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Social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, etc have become a great online resource for generating leads if used correctly. They have become one of the best alternative mediums for introducing a business to the target market and building a list of potential leads.

This article outlines 5 best strategies that can be used to attract debt consolidation customers using twitter in the right way.

Build your network actively – the 1^st step towards building your database of debt leads is to add people who could be potential clients in your industry and frequently tweet valuable content. However, avoid any direct sales pitch or spamming people. It is also a good practice to re-tweet posts of other people as this indicates that you are reciprocating. When you do this, there are higher chances of your own posts and information being re-tweeted which means your potential leads can grow significantly.

Using twitter advanced search – the advanced search feature in twitter makes it possible to filter searches based on a lot of parameters. This includes complex filtering of keyword searches as well. You can create an advanced search around your topic relating to debt consolidation in order to identify your potential debt leads. For instance, if you want to know if anyone is asking about debt consolidation help or the procedure, you can do a search using the term debt consolidation.

Addressing people’s questions – most often people ask questions, complain about something or search for stuff on twitter and they are happy to have someone answer their questions. With this, you can send out tweets addressing their questions relating to your business and turn up debt leads with a higher success rate.

Converting your network of people – once you have built your credibility, rapport and trust with your close network, you can simply let them know what you do. You can also create good landing pages for converting your potential leads into profitable sales. It may not be possible to build trust with every person at the same level, but there may be quite a few people who may not have any problems if they were led to your landing page whose link you would have occasionally tweeted. When your visitors land on your tweeted URL or your landing page, they can know what you are offering, why they need your help and why they should choose you for debt consolidation help.

Tweet about what you do – you can share information on what you are working on and what you offer and when people find the information helpful, they may ask your suggestions and this will build better relationships to get you closer to your goal of procuring leads. If you have a blog with informative content about your business, you can expose the new audience to it on twitter by using TwitterFeed. TwitterFeed syndicates the content of your blog and distributes it across twitter, getting you more traffic and increasing the chances of finding potential debt leads.

These tips on using twitter for lead generation can help in maximizing the potential offered by this social network. It is important to use this medium correctly to attract debt leads and increase the sales closing ratio.

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Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin are considered the next generation in communication tools. We think that these social media sites are silver bullets for prospects and business. However, filling out social profiles, friending, following, and pumping out statuses about our services is probably not going to help you make your sales quota.

Here is why:

1. Twitter is a social networking site not an Internet leads procuring site – If you were hoping to pick up debt leads by advertising your services on Twitter, forget it. No one would openly admit to their financial needs on a social networking site. In fact it will be very difficult to identify who needs your services and you may end up annoying your friends or relatives if you thought they needed financial packages to bail them out. People might start avoiding you.

2. Losing focus of your services and marketing skills– Twitter may prove distracting if you primarily want to rely on the Internet for leads. You may end up wasting your time reading up on other peoples posts or about your competition and eventually lose out on valuable marketing time. Contacting your potential debt leads should be your focus, not watching drama on Twitter.

3. Lower debt lead conversion – Internet leads from Twitter aren’t likely to result in significant volume and certainly will result in lower debt lead conversion. A bad experience with any contact on Twitter may also cause you to lose business not only from the contact but also from the contacts’ friends.

4. Continuous marketing efforts and not Twitter makes you money – Twitter in and of itself will not give you Internet leads or debt leads for business. You will have to focus all your time and effort networking and staying visible to get any business. This time can instead be used constructively to buy relevant leads from an Internet leads provider. Your debt leads can be purchased in reasonable volume and be efficiently targeted for your products and services with traditional Internet lead generation.

5. Compromising on Professionalism – Twitter is an informal site for social interactions. Posting your inclinations for acquiring debt leads or Internet leads may project you as a desperate sales person who has nothing else to do. It may also dilute your image professionally as your personal and business details get mixed with each other.

6. Lack of personalization – Debt leads business needs personalized solutions. Twittering client solutions is likely to cost you reputation and professional points. Debt customers will look at you as an ambulance chaser not a serious debt settlement specialist.

Social networking sites are best used for their intended purpose–socializing and building relationships. Using them indiscriminately to garner Internet leads may negatively impact your abilities as a sales person. If you want to make real money, you should spend your time talking to potential debt leads purchased or pursued through reliable Internet lead sites. Use the Internet selectively for your business and you will make more money. Not Twittering.

As I increase my use of social media one thing strikes me–There are so many debt leads floating around. It seems like I’m always seeing people complaining bout money, credit cards, house payments. Others are talking about all the money they are blowing at college, the mall, the bar. Lots of debt customers just waiting for you.

Simply adding these people to your various social networks is like stocking the pond. Here’s how I keep my radar up for opportunities.

Keyword Searches

Start with keyword searches on your various social networks. Many of them will feed you conversations and discussions in real-time. Just do a few searches and find a good refined flow of chatter about debt, credit cards, spending, budgeting, and other finance terms. Then blend in modifiers like need, problem, pay, or trouble.

