth starting a conversation with.

3) Network Diving – Level One

Find someone within your network whom you believe is reputable, is always making referrals, or who is just a good friend. Then, “dive” into their LinkedIn network.

Example: Tony is a good friend of mine who I KNOW would always be willing to introduce me to people in his network. Find a connection like Tony and try diving into their connections!

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Don’t be afraid to get in touch with your established network and ask them to introduce you to people in their network. Take the “social” part of social media literally, and dive right in to new opportunities.

LinkedIn has a feature where you can search specifically for a certain industry, seniority, or job title of that connection pool to ensure you’re reaching out to your preferred target audience.

Here's an example of a filtered search within Tony's network:

Customize the search on your friend or colleague's network to hone in on a target that meets your needs.

4) Conversation

Now that you took that leap of faith diving into a new network, it’s time to start a conversation. Think back to those first five minutes on LinkedIn, we’re at the point where times halfway up.

You have identified that new person whom you want to start a conversation with, now it’s time to engage. Isn’t engaging what social media is all about? Select a recent post that your prospective appointment has shared and start a genuine conversation with them in the comments. Something as simple as making an authentic comment is a guaranteed way to opening up new doors for you and this potential client. Put the sales aside for a second and really focus and touch on what matters to them. Start that dialogue, and be sure that you are all in on investing in them. This will establish a feeling of authenticity and trust before the actual conversation even begins.

Example: You found a potential appointment, Spencer in this case, from that nose dive into Tony's network. Now that it's time to start a conversation, head over to Spencer's activity to find something you can either comment on or include in your future messaging.

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5) Set the Hook – Convert

Now that you've done all that work (about 3.5 minutes into your 5 minute limit!), you're ready to get that appointment. Here are a few example strategically formulated messages you can send to your future client for your best chances of landing that conversion.

The “Catch Up”

This introductory message shows a genuine, authentic approach to breaking the ice with your target appointment. Writing this message needs to be done in a targeted fashion. Confirm that this person has a reason to utilize you and your services and that you as well are targeted in this initiative.

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The “Fresh Connect”

It is important to thank people for connecting. If you’re lost on ways to initiate that conversation, thanking someone for simply connecting with you is a great place to start. It’s personal, simple, and gets straight to business.

We want to include a specifics with formulating this message. Specify how you want to meet and let them know you’re interested in working with them. Don’t leave this potential client wondering why you reached out.

Always provide two times and dates you are available to meet! If their response is delayed, at least you ignited a dialogue that can get picked back up in the future. Don’t forget to insert forms of contact information so you are easily reachable. While LinkedIn does not allow for automated signatures on messaging, it is always helpful to keep a document handy with a custom signature you can quickly copy and paste.

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The “Continued Call”

One of the most important things about the continued call message is that you started the conversation. Remember that initial chat you had in the comments of the potential client’s post? It should be referenced here in this direct message. You can lead with language like “As promised…” or “Like I mentioned…” as an extension of that previous conversation. Make your intentions clear.

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The “Transition”

This message can be technically viewed as an email validation. Make sure you have that intent to go from this conversation, to the next.
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The “Referral Call”

Adding something relevant and specific to this potential client will allow them to feel like you truly care about them as a person, rather than just another possible conversion. Now, you are actually offering them referrals, letting them know that this connection will be mutually beneficial.

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All of these steps to creating appointments on LinkedIn are meant to be completed within just FIVE minutes after logging on. Ditch the phone, turn off the TV, and focus on using your time on social media to gain new business. Every message you’ve seen thus far has included a personalized touch, clear intent, specific times and dates, and contact information. Who knew that five short minutes could be amplified into creating appointments? It is essential that we utilize the ever-growing digital world to our advantage.

What did you take away from these 5 LinkedIn power moves?

About the Author

For over 30 years, Dean DeLisle, has demonstrated his ability to accelerate bank, financial, and insurance institutions to stimulate business development while in a compliant environment. As Founder of Forward Progress, Dean and his team have helped over 2,000 clients assess and improve their online marketing and social networking results and trained over 120,000 professionals in over 35 countries with their online programs on their Social Jack™ Academy.

Dean has recently launched his new book, FIRST, The Street Guide to Digital Business Influence, which also tell stories of leaders within banking who have changed their culture and brand impact online.

Watch this Social Jack Flash Class

 


According to a 2018 industry report by Social Media Examiner, 87% of all marketers indicated that their social media efforts generated more exposure for their businesses and 78% reported increased traffic to sites. Perhaps most importantly, more than half of marketers who’ve been using social media for more than 2 years reported it helped them improve sales.

However, as brands begin to see greater results and budgets increase, more pressure is put on marketers to prove ROI, stay ahead of the competition, and strategically align their efforts with business goals. Given these realities, it is more important than ever to assess your social media strategy and make sure it’s working for you. Below you will find 9 components that are critical to a successful social media strategy.

1.  Perform an audit of your current social media practices

What is a social media audit?

Social Media Strategy Audit

Perform an audit of your current social media practices

An audit is a detailed look at current social media practices. Digging into the numbers will provide a clear look at what’s working, what’s failing, and what to improve. This lays the groundwork for identifying your goals and the steps required to reach them. It’s also an important way to identify opportunities and challenges.

According to Social Media Examiner, only 42% of marketers were able to keep a measure of their social media marketing activities. But how can you get the most out of your social media program if you don’t know what’s working?

Your audit should include the following:

  • A list of all owned platforms with handles and login information.
  • A list of your most engaged followers
  • Calculation of your engagement rate
  • Content performance, recorded by asking the following questions:
    • What type of content performs best? The worst?
    • What time and/or day get the most engagement?
    • What is your current post frequency?

