HOW TO GET 70%-90% OF YOUR FRIEND REQUESTS ACCEPTED, AND BLOW UP YOUR ORGANIC MARKETING
It’s no secret that using FB profiles to connect with potential clients is a huge part of my “one lead per day” organic social selling system that makes multiple five figures per month (for the right people, anyway 😉 ).
In order for everything to work optimally, you must get a large majority of people accepting your friend requests.
I consistently get anywhere from 70%-90% of my requests accepted. (I track this carefully) This stat has held steady for a little less than a year – ever since I started trying to do organic networking at a higher volume.
While I don’t fully understand why (no one fully understands how FB works in this regard), I have some strong hypotheses about why I have such a high acceptance rate, especially after seeing hundreds of discussions on this topic and guiding dozens of clients to implement this system.
So here you go – my best thinking on how to get lots of potential clients happily accepting your friend requests.
All of this comes down to NOT BEING (OR SEEMING LIKE) A SPAMMER.
Or like someone who’s eager to “hard-sell” people.
So…
How your profile appears when a stranger looks at it (and is deciding whether or not to accept your request) is very, very important.
Basically, don’t look like you’re screaming all about your business and that these folks are going to get “sold” the second they accept your friend request (in terms of your sliding into their DMs OR the kinds of posts they’re going to see from you).
Don’t have a promo-y cover image with stuff about your business on it.
Same for your profile picture. Make it “normal.” Just you. Not a picture of your dog or your favorite plant. Maybe a professional photo, but nothing that looks deliberately posed or stiff or business-y. Don’t have your biz logo superimposed on the photo. This is your PERSONAL page.
Don’t have a salesy sounding one-liner on your intro section like “I help experts scale to $100K months!!!”
Make it softer, like just “business coach.” Plus some personal details about you.
Don’t have a bunch of spammy looking posts on your timeline linking to your website or your sales pages.
Only have the very high value, mind-blowing belief-shift posts leading to a classy pitch (or not) the way I teach it, so that new folks are already amazed at the value they see on your page and want to accept your request JUST so they can see more of that goodness in their feed.
(Oh, and puh-leeze make sure that at least some of those posts are “public” – folks who aren’t your friends yet won’t be able to see them otherwise!)
Also have some public personal posts/photos so people can see you’re a human and aren’t just all about your business.
In summary: Just be YOURSELF, as an individual. Anything else is suspect anyway in terms of people/FB thinking you’re trying to basically operate as a business from your profile page.
Also, try to request your friends mostly from the “friend suggestions” list – these are the ones FB has “pre-approved” as being likely to accept your request for reasons unknown (but magical).
And don’t request 50 people all at once in rapid succession, so as not to look like a bot or a spammer. If you have clear ideal client criteria you’ll need to take some time to look thoughtfully at profiles anyway before you request them. Spread your requests throughout the day.
If you follow these guidelines I believe you’ll get a much higher acceptance rate on your requests. Of course, that doesn’t guarantee you’ll get one lead per day or one client per week – you need to design your offer properly and also execute all other parts of the system properly to get those results.
(See these posts for more details on the full system.)
Oh, and this should go without saying, but I am not a legal expert nor do I work for Facebook, so take all of this advice with that in mind. As with all business strategies, implement at your own risk.
Happy friending!
I’d love if you could address when sending a request, that person messages you with “hi, where did you find me and what’s your intention for friending me?”
Sure! I send back something very simple, such as “I found you on the friend suggestions list and my intention is to grow my network here on FB.”