Ep #233: Being Referred on Social Media?

Stacey Brown Randall:          Have you ever wondered how to respond when you’re tagged or mentioned on social media? You certainly don’t want to miss out on that opportunity for being referred, do you? Let’s dive in.

Hey there, and welcome to episode 233 of the Roadmap to Grow Your Business Podcast, a show about helping you build a referable business. I’m your host, Stacey Brown Randall.

I’m calling this a BRB eavesdrop. I know, I know, we were all taught that it’s rude to eavesdrop, but not when you’re being given permission. So, stick with me. Here we go.

Just about every week in the Building a Referable Business Program, which is my group coaching experience, I’m available for a live Q&A session that we do over Zoom. It’s awesome.

There’s like no expectation that a member is going to attend every single week. I mean, we do about 40 of those over a 52-week year, but I am available for them to submit their questions or ask them live, and I answer them.

So, when they pre-submit their questions, or in some cases, they just pop on live to ask their questions, it gives us a chance to dialogue about the answer, which allows me to usually go deeper, and give a more well-rounded answer.

I have found that I’m able to give a more well-rounded answer in the moment when I’m verbally responding versus just trying to email type out an answer. Because then, it’s usually brevity that you’re focused on with email and making sense, so you don’t want to get too complicated if you don’t know that the person’s following you, because you get no verbal recognition when they’re reading your email.

So, I love answering questions live. Now, whether that client is in the session with me or not, that’s okay because we record me answering the questions, and then of course, we timestamp the answers on our portal for our members, so those who can’t attend can quickly and easily find their answer.

But some of our best answers come when the person is there and they’re asking the question live, and that I am able to give a really good in-depth answer because we’re doing it together, and we’re verbally responding, we’re not responding written.

So, in this particular eavesdrop, you’re going to hear about five minutes of a discussion about social media and referrals. So, just to kind of put some things into context, it’s a short clip where you’ll hear Erin ask her question about something that’s happened on social media regarding referrals for her, and then you’ll hear me give a part of the answer as part of this eavesdrop.

You will hear me reference a training, it’s called The Social Media Referral Seed Planting Training. It’s one of our situational trainings that is available to my BRB and VIP members.

So, if you’re like, “Whoa, what is the Social Media Referral Seed Planting Strategy? I got to get my hands on that.” Well, sorry. Unfortunately, you’ve got to be a member of BRB or be my Referrals in A Day VIP members to get access to that strategy.

But I wanted you to know what it was when you heard me reference it, not like you’re missing something.

So, this question comes from BRB member Erin Smith, who is a travel planner. We call her the travel diva inside BRB, and she owns Cultivating Connections Travel Planners.

So, here’s the eavesdrop, her asking her question about being tagged in social media post and what to do. And then of course, when we’re done with her asking her question, and then I give the answer, I’m going to circle back to you guys just to give a little bit more explanation at the end.

So, here’s your approved eavesdrop.

Erin Smith:          And then the whole social media when somebody recommends you on some group, what if you have like five people recommend you to the same person? Do you just go with the first one or do you keep them all?

Stacey Brown Randall:          Okay, so wait; let me understand where you’re coming from this. So, you’ve got on Facebook, someone maybe either said, “I’m looking for a travel planner, or a travel diva,” or like, “I’m looking for some help.” And then to her post or his post, five people tagged you in it or at least said your name and you saw it?

Erin Smith:          Yes.

Stacey Brown Randall:          Okay. So, I’m going to-

Erin Smith:          And she did contact me, so-

Stacey Brown Randall:          Okay, perfect. So, I’m going to take you through how I want you to think about this from an ecosystem of this process.

So, number one, write a thank you card to all five people.

If you do not have their mailing addresses, and you can’t find it within a couple of minutes, like they have their own company and their mailing addresses at the bottom of their website, or you can look them up in the tax records, whatever it is; then send them a video via like Facebook Messenger, or like an audio message via Facebook Messenger or email.