Getting started on an audit can be a little overwhelming, so here are a few resources to help:

Social Media Strategy Audit Resources

Social Media Strategy Audit Resources

2. Perform a competitive analysis

Once you’ve reviewed your own practices on social media, it’s time to look at competitors. This is a good way to see how you compare, and can also be helpful in identifying industry standards, trends, and threats. The first step is to identify which competitors you want to research. Pick 4-5 competitors, including brands that are bigger and smaller than yours.

For each competitor, ask yourself the following questions:

  • How are your competitors using social media? Include a list of all platforms they are on, how active they are and what type of content they are sharing.
  • How many followers do they have compared to you? And what is their engagement rate?
  • How is their content performing? What types of content perform the best?
  • How do they engage with their followers?

It is often difficult to see everything competitors do. Here are a couple tools to help with your research:

3.  Identify your goals and objectives

The cornerstone of any strategy is understanding what you are trying to achieve with your social media marketing. Without this, it’s easy to get caught up in the daily activities of content creation and posting while forgetting why you are doing all of this work in the first place.

The best goals are written and posted in a place you will see them every day. They should guide all of your campaigns, content creation, and community management activities.

To identify your social media goals, start by asking yourself the following questions:

  • What are my overall business objectives?
  • How can I use social media to align with these objectives?
  • What does my audience expect from me?
  • What do I really want from my social media efforts?
  • Are my goals measurable?

The Metrics Map chart below is a great tool to use in aligning your business goals with specific social media activities. For example, to drive more traffic to your site from Instagram, you’ll need to set goals that relate to increased awareness and increased demand.

Social Media Strategy Metrics Map Chart

Social Media Strategy Metrics Map Chart

The map’s recommended social KPIs for these stages are impressions and engagements. Now that these metrics are identified, you can create S.M.A.R.T Goals for each of these buyer stages.

4. Build an audience persona(s) to target the right customer

An audience persona is a research-backed profile of your ideal customer. A whopping 70% of people in North America use social media every day, but that doesn’t mean that you want to speak to all of those people. An audience persona will profile your ideal customer.

Furthermore, 80% of consumers say they are more likely to do business with a company if it offers a personalized experience. Personas also help to identify authentic and personalized opportunities to reach your customers through social media.

Use research and data from your social platforms, Facebook Audience Insights, Google Analytics, and your internal sales tools or CRM to find out more about your customers. While you are digging, ask yourself these questions:

  • What are the customer demographics?
  • What are this person’s challenges, goals, values, and fears?
  • How do they interact with social media?
  • What social activities (platforms, hashtags, accounts) should be used to reach them?
  • What is your persona’s name?
  • What is the visual representation of this person?

Here are a couple resources to get started building your audience personas:

5. Define your brand voice and visuals on social media

Showing up consistently on social media is an important tactic to increase trust and brand awareness among your audience. Consistent use of color alone can increase brand recognition by up to 80%. It can also help to drive revenue: consistent presentation of a brand increases revenue by roughly 23%, according to Lucid Press.

Your social media strategy should outline the look and sound of your brand across different platforms by identifying and recording the following items:

  • Brand Voice. What does your brand sound like? What words would you use to describe your brand’s voice? Is it silly, fun, professional or thoughtful?
  • Grammar and Terminology. How does your brand follow grammar and punctuation guidelines? What words or phrases do you embrace and which ones do you avoid?
  • Post formatting. What do your posts look like? Do you break lines often or write in one paragraph? Do you write long-form posts or keep it short? Do you use emojis?
  • Hashtag usage. How are you using hashtags and what do they look like within a post?
  • Visual guidelines. What type of photos do you share? Is there a certain filter that you use? How should social graphics look?

Here are some helpful resources to identify your brand guidelines for social media:

6. Build a content strategy for the types and amounts of posts you’ll share

Social Media Strategy Rule of Thirds

Social Media Strategy Rule of Thirds

With a strategy framework outlined, you can start to detail the tactics required to engage your ideal customer, reach your goals, stand out from the competition, and reinforce your brand. Your content plan is the primary way to achieve all of these things. In 2018, marketers plan to increase their use of videos (77%), visuals (68%), live video (63%), blogging (57%), and podcasting (25%), in that order.

Social media content should be a mix of different types of content. One helpful guideline is the Rule of Thirds, which states that content should be ? promotional, ? curated and ? engagement based. Identify types of posts that fall into each of these categories. (There are some ideas in the chart above.)

Next, create a calendar to identify key dates and authentic opportunities to share content from each category. Pay close attention to make sure you aren’t overloading your feed with promotional content.

7. Integrate your social media strategy with other channels

In today’s marketing environment, an integrated approach drives results. A well-integrated and customized campaign can boost effectiveness by 57%, according to AdReaction: The Art of Integration. This isn’t surprising, considering that 86% of shoppers are regularly channel-hopping across at least two channels (CommerceHub).

Despite all of this evidence, marketers are still struggling to integrate their channels.

Make a plan to cross promote your social media content. Your strategy should outline how you will share and promote social content via email marketing, website, direct marketing, and any other channels you are utilizing.

8. Identify the budget, tactics, and tools required to achieve your goals

Identify social media strategy budget, tactics and tools

Identify social media strategy budget, tactics, and tools

Almost all marketers report to someone, and that someone is going to want to know how much your strategy is going to cost. Although budgets differ across companies and industries, most companies spend about 5% to 15% of annual revenue on marketing. Social media is becoming a bigger piece of companies’ marketing mix. Social media spend is expected to increase 89% in next 5 years (see graph above).

