This month’s newsletter is advice based on a peeve of mine. Businesses are slowly realising the potential of social networks such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, but seem to be indivertibly hindering the benefits that they offer; let me explain:
Following most meetings I like to ‘process’ all business cards, by adding them into our system, and more recently connecting to the contacts via social media. Some people make this easy, but for others it is almost impossible to find their profiles; in the modern day and age this is similar to missing a phone number or email address. If I want to follow their company, and can’t find their Twitter profile, I can’t.
If there is a Twitter logo on a business card, it should be accompanied by a Twitter address (ours is @WebbedFeetUK). If there is a logo in an email signature or website, then this should link to the Twitter profile. There are so many people out there who obviously care about their Twitter profile as they have the logo, but it links to the Twitter home page, and in many instances the profile name is not obvious.
Furthermore, some people use social networking, but do not mention this on their business card, website or email signature. If you use these, and want to gain followers then you’ll need to let everyone know.
You wouldn’t tell someone to “call me” without providing a phone number.
If you don’t tweet or update your profile then this article may not apply. However if you do, and you’re wondering why people aren’t following you, then I would suggest having a good look at your printed and online advertising and check that there is a clear route to each of your social networks.
Once you have your followers, you need to decide what to write, how to customise your profile, and how to start converting followers into customers, and that’s where we come in...