Regardless how small your business, you can use social media tools to help position you as an expert and to build relationships with your clients, prospects and colleagues. The biggest question with regard to these tools is WHY would you use them. Over the coming months you’ll notice I’ll be sharing lots of tips and strategies for using these to: – build your networking – increase your profile and position yourself as an expert – communicate with your customers – generate new resources for your own education
Social Networking
Social networking is, to me, the foundation for using social media and an easy place for you to begin. Here are three social networking sites to sign up to. This will get you started. 1. Join Facebook – It’s not just for finding high school friends. Take a look at my profile as an example on how to use it as a business tool. Watch how we are using facebook it can give you clues on how to make it work best for you. Become a fan of our page for news and updates. Link to this from your site. 2. Start Twittering Don’t feel ready (or have a reason why) to blog, then micro-blog. Twitter allows you to send short messages to your online followers. Watch what the swarm of Twitterers do, how they use this tool to communicate with their audience. You could find that you have an easy tool to build your network. Go to Twitter.com, sign up and start following my Twitters to start your network. You can start by following me at www.twitter.com/suzidafnis. Here are a couple of related articles you may find useful: Twitter Tips and Hints. Small business and social media. 3. LinkedIn This professional network is a great way to promote your business to an international business audience. Need to do some market research? Use the Question and Answer segment to pose a question for your research. Alternately – answer others questions and get credit for being a expert in this area. Again, to get started you can take a look at my profile for a template/set up. There are loads more networking sites that you can be a part of.. but for now, get started on these three. You’ll learn just from watching what others are doing. During March the Australian Businesswomen’s Network focuses on social media for women in business. So… watch for great tips, strategies, articles, and resources coming up then.