Aside from your team (either internal or external), a social media budget should include resources for:

  • Creating content
  • Paid social promotions
  • Influencer campaigns
  • Social media management tools
  • Community engagement efforts
  • Analytics tools

If you’ve never created a marketing budget before, here are a couple tools to help:

9. Create a reporting plan

Create a social media strategy reporting plan

Create a social media strategy reporting plan

The last step of your social media strategy is to set up a way to track results. Create a template that records the KPIs identified when you set your goals. A good report will show progress (or lack thereof) over time. Reviewing reports on a quarterly or monthly basis can inform changes in strategy, new opportunities and areas for improvement.

Companies are investing more and more into social media programs, but many are still struggling to improve the channel’s impact. A recent study by eMarketer uncovered that 6 out of 10 small businesses find it difficult to track the ROI from their social media marketing efforts. And even a survey (reflected in the chart below) of CMO’s found that the impact of social media remains difficult to prove.

Chart Showing Your Social Media Impact

Showing Your Company’s Social Media Impact

A strong social media strategy will identify the metrics that matter and help marketing teams to understand where they are creating an impact on the bottom line.

Need further guidance in taking your strategy to the next level? Attend a Social Media Strategy Summit to hear the latest in best practices from top brands across multiple industries.

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A key part of many social media campaigns in today’s day and age is the power of Influencer Marketing. This form of marketing allows people to reach into their wells of power (AKA their network) and help sway opinion about a product or service that people should buy. What makes this interesting is that people are able to have more personal interactions with their audience members instead of doing a generic post. In order to use Influencer Marketing to its fullest potential, there are a few tips you should keep in mind.

In this episode, Neal Schaffer shares what he loves about Influencer Marketing. He explains the power it has and why so many people are jumping headfirst into it.

Make content, not war

Obviously, creating content is a key part of Influencer Marketing. You want to keep your network engaged with you by posting relevant, timely content; but, how do you present it to them? One way is a blog post. After all, a blog post allows you to be more personal and humanize whatever you talk about. However, there are various other effective ways that you can present content to your audience.

The other route you can take here is by developing visual content for your audience. You still need text for your social media post, but a visual can augment what you say very well! If you want to show off a product’s effectiveness, you can create a video to demonstrate it. Want to make a statistic really stand out? You can make a chart or an infographic to visualize the data! A photo can also help give some more ompf to your posts! Remember, you should make a post fun by doing something creative with what you offer or what people should know about. Make your content both clickable and engaging.

Influencer Pro Marketing Tip: Are you looking for ways to enhance your social media posts? Our Influencer Development Program will help you identify your target audience and then we can help you develop content that is both relevant and engaging!

Be an advocate of your work

Obviously, everyone wants to get invested in work that is meaningful to them. When that happens, employees tend to be very happy about where they work and essentially become an “ambassador” to their company and its brand. This is something that Schaffer called “employee advocacy.” The term essentially means that employees are representatives of the brand and can talk about in a positive light. This is something to leverage for your next Influencer Marketing campaign. If employees have a lot of followers, they can talk about their company. In doing this, they can get others to jump on board with the brand and use the services it sells. This goes to show how important employees can be online!

Influencer Marketing Pro Tip: If you are looking to sell a service on social media, look at your brand and the company’s brand. By seeing how you fit into the brand or why the brand matters to you, you can offer that personalized communication with customers. Customers like to see personality coming from a company because it once again HUMANIZES the brand. This will help you make those sales!

Employee Advocacy – LinkedIn

As the second most engaged social media network, LinkedIn is a great tool for employee advocacy. LinkedIn is a professional social media channel, so it makes sense to use employee advocacy here. On this channel, you are representing yourself, but also a company. In order to convince people to use any of your company’s services, you should show them why the company is great! Maybe your company is pushing a new environmental project or something that helps employees… talk about it! When people see your words, they can get a better idea of what your company’s values are and why they should get involved with them. This is the ideal channel to enhance the awareness and brand of a company while getting connected with other industry experts.

Influencer Marketing Pro Tip: Do you want to use employee advocacy on LinkedIn but don’t have an account or are lacking connections? Social Jack’s Influencer Development Program can help you build your profile and network so you can chat your company up!

In summary

Influencer Marketing is great because it allows you to get personal with your audience. You can do this by making your content more visual, grabbing the attention of your connections. The other thing that many people can do is employee advocacy. Happy and fulfilled employees are the best spokespeople for a brand, so you’ll want them to talk about your brand where they can! Finally, make sure you are on LinkedIn! This channel allows you to meet more connections but also allows you the perfect space to talk about your company and why people should use it!

Influence Factory LIVE airs Wednesdays at 12pm CST. Register here!

You can also subscribe to previous and upcoming shows on the Social Jack website.

We hope to see you in our next Influence Factory!


Artificial intelligence has opened up a whole new world of opportunities that many people never believed possible! From the ability to have any question answered within seconds of asking, cooling and heating your house based on your personal preference, to having voice assistants schedule appointments for you with one quick command. However, AI isn’t justfor making our daily lives simpler – it can be a very useful marketing tool for us Influencers. Knowing how to utilize AI and voice assistants as a marketing strategy are amazing ways to help expand your brand. In this episode of Influence Factory, Nick Myers teaches us how to effectively market using AI and voice assistants.

