If you have been sitting on the fence wondering if it’s a good idea to launch a Twitter account (or actually use the one you set up 8 months ago), or if it’s a good idea to start a blog or spend time building your profile and network on LinkedIn, maybe you need a gentle push. People in business often talk about ROI, return on investment, but now it’s time to start talking about ROV, return on visibility. For little money, but quite a bit of time, at least initially, you can garner real results by becoming visible to prospects in the online community.

Tackling the social media mountain can be daunting at first. Remember that you can start with baby steps. Actually, I would recommend taking some time to observe the social media landscape before jumping in. Then, once you’re ready, here are some suggestions to follow:

• Build your networks. Invite people you know to connect with you, and join groups in sites such as LinkedIn. Once you get to know people in those groups, you can invite them to connect with you as well. One thing to remember, though- numbers are great, but people have hearts. Closing business usually means have a face-to-face or voice-to-voice discussion with real people. Social media is a way for you to find each other, but you will still most likely need to interact with the person outside of the social media site to make a transaction, unless you’re just selling a well-known product.
• Join discussions and start discussions on your own. You don’t have to write you own blog—you can comment and respond or answer questions in LinkedIn, other blog posts, or on Twitter. Make your comments relative, beneficial and observe rules of etiquette.
• Start using Twitter. Twitter can increase your visibility dramatically. Find a platform such as TweetDeck to manage your Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook accounts from one place so you can save your sanity. Use a site like twellow.com to find people and businesses to follow, and they’ll usually return the favor. Make your tweets relevant and helpful, and remember to use them to let others know what your business can offer.
• Use like-minded communities to research your competition and see what others in your field are up to. On LinkedIn, for example, you can join relevant professional groups to ask questions and find out what’s going on in your industry. With this tool, you can also construct a quick poll and get responses from hundreds of people in a few hours.

As you get more involved, you’ll learn as you go about the different types of social media, how other small businesses use them, and approaches you can use to start your own online community, blog or video. So join in and start seeing a return on your visibility! Remember, social media is here to stay. Sure, it will morph over time (remember that texting has only been around for a few short years), but it’s not going away.

-Michele Rempel, Mandatek

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 15th, 2009 at 4:03 pm and is filed under Digital Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.