📈 3 Simple Steps To Grow Your Organic Reach On Social Media With Wendy Lee Stephenson 📲
Social media is one of the most efficient platforms to use when getting in touch with your target market and converting them into loyal customers. But growing your organic reach is more than just sending personal messages or waiting for responses to your calls to action. Wendy Lee Stephenson joins Adrienne Hill to discuss her 3i Prospecting Formula that will help you find leads and prospects on social media, particularly Facebook. Wendy breaks down valuable strategies for building strong business partnerships, increasing online engagements, and starting business-oriented conversations. She also explains how to write engaging direct messages and the power of authentic compliments.
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Wendy has a lead magnet which is listed below.
It is a free guide that can help you learn the 3 simple steps to grow your organic reach on social media.
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📈 3 Simple Steps to Grow your Organic Reach on Social Media 📲
Wouldn't it be amazing if every time you sent a personal message or a DM to someone on social media, they answered every single time? They were excited to hear from you and they followed whatever call to action you gave them. It would be pretty cool. It would make business feel fun again. You would probably be able to start believing that you could not only hit your goals but also build strong relationships with people, whether they ended up buying your products or services. There's a little Prospecting Formula that I would love to share with you that will show you how to achieve exactly that. Let's dive in.
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I am here with Wendy Lee Stephenson. She is a busy mom to seven kiddos. Talk about being busy. She spent fourteen years in the corporate world and started a network marketing business to make a little extra money to pay off debt. How many of us have been in that place? I have. Little did she know her Plan B would become her Plan A after a layoff. She went all in. In the past few years, she has built three six-figure businesses and has built teams that have done over $10 million in sales online.
She was featured in Yahoo News as one of the top ten social media experts to watch out for in 2021. She launched her flagship course, Foundations of a 6-Figure #Mompreneur, to help moms in network marketing hit that elusive six-figure income with simplicity, intention, and joy without the overwhelm. We are so blessed to have her with us here. Welcome, Wendy Lee. I'm so glad to have you here.
Thanks. It's so good to be here. It's an honor. I appreciate you having me and introducing me to your amazing audience.
I'm sure many of them have already met you and found you online, but for people in the audience who haven't met you yet, could you tell us a little bit about your entrepreneurial journey and what brought you here with us?
I worked for fourteen years in the corporate world. I was in sales and marketing. I prided myself on my career. I tried the at-home mom thing for a second. I wasn't good at it because I felt like I had very quickly lost myself. I was a better mom working. I had that mom guilt a little bit. I was like, "Should I feel good enough being home full-time?" I missed that. Somebody introduced me to network marketing. I was completely opposed at first. For those of you that have ever reached out to somebody and they have shut you down, I was one of those people. I was like, "I'm anti-MLM. I have a real job." I was so rude.
A week later, I came across some information. I went to a conference and learned about residual income and passive income. At this conference, they were talking about all the ways to create that. Everything required a lot of money upfront. I remembered the girl who reached out to me and said, "Passive income." I was like, "I need to go back and ask her and be educated about what I said no to." I went back, asked her some questions, signed up for the business that night, and wound up being the top earner on her team, which is crazy, especially because I was the one that shut her down completely.
I said yes. I was a little bit of a slow starter. The first month, she was probably like, "Are you going to do anything?" I did nothing the first month, but then in my second month, I brought a few people in. I had no clue what I was doing. In my third month, I went to an event. There was an event put on by the company that happened to be in my town. It was an awesome opportunity for me to hear other people's stories.
I want to say the power of hearing people's stories is huge because I sat in that audience. There was a girl up on stage. She was a career woman. She said, "I've surpassed my full-time six-figure income with my business on the side." When she said that, it was like, "That's what I want to do. I'm in." Seeing what was possible by hearing her story inspired me. I picked it up. I was like, "I'm going to find the biggest leaders I know and copy what they do."
Success leaves clues. That's what we're all here for during this event. You could go through that learning curve on your own or take what they did, shorten your learning curve, and get results much faster.
That's what I did. I found the top leader in my town. I followed her around. I did everything she did. I don't like the term, "Fake it until you make it," but I do like to say, "Act as if you already have." I acted as if I was as successful as she was and carried myself with that posture. What I found is a few months in, I had a four-figure paycheck. I lost my job.