So, I want all of them to get thanked because what we want them to continue to always do is do that again. Like keep tagging you. And mention like in your language, be like, “Thank you so much for referring me to …” whoever the person was.

“I know these opportunity is when people just like randomly ask the question in a Facebook post, who should I be using? You don’t have to take the time to tag me, but you did, and that means the world to me. So, thank you for referring her to me.”

I want you to mention the action they took and the person they did it for, or the potential client that they did it for. That’s step one.

Step two is in theory, we would tell you, you’re going to mark that as one referral received but five sources are getting credit for it, because truly, the reason why she reached out to you was the collectiveness of it.

So, if you’ve been through the social media referral seed training that I have on the portal, you’ve heard me talk about my theory around this, of just watching this happen a lot, and then sometimes being creepy and reaching out to people and saying, “So, who did you end up going with?” Because I just wanted to know, and I was working on my theory.

My theory is that when someone, when they ask for recommendations like that in social media, and then a whole bunch of people tag other people, and some people get tagged more than once, my theory is they pick their person on two things.

Number one, they pick whoever they trusted the most, that tagged somebody else, that’s who they went with.

So, if 14 strangers in the mom group said, “You should try these 14 different people,” and then a person they know from a play date group tagged somebody, they’re going to go to that person first. They’re going to go to whoever their trust is, is recommending someone.

It doesn’t change when it’s tagged on Facebook or it’s happening over email. They’re going to go with that trust and relationship, or it’s whoever gets tagged the most. You got tagged five times, of course, she was going to reach out. Even if she didn’t go with you, she was definitely going to reach out to have that conversation.

So, I want all five of them to get recognized. They’re going to get the thank you and they’re going to get tagged in your system. They all … it’s one referral. This isn’t five referrals. I don’t want that to impact your numbers.

It’s one referral, but five people are now in your system. I want you to continue to cultivate them like they’re a full-fledged referral source, and whatever your next touch point is, I want them to get it.

Erin Smith:          They did.

Stacey Brown Randall:          Perfect. And I want them to continue to get it until it’s been a year and you tell me, “And they haven’t done it again.” Either they haven’t referred someone directly to you or they haven’t tagged you again on Facebook.

We’re just going to keep them in there. It’s going to be hit or miss. We just don’t know which is why we’re going to kind of keep them in there from that perspective. And anytime you talk to any of them, you’re going to reference this one person that they all referred to you.

So, that’s how I want you to think about this from the ecosystem kind of perspective.

Now, the other thing that you will learn in that social media referral seed planting, and I think you’re at that point where you’re probably ready to start implementing some of these strategies if you haven’t already …

Alright, let’s do a quick recap so you understand some of the information that I was providing to Erin. I want to make sure that I’m giving it context for you guys as well.

So, the first thing I told Erin to do is every single person that tagged her on that post as recommending her, and technically referring her to the person who was asking about hiring someone to help them with travel, all five of them get thanked.

Now, some of you may be thinking, “Wait a minute, what if I don’t know who those people are? Like what if I don’t have their address? What if I don’t …” And we talked about that a little bit in the answer.

My preference is for all of the people who tagged you in that post, and anytime somebody tags you in a post, they’re effectively referring you, they’re just doing it digitally via social media. My response is always going to be you need to send them a thank you card. But that doesn’t mean you always have their mailing address. I totally respect that.

So, you can send an email or preferably, I would prefer actually a video, then, if you’re going to do that via email, and just saying a quick thank you. They need to be recognized for what they did. It’s not enough for you just to like when they tag you or for you to reply, a thank you right there in that social media post.

I want you to take this offline, so to speak, and I want to make sure that you thank them appropriately. So, make sure you thank them for referring you to, and then insert the name of the person that requested the help on Facebook or whatever platform it is.

So, definitely step one, you want to make sure that they are getting thanked.

Stacey Brown Randall:          Hey, pardon this interruption. But I needed to ask you, did you miss the last live private training that I did back in October, showing you how I work with clients to double, triple, or quadruple their referral results in one year?

