Talking to strangers can increase your visibility on social media and on the Internet. Here’s something to get you moving forward in your digital marketing.
[Social media tip: Talk to strangers. Your mother will get over it.]
- We grew up with “Stranger Danger” – Mom said…
- Our customers we once strangers to us and our business
- We need to talk to strangers to grow our business
- Conversations create opportunity – both online and offline
- There are things that we can do today that will make a difference for our business
Digital Marketing Considerations:
In my generation, mothers told her sons and daughters not to talk to strangers when they were out and about. For mothers, strangers were a source of danger for the children. For moms today, this is still a concern for their children; but social media is pushing things to a whole new level.
But when it comes to digital marketing and business, every customer that comes into our business was a stranger at some point. When it comes to friends, every friend was a stranger before we got to know them.
When it comes to building a business using digital marketing, that is our social media and all our online resources, and knowing that we need to have new customers coming into our business on a regular basis, we need to talk to strangers. For our business to be really successful, we need to talk to as many strangers as possible.
For some using digital marketing, I know that they struggle with reaching out to strangers and starting a conversation with them. As funny as this might sound, mother probably has a big role in their reluctance to talk to strangers.
Digital Marketing Realities:
Some of the greatest people I know in business can walk into a room full of strangers, talk to as many strangers as possible, and draw opportunity out of that room. They seem to have the gift of the gab. They seem to show no fear at all when it comes to talking to strangers. But at the end of the day, they get the job done.
I’ve learned to do better in a networking environment full of people over the years. I have gotten over my fear of talking to strangers. I know that if I don’t talk to strangers, my business will not grow. And the same goes for you, if you don’t talk to strangers, your business will not grow either.
When it comes to digital marketing, we need to learn how to get comfortable talking to strangers online. Now I’m not talking about throwing yourself into unsafe situations. But what I am talking about a stretching ourselves beyond the level of our comfort and talking to people that we don’t know yet. We need to get more comfortable with this. And as we talked to more strangers, the process will get easier.
Our mother will get over it when she sees us bringing in more business as we talk to more strangers and increase our community of loyal customers. It is funny to think that our mothers can have such a profound effect on how we conduct ourselves in business. Regardless, we need to push ourselves out of our comfort zone and into a zone that truly stretches and causes us to grow.
What should we do today with our digital marketing?
We should try to reach out to strangers in our local area and see if we can start a conversation with them. What can we talk about? We can talk about the last thing that they just posted. Twitter is the easiest platform for talking to strangers in my opinion.
Things we can do today:
- Go to followerwonk.com and search Twitter bios for people in your local area. Start by clicking on the “Search bios” tab. Then click on the more options link below the search box to add the location of the search.
- Once you find someone in your local area, go to their Twitter profile and look at their last few tweets. It is important to check to see if they are having any conversations with others. If they are not having any conversations with others, go find another profile.
- Once you found a good Twitter profile to start with, see if you can start a conversation around what they have put out on Twitter. Remember that they might not be on Twitter at the moment, so please be patient. Keep an eye on your notifications section on Twitter for the reply.
Strangers are more likely to converse with you on Twitter than they are on Facebook. Facebook typically is harder to start a conversation with complete strangers. So focus all your efforts and connect with strangers on Twitter. In my opinion, you are more likely to get better results on Twitter.
To start the process and put these words into action, go talk to stranger and see what happens now.
As a word of encouragement, I had a travel agent reach out to a stranger in the local area on Twitter. The result was that they sold a travel package to the person they reached out to. It did not happen all at once. But through casual conversation, the person she reached out to felt comfortable enough to ask the travel agent for a quote.
Remember that all of your customers were once strangers.