Thank goodness you had built that Plan B.
I was the full-time breadwinner for my family. What could have been a devastating day I walked into going, "My path is clear of what direction I'm going to take." I leaned all the way into building my network marketing business. It wasn't easy. We almost lost our house that first year as I was building my income. It was hard, but we are not built by easy things. Our strength is created in the hard, like lifting weights. When you lift weights, your muscle builds because it's being torn and broken down. While that year was so hard for me emotionally in relationships and all these things, it was the biggest growth year of my life. By my second year, I had surpassed my full-time income. In my third year, I was a six-figure earner.
I didn't realize we had that in common. I was also in one of those situations where I got laid off, but because I had been building my business, it wasn't even a panicked moment. I remember sitting in the room. They're telling me this. I'm thinking, "It's happening." They're telling me, "This must be so hard. Do you have any questions?" I was like, "I'm good. It's fine. See you later."
"I get a severance package to help me build my business for a minute. I'm good."
How many of you in the audience would love to have that level of confidence about life? Whatever it throws at you, you're good because you have the right strategies in place. You followed the right successful leaders. You can implement what they have done. Let's dig into what Wendy Lee has done, shorten that learning curve, and dig into it all.
For you, Wendy, a large part of your success came from Facebook and connecting, networking, and prospecting the right way. When it comes to Facebook, some people feel like it's so busy and saturated already. How do you find leads and prospects on Facebook? What would you recommend in terms of taking things from riding the struggle bus to next-level killing-it status?
There are two big factors. Number one is knowing who you're talking to. Number two is knowing what problem you solve. My first network marketing company was in skincare. They're like, "We sell to everyone with skin."
The two biggest factors in finding leads and prospects are knowing who you are talking to and understanding what problems you are solving.
That's the worst advice ever. If you're talking to everyone, you're talking to no one.
When you try to talk to everyone, you talk to no one. That's why we don't want to be divisive online, but we should be opinionated. You should have a strong opinion because it's something for people to connect to. You can find that connection piece, but it starts with who you want to serve. Who is that person that you're looking for to either buy your products or join you in business? You've got to know them intimately.
Give them a name. Mine is Christie. I know everything about Christie. I know where she shops. I know how many many kids she has. I know how old she is. I know what keeps her up at night. I know what she and her husband argue about. I know what is stressing her out and what brings her joy. When you can know the person and who you're talking to, the first big thing is knowing where to find them because the biggest struggle on Facebook is finding the people.
Tons of people say, "I don't have enough people to talk to." When you're struggling in business, whether you're in network marketing, you're a coach, or you're selling courses, it doesn't matter. One way or the other, on social media, you have to find people to talk to. In the beginning, especially when someone is struggling, it's tempting to say, "My ideal person is anyone with a pulse and money in their pocket," but what you're telling us, and I couldn't agree more, is if you can zero in on a specific person and speak to that specific person, all of a sudden, someone is listening instead of everyone ignoring you.
Here's one of the best tips I ever got. One of the speakers said, "Talk to one person." Stop saying, "Hey, everybody," not just in your live videos but in every post that you create. Talk to one person. Is it going to speak to everybody? No, but it's going to impact the person that it's for. I finished a live video in one of my groups. I said, "Do you struggle with creating good copy for your posts on social media? Do you spend a ton of time trying to figure out what to say in the most perfect way to get it to translate? I have a solution for you." Every person that feels that is going to stop their scroll, lean in, and see what I have to offer, whereas people that aren't affected are not going to be like, "Who is she talking to?" They're going to move on.
They're going to move on and not have another thought about it, but you get very specific on a specific problem and the person having that specific problem. All of a sudden, people are paying attention. Speaking to a specific person or group of people can help to get engagement, but how do you then turn them into a leader or prospect for your business?
I have a 3i Prospecting Formula that I teach. It's Identify, Influence, and Interact. Those are the three pieces. It's identifying your ideal client and their pain points, influencing them through your marketing by speaking to their problems and solving their problems in what you post, and then getting in Messenger. If you go and friend request somebody, what's the first thing you do when someone friend requests you? You check out their profile.
You see who they are, "Who is this person?"