These simple searches will start to show you a new world of consumer debt problems.

Facebook, Twitter, Google Alerts

Where should you search for these debt problems? Where the people are, naturally.

Start with the most popular–Facebook. Chances are as soon as you start adding Friends to your network you will see indicators of debt problems. However, for real debt lead (potential) volume I suggest start a Fan Page. Focus your Facebook page on debt education and you will attract debt problems like flies.

Second to Facebook, I like Twitter. The fundamental question is, "What’s Happening?" and boy do people tell you. Even something as personal as financial woes are flying across the network. Add to this the efficiency of Search.Twitter.com and you have another ready flow of debt relief prospects.

Finally, although not as sexy as real-time social media like Facebook and Twitter, Google Alerts is still a good source of debt leads. I add my debt keyword searches into Alerts and gobble up lots of people talking about debt problems on their blogs and social networks.

RSS Feeds

Watching all of these debt problems flow by can be overwhelming. Even worse it can be distracting and waste your time. The truth is most are not ready to close, or even inquire into your debt relief services. That means you need to find an efficient way to monitor these streams over time. RSS is the best solution.

Most of these social networks and real-time searches can produce RSS feeds. You don’t really have to understand the details of the technology, but if you subscribe to them in a RSS reader (Google Reader) you will have a steady flow of social media debt leads to supplement your debt lead buying.

Twitter is a swiftly growing phenomenon. It is full of people chattering back and forth about their daily lives and nuance. Many think it is another growing distraction and waste of time on the Internet.

I tend to agree, but those characteristics also give it some interesting possibilities for generating Internet debt leads. And here are some simple tools that allow you to give it a try.

1. Twitter.com - At the most basic level you need to have a Twitter account. I recommend this simply be a personal account, ideally with some simple version of your name as the user name. This will enable you to use the rest of the tools and engage potential prospects on Twitter.

2. TweetGrid - The primary way you will be looking for debt leads is to search for triggering terms and conversations that may indicate a customer looking for help. You can simply create multiple queries in TweetGrid to monitor for these specific keywords. TweetGrid also makes it easy to engage if someone asks for help or more information about debt settlement or relief.

3. HootSuite.com - This is a great little tool that allows for you to schedule future Tweets. The smart Twitter user understands that people in trouble with debt and on Twitter will go looking for experts. This is where this tool comes into play. Make sure you are loading up and regularly scheduling helpful Tweets about debt relief. This will help draw in a good audience of prospective customers.

4. Seesmic Desktop or TweetDeck - Keeping all of this organized requires a good command center. Try one of these. They will let you manage multiple conversations, searches, and even Twitter accounts. These tools make it easy for you to directly engage prospects on Twitter and keep track of the various conversations.

Twitter is still emerging and evolving as a real-time Internet channel. And there is definite promise for significant lead generation opportunity in the future. Learning to harvest this marketing channel now will certainly pay off in the future.

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I know many of you blog to build your personal brand or increase you flow of high quality exclusive leads. The question is are you branding that blog or just spitting out content?

3 Reasons to Brand Your Blog

I came across a nice article on CopySnips.com about branding your blog. He is talking to copywriters and for-profit bloggers, but we’re all in the business of making money so it seems like a pretty important topic. This is especially important if you use blogging for lead generation, which you should by the way.

Here are CopySnips.com’s main points:

• Branding makes you easy to find
• Branding makes you memorable
• You can create and reinforce your brand’s image

Winning Customers, Why Make it Hard?

Ultimately, we all know that winning customers is about having good service and a quality product. I assume you are working hard on that every day, but why would you make it hard to find your great business?

That really is the problem you are solving with branding. It is not the glitz and the glamour. It is the making it easy part.

You need to use you blog in an intelligent way to get prospects familiar and funneling into your sales process.

So, take a look-see what CopySnips.com has to say.

BTW, if you enjoyed this post, click here to retweet it to your Twitter followers

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Are you following me on Twitter? You should be. I am constantly Twittering out ideas, tips, and news I pick up from my stream of daily feeds on debt, mortgage, and loan modification.

Here are some recent items you may have missed if you weren’t following me:

• Reverse Mortgage – Bank of America executive says it is part of retirement now
• Naked Capitalism – Debtors Revolt?
• Loan Modification – California Attorney General targeting loan modifiers

Twitter is a great way to tune into late breaking news on most any topic, but especially financial industry news.

So, if you don’t have a Twitter account sign-up for one today at http://twitter.com. In all cases start following me at http://twitter.com/troywilson

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Sales 2.0, social media, social networking, and other like terms are literally sucking the air out of the room. But, will it really work on it’s own? Will it work without “real” contact, real connections?

Here are a few really good lessons to review before you begin believing sales happen without phone and “belly-to-belly” interactions.

Funnelholic on the “Pounce Controversy”

This all started with a simple post/survey by Mike Damphousse on his blog asking, “Webleads: Pounce, pause, nurture, or wait?”