Well, if you missed that live training, it was private, so you had to have an invitation to attend. If you missed that live training, I am hosting another one in mid-December.

This will be the last training that I do like this live for this year. So, you don’t want to miss your chance. You will need to submit your application to join BRB so that you can receive all the training details.

Of course, there’s no obligation to join BRB (Building a Referral Business) our group coaching experience, but we do want to make sure that the people who are on this training are at a certain point when they think about their referrals journey, and what they’re looking to learn out of this training.

So, that’s why we have you submit the application, but of course, there’s no obligation to attend. But if you want to be on this training, whether you plan to join BRB or not, is fine. You’re going to have to apply now. So, please do that.

But hey, if online courses and group coaching programs just aren’t right for you, and you’d rather work with me one-on-one for one day and get everything built and in place to start 2023 referrals strong, then just reach out to me directly via email or direct message me on LinkedIn or Instagram, and request information for my Referrals in A Day VIP option.

Now, back to the episode.

Stacey Brown Randall:          Okay, so step one, of course is who all is getting thanked. Step two is also to make sure that you’re actually tracking this, and tracking it correctly. I want you to keep a list of the people who are tagging you in social media posts that are effectively recommending or referring you.

So, definitely make sure you’re keeping track of who they are, and even the date that they do it. I think that’s super important that you’re tracking that information.

Now, I worked with an interior designer a couple years ago, and she would get tagged a lot on social media by people who would say, “Oh my gosh, you got to work with her name, oh my gosh, you got to see her work. It’s amazing.”

And some of those people, she knew, and some of those didn’t. And what I had her do was just track those people for that entire year, and just see who did it multiple times, and then that’s who ultimately, she had as part of her referral plan.

And others who like tagged her once and then never again, she didn’t always worry about having them in her referral strategy. But here’s the thing, she had a referral strategy to decide to put them into or not into. So, that’s why we were tracking this information and seeing how it went.

But it’s also important that you track this correctly. If five people, like in Erin’s case are all referring you to the same client or prospect, then it’s one referral, but all five of those folks get credit, which is why all five of them get the thank you card and get tracked in your system.

And then of course, step three, you guys heard me a little bit talk about the keep nurturing them. You don’t know what’s going to come of this. Somebody may tag you once on Facebook or some social media platform and never again, but you won’t know until you track it.

And so, if you can cultivate a relationship with them, maybe they’ll do more than just tag you on social media, and they’ll actually start connecting you to the prospect directly via email, which of course, is the way that I like to have folks do it so that you are in control with the follow up.

And I’m sure you probably have some thoughts and opinions on my referral theory as it comes to social media. So, if you do have thoughts, you know I would love to hear them.

Whether you agree with me or don’t agree with me, I would love to get your thoughts on what happens when people are tagged in social media request for referrals, for recommendations and referrals, like who actually gets chosen.

So, if you listen to that part when I talked about my theory around this, of who actually gets picked, I’d love to know your thoughts as well. Just hop into our free Facebook group referrals without asking, and let me know your thoughts.

Well, I hope you enjoyed that discussion on planting social media referral seeds because there is a right way and a wrong way to do it.

So, I hope you guys enjoyed that little eavesdrop into what it’s like to be with me inside building a referral business. And I’m glad I was able to bring this eavesdrop to you. Let me know if you like this and if you do, we’ll do it some more in the future.

The show notes page for this episode where you can find everything we’ve talked about, staceybrownrandall.com/233, that’s 233 for episode 233. And don’t forget the transcripts are available for this episode on the show notes page.

Coming up next week is episode 234, and let’s talk about how you are looking forward in your business.

Until then, you know what to do, my friend; take control and grow your business. Bye for now.

Thanks for listening to the Roadmap to Grow Your Business podcast. To
access all resources and links mentioned in today’s show, and to
connect with Stacey, head over to www.staceybrownrandall.com.