Immediately, I want them to feel a connection to me. If they're my person, then my content should make them feel connected immediately. They look at my profile and they're like, "Maybe I could learn something from this."
"I like this girl."
You want them to feel that connection so that they accept. Once they're your friend, they accept your friend request. That's when I go in, look at their profile, and then interact. I use that third eye and interact. I've influenced them enough to make them say yes to my request. I interact with them and start a conversation. When you do it on repeat and start to see that they're watching your stories and interacting with your posts, you can take them from a cold lead to a warm prospect in a few moves by relating to them and having that conversation in Messenger. I wouldn't say it's a prospecting conversation right away, but it's getting to know you.
Interact with your prospective clients and start a conversation. Do that on repeat, and you will see them viewing your stories and interacting with your posts.
It's connecting as humans, "I'm Wendy. I'm a real person. I'm not a network marketer." Putting good marketing out there is attractive, interesting, and compelling. Do you find that in going through this process of connecting and then interacting with them, you will see certain names popping up over and over? "So-and-so liked. So-and-so commented." How do you tell when they're ripe to have a business-oriented conversation? Are there certain clues you could be looking for?
Specifically, I have written out the person that I want to do business with. When I see those characteristics in a person, I simply tell them that. I will send them a message, "I've been seeing your name pop up in my feed. I love the way that you share your life on social media, the way you share your family, or the way you are so passionate online about what you stand for. That's exactly what I look for in business partners. I'm curious whether you are open to taking a look at what it is I do to make money online. You would be an amazing fit. If it's not for you, it's no big deal, but you're my time type of person."
You have to be authentic. The compliment you give has to be real. You have to like that thing about them.
When you are filling your funnel with enough leads, you don't have that desperation. You don't have the commission breath. You don't have to drool all over every prospect. You can be choosy. People ask me, "How do you find the right ones?" I'm talking to so many people that I have the posture. If I reach out to you, it's because I'm impressed with you. That is a compliment to the other person. If I'm not reaching out to you about my business or my products or trying to build a relationship with you, I unfriend people.
You get to know them, and they're not your kind of person. You don't feel bad about that.
I unfriended somebody. I kept trying to have conversations with one-word answers, "That's nice," or short and non-conversational. I'm like, "That's not the person I want to do business with. Bye-bye." That gives you the posture. The three Is are so important, but in all of that, we have to have belief and posture. We need a belief in our company, our products, this industry, and ourselves. We need a belief in those things. We need the posture of acting as if. Act as if you're already the millionaire you want to be, the six-figure earner you want to be, or whatever your goal is. Act as if you're already there.
Step into the future self that you want to be. You will become that future version of yourself. It sounds like authentically connecting, putting out valuable content, and setting up your profile in the right way so that it lets people know right away. There's some real value here. Do you have any advice on how to do that initial profile setup so that it attracts people?
First, there's no set way. I can give you some suggestions, but some people love the in-your-face, "This is what I do. This is my help statement." Some people are more subtle. You have to go with what feels good to you. There's no one-size-fits-all, but there are a couple of things to check. Number one, do you have a memorable profile photo? I've updated mine with this bright pink background and me laughing because my old profile picture doesn't reflect who I am.
It was very posed to look good on Facebook. I'm super expressive. I make lots of faces. I want that to show up. I love hot pink. I have a bright and memorable profile picture. Even when I'm scrolling somebody else's, I know when I've commented on it because I see my picture there. Number one is having a profile picture that feels you authentically and lets your personality shine through.
Number two is utilizing the real estate we have, your bio, and the cover photo where it says your work history, where you've lived, and things like that. Utilize that space to let people get to know you but not scare them off that you're going to sell them. If you're in network marketing, don't have your company website there. Create a Milkshake, a highlight link, or a Linktree to direct people in a different way that's not your company website.
Don't put that you work at X, Y, and Z companies. Say that you're your company's CEO and then clean up your page. I create this grid for content. I have my three pillars or storylines. I'm about faith, family, and business. Those are my three big buckets. It's what I stand for. What you can expect to see when you come to my profile are things about my faith, my family, and my business.
Have the four Es that I teach. Entertain, Empower, Engage, and Educate. I make a little grid and go, "How can I educate about business? How can I entertain about business? How can I empower with regard to business? How can I do those things with my faith and my family?" I want people to see in five posts that I'm about those things when they come to my profile and not get confused. People say, "The riches are in the niches." I'm saying, "You have to get niche like you're only about one thing, but you want people to not be confused about what you stand for."
