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Many of us receive direct messages from people we don’t know (or just met) on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and other social media sites. I receive A LOT of these. One thing that I notice with them is that their messages sound salesy or like a pitch, especially with new connections. If you’re wanting to DM people, I will answer two questions in this blog:
 There are a few kinds of questions that I receive on my DMs: 1. Open-Ended Questions Have you received any of these messages:
I hate these kinds of questions because it puts the pressure on me to get things going. I’m then entering into a full conversation with someone who I don't know and I don't know why they're trying to reach out to me. These questions are so open-ended, and I don’t know how to reply. I can reply “Good” or “Great” then they’d ask “What do you do?” Well, if this person looked at my profile, they would know what I do. Don't make me work because you want to talk to me. If you're going to reach out to someone, say more. 2. Unsolicited Offers Have you received messages like:
Who doesn't want good things for their business? Who doesn't want these things? But it doesn't mean that I'm ready to enter into a sales conversation with you about it because I don't know you. So you have to ask yourself, “What are you leading with when you're messaging people?” Because when people lead with optimizing my website, increasing my Google ranking, or whatever, I am not shopping for that. Your first message should not be a solicitation. You should not be offering to help me for a fee in that first message. I did not request solicitation in my inbox. I also receive messages like:
Well, how do you know that my community wants it? Right, you're leading with your own offer. You're not leading with anything that I should care about. This is something you have to think about. What are you leading with? Are you leading with your own agenda? Or are you leading with something that would actually be for them?  3. “I love… The other thing that I often see is people saying:
That type of message could be almost for anyone in the world. But if you’re going to say such things, be specific! For instance, if you want to be on the Dynamic Women Podcast, send me an email that says something like, “Hey, I love what you're doing. I listened to Episode 34 about changes for the new year! I love the five things that you shared! I totally resonate with this piece.” If you message me something along these lines, it would show me that you actually took the time to consume some of my content and get to know me. 4. No “No Big Deal” Sometimes, people send things like:
This is okay because I have permission to not answer her. However, sometimes what'll happen is people will send that but not the “no big deal.” And then they'll come in again and like, “Hey, you didn't reply to my message” or “Hey, I'm sending this again because you haven't replied.” If that's through my business page on Facebook and I don’t reply to their spam, that messes up my response rates! You might ask, “If they want to friend request you and you don’t know them, then what's the point of accepting their friend request?” Good question. My response to this is as a business owner and speaker who is in the public eye quite a bit, I will say yes to their friend request if:
I’m trusting that they're good people and we should be connected. If you want to accept a friend request from someone, then you need to make the decision if that is a good decision for you or not. Have your own criteria for accepting friend requests. Your being salesy happens when you lead with your own agenda. You’ll come off as kind of awkward and weird in messages when you don't have a clear intention or you're not trying to connect with the person. So the keyword here is CONNECTION. Connect with the person. And so in order to connect with someone, you need to have a topic that is worthy of connecting about. If you want to connect with them, you've got something specific that you can say or to talk about THEM, not talk about YOU. I don't know how many times I've had someone email me and the email tells me how awesome they are. One of the easiest ways to connect is to acknowledge the person in a true way for something that you admire about them, that you like about them, or that you want to compliment them for. Acknowledge them for something and then speak about what's in it for them. Here’s the question recap...
Now here are some tips you can do to NOT sound salesy: 1. Get on people’s radar first. Go like some of their posts, comment on them and/or share some of their content. When people do this on my stuff, I do notice! If someone shares my content and I realize they've shared it, I will thank them. Then I’ll be more receptive when they DM me.  2. Find out what’s important to them. Not what you think is important, but actually what is important to them. You'll find out what's important to them by listening to some of their videos, their audios, and their podcasts. Or by reading stuff on their website and their bio. 3. Don’t make them do all the work. Don’t just say “How are you?” That's an annoying start to a conversation (unless I know them). Instead, tell me what you want to talk about. Acknowledge their work, and be detailed in the message. Refer to something that they have done and just come from a place of serving them first, and then they'll potentially reciprocate. These are the things you can do to not come across as salesy and pitchy in direct messenger. Now, how are you going to show up differently? Diane P.S. I have to take my own words of wisdom here. Sometimes I try to get straight to the point with people without connecting. That's my A-type. It’s a learning curve!