Funnelholic gave his initial answer, which then evolved into this essential conclusion: Phones still matter!

Please remember:

1. The phone still works.
2. For it to work, we need to get our phone resources connected with the right people (NOTE: if you sent an email to someone, I hope you sent it to a targeted list).
3. New technologies should increase our connect rates, NOT keep us from talking to people.
4. The phone is your best weapon in the lead-conversion rate war.

Need some more convincing? How about from the master marketer himself…

Seth Godin on Social Networking

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Chances are that you have a lot of customers in your CRM that you could be engaging directly with social media or in your existing social networks. But, how do you connect them?

Here is a quick way to connect your CRM and your social profiles.

Segment Your Consumers

The first step is to segment a group of prospects you want to target on social media. These could be new prospects, aged leads, or maybe some demographic that you think will be more responsive to social media marketing.

Export this list to a spreadsheet, vCard, or other format that Gmail accepts.

Use Gmail

I suggest setting up a new Google Mail account just for this process, but you can use your existing Google Contacts. When you are ready import your prospects list into Gmail.

Now you are ready to select your favorite social network.

Connect in the Social Profiles

I suggest you start with Twitter. Twitter tends to be a bit more open environment. Connections are more open and people are expecting to be connected to by people that have like interest, but are not necessarily closely connected.

This means you will certainly be able to follow what makes them tick and you may pick up several new followers.

Listen for Opportunity

Now you have a great listening post for prospects in your current sales database. Listen closely for opportunity. Learn a little more about them.

If they follow you, then you have a double bonus. You are also going to get the opportunity for them to see you in action-helping and providing advice on mortgages to debt settlement. It is like getting a highly qualified opt-in email list.

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“You have a new follower.” That is becoming more and more a part of our daily lives. Online networking and socializing is as common as having a telephone to communicate with friends and family-even businesses. Don’t forget that in your marketing and sales strategy.

As Twitter becomes more and more popular you need to be using it to communicate with your customers. What’s even better is you can connect simply with your leads and get keen insight into what may make your first call more effective.

Loading Aged Leads into Gmail

The first step in connecting to your aged leads via Twitter or other social networks is to get those leads (contact information) into your Gmail account.

Gmail has a simple importing feature to get them in your Google contacts. Then, most of these social networks allow for simple importing of Google contacts and searching for them on the network.

Getting Connected

Once a service like Twitter finds all your aged leads, you simply need to hit the follow button. There is an increasingly low barrier to reciprocating follows and connections, so the chances are the customer will follow back.

Listening for Opportunity

Once they are in your network you can quickly get to know the person and what may help your sale. In addition, you will be able to observe requests for help or assistance.

Now you will be able to help your customers when they are ready, not just when they pop in your call queue.

Ongoing Nurturing

Adding your aged leads to your Twitter, or other social network will aid in your lead nurturing efforts. Use Twitter or Facebook to announce changes in the market or your products. Simple messages regarding news and information are great for provoking new inquiries.

Connecting your leads to your social network could be as profitable as your direct mail or email marketing efforts. Try it today!

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“Consumer debt problems worsen.”

“Credit cards become increasingly restrictive.”

These are today’s headlines, but are you turning them into marketing messages? Being your prospective customer’s primary financial news source is a great opportunity. Chances are most customers avoid the business or finance section of their local newspaper. The information is too complex or simply makes their eyes glaze over-this is your opportunity.

A simple email, Twitter, or Facebook message every couple of weeks passing a link to a relevant debt story could easy produce multiple leads. Let’s design a simple campaign…

Searching for News

The first step in being a valuable source of financial news and information is to efficiently harvest it. My favorite suggestion is Google Reader; however, I do get a fair amount of good ideas from Twitter, Facebook, and increasingly FriendFeed.

Combine a mixture of traditional news feeds, like the online Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, and CNN Money, with less traditional sources like smart bloggers. Here are a few I watch:

• TheMortgageReports
• HSH Financial News
  
• Calculated Risk
• Naked Capitalism
• Morning Mortgage Notes

A RSS Reader, like Google Reader will allow you to quickly clip and share important items.

Setting Up Your Broadcast

Depending on how you communicate with your customers you have a variety of options to broadcast these little bits of information.

I prefer the ease and reach of Twitter. This approach will also attract additional followers, which could become prospects. However, do not underestimate the power of good old fashion email. A good message or one forwarded directly from the news source can be powerfully viral. Each person you email is likely to have their own network of folks they forward interesting items to.

Make it Consistent and Routine

Probably more important than the content is the consistency with which you provide financial news. The more consistent your timing, frequency, and quality of coverage the more your clients will rely on you exclusively. If there is a feeling that you are the person who can, with credibility, be their source of financial services information they will unlikely look elsewhere. That means when they need help with finances-mortgage or debt-they are calling you.

Offer Your Help

Finally, never forget to offer your help in answering any questions or explaining the information in the news clip. This is you opportunity to educate, add more value, or solve their financial crisis/need.

News can easily become your secret marketing weapon.

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