The Trust Factor Part II & Social Media – The Outcome | Internet Marketing & Social Media Connections

The Trust Factor Part II & Social Media – The Outcome

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WARNING: You’ve heard this before! But read on anyways because I want to share the ‘outcome’ of the ‘why’ and share a real person’s story.

I’ve talked about how to properly utilize social media before, Why Social Media is So Effective, Marketing on Twitter and I recently talked about the Trust Factor but I wanted to follow up by my own recent success story.

Most of you know I’ve been around the social sphere for quite some time now. I don’t have tens of thousands of followers for a couple of reasons 1) I’ve never really sold much in the way of my ‘own’ products…which reaches a larger audience at times 2) I’m picky about my social circles 3) I spend a lot more time focusing on my clients’ social networks and marketing/visibility ventures than my own.

BUT let me tell you how valuable my social circle is…and I also talked about this briefly before too. I didn’t come into the social circle trying to sell things and I came into it to actually network, help people, be helped, and socialize. When I first started in the social networks, I honestly had no real intention of utilizing them this way (years ago). Recently, I decided to grow my 1-woman business into a larger scale. I added a couple of team members and started training them on some things and started planning a dedicated site (have never had a dedicated site for my services either because I have always been successful in winning projects I set my sights on and in receiving word-of-mouth referrals), planning different back-end things, planning the development, etc.

Thusfar I have done no real marketing because I’m still planning things + working on my existing client projects. I threw up a very minimal amount of info on this site about the services and added my signature to a forum or two that I’m an active member of; made a couple of Tweets and Facebook posts…and that’s about it (and I do literally mean a couple-few).

With only the support of the people (& actually a very small amount of people that know what I’m up to) that I’m already connected to, and have developed a bit of a relationship with, who have grown to place at least a little bit of trust in me, my team has a steady amount of business already (it literally started coming in within a week) while I work on planning and setting everything up.

I think I started mentioning my expanded services and that now that I have a team we can manage more full-on campaigns more efficiently about a month or so ago. Within that month we’ve picked up several new projects and I’ve had several other people come to me and say they want to use us in the near future once they get some stuff moving on their end….and we got every bit of this from my social circle ALONE with almost zero marketing (just the few Tweets, etc. mentioned above). I’d say that’s not a bad start at all! And I fully believe that when I actually get a dedicated site up and do some real marketing and when more people in my social circle see what we’re up to, business will be rolling in at the pace that I’ll have to bring on new contractors (well I’m already about there) but I suspect it will come in even quicker.

Why? Because, like I mentioned above, I DIDN’T come to the social sphere trying to push things. I just socialized, helped people when I saw they needed help, participated in convos, asked for help when I needed it and pretty much just mingled like I would at any other social event. I networked…but not in a ‘hey let me sell you something’ manner. So people started to trust me, to believe in my skills in my arena, and to like me because I am actually social and helpful. The key really IS that simple. And I didn’t even have to work hard at it (I wouldn’t call any of it work at all really…a few Tweets, FB posts and convos I’d participate in anyways)…I mainly did what I just enjoying doing anyway and what I was already doing before.

Someone coming in JUST to try to sell things will have to put in 10x the work to get a return. When I decided to grow, I had a feeling that my social circles would contribute some success but I had no idea just how much they would right off the bat…even with no dedicated site, etc.

And the word-of-mouth referrals have always sent me business and have recently sent my expanded business some projects; just picked up a new one yesterday as a matter of fact…and it’s a pretty big one and the guy said if all goes well (which I won’t let it do anything BUT go well) he has more he wants to move on to. He came from an existing client.

About a week before that, I picked up another small one and he said if it all went well, he’d have more too. We finished his first project and he’s now sending us more. He came from a forum I’m part of and I only have the info in my signature…I didn’t make a “sales” post at all, I simply participated in some other convos and apparently he noticed my convos and sig and decided to check me out.

Another one reached out from Facebook yesterday inquiring about what all we’re offering and said he’d probably want to work with us soon.

An ongoing one we have gave me a go because he saw that I had an idea of what I was talking about and saw that my reputation was great. We’ve been working with him from the beginning and are still continuing ongoing work with him.

Others have said “get the site up and I’ll refer people to you”…because they know me, they know my quality and they trust me enough to send people my way.

I’m very excited to see what happens when I actually get the site up and let people know!

In my previous post on Relationships on Twitter, I touched on some valuable relationships I was developing there a while back. Those relationships have continued to flourish and benefit both ends on an ongoing basis.

So I just wanted to share, again, that it’s all in your

intention
approach
trust factor building

…and it REALLY IS THAT SIMPLE.

If people get to know who you are, clearly see that your intentions are good, aren’t turned off by your pushy approach, and start to trust you because you’ve stuck around and been helpful…you can’t help but to succeed (well taking into consideration you do really offer something valuable). They WILL WANT to do business with you, you won’t have to try to push them into it.

It’s important that you’re constantly building your social connections…in the right way. You can go around randomly friending people all month and see very little return because you’re not doing anything valuable. It’s important that you stay visible and stay helping and contributing to your network. It’s important that you even ask for help if you need it, let someone else help you if they can (I’ve gained some valuable relationships that started by someone else helping me with something).

I know this is all info that you’ve seen and read a hundred times by now but I thought it was important to share some of the success I’ve seen from doing these exact things and not just preaching that these are the things you need to do. I wanted to share ‘why’ these are the things you need to do and the outcome of doing things the right way.

When I decided to grow these services to a larger scale, I was confident that my social networks would contribute to the business but I honestly didn’t realize just how fast they would contribute from the very start before I even had everything set up and in place. I’m grateful to my social circles, to those from my social circles who have given me their business and their referrals, to my existing clients who have boosted me with word-of-mouth marketing and for those who are ready for me to get the site going so they can send more business my way.

Even without tens of thousands of followers, you can have a very dedicated (and maybe even more dedicated than having tens of thousands of ‘empty’ followers) social circle. 2010 will rock for me all because I always had good intentions, I’ve always been eager to help, I stay focused on my specialties and dedicated to learning more and getting better, I love to share with others and there’s never anything shady about anything I do. I’m totally transparent and everything I do, every convo I participate in, every action I take, every help I offer…I do because I WANT TO not because I have a sneaky intention behind it. And it’s all rapidly equaling success…and the type of success I want, not the type of success that causes you to have to hide behind some other identity or rip people off (however, people often use pen names, pseudonyms, etc. for very legit reasons).

If only 1 person is inspired by my movement towards success because of these reasons, then I’m satisfied by the half hour I just spent writing this up =)

Social Media Maniac,
Karen J.
@areaK

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