I remember watching a business owner once. She got twenty-odd likes on a post she’d agonised over for an hour. She was thrilled. Genuinely buzzing. I asked her what she was going to do with them. She looked at me like I’d asked her to solve a Rubik’s cube in the dark. “Do with them? What do you mean? They liked it. That’s the good bit, isn’t it?” That’s the moment I want to talk about, the social media follow up. Not the post. Not the caption you rewrote four times. The bit that comes after you’ve checked your notifications 53 times to see if it’s landed, when people have raised their hands… and then you do absolutely nothing with it.

Someone liked your post. Time for the social media follow up.

Here’s the bit you can lift and act on today. A like or a comment isn’t the finish line; it’s the starting gun. Your next move is to open a quiet, human conversation with the person who engaged, and offer them a clear next step. One fluid motion, from a like to a booked call. No overcomplicated funnel diagrams, no thirty-seven-step automations. Just noticing who leaned in, and you leaning back.

Most people treat engagement like applause. You take a little bow, feel good for an hour, and move on. Then wonder why social media isn’t bringing you in any work. It’s not the platform. It’s that you keep letting warm people go cold while you’re busy writing the next post.

What do you actually say in the DM?

If you’re a normal human being (don’t ask me what counts as normal), you say hello and thank them. That’s it to start. “Really glad that one landed with you, what are you working on at the moment?” No pitch. No PDF. No “book a call with me” before they’ve finished taking their first breath. (We’ve all had that message, and we’ve all left it on read).

You’re now in a sales environment, and it’s time to do the hardest thing, which isn’t talking. It’s shutting the hell up and listening. Let them tell you what’s actually going on. People will hand you the exact words for their problem if you give them thirty seconds of genuine attention instead of your sales script.

A follow-up done badly is worse than no follow-up at all. If you slide in with a wall of text about your three packages and a Calendly link, you’ve earned yourself a block, not a lead. There’s a whole art to not being that person, and I’ve written about the messages that get you muted over on STOP sending these LinkedIn messages. Read it.

Why should one post make just one point?

Wait a minute, let me backtrack to the post itself that got the like, because it doesn’t always happen. If the post raises five problems and points at four different solutions, the person who liked it has no idea what you want them to do, so they pick the easiest option… they go back to scrolling. A confused mind doesn’t buy, and a confused reader does nothing at all.

For each piece of content, pick one pain point. One problem, and talk about it like you understand it, then offer clarity. That means giving your audience the next logical step. When you’re clear about the single thing you’re helping with, the right people see themselves in it, and the conversation pretty much starts itself. This is the same thinking that runs underneath the whole engagement-to-work approach, which I’ve laid out in full in How to Turn Social Media Engagement into Sales. This article is simply putting a magnifying glass on the very first move.

How do you turn a chat into a call?

You’ve had some back and forth; now invite them to a proper conversation, and make it a proper conversation. Not a ‘discovery call’ that’s really five minutes of rapport and twenty-five minutes of you politely pitching before agreeing to ‘circle back’. Yuck. Call it what it is. Maybe it’s a power call. Half an hour, a real problem on the table, and by the end they know exactly what working with you looks like and what it costs. (Which is something I usually offer to my webinar attendees.)

One really good move when it comes to these calls is to ask for a small deposit to hold the slot. Yeah, I felt you flinch then when you read that. It’s uncomfortable, I know. It sounds cheeky, but it works. A deposit turns a ‘yeah, that would be good’ into a solid commitment. It filters out the tyre-kickers, and means the people who show up are serious. (Your calendar will thank me later.) It also subtly tells them you value your own time, which makes them value it too.

What about the ones who aren’t ready yet?

Not everyone who likes your post will be ready to book this week, and that’s ok. The mistake is letting those people evaporate. There’s still space for a social media follow up. Get them into a simple nurture sequence. A short run of emails that keeps you useful and in their inbox until the timing’s right. Nothing clever. Helpful, regular, human. I’ve made the case for one over on Should You Implement an Email Nurture Sequence? (And the answer, in case you’re wondering, is yes. Yes, you should.)

You have to create a bridge between ‘follow me for free’ and ‘pay me’. That bridge is a lead magnet, something valuable they get for nothing other than an email address. A genuinely useful download, a webinar where you actually teach instead of tease. Give someone real value before you ask for anything, and the ask stops feeling like a leap. It becomes the obvious next step for you as well as for them.

That’s the whole thing.

• Someone likes your post.
• You open a real conversation.
• You listen for the one problem.
• You point at one next step.
• You move the ready ones to a call held it with a deposit.
• You keep the not-yet ones warm with a nurture sequence off the back of something useful.

That’s how you get from a single like to a booked call, without a single sleazy bone in it.

The likes were never the point. What you do in the ten minutes after them is.

Want the templates that make this easy? My book, Stop Hiding – Start Marketing, comes with the Show Up Vault. A full library of prompts, templates and workbooks, including the messages, nurture emails and call structures that turn quiet engagement into actual work. Grab your copy here.

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