 Understanding AI

 When most people hear the term “Artificial Intelligence” they think of how it is depicted in movies and television– as robots taking over. Scary, right? In reality, there are two types of AI: narrow AI and general AI. Myers describes narrow AI as the AI we have today; it only does specific things such as answer questions and schedule appointments for you. The second type of AI that Myers describes is general AI – meaning that it would be integrated into all aspects of daily life, having a higher level of intellect than narrow AI. But rest easy all you AI skeptics, Myers says that this kind of technology won’t be available for a super long time!

Bridging the Gap between AI and Marketing

 So, how exactly does AI relate to marketing? Myers brought up a computer program called Chatbots – a tool many companies use on their websites for customer service questions. As soon as you click on the website, a popup will read “how can I help you?” You can type any question you have about the service you are using, and the Chatbot will give you a speedy and helpful answer. Myers also believes that AI is helpful in marketing because it can sift through social media data, thus giving companies more insight about what their customers want. This can help companies tailor their marketing campaigns to better fit their target audience.

Trends in AI Marketing

Researchers expect that by 2020, about 55% of households in America will have some form of smart speaker, such as a Google Home or Amazon Echo. It could be beneficial for businesses to find a way to incorporate voice into marketing strategies, as the world is “going away from the visual and more towards voice,” Myers says. This technology also provides a one-to-one engagement that other technologies don’t. Figuring out a way to harness this trend of using voice instead of visuals could really set your marketing campaign apart from the rest!

The Future of AI Marketing

Myers believes that in the next 5-10 years, we will see an increase in Chatbots with social media and a definite increase in voice assistants. More and more Influencers are jumping onto the AI bandwagon, meaning a significant rise in the amount of AI technology available. Therefore, AI marketing could easily become the most dominant form of marketing in the future.

 In Summary

Artificial intelligence is an often misunderstood tool that many would not think to use for marketing purposes. There are many advantages to AI – such as a one-to-one connection to your technology, and being able to tailor your marketing campaign to your audience’s wants and needs. When used correctly, AI marketing could be just the thing to make your marketing campaign stand out! Hello, successful Influencers!

Influence Factory LIVE episodes air Wednesdays at noon central. Register here.

You can also subscribe to previous and upcoming shows on the Social Jack website.

We hope to see you in our next Influence Factory!


Social media is a wonderful world; it allows us to connect to people by the snap of your fingers! Companies and Influencers use these invaluable tools to engage with their audience and showcase their brand’s personality. Many plan out the content they want to use in order to gain the best possible engagement from their audience. However, what if there was a way to engage with them LIVE via video? Facebook has a “Facebook Live” feature that allows any individual or company to have a live video feed and interact with those who tune in. In this episode of Influence Factory, Duffy Atkins of WGN News explained how to effectively leverage this feature to get the most engagement out of your audience.

Tell your story out loud

The best thing about the power of video is that your audience can seeyour facial expressions and actions that pertain to the story you are telling them. While you do want to tell people what you are thinking and feeling in a video, it can be a bit unnerving if you are a camera-shy individual. During this episode, Duffy talked about the importance of simply telling your story out loud to others. Even if you do fumble on occasion, people will appreciate your vulnerability on live video, making your story even MORE compelling. Bringing in other material to supplement your visual story will make your story even stronger; the stronger the story, the stronger your Influence!

Influencer Marketing Pro Tip: If you are still feeling a bit nervous about filming a video of yourself, say your story out loud before you go live. You can either do this in an isolated area or with a friend or colleague. Doing this can build your confidence in your story and make you feel more comfortable when you talk about it.

Get to (quite literally) know your audience

Influencer Marketing is all about a) knowing how to make meaningful connections and b) engaging said connections by providing content that is conversational and relevant to them. All Influencers must know who to target and what type of content to send their way. Thankfully, Facebook Live makes the tedious task of researching a target audience super easy for its users. When you use the live stream feature, your connections (and many others) can see the video. By clicking on it, you will see how many people and who is watching. Once you’ve done several streams, you can get a strong grasp of who your target audience is, allowing you to tailor your video to them and effectively engage in conversations during a stream.

Influencer Pro Marketing Tip: While you should tailor your live videos to your target audience, do not make your videos relevant to just them. You can use the knowledge that Facebook Live gives you and create ANY kind of content that would be relevant to your audience. This will ensure effective engagement at all times on your profiles.

Be real

You may hear the overused phrase “be your best self” used by your friends in today’s day and age – but, that phrase contains a valuable lesson when it comes to filming a live video. During the episode, Duffy also mentioned that you should be your most authentic self when doing live video. You can prepare certain things for your streams; however, you should not be afraid to show your real self during a video – do not sound too rehearsed! Why use video over regular posting, though? Regular posts tell what a company or Influencer’s personality is, while video SHOWS your personality, because people can see the Influencer’s interactions with others. Do not be afraid to show people who you really are – it can drive engagement up!

Connect to your audience like you would a neighbor

Another key point from Duffy’s episode is that doing a live stream allows you to freely interact with your audience while you are on air. This gives you the chance to have a conversation with them and answer questions they may have. A live stream is like a neighborhood; it is a community of similar individuals interacting with each other. Don’t be afraid to say hello to your audience and get them involved with your stream. Having them partake in fun elements of a live video will maintain interest and generate more viewers!

Influencer Marketing Pro Tip: Much like how you would tag any major Influencers who partake in events, be sure to give them a shout out on a video if they helped or were a part of the audience. By doing this, you can expand who sees the post!

In summary

Facebook Live is an invaluable tool that is changing the way that Influencers engage with an audience. This live feature gives them the place to tell a story and show their true selves to the world, and personally connect with your network. The feature also helps with research by showing how many and who is watching your video, allowing you to tailor your content to them in the future. By using this video feature, your can enhance your Influence!

