Like any social experience or business interaction, engaging prospects and customers with social media is a process.

Unfortunately, most fail at this with inauthentic, boring messaging.

Worse, they don't have a system to follow that consistently produces profitable results.

I wanted to give you a simple 8-part, step-by-step a template you can use right now that will greatly support the sales process and increase and improve the level of connection and value you provide to the social media experience to both your prospects and customers.

I think it also boosts long-term brand equity – the thing that makes you and your products really valuable.

If you’re building social media relationships with complete strangers or ravenous customers, your goal is to connect and deepen your relationship by opening a conversation and encouraging involvement that ultimately drives sales without being pushy or “salesy.”

This system isn’t contrived or manipulative. It’s absolutely authentic and real and if you follow the process, you’ll connect on a deep level with your followers and attract more to your social circle.

And the end result is you’ll encourage buying behavior,  social shares, engagement and long-term brand equity…so you don’t have to work as hard to sell in the future.

There are eight basic steps to this system.

Watch the video for a complete step-by-step description of how it works and if you’d like to see a real-life example, visit Top Gun Toolkit and check out the social sharing that’s taking place.

Here are the eight steps:

1. Acknowledge your visitor’s action and participation

2. Engage with a question and broaden the scope of the comment or question to engage the entire viewing audience

3. Reinforce the question, challenge or pain to the audience with examples that are designed to speak to the individual, but also to everyone reading

4. Connect – with feelings and heart – this is ultimately WHY YOUR PROSPECTS and CUSTOMERS BUY because they feel that you actually care about them. Other engaged readers are going to say to themselves, “man, if they give this kind of information and attention away during a free promotion or launch, imagine what it must be like to own one of their products!”

5. Pre-frame – that is where you reveal that something else is coming up in another video, post or content element. The message to an engaged prospect is essentially “NEW, COMING SOON” – but it a way that pre-seeds the sale of your product or service. Again, this must be done by providing value with training and examples

6. Curiosity Cliffhanger – add curiosity and an “open loop” – create a reason to make your audience want to return because something is MISSING from your story. You do this by asking questions that help them arrive at a conclusion that there is more to this story and you’re going to provide in the next post or episode.

7. Request – your engaged socialites to implement. Acknowledge their participation and thank them again, asking them to come back after taking some sort of action – showing that you’re all about IMPLEMENTING and giving them the power to take matters into their own hands to get results. Let them know you’re here to provide the tools, resources and services to get the results they want and need quickly and easily.

8. Invite – every one of your readers to comment and request to ask them to like and share the post, page or conversation with their friends and people who could benefit from your content, resources and tools. Going viral is a very good thing. Free traffic and leads keep your costs down and your sales high!

When you respond and engage with your audience, make your best effort to think about how you can reuse this information and content for training, education, presentation or marketing purposes.

Chances are, you get asked the same questions over and over again and if you document and organize those question and objections, it’ll make your sales and marketing messaging more connected and engaging.

It also paves the way to creating better training content for both your staff and clients. After all, many of your clients are attracted to you because they want to experience the same results you do!

Here’s a quick example of an interaction I had with a prospect on the Top Gun Toolkit comment page in a product launch:

Note that Kartik wrote back with a thank-you message shortly after I wrote back to him. I made a point of answering his question in a way that served him, answered his question and can be useful to someone who isn’t in his same business as he is. It’s generalized to the point of being very useful while still being specific.

To other viewers and readers, they see the engagement, the quality of thought that went into the response and are more likely to ask questions and participate too.

All of that content is reusable – and can be distributed in multiple formats online.

From this single conversation, here’s what I did with this content:

1. Trained my staff

2. Engaged my social audience

3. Created content that I’m sharing with you right now in the form of this article

4. Made a video that’s being distributed on every social network, YouTube, a podcast

5. Driving traffic to the “Top Gun Toolkit” launch web site

6. Increasing engagement on my blog

7. And provides an excellent article to distribute to my email database (that's probably how you found out about this!)

Remember what Robert Cialdini says in his book, “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion” – “Social Proof” is one of the most powerful “weapons” in a marketing toolbox.

Next time you look at an engaging social media conversation, compare what’s going on with the 8 steps you see above and see which of these are being used and which aren’t.

Here’s what I’d like you to do right now:

1. Visit www.TopGunToolkit.com, watch the video, download and read the educational PDF and witness the level of engagement and involvement that’s taking place on the site

2. Post a comment, ask a question in the comments section

3. Like, comment and share this article on as many of the social networks as you belong to – and this blog too!

4. Give this video a “thumbs up”

5. Subscribe to the “Top Gun Toolkit” podcast!

6. Send a link to www.TopGunToolkit.com right now to three of your friends or business associates who you feel would benefit from the content we shared in the free training video…

7. And in Video #2 of this free training series, try out some of the sample “Marketing Machine” campaigns we built for you and discover how you can grow your existing or a new business with social media, mobile and video marketing

Thanks for reading, watching and commenting and I’ll see you soon!

PS – here's the free PDF report called “How to Get and Close a Consulting Deal or Just Close More Consulting Deals if You Already Consult” – it's a “high engagement” article that gets read, distributed and has high perceived value. Model this!

There's also a second PDF you can download, “5 Steps to Getting a Coaching or Consulting Deal…and How to Deliver Deliver Great Products and Services.”

There are 38 pages of content – about how to get coaching and consulting deals and 6 pricing models you can use.