Everywhere you look someone is talking about Twitter, or asking you whether you are on LinkedIn.
As a busy professional, I'm guessing the calls on your time are huge.
There never seems to be enough time to get everything done.
There is always one more client call that you can make.
This got me thinking, how can you use social networking to achieve more for your business, without either shelling out loads of money, or spending hours blogging away or tweeting away? Here are 8 tried and tested techniques to help you to achieve more, for your time, effort and money with social networking.
1.
Be clear about who you are targeting.
This is the same whether you are using on-line marketing tools or more traditional tools.
It's a great boost to the ego to have 100+ people in your LinkedIn contacts or over 1000 followers on Twitter - but unless these are people who will buy from you, or know someone that will buy from you, then it's not worth the effort in courting them.
2.
Join on-line networking groups, and become active members of the on-line forums, where potential buyers of your products or services hang out.
Ideally, you need to be spending at least 80% of your networking time (whether in person or on-line) with potential buyers.
3.
Use your on-line presence to boost traffic to your website.
Google ranks the content in blogs above content written in websites.
So start a blog, or use your tweets (postings on twitter) to direct potential clients/customers or referrers to your website.
Or if you are a busy professional get your PA to start tweeting for you...
4.
Remember to project your personal image - rather than your company logo.
At the end of the day, people still buy from people.
Make sure you have a photo of you on all your on-line profiles.
5.
Start following potential buyers on Twitter.
Very simply use a tool such as Twellow, wefollow, tweetmondo to identify potential buyers of your products and services, and then start following them.
Then introduce yourself to the person you are following, explaining why you have chosen to follow them.
Make sure your twitter postings are including links to relevant articles and blogs for the people you start to follow.
6.
Keep your on-line and off-line brand and image consistent.
It's very easy to start diluting the impact of your brand, by giving off different messages from all the communication channels you use to talk to your potential customers.
There are some simple things, make sure you are using the same colour scheme, logo and font wherever possible.
7.
Do remember that it is 7-14 times more effective to win business from an existing customer rather than a new customer.
Enough said really! 8.
Ask satisfied clients and customers to write a testimonial for you.
But, here is the modern twist.
Ask them to write a testimonial for you on LinkedIn, and ask their permission for you to reproduce the testimonial on your website.
This way you get another contact on LinkedIn - and a new list of potential customers.