Influence Factory LIVE airs Wednesdays at 12pm CST. Register here!

You can also subscribe to previous and upcoming shows on the Social Jack website.

We hope to see you in our next Influence Factory!


It’s not a secret that businesses are what drive our economy and drive revenue. However, many people have a misconception about capitalism and how it can be cold and inhumane. Despite that thought, there is another avenue of thought called “Conscious Capitalism.” This idea of business focuses on how business can be a force for good even if it is for profit. In this episode of Influence Factory, Thea Polancic, Founder and Chair of the Chicago chapter of Conscious Capitalism, discussed how people can humanize the world of business and use that to become an agent of change.

What is Conscious Capitalism?

Breaking down those two words into their simple definitions would make you think this term is about businesses’ awareness of what they are selling to customers. While this is true, the actual meaning of this phrase is that businesses are serving the needs of their stakeholders from the customers, to the employees, to the suppliers of the industry. This thought hits on the idea that businesses (and specifically, business owners) should make it a business to care about each individual involved with a company. This ensures that a business becomes more of a personality instead of a corporate entity.

Influencer Marketing Pro Tip: The idea behind Conscious Capitalism can apply to your personal online branding as well. You are there to offer a service and make money, obviously. However, your actions should be focused on how you can best serve your customers and community. By simply interacting with them instead of just pushing a product, you can show your personality and how your service can help others. Connect your brand and service to a purpose!

The Impact of a Caring Company

Each individual employee in a company has a primary purpose of getting money through their job along with getting benefits. However, this is just a general reason why people want a job with a company. The other (and far more important) reason is that they want to work for a company that cares about them. During this episode, Thea talked about companies providing a meaningful environment to their employees. A meaningful environment is one that allows employees to help the company’s success by being allowed to share thoughts and opinions with their colleagues. Yes, employees are needed for a business’ overall financial success. However, when companies allow their employees to share their thoughts, it can humanize them and get people to fully believe in what the company stands for.

Another way that companies can do this is by engaging in a voluntary exchange with their customers. A voluntary exchange is what happens when both the buyer (customer) and seller (the business) engage in a market transaction that will benefit all parties involved. Remember, companies are selling a service, but that service needs to show how it can benefit the buyer. Showing a customer how this product can solve an issue will also show that the company cares about creating a meaningful relationship with them.

Influencer Marketing Pro Tip: These lessons can also apply to your online brand. Social media gives you a chance to get personal with these customers and really engage in meaningful conversation. Talk with your potential customers and show how your company can help; if you are managing a company’s page, talk to your customers and find out what you need to do in order to help them, or solve a complaint. This helps customers see a business as one that truly cares about their customers – not one that couldn’t care less about them.

Growing the Business for Everyone

Another point that Thea made during her presentation is the importance of considering everyone who is invested in a business. Every move you make for a business should be done to benefit everyone, not just yourself. This can be done by expanding your company with new connections. By reaching out to others or even enhancing your relationships with current employees. Remember that capitalism can be a force for good, and you need to make sure everyone who is making your business a success is benefitting from the success.

Successful Business Growth

At the end of the day, the main goal of any business is to expand their services to make money. In order to do this, there are a couple things you can do. First, encourage a leadership culture. Earlier, we mentioned that you should make employees feel comfortable sharing their opinions. Doing this allows for workplace innovation. Initially, new ideas may struggle and face some backlash from others, but don’t let this scare you – this is how all innovations start. Employees should feel comfortable with being uncomfortable because it can take a business to new heights.

The other option to help with growing a business is by enlisting the aid of a business coach. The advantage of the coach is that they will be a fresh set of eyes that can point out what is being done wrong, or even opportunities that are being missed. Business owners can have a bias that may keep them from seeing these errors or opportunity gaps. A coach can help you find where there is room for improvement, and elevate a business to new levels of productivity and innovation.

Influencer Marketing Pro Tip: If you are looking to elevate you or your business’ brand, our team at Social Jackis here to assist you. We offer various programs for Influencer Development, which include helping your business expand its network.

In Summary

The idea of Conscious Capitalism can apply to Social Media Marketing. Conscious Capitalism is all about making sure every person invested in a business benefits from the opportunity. A business should be offering a service and be able to have a purpose as to why people should use this product. Businesses should also make sure that they care about their employees, who will bring in incredible ideas, resulting in new innovations for the company. In case of any issues, businesses should bring in coaches who can help them enhance a brand and humanize it. Take these lessons and apply them to your own social media channels.

Influence Factory LIVE airs Wednesdays at 12pm CST. Register here!

You can also subscribe to previous and upcoming shows on the Social Jack website.

We hope to see you in our next Influence Factory!


In order to understand the effectiveness of your digital marketing campaign, there are a wide array of tools that us Influencers can use – they tell us what did and did not work and new insights gained from a targeted audience. Tools such as Google Analytics can help us make sense of all of this information. In this episode, our guest Influencer, Andy Crestodina, shared insights as to how you can effectively analyze a campaign, what he discovered from past campaigns, and how to leverage effective Influencer Marketing for any campaign.

Understanding Search Engine Marketing

You have probably already heard of search engine optimization (making sure a link to your website is high on the list of websites that come up in a specific search). This is essentially a step up from that. With this form of marketing, the specific target in mind is an audience that you know will be looking for your company’s services. However, intent is something that affects this audience. On one hand, people with intent are those who you already know would want your services and may lack patience to see ads or content. The people without intent may not even know that they want your services. You can hit both audiences in search engine marketing. Go after those with the intent by making sure you come up high on a search engine’s results. For those who don’t know (yet) they want you, this marketing can also get them interested and make them want to learn more about what you can do for them.