Want to get on my radar? Comment below or subscribe and/or review my Dynamic Women Podcast! Read my other blogs here:
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Life can feel full and unbalanced and then you need to find more time to be on top of your social media. And while social media truly has some great benefits for your business, it can get in the way of your personal priorities and take a lot of time. Since I love efficiency and saving time, in this blog, I’m going to share some tips to post on social media faster and easier. But before you try to cut time in any activity, ask yourself these 3 coaching questions I ask other female business leaders:
 Think about these questions as we go through the tips. (Take note: I’m not a Facebook expert. These are some tips I chose to do in my business as I grew it with 2 young kids. In case you didn’t know, Facebook can penalize you for using an external posting system. You’ll be penalized by not having your posts show up as often as posts that are organically posted straight to Facebook.) Now, there are ways on how you schedule posts for Facebook and other social media platforms: 1. Copy and Paste You could copy and paste your posts on different Facebook groups and schedule them. But if you really want to post organically, one tip I’ve heard is to stay in the box that you’re pasting in for 10 seconds because that is of Facebook's way of knowing did you actually write this post or if you went on a copy and paste spree. Extra Tip: Create an Excel or Word document where you have all your posts ready. This way, you can have your posts more organized and planned out and you will not be distracted by Facebook. 2. Use Scheduling Systems There are different tools that you can use to schedule posts for different platforms (not just for Facebook) at the same time like Buffer, Hootsuite, CincShare, and Planoly. I used Hootsuite before where I would create an Excel spreadsheet that contains all the information (what and when I’m going to post, hashtags, etc.) then I would bulk upload it to Hootsuite. Right now, I am using Planoly where I can schedule my posts for Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. And even better I have my VA do it. Your reach may not be as good using this way so you have to ask yourself, is it more important to do this and have more time? Is that more important than having it have a bigger reach? In coaching many busy business owners, my thought is, "if using a scheduling system means you’re actually consistent in your posting, is that not better than being inconsistent in organic posts?" It all comes down to what you value the most. Extra Tip: Work on better content. Work also on staggering times like 1:07PM instead of 1:00PM or 1:23PM instead of 1:30PM so your post is not competing with posts at those times. Another tip is since you’re using these tools to schedule your posts, you can post on different social media platforms so you’re also present on those platforms.  3. Use Facebook’s Creator Studio Facebook has its own platform called Creator Studio. Use Facebook's own platform because it might be better because Facebook is going to like that more and maybe push more of your content out. 4. Cross-posting Facebook doesn't like this as much, but you can always push content from one platform to another. I can post to Instagram and have it fly over to Facebook and or Twitter. Is this the best thing for my time? Yes. Is this the best thing for my business? Maybe not. I'm dealing with the time that I have. So I encourage you to do the same - to think about what is the best use of your time. Extra Tip: Have someone manage all of your social media platforms then they can engage and post organically for you. Even if you don’t feel you have the budget, think about how you can make it happen. This will free you up to do more income generating activities. 5. Pick One Platform Pick one platform and make sure you're doing some organic posting by posting straight to the platform. Then get on there and actually engage with your posts, reply to people’s comments, like them, and ask them a question back.  If you push content from one platform to another - great! If you bulk upload to other platforms, great! But at the very least pick one platform and really put a lot of energy into it. Ideally, focus on where your clients already are. Extra Tip: Have good content. Create content that's engaging. Create content that could go viral because it looks good. Create something that people want to consume. Which of these tips will you try out? Let me know in the comments! If you have questions that I can help you solve, comment down below, so I can answer that in my next blogs. Join my FREE Facebook group Dynamic Women Global Community, I love sharing tips and techniques there. Read my other blogs for more time-saving hacks:
In my last blog, I talked about four aspects to supporting your success: networking, accountability, mastermind, and a coach. The best is when you can have networking, an accountability group, a mastermind, and a coach all in one group. I share this with my clients. It helps them achieve more, stay focused, and get new opportunities. Why is this good? Think of an iceberg and water.  When you spread yourself thin and do a lot of different things, you only really get the tip of the iceberg because your bandwidth is so spread apart. When you have ONE group that you're working with to satisfy your masterminding, networking, coaching, and accountability needs, you get to go:
What are the other benefits of having these four things in one? 1. You save time because:
