How to Engage in Social Media Outreach

In the old days, there tended to be a very clear division between marketing and sales, namely that marketing would put out a message into the market that would attract potential customers, and sales would either directly reach out to those potential customers (direct sales) or respond to inquiries about the product they are trying to sell (customer service).

Nowadays, with the integration of social media into the marketing mix, connecting with potential customers directly has become much easier and increasingly part of the marketing team’s responsibility.

What’s Unique About Social Media?

Some traditional outreach techniques included activities like cold calling and door-to-door sales, both of which confronted the sales person with a customer they barely knew anything about.

With social media, you can learn about your customer’s behavior and interests online, which makes it much easier to tailor your marketing slogans and sales outreach to specific target groups and get higher returns.

What’s more, you are now able to analyze your customer’s behavior not only before you reach out to them, but also while and after, as you will continue to see in real-time which conversations they might engage in or what kind of profile updates they carry out.

So how exactly do you engage in social media outreach?

Outreach Techniques

There are many different ways to conduct social media outreach, but at the core of all the techniques listed below is one simple principle: you have to engage in a conversation your potential customer is already involved in rather than contacting them out of the blue with irrelevant sales.

Twitter

• You can “follow” your prospects simply by pushing the “Follow” button on their profile page. Then, they will get a notification saying you followed them, which hopefully entices them to check out what you are offering and then “follow you back.” To be extra efficient, follow them at times when they just had a conversation that directly relates to your product or services.

• Another way to get on people’s radar is to “favorite” their Twitter posts – the ones relevant to your business – by clicking the little star at the bottom of the message window.

• You can also interact with their Twitter posts (aka “Tweets”) by replying to them with a valuable insight or relevant comment. To do so, click the little arrow button below the original Tweet.

• If you have a coupon or promotion, or even a blog on your site that you believe your prospective customer might be interested in, you can “direct message” them and provide them with a link accompanied by a fun, nice, or witty note (depending on what your brand voice is.)

Facebook

• Facebook doesn't have a limit on how many characters you can use in a post, so it tends to provide a much more conversational environment than Twitter. One of the ways to reach out to your target audience is by posting an inspiring or provocative image, for example, and asking Facebook users to express their reactions in the comment section below.

While Facebook allows more characters, it still has many similarities to Twitter when it comes to social media outreach. Here are the Facebook equivalents to the Twitter techniques listed above:

• “Invite” users to “Like” your company Facebook page = “Follow”

• “Like” other people’s posts = “Favorite”

• “Comment” on other people’s posts = “Reply”

• “Direct Message” = “Direct Message”

LinkedIn

• Because of its inherent business nature, LinkedIn is a great place for B2B businesses to do social media outreach. What’s unique about this social network is that you can organize discussion groups around specific topics that directly relate to your company or product. In curating these discussions you will not only be able to establish a certain authority, but also connect with people in a two-way conversation.

Similar to Facebook and Twitter, there are equivalents on LinkedIn as follows:

• “Connect” with users = “Invite” = “Follow”

• “Like” other people’s blog posts = “Like” = “Favorite”

• “Comment” on other people’s blog posts = “Comment” = “Reply”

• “Send InMail” = “Direct Message” = “Direct Message”

Conclusion

Social media provides all the tools to both research qualified leads as well as reach out to potential customers based on their recent activity. As a result, you will not only be able to work more efficiently due to a plethora of valuable data, but also increase overall response rates and ROI.

One last tip: make sure to act like a person, not a company, when reaching out to people. It’s called “social” media after all. For more information on this and other marketing and communications related subjects, check out Ragan’s PR Daily’s content and resources.