Video as an Effective Tool

While this may be an obvious tool to use for marketing, it is one that is tragically underused. Video that is visual and done well can be extremely compelling. If you are producing any type of content, special service, or event for your company, doing a short video commercial about it can make it more noticeable. Videos are often placed at the top of search engine lists, so you have a better chance of more people seeing it and wanting to go to your website; therefore, gaining new customers. You should also put a coded link (to make it specific to the campaign and easier to measure) in the first comment as you have a better chance of people clicking it. Also, use captions so you can start a conversation for viewers and pique their interest.

Influencer Marketing Pro Tip: LinkedIn’s algorithm does a fantastic job of sending videos to highest parts of someone’s search and their own newsfeeds. Andy said that in his professional experience, he found that some videos on LinkedIn get a couple thousand views and clicks on their links. You can use a social platform’s search engine to maximize your results!

The Difference Between Social and YouTube Video

You might think that video for the two are one in the same, but they are actually quite different! A video for social media is when you speak directly to your audience and make them aware about a certain event or service. While that is a form of content, YouTube videos consist of more content that everyone can access from you. Again, the difference here is intent. People on LinkedIn have more of that intent to find what you are offering, so that is why it jumps to the top of their feed and sometimes starts playing once it appears on their screen. A YouTube video will often be for those who do not have that intent. These videos usually appear from highest to lowest in number of views on the main feed. Remember that for social media, many of those sites will OPTIMIZE videos! YouTube will bring up related videos based on your history, but they may not be exactly what you are looking for.

Use Ego Bait

This term is far simpler than you think – AND it can get a video noticed by even more people! For this to happen, you should be quoting and tagging a person or business in the video. In doing that, more people will see your video, including the person you tagged. Remember that someone you tag can be an “ally in sharing,” meaning that their followers will see the content. Because it is a video, it will go to the top of their feeds and searches. When you mention someone related to the piece of content, it can boost your views and clicks for your websites.

Influencer Marketing Pro Tip: a “thank you” is still one of the magic words. If you do not thank someone you tagged, or tag people who are not relevant to the content, they will be LESS likely to share what you created. When you thank them for being a part of the content, they will respond to it. You want to improve visibility of a social media post, so make sure your engagement with other Influencers is GENUINE!

Analytics on a Small Budget

A wonderful point that Andy brought up in this episode is that you should experiment with different tools for analytics, as many of them can be super useful to building your Influence! For example, if you use Quora, you will be able to see if competitors are featured in any kind of question. This can then give you the idea of whether or not you should purchase advertising space, which will improve your brand’s visibility. Another tool that can be used to track conversion links is called Campaign Tracking Code. Any action to drive traffic can be considered a “campaign.” You should be using this to make the code specific to that campaign for easy tracking. Many of these tools are affordable, and companies who work on small budgets can use them effectively while not using up all of their resources.

In Summary

Search engine marketing can be complex but using tools can ease the process. To do it, you need to know that search engine marketing is more for an audience with intent during their searches. Video is also huge for many search engines as it is more likely to show up on the top of a feed or list. If you tag and share content with those it is relevant to, you can get them to share it for you as well. You should also experiment and play around with search tools as there are many affordable ones that can provide your brand with useful results.

Influence Factory LIVE airs on Wednesdays at 12pm CST. Register here!

You can also subscribe to previous and upcoming shows on the Social Jack website.

We hope to see you in our next Influence Factory!


Are you looking to get more sales accomplished in your field? With the power of Influencer Marketing, people have the ability to build their brand and sway others, but most do not know how to effectively use it. Influencer Marketing, when leveraged properly, has the power to bring in more sales and generate leads. Our Influencer Guest, Jimmy Z, talks about the best way to fill your sales funnels with tons of great tips and tools on this episode.

Learn to Influence with Integrity

During this podcast, Jimmy mentioned that the main difference between proper Influencing and manipulation is intent. A great Influencer is an individual who looks to create a win-win situation for all people involved. Another important aspect of “Influence with Integrity” is that good Influencers look to add meaning to what they sell to people. Many people will ask you why they should bother buying your services. You want to provide more value to your service than what they originally thought. When you are deeply invested in what you want to sell, you can add more personal value to a product which WILL entice people. Bottom line here – personality and passion will add more value to anything!

Influencer Marketing Pro Tip: You can use this information and apply it to the Digital Marketing world of sales. Social media is unique in that it allows us to connect to people and show off a brand. For any product you sell, you want to create content that shows how important it can be for customers. This kind of content is what we call “value-based content.” With this, you should be giving the customers as much as you can about a product by adding that personal value to your messages. If you just try a quick joke or description on social media and then wait, people will ignore what you have to say. Give them as much as you can right from the start. When you do that right, customers can refer you to others and those others will continue referring you!

Determine Your Free Line

While personal value is important to sales, you are not going to get paid because people see the personal value you are adding to the product. That is mainly to help them generate interest in what you want to sell. However, that interest can be used to convert a lead into a customer when they get some free content from you. To effectively get customers on board or invested in your product, you need to offer free things that get them thinking about you. Maybe your company publishes reports that anyone can access. Or, maybe your company uses a blog or webcast (similar to what we do at Social Jack). When you use this free material, you can get very personal with prospects and get them into your funnel. Your line of how much “free” material you give away can depend on what company you work for, but it is effective nonetheless. Think of this content as your fish hook (or net, so you can grab more fish). By hooking potential leads at the start, it is easier to get them to come on as customers!