This is fascinating. For the audience members, I hope this is helpful to you because when you hear someone say, "I'm going to teach you about strategies to sell in the DMs and effectively prospect," you wouldn't necessarily intuitively start with your profile, but that's where it starts. That's the foundation. The minute you start messaging someone, they're going to check out your profile and be like, "Who is this person? Do I like them as a human? Do I like who they are as a person? What do they stand for? What are they all about?" I love this advice. It's so foundational. It will never serve you wrong.
The first step in selling through DMs is cleaning up your profile. I love that. That's a foundational piece. Knowing who you're talking to is another one. You can't talk to the perfect audience if you don't know who they are. I love that advice. The readers are going to go out, clean up their profiles, figure out who their actual perfect person would be to work with and start getting brave and being choosy. When it comes to finally now getting in the DMs and talking with people, do you have any general advice, a DMO to follow, or dos and don'ts? Is there any advice on what to say or not say?
I create these rhythms. One rhythm I have is every single day in my power hour, I'm adding new connections because, based on my ideal client, I know where to find that person. I blindly send friend requests. I don't overthink friend requests. I blindly send them. If they're hanging out on the page where my ideal clients are hanging out, I pull up and go, "Who can I add as a friend?" I add them.
The other part of my power hour is going and sorting my friend list on Facebook by recently added. You can sort by the newest first. Those are the people that have most recently accepted my friend request. Hat's when I go in and look at their profile. I'm like, "How can I connect with this person?" I'm going to give you a simple opener. If you have nothing else that you can connect with, you can see where people live on their profiles.
I'll get in and say, "Thank you so much for connecting. I love meeting new people online. I see that you're from Dallas, Texas. Are you from there originally?" People love to talk about themselves. You want to ask a question to get people to open up about themselves. That's a nice and easy one. As you do this and get better as you practice it, you're never going to get better if you don't do it.
You can learn all you want, but until you start doing it, you're not going to improve on it. Start with that as you get better. You're looking at people's profiles. If I see someone with a lot of kids, I'm like, "What are the ages of your kids? It looks like you have 4 or 5 kids. I have seven. My age ranges are this. What are yours?" Find a way to connect with them and ask them a question about themselves.
Think about when you go to a party. If you go to a cocktail party or a networking event and get to know somebody, there are two types of people or extremes. I'm going to tell you about these two extremes. Tell me which one you want to be. There's the one that you go to. They are like, "It's great to meet you." You ask what they do. All of a sudden, everything is about them.
They tell you everything about them. They don't ask you anything about yourself. You walk away going, "That person is full of themselves," but then when you're on the flip side and somebody keeps asking you about yourself and you keep sharing, even though you might not have learned anything about them, you're like, "They were the nicest person."
People have a fundamental need to feel seen, heard, and understood. If you're asking questions that make someone feel seen and heard, maybe for the first time that week, to show that you're asking enough questions and that you care about who they are as a person, it's incredibly flattering. You might walk away being, "I don't know anything about that person except I like them."
Here's the thing. It's fun. The ladies that I have in my mastermind are so funny. We do power hour together every morning. We call it a seed session. We do a seed session together every morning. I love hearing them go, "It's so fun. I've made so many friends." When you get in and start asking about somebody else, not always does it turn up that they're your customer or your business partner, but sometimes they're your friend. Sometimes they invite you to collaborate on something. You never know what's going to happen. It's fun to create relationships and make other people feel good about themselves.
Creating relationships and making other people feel good about themselves is fun.
I love that reflection because so many people who are trying to build a business online open their messaging software with the intention of, "I'm getting a customer. Everyone here is a potential customer." If you go into it with a heart, "I might find a customer. I might find my new best friend. I might find someone to interview for my podcast. I might find someone who lives across town and has kids the same age. Maybe my kid makes a new friend," and if you're open to more than, "I'm going to sell them something," the world can show you all kinds of amazing connections.
It's powerful. I've been on several podcasts. Most of them have come from me starting a conversation with somebody I didn't know. We get to know each other. They're like, "I love your story. PS I have a podcast. Do you want to be on it?"
