The Slight Edge of Social Media – Case Study

In a recent blog post, I elaborated on how implementing The Slight Edge philosophy can improve your success with social media. Today, I’d like to take a look at one case study from a client of ours. By doing small, consistent actions we are beginning to build brand awareness and increase sales. Here’s how…

Our Goal: To create another touch point to foster business relationships with other professionals who could provide referrals. To promote brand awareness so that when people have a specific need, this person and her company come to mind. 

Our Strategy: Follow-up on two basic interactions done on LinkedIn (which most people ignore).

1. Send a LinkedIn message to new connections. We thank them for connecting and ask what they are working on in case we can help provide a referral or resource to them.
2. Send a LinkedIn message to those who give endorsements. We thank them for the endorsement and invite them to refer others to us who we can help.

Results: In the first 2 weeks we sent 10 messages thanking folks for their Endorsements and 25 messages to New Connections.

In these two instances, we were able to reach people at a point when they were ready to take action and we made it easy for them to contact us (through LinkedIn). One appointment may not have happened until my client and this prospect met at another in-person networking event. Instead, she was able to connect with the prospect as a follow-up to exchanging business cards at a networking event they had both attended the prior week. In the other case, it prompted the connection to follow-up with a referral they had offered to make to someone needing my client’s services. We received a total of 6 responses to our messages (17% response rate). And received inquiries from and booked appointments with 2 people (33% success rate).

In the other four responses, the connections offered affirmative responses that they would be happy to pass on a referral when the opportunity arose. A couple connections responded with information about what they were working on. This allowed the conversation and engagement to continue.

Regardless if a response was received or not, it helped to build brand awareness. The goal is to be (and remain) top-of-mind so that when a need arises, you are the first person people go to for the solution. Implementing this small, yet consistent, strategy is just one way to build top-of-mind status and achieve The Slight Edge.

So, let me know…What small, consistent steps can you implement to reach your goals?