Create Credibility

Now, without value, your customer will not be interested in your product which can be bad. However, another thing that can hurt you is not having the proper credentials to sell your product. As an Influencer, you are the expert on your career field. However, if customers do not see what gives you the right to speak to something, that will lose interest the moment you talk to them. In order to fix this, you need to build credibility. Make sure your information on social media is up to date and that people know why you are trustworthy. You can’t generate interest if the trust isn’t there.

“The two keys to selling are interest and credibility.”            – Jimmy Zawiski

Influencer Marketing Pro Tip: The easiest way to build credibility is by writing a book. Did you know that Amazon Kindle can do this, not to mention, make it EXTREMELY easy? Kindle has a self-publishing feature that educates you on everything you need to know about publishing a book and putting it on Kindle for FREE. Make use of this and build your credibility!

Bonus Influencer Tip: Amazon has an additional sister site called Createspace. This site not only gives you formats you can use to publish a book, but can also provide quotas on much it would take to print it. You can also connect it to a phone number so people can order a printed copy for a cheap amount ($3-5 at most). This is a GREAT way to spread your Influence at a low cost!

Create a Sequence Map

Do you know what you want to say about product but not sure exactly how to say it? Jimmy recommends using a sequence map, which is a map filled with empty bubbles. In this map, you write down a different thought about your product in one bubble. Once you’ve written down everything you want to say, you can then develop a flow by connect one thought to another which will connect to another. By writing down what you want to say, you can better practice and effectively sell the product by knowing when to bring in that personal value.

Influencer Marketing Pro Tip: If you are not one for writing stuff down, you can do it electronically too! Pages and Microsoft word can have you use bubble shapes in a document as well. You can type in the bubbles and then draw lines to connect everything!

Find A Way to Teach a Course

Another way that you as an Influencer can bring in more people is by taking your expertise and turning it into a course for people. This can establish credibility as people can see you break down material and demonstrate why you are an expert in this field. Doing this will generate interest in your product and turn those people into customers who want to learn from you. When you have a quality course and quality marketing, you will generate A LOT of customers!

“The greatest thing you can do is take your thoughts and turn it into a course.”                                                          – Jimmy Zawiski

Influencer Marketing Pro Tip: Jimmy recommends Kajabi if you want to teach an online course. It gives users a good set up to explain things and when mixed with awesome marketing, can bring in serious revenue for you!

In Summary

Social media has a massive Influence on sales in this age, and following these tips make it simple! Remember, adding personal value to a product will generate interest, but just be aware of how much free content you give people to egg them on. You also need to establish trust with them by having proper credentials to speak to a product’s value. Luckily, there are endless resources that can help you grow your credentials and, by extension, your Influence. When you market yourself right, your sales fishing net will bring in a lot of brand new customers!

Influence Factory live episodes air Wednesdays at 12pm CST; Register here.

You can also subscribe to previous and upcoming shows on the Social Jack website.

We hope to see you in our next Influence Factory!

 


If you have ever received a referral for a job or new business, you know how critical your online personal brand can be. People are only one click away from choosing you or moving on, and many times you will never know.

The Social Jack™ Team has helped thousands of business professionals develop their Influence and have put together a quick, easy to follow recipe to get on the right track. To make sure that people click on you when making that critical choice for a professional, read on.

Looking at Social Media as Events:

Although we aren’t supposed to “play favorites” we all have a social media channel we use the most. Some of us are Facebook, some are Twitter and others are Instagram. Regardless of what your favorite is, you should be looking at them as an “event” that you are going to. When you’re at an event, there will be times you really enjoy it and want to come back, and other times when you think it could be better (we’ve done hundreds of events, so we definitely understand!). You can apply this to you clients, as well. Every client has a different “event” that they like. To help your client, you need to find what “events” they like and help them refine it even more.

Influencer Marketing Pro Tip: Companies you want to “bring to your event” (aka social media) usually like to hire social media experts who are experts of multiple disciplines, or channels. Take the time to experiment with different channels. The more you can master, the more likely a company will want you for social media execution! 

Define Your Goals:

To get the most out of your social media, you need to figure out what your goals are for your social strategy. Maybe you are a Thought Leader who wants to get your name out there as an expert in your field. Maybe you want to bring more personality to a brand or event, or even advance your career. Developing your personal brand can achieve ALL of these goals. Once you have a clear idea of your desired outcome and learn the basics, you can build on your brand and reach those goals. Make sure that your goal is quantifiable and realistic! If you need help, we have plenty of worksheets in our Social Jack Academy to help you get started!

Tell Your Story

A brand is more relatable and personal when you bring your own story into it. Your personal accounts and the content you create tell this story, so it is important. To do this, think about some of the biggest turning points in your life. People want to know what got you to THIS moment, so you should be telling them the most defining moments in your life. Write things down over time so you can figure out the key points in your life that brought you here. When you write these down, you can also define the “theme” of your brand. This theme is your main idea – the thing you want followers to know about you. The key points are the roadmap of your personal brand; how you explain your journey from point A to Z. The more you write down, the more of your story you can use to execute your person brand.

Influencer Marketing Pro Tip: When writing things out, do what we call a “mind dump”. This simply means that you just write down whatever comes to mind about yourself. Do not leave out a single detail. From our experience, we’ve seen people come up with their own theme from even the tiniest details of their experience. More details, more personality for your brand! If you enjoy writing, think about taking up journaling.