It's the adult version of, "Do you want to play with me?"
It's the adult play date. Go into it with the heart of serving. To wrap this up, one of the things we mentioned in the beginning is understanding what problems you solve. A great activity for everyone to do when it comes to your business is to take a piece of paper and divide it into two sections. One section says, "Business." For the other section, I want you to pick a category of products if you're in one of those companies. We have household care, skin care, and healthcare. Pick one subject. Maybe it's weight loss, skincare, or leggings. Pick whatever product category in a business and write down the features first. You're going to divide the page again at the top. It's the features. What is it? What can it do for you?
It's a super stretch legging that repels dog hair.
On business, it's a dual-sided comp plan or a customer referral program. It's the nuts and bolts that you care about now that you're doing what you do, but nobody else does. I want you to take those things and go, "What does this mean for the prospect? What problem does this solve?" This will get your mind there a little bit. I sell collagen that helps target tummy fat. One of the things I like to talk about is the stressed-out mom in the mornings trying to get ready for church. Have you ever been the mom getting ready for church that you turn into Cruella de Vil? You start yelling at your kids because you're so stressed out. What it comes down to is you don't have clothes that make you feel good because of the extra tummy fat that you're carrying.
You've tried on three pairs of jeans. You can't close the top of any of them. You're feeling terrible about yourself. You're going to be late for church.
You're going to take it out on your kids. You feel guilty. You're like, "Why am I so miserable every Sunday morning?" It's because of the extra tummy fat. What if I can help you with that? It's taking internal and external problems. An external problem is, "I have extra belly fat." The internal problem is, "I'm miserable in the mornings and late for whatever because I can't find anything to wear."
I'm stressed in my mind. It's causing me to lash out at my children.
What are those problems you solve that are more deeply internal emotional things? People buy with emotion. That will help you completely transform your business by always being in that mode. What problems can you solve? Understand them. Once you write them down, practice conversations in leading people to expose those problems. If you can become a good question-asker in Messenger, you can help people offer up their problems and then offer the solution.
If you ask good questions in Messenger, you can help people offer up their problems and guide them in finding solutions.
What a simple and super efficient exercise to get someone immediately thinking differently. We all want to sell with a heart of service, but what does that mean? It means solving problems for people. What a simple exercise to help people put their mindset in that space. I love that. I also understand you have some other tools that might be helpful to our audience to help them nail their prospecting game. You have a free gift for them. Do you want to tell us a little bit about that?
I mentioned my 3i Prospecting Formula. I have a quick little downloadable worksheet to wrap your mind around what that looks like, how to put it into practice in your business, and where to find your ideal client. There are so many things. We automatically think of Facebook groups but there are other ways to find your ideal client. I have this worksheet that's going to help you lay out and map out, "Who is it that I'm looking for? Where can I find them? How can I influence them? How do I start interacting with them to build a business and build these relationships that turn into a big business?" You can download that freebie. I use Facebook and Instagram primarily but you can translate it to any platform.
You can use it anywhere that offers messaging. That's wonderful. How helpful. You break it down in such an easy and actionable way, which I love. For those in the audience, take action on something that Wendy Lee taught us because if you're watching for entertainment and you never take any action, you're not going to get the results.
Do the little exercise she talked about with the quadrants and grab the download. Let's all get better at prospecting with that heart of service. We can completely transform the industry together. Who knows? Maybe this event is the beginning of that trajectory for you where everything changes. Thank you so much, Wendy Lee, for joining us. It has been so valuable and helpful. I can't wait to see what the audience does with your advice.
Thank you so much for having me.
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About Wendy Lee Stephenson
Wendy Lee Stephenson is a busy mom to 7 kiddos. She spent 14 years in the corporate world and started a network marketing business to make a little extra money to pay off debt. Little did she know her plan B would become Plan A after a layoff. She went all in and in the past 8 years she’s built three 6-figure businesses and has built teams that have done over $10M in sales all online. She was featured in Yahoo! News as one of the Top 10 Social Media Experts to Watch Out for in 2021, and she recently launched her flagship course, “Foundations of a 6-Figure #mompreneur”, to help moms in network marketing hit that 6-figure income with simplicity, intention and joy and without the overwhelm.