I’ve been involved with social media marketing now for about 24 months!
I use LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter on a regular basis. My radio show operates as a hub for my social media content world. My experiences in seeking the best way to implement social media and the best applications of social media in my business provide an interesting lesson for other small and midsize business persons.
I initially put my toe in the water in the social media world through LinkedIn. It was easy to use and I got a lot of people to connect with me quickly. LinkedIn and is a great social network for the professional world. It has significant benefits many of which I have not yet explored. I use it to communicate with my LinkedIn contacts and to broaden my contact base by creating discussions within all LinkedIn groups I have joined.
The LinkedIn discussion groups have provided me with a significant increase in my contact base and allowed me to identify a candidate for employment at our firm that we eventually hired. I have found that approximately 10% of my LinkedIn contacts open content that I send to them. I think that’s an extraordinary number given the diversity of the contacts in my Linked In database.
My Linked In database has grown significantly and now exceeds 1,400 contacts. I add about 10 to 15 LinkedIn contacts per month. Whenever somebody links in with me I always respond to them with a personal message asking if they’d like to have a phone call to see if we can do business. I’ve had significant success with this method and typically generate 1 or 2 leads per week this way.
Facebook is the one social media platform that I have not fully grasped. I realize that sounds ridiculous given that most 10 year olds can operate on Facebook and are better at it than their parents. I started with a personal page over a year ago and got poor results. I generated a lot of friends quickly but I also started to get spam friend requests. My personal page became a magnet for unwanted business solicitations. Therefore, I created a business only page.
I ran a contest to generate friends and soon had over 1,000. Facebook offers the small business person the opportunity to create a truly rich online experience. I found that it’s not really a great place to meet new business contacts so far but is has shown that it is a great place to project your personality onto the Internet. In order for me to take full advantage of Facebook I’ve hired a consultant.
Associates in Business has designed my Facebook page as well as my online web page/blog. Their familiarity with the nuances of Facebook allows me to focus my time more efficiently and they produce a Facebook product above and beyond what I would ever be able to do on my own. I recommend this approach to every small business person who has little time and many ideas.
The Associates in Business also are my search engine optimization experts. They have helped me get my web site to the top of Google pages and help me generate thousands of hits each week.
Other than radio, my favorite form of social media is Twitter. Again I can hardly understand the landscape of the Twitter universe so I got myself a personal consultant. My Twitter consultant goes under the handle of SocialMedia305 (SM305). He has shown me how to use Twitter to build my contacts, identify the relevant thought leaders in my business and market my products effectively.
SM305 has helped me build my business by creating a targeted list of potential clients and a list of potential customers those clients want to reach.
How will these social media platforms interact to help me build my business?
A brief example will help paint the picture. I recently authored an article on the Miami condominium market. I used Twitter, Linked In and Facebook to distribute the article across the globe. Using a bitly tag, I was able to follow the article as it traveled around the world.
The article made it to China, India, Belgium, South Africa and many other points across the globe!
I can guarantee you that I don’t know too many contacts in China or South Africa. I can tell you I have to Twitter followers in those countries and that LinkedIn distributed the article to almost 1/3 of all the people that read it. Facebook played almost no role in this process.
So, if you ask me what the most powerful social media tools of today are I would say they are:
- Twitter for reaching the general public, and…
- Linked In for keeping in touch with your personal network.
While I’m not big on Facebook today that may change as the Associates in Business build out my Facebook presence. We’re also looking into the Google + world.
If you fell my team of consultants can help you – contact them and stay tuned for updates!