Know Your Digital Impression:

When people come visit your profiles on social media, you want to give them the idea that you are approachable. If you have any pages that talk about you in third-person, it can be a BIG turn-off to people (aka potential clients) because it makes them feel like you are not personal or approachable. This is where you start to Google yourself. Google yourself. Do it. It’s not vain- it’s imperative. Make sure you go at least three pages back and see what is already out there for your personal brand. This search shows your “digital footprint” so you want to make sure it is as clean as possible! If there are any outdated profiles on you, make sure you fix that information ASAP and keep it current. This is especially the case for LinkedIn. If you need help, our Influencer Development Program has several modules that help you build a professional profile.

Your Profiles are Your Professional Brand

While it is quite clear that your profiles show your professional brand, many people forget to make sure those profiles are completely filled out. While this can mean having your most recent position listed, having a (recent!) profile picture, and updating your bio, you are more than your title. When people visit your page, it should start a conversation with people and answer how you can help and why you are the expert in your profession.

Influencer Marketing Pro Tip: Feeling limited by the character limit of your LinkedIn headline? If you need more space to develop your personal brand in your LinkedIn, the mobile app extends the character count by 80 characters. Make them count!

The Power of Your Connections

A major thing to help you better connect with individuals and expand your network is constantly developing and updating your profile so you appear in searches. Your current and prospective connections may already be looking for someone with your specific experience, but if you give a generic title or headline they won’t be sure of your abilities. When your connections see a defined headline, it makes you more credible and trustworthy. They will also be more likely to view your experience and want to work with you.

Influencer Marketing Pro Tip: Remember, you may have only have 300 connections on LinkedIn but you actually have more thank you think. Your connections can lead you to other connections so make use of your network! When you connect more, it helps you build your personal brand.

Power Move – Add Other Influencers

Once you lock down and develop your brand, you should strengthen your network by adding more Influencers!  If you want a better network, you want to attach yourself to powerful individuals in your industry. This will help you not only find kindred spirits, but also help you find people to speak at events or even work with.

Power Move – Conversation

You should connect to others, but don’t JUST connect – engage with your connections! You should be having conversations with these individuals, which can spark conversations with more individuals. This is what we call “social teaming”. When you have a good conversation with Influencers, you can boost your likes and engage with others. You can also see who else is talking about the posts and make a plan for what you should say. When you engage with someone in your field, they will see it and their connections will ALSO see it.

Measure Your Goals

You’ve updated your profiles, enhanced your brand and made use of those power moves. Now what? The only way you will see your improvements by measuring your results. This is what we meant earlier when we said to make these goals quantifiable. If your goal was to get more sales, keep a record of how many you made thanks to your social media presence. If you want to build more connections in your network, LinkedIn will show how many connections you have and how many people like what you post. When you measure your success, you will EASILY see your results.

In Summary

Remembers that your profiles tell your story. Our unique stories are what differentiate us from others. Use your profiles to bring your story to life and show people why they should work with you.  If you need further resources, check out our Free Resource Center at Social Jack. You can access our Free Resource Center by signing up for a Basic Social Jack Account plus browse the worksheets and classes currently available.

We will see your profiles online!

We hope to see you in one of our next classes! Check out the full list at www.socialjackflash.com


Influence Factory Brings Influencers Topical Industry News in an Exciting Way.

CHICAGO, February 12, 2018—Social Jack jump-started 2018 with a bang launching their new, free online webinar to podcast offering called The Influence Factory. The show airs live every Wednesday at noon CST as a webinar, but unavailable viewers can catch the episodes at a later time on YouTubeiTunesGoogle PlayStitcherSoundCloud and other channels.

Influence Factory, Where Leaders Assemble, features a wide variety of up-to-date segments compacted into a concise hour. Segments include an Influencer lesson of the week, a Special Guest interview with an Industry Business Influencer, updates on the latest industry news, and “Ask the Experts”. “Listeners” are encouraged to participate through polls, questions, and a Q&A segment and at the end of each episode the viewer with the most engagement receives a special prize. The goal of the webcast is for aspiring Influencers to engage and share new business ideas and learn from industry experts.

Each week Influence Factory features a different guest influencer to answer viewers’ questions pertaining to their area of expertise. Past guests include Google SEO Expert Joe Karns, Social Media Speaker Spencer X. Smith, Microsoft Storyteller Miri Rodriguez, “The Video Jedi” George B. Thomas, and Nimble CRM founder Jon Ferrara. Interested viewers can watch past episodes on Social Jack’s app, or on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOySYhhhgqoAtKpLXPWmxhQ

Viewers can also listen to past episodes on the go in podcast form on iTunesSoundCloud, and Google Play. The best way to catch The Social Jack Influence Factory is by subscribing to their weekly Webcast, and ensuring you don’t miss an episode, at www.myinfluencefactory.com

About Social Jack:

The Social Jack System is an Influencer Development platform that combines the power of people, social teaming and today’s social networks to create Business Influencers and develop a targeted loyal following and achieve influence in your world. Social Jack serves organizations, executives, professionals, top producers, speakers, and they even have Influencer Event offerings.

About Dean DeLisle:

As Founder and CEO of Forward Progress, Dean leads his core team to provide digital marketing solutions serving over 2,000 corporate clients for the past 15 years. In 2015 Dean created and released a Business Influencer Development Platform known as Social Jack™, and they have successfully trained over 100,000 professionals on Social Selling and B2B Influencer Marketing. Their curriculum and programs are used globally by Fortune 500 companies, Associations, Conferences and Universities to instill best practices related to the effective use of social networks.