2. You save energy.
3. You save money.
 When I was able to see all of these benefits for myself and how it was a better way of up leveling my business I started looking for it. In the end, I created it for my clients. It was a huge difference. You’re probably searching for something like this - for something that would just ease the burden of all the things you have to get done. A speed course to help you reach your goals, a program that has four in one. Your one-stop shop to help you reach where you want to get to.  This is why I put all my years in my education, my teaching, coaching, delivering workshops, delivering speeches, presentations to groups of people, and all my personal and professional development, put them into one program - the She's Goaled Program. Check it out and apply to be able to reach your goals with the 4 point system. Here are some of my blogs that you may also enjoy:
I’ve struggled in my business at different times. I thought I was making the right decisions based on what others had suggested, but the problem was they weren’t actually doing what they shared with me.  I was constantly reviewing and making changes. Of course those mistakes were really learning opportunities. But the thing is, what if you just knew how to NOT make those mistakes? What I learnt is how quickly you decide to make a change and how fast you take action actually determines how successful you're going to be. If you can't make changes when problems come or you stay in the wrong decision for too long, then you're going to have more negative outcomes. As a coach, they don't teach us how to run a coaching business. So, I did these things: 1. I joined a networking group. Networking groups are great, but the problem was that the networking group I was in wasn't giving me a strong level of information that I needed on how to run a business that's in alignment with me. 2. I hired a good business coach. It was really great working with her. She helped me with business foundations, but I was missing that group interaction. I want a group of people, especially women, to come together and we can move our businesses forward together and I can get some information. 3. I joined a Mastermind. I joined a mastermind, but I wasn’t getting that high-level strategy that I needed from it. This mastermind was self-led wherein the participants were to lead it. I was the only coach and facilitator in the group. I ended up having to run it. That just felt weird. I started to feel like the coach, where I'm not able to chill and relax and just be part of this experience. And so I thought to myself, that's off. That's not right.  4. I had an accountability group. I thought maybe I just need a little accountability group to get things going and help me get things happening. But I realized, these people are not doing what they said they would do. And it was quite frustrating for me because at the time, I was pregnant. I was spending more of my time there coaching them how to reach their goals, and how to actually do what they were supposed to do. It was frustrating. That level of accountability wasn't there. I had a networking group, a coach, a mastermind group, and an accountability partner. They were all serving partial needs for me, but none of it was like fully encompassing all of my needs. It takes a lot of time to attend four different events. It was costing me time and brainpower. Each of them had its own set of requirements and expectations. I couldn't keep my head straight with all those things. It was also costing me money! What I wanted was ONE single track to put my business train on. To be able to just go to one group of people and have them serve all of my needs and get my business moving forward so that I am not wasting my time, energy, mind power, and money. Why isn't there something where a group of people can have the following aspects: 1. Networking - We get together and have networking opportunities. We start referring each other and can use each other's services. 2. Accountability - We can have accountability with someone in charge. Having an actual facilitator, coach, or someone in charge of that accountability can lead to better results so that the participants don't have to hold each other accountable. 3. Mastermind - In some groups, certain people take more time because the time isn’t being managed. When there’s a facilitator to facilitate the timing, everyone gets their time. It's not just the power of the group, but I want someone in charge that knows so many different things. 4. Coaching - Having someone in that group who can coach. The cool thing is, as they're coaching someone else in the group, you can learn so much, too. By being coached in front of others, you also have that feeling of we're in this together.  Which of those four pieces do you like the most? You can have networking, accountability, mastermind, and a coach for your life as well in your business. In my next blog, I will share with you the ONE step I took that helped me achieve more, stay focused, and get new opportunities. You can also read my other blogs:
1. The Price We Pay for Our Decisions 2. Hire Help: 1 of 5 Tactics to get more done in life or business (Part 1) 3. 5 Tactics to get more done in life or business (Part 2) |
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