Have you noticed that these days, when people ask for recommendations for someone to help them with something, that instead of asking their face-to-face contacts, colleagues and friends, they ask on social media?

Not random requests on Twitter or their Facebook profile. But in groups on Linkedin and Facebook or other forums. Places where they're connected with people online who they believe will be able to come up with good recommendations.

In recent weeks I've seen requests for recommendations for website developers, tax experts, virtual assistants, specialist lawyers and facebook marketing consultants.

Wouldn't it be nice if you were the person whose name came up time and time again when people asked for recommendations in your field on social media?

In this 5 Minute Marketing Tip video I share 3 strategies for getting more recommendations on Linkedin and Facebook groups and Forums.
 

Video Transcript

Hi, it's Ian here.

It's not so long ago that if someone was looking for someone to help them, they put out a request for recommendations to their personal contacts, their friends, their colleagues in the face to face world. These days that request for recommendations is much more likely to go out via social media. Not Twitter or their personal Facebook profile but usually in groups on LinkedIn or Facebook or private forums where they're connected with other people who they believe are likely to be able to make a good recommendation.

Now wouldn't it be nice if you were the person who got regularly recommended in those groups on LinkedIn, on Facebook or forums. In today's video, I'm going to show you 3 strategies to make sure that you are the person who gets regularly recommended on social media. I'll see you after this break.

Hi, it's Ian – welcome back. How do you get regularly recommended on Facebook, on LinkedIn groups or forums when your clients are asking for recommendations?

Well the first thing is you have to be a member of those groups where you clients are hanging out and asking for recommendations. Sounds obvious, but very many professionals are primarily members of groups of their peers and colleagues where they chat about kind of their work and what's going on and latest innovations in their field. Well you also need to be a member of the groups where your clients hang out.

Now that's not just so that you can answer their request for recommendations and recommend yourself because that typically doesn't work. But so that you can get to know and get in contact with other people in the group who could make those recommendations.

So the first step is to be a member of the groups where your clients hang out so that people know you and can recommend you.

Second thing is you have to make your expertise and your capability visible to those members of the group. Now if some of the members of the group were your clients before and you knew them quite well for example, that's great, they can recommend you based on their experiences. But chances are most of the members in a group online won't know you, they'll be scattered around the world or just people who haven't met because it's a virtual group, they wouldn't know how good you are. You have to make your expertise visible so they'll feel confident enough to recommend you to others.

A couple of ways you can do this. Firstly, you can be really generous in terms of answering questions. If on the group anyone ever asks a question about a topic you know about, don't just give a short, curt reply or say I know about this, give me a call, because it will just sound like you are selling to them. On the group itself give a very detailed in-depth generous reply. What you really want is for the person who asked the question to be completely blown away and have their expectations exceeded in terms of the quality and the depth of the answer.

Now not only will that really impress them, but of course everyone else on the group will see that and they'll be really impressed with how much you know and how willing you are to share that information. That's one of the beauties of social media is that not only are you answering the question of the person who asked it but everybody else gets to see it. You're showing your expertise much wider.

Another way you can do it is by sharing blog posts and videos etc. Now you've got to stick with the group etiquette. Some groups on LinkedIn and Facebook don't allow you to post links up to your own website and stuff like that. Those are the rules. Don't break them but if they do allow it, then pick your very best highest quality videos, blog post, etc. and share those with the other members of the group to demonstrate your capabilities.

Now the third method is probably the best method and that's to give critiques or live help on the group. What I mean by that is you essentially make a proactive offer to help people on the group in a way that's visible to other group members. To give an example, I'm a member of a few groups and a couple of them I have seen this done really effectively, one of them for example some guy who is a website copywriter basically put up a little post on the Facebook group and said, “Hey, I'm a website copywriter. I've got a little bit of time to spare, if anyone wants me to review a page on their website, a landing page or their homepage, post up the link here and I'll do a review for it.” And a couple of people put up a link to their pages and he came back with very thorough in-depth reviews that demonstrated he really knew what he was talking about and of course that he was really generous.

Now after having done that a couple of times within a couple of weeks I saw other people on the group who haden't asked for a review of their site but who had obviously read that particular post on the group: I saw them recommending him. Other people would come in, haven't seen the post, and when anyone asked for a recommendation for a web copywriter they'd name this person and say you should check him out, he really knows what he is doing. That's based on how he demonstrated his expertise live by doing those critiques.

You can't do a critique in every field. If you are leadership coach for example you can't offer to do live critiques for someone's leadership. But what you can offer to do is live Q&A. If people just post their questions on the group you can answer those questions. There is always a way you can think of to demonstrate your expertise in a very interactive and value added way on that group that's appreciated by the group and then you'll have people recommending you.

Now the third step is that after someone has recommended you, and when the person receives that recommendation, although they might contact you straight away, they're more likely to go and check out your website. You need them to be really blown away again by your website. When they go to your site, most likely to the homepage, they probably haven't seen the original piece of content you shared or the critique you did that made that person recommend you. You need to establish the same level of credibility with that person who asked for the recommendation by what's on your site.

It needs to be really easy for them to find great bits of content. Ideally some more videos or blog posts where you do critiques for example that demonstrates your expertise. If you did critiques on the group and you get permission, copy those to your blog so that people can see them there. Share other blog posts and ideas. Really make sure that on your website it's very clear you are an expert and you are very willing to share that expertise and make it easy for them to find, not a tiny little link at the bottom of the homepage, but make it very easy for them to get to that content rich section of your website.

That's really it, those 3 steps. Make sure you are in the groups where people are asking for recommendations so that those other group members can get to know you. Demonstrate your credibility and build relationships with the other group members by helping them out, by answering questions, sharing great content and proactively offering to help by doing critiques or Q&A etc. on the group. Then thirdly make sure there is a brilliant website experience where the person who you'd be recommended to first checks you out and again it reestablishes your expertise and your credibility.

A quick fourth bonus strategy: make sure you have a great follow up strategy in place as well. Probably when people ask for recommendation they are looking to hire someone, but you never know: other things often get in the way, the timetable slows down. So when they've checked out your website they may not be ready to go ahead straight away. You want some way of keeping in touch: ideally get them to sign up for regular emails from you where you continue to build credibility, send them great material, so that when later on they do decide it's now time to go ahead, you're on top of mind, you're the first person they think of. That's bonus strategy number 4. Put all these 4 strategies in place and you will be someone who is recommended regularly on social media and who wins work from it.

See you next time :)