Feb 252013
Social surround strategy has been generating a good deal of buzz lately
amongst the social sales circles. As social media becomes integrated into sales
training programs everywhere, social surround strategy is being taught as the
primary source for opening up new relationships that may lead to new sales. With
more people gaining experience with social surround strategy, best practices are
emerging and proven strategies are more evident.
It is commonly accepted that in order to gain someone’s attention through social media, you must first earn respect of a potential follower through industry related insightful shares that demonstrate a certain level of thought leadership. However, social surround strategy is quickly changing that train of thought. This is not to say that it is not important to produce consistent insightful industry related shares, because social surround strategy is far more effective when someone has an already established social following as well as an insightful stream of activity. However, the following social surround strategy steps have been proven to open up conversations which can lead to business relationships on a very consistent basis.
Most social surround approaches begin on LinkedIn. From within LinkedIn you should look for the person you are targeting to meet. Once found, send a request to connect as a friend, which LinkedIn now allows you to do without having to enter in the person’s email address. When a connection request is sent, the other person will receive an email that clearly states your name, giving you the first moment of recognition.
The next step is to move on to Facebook, where you should attempt to friend the target connection. The friend request will put your name in their message list, providing a second layer of recognition.
Then move on to Twitter. From Twitter you should immediately follow the target and then mention them in a tweet or retweet one of their tweets. In most cases, the follow and retweet will both generate an email to the target which will again put your name in front of them, giving you even more recognition.
At this point you have placed four key moments of recognition in the target connection’s site, so now its almost impossible for the person to not see you. Once these have been done, a day or so later you should check to see if the person has a blog or website. If they have a website, you can send the person a contact request, perhaps offering to buy them a cup of coffee sometime soon. If they have a blog, take the time to read a couple of their posts and comment (insightfully) on those posts. Drop an additional comment on a post asking about a potential meeting for a cup of coffee as well.
At this point, the person is likely to check out your social profiles. This is where a strong social following and active industry sharing comes in most handy. If you have taken the time to build your social status and following, the person is much more likely to be open to a call or meeting. If not, it make take a little more persistence in the form of more time retweeting them, or a couple of emails sharing some insightful industry news or information etc. You will likely have to work a little harder on opening up the gates if you do not have a strong social following.
There is one additional step that can be used if someone is truly being hard to break the ice with. On your blog, write an insightful industry related post that references your target and links to them in the reference. You can either link to their Twitter handle or, even better, to their blog or website. If you have a somewhat active blog you will be doing the person two favors. First, you will be providing them with a link to their website from an industry related site, which benefits them in search engine rankings. Secondly, your website and that particular post will then pass their website fairly targeted web traffic (fairly targeted because the topic of your post is related to what they do, which will organically attract industry related traffic). Passing traffic like this may potentially lead to more sales or leads for that person but most importantly, they will continually see your website in their website analytics reports as a referring source of traffic, making it really hard to forget who you are.
In any case, if you follow a consistent approach at social surround strategy, you will achieve more meetings with new people than you get rejected on and ultimately increase your number of new business relationships. This entire process only takes a few minutes so a steady approach is quite manageable for most people.
About the Author
It is commonly accepted that in order to gain someone’s attention through social media, you must first earn respect of a potential follower through industry related insightful shares that demonstrate a certain level of thought leadership. However, social surround strategy is quickly changing that train of thought. This is not to say that it is not important to produce consistent insightful industry related shares, because social surround strategy is far more effective when someone has an already established social following as well as an insightful stream of activity. However, the following social surround strategy steps have been proven to open up conversations which can lead to business relationships on a very consistent basis.
Most social surround approaches begin on LinkedIn. From within LinkedIn you should look for the person you are targeting to meet. Once found, send a request to connect as a friend, which LinkedIn now allows you to do without having to enter in the person’s email address. When a connection request is sent, the other person will receive an email that clearly states your name, giving you the first moment of recognition.
The next step is to move on to Facebook, where you should attempt to friend the target connection. The friend request will put your name in their message list, providing a second layer of recognition.
Then move on to Twitter. From Twitter you should immediately follow the target and then mention them in a tweet or retweet one of their tweets. In most cases, the follow and retweet will both generate an email to the target which will again put your name in front of them, giving you even more recognition.
At this point you have placed four key moments of recognition in the target connection’s site, so now its almost impossible for the person to not see you. Once these have been done, a day or so later you should check to see if the person has a blog or website. If they have a website, you can send the person a contact request, perhaps offering to buy them a cup of coffee sometime soon. If they have a blog, take the time to read a couple of their posts and comment (insightfully) on those posts. Drop an additional comment on a post asking about a potential meeting for a cup of coffee as well.
At this point, the person is likely to check out your social profiles. This is where a strong social following and active industry sharing comes in most handy. If you have taken the time to build your social status and following, the person is much more likely to be open to a call or meeting. If not, it make take a little more persistence in the form of more time retweeting them, or a couple of emails sharing some insightful industry news or information etc. You will likely have to work a little harder on opening up the gates if you do not have a strong social following.
There is one additional step that can be used if someone is truly being hard to break the ice with. On your blog, write an insightful industry related post that references your target and links to them in the reference. You can either link to their Twitter handle or, even better, to their blog or website. If you have a somewhat active blog you will be doing the person two favors. First, you will be providing them with a link to their website from an industry related site, which benefits them in search engine rankings. Secondly, your website and that particular post will then pass their website fairly targeted web traffic (fairly targeted because the topic of your post is related to what they do, which will organically attract industry related traffic). Passing traffic like this may potentially lead to more sales or leads for that person but most importantly, they will continually see your website in their website analytics reports as a referring source of traffic, making it really hard to forget who you are.
In any case, if you follow a consistent approach at social surround strategy, you will achieve more meetings with new people than you get rejected on and ultimately increase your number of new business relationships. This entire process only takes a few minutes so a steady approach is quite manageable for most people.
About the Author
Ryan J. Corey is co-founder of
Sales Rep Marketing which is a service that provides online personal branding and social
media marketing for territory based sales professionals. Ryan has been involved
in online marketing since 2003.
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