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How can social media add rocket-fuel to your existing

marketing and business development initiatives?

Kirsten Hodgson

Imagine this: you’ve just heard that a large number of existing and prospective clients,

referrers, colleagues and peers will be attending a networking event. You’ve got the

opportunity to listen and to find out what’s important to them, to meet them and have

conversations on things that you are knowledgeable about and to help them out. Would you

attend?

The problem is that in the real world it would be very difficult to get everyone in the same

room and to meet more than a handful of people before the event finished.

Enter social media.

Social media is a buzzword but the platforms themselves are anything but.

Their popularity is growing. Not just for social purposes but for business reasons too.

Consider this:

In March 2012 LinkedIn had 150 million members worldwide and over 250,000 in

New Zealand. That’s an eighth of our population. The number of Australians on

LinkedIn recently eclipsed the 3 million mark. In March 2011 LinkedIn had 100

million members so it grew by 50% in 12 months.

In March 2012 there were 2.1 million New Zealanders on Facebook. Contrary to

popular belief that it’s a generational thing (or that parents are simply on there to

monitor their children), the fastest growing group on Facebook is women over 55

years of age.

In March 2012 Twitter had 140 million active users, up 40% on 2011 figures. Not just

the domain of celebrities, Twitter is used by numerous businesses and business

people around the world.

These platforms, used in a structured way, can add rocket fuel to your existing marketing

and business development initiatives. Before we consider how, let’s look at what social

media is and what the main platforms are.

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What is social media?

There are various definitions, but it can be encapsulated as:

any online platform that enables users to generate content and that facilitates dialogue

between a user, the platform owner and other users.

The big three

From a business perspective, the three most powerful social media networks are LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. If leveraged well, they can really help you get noticed and build your business. Google+ is another platform that has potential but it hasn’t yet reached critical mass.

LinkedIn describes itself as:

“the world’s largest professional network with over 150 million members and growing

rapidly. LinkedIn connects you to your trusted contacts and helps you exchange knowledge,

ideas, and opportunities with a broader network of professionals.”

Here’s a short video LinkedIn produced1 about what it is and how you can use it:

http://learn.linkedin.com/what-is-linkedin/

Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging site as well as an amazing source of great content. Imagine a giant signpost on which you can post up to 140 characters at a time to share interesting links, updates etc.

Twitter can be a great way to drive more traffic to your blog, website, newsletter sign-up form, event or other content. Its real value comes through building relationships one by one with others, reading and sharing their content and building credibility with these people who in turn sometimes share your content.

This is one of my primary sources of professional development. There is so much great content – provided you follow the right people – that it can be a fantastic source of inspiration and learning.

Facebook is, according to Wikipedia, the most used social network service. Traditionally it’s been used more by business to consumer (B2C) companies than business to business (B2B). This is changing, as evidence comes to light that business customers do use it for business purposes. For example, a small business accountant I know here in New Zealand generates $20,000-$30,000 of revenue each year from Facebook. We’ll explore how later in this paper.

1 If you would like to scan the QR (quick reader) code using your smart phone, you must

download a QR reader app in order to do so. This will take you to the LinkedIn video.

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A fad or something more?

If LinkedIn were a country it would be the world’s 8th most populated (as of February 2012

using Wikipedia’s list of countries by population as a benchmark). Facebook would be the

world’s 3rd most populous.

Social media is no more a fad than the introduction of the fax machine or email. Sure, the

platforms will evolve and may be replaced by something else over time, but the principle of

engaging, socialising and networking with others will remain the same. Millennia ago, we

lived in tribes, then we lived as part of extended families. Now, ease of travel and mobility

have changed our family groupings, yet we still crave social and business interaction just like

we always have. Social networks give us this interaction in another form: in addition to

networking and building relationships in person, we can now do it online.

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How can I use social media for business development and marketing

purposes?

There are 6 key ways in which you can use social media to add extra impetus to your existing

efforts.

1. Manage your reputation - whether you’re aware of it or not, people could be saying

things about you online, both positive and negative. If you are aware of what people

are saying (if anything) you can then determine whether and, if so how, to respond.

Two simple and free tools you can set up to monitor your brand online are Google

Alerts and Social Mention. At the very least set up a Google Alert for your name and

your company name.

2. Raise your profile and position yourself in your field – as an AMINZ member you’re

probably already sharing information with your target audiences. This may be

content you’ve created (such as articles, seminar slides, Whitepapers, or

newsletters/newsalerts), or content others have put together that you think your

target audience will be interested in. You can also share this content via social

networks, further positioning yourself in your area. If people ask questions and you

can help them out (without ‘giving advice’ per-se) you can further demonstrate your

expertise. This will give people a flavour of who you are, what you are like to work

with and what you do before they have actually done business with you. People can

ascertain whether you know what you are talking about and whether you’re

someone they would like to work with. Not everyone will like what you’re saying or

agree with you and that’s okay. There’ll be others who will.

3. Research and planning – a person or an organisation’s activity on social networks

can be a rich source of information. Perhaps you’ve set up a new business meeting

or are putting together an RFP response or capabilities statement. By searching

social networks, you can see what topics and issues your contacts are discussing.

This may give you information you can talk to them about or include in your

response. At the very least if you can find out a bit about their hobbies and interests

you can find an ice-breaker. I recommend that if people you are meeting or pitching

to are on LinkedIn, you look at their profile. Similarly, if you are doing any key client,

industry sector, practice group or personal planning, look at the social networks.

Again, using LinkedIn as an example, you could search a particular organisation to

find out who is on LinkedIn and to ascertain which of these people you don’t know

but should. You can then look to connect with them, either by asking a contact to

introduce you or by joining the same groups and commenting on the other person’s

discussions (assuming they are active on LinkedIn). You could also join LinkedIn

groups relating to a particular industry sector or topic.

4. Build your knowledge base in your area(s) of expertise – monitoring social

networks allows you to keep up to date with the key issues in your area of practice,

in a particular industry sector or for a particular client. Following people who share

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good information and relevant hashtags2 on Twitter can lead to a rich source of

information. LinkedIn groups and your LinkedIn connections can also be great

sources of up-to-date content.

Rick Shera, Partner at Lowndes Jordan is a start-up, internet and IP lawyer. He has

been tweeting under the moniker lawgeeknz since February 2009 and has amassed

over 2,400 followers. Last year I interviewed him about his use of Twitter and how

it’s helped him in his practice. Rick cited two great advantages:

“First off, it is an excellent way of following the start-up, IP and internet industries

that I work with. Legal and business model developments in those areas anywhere in

the world will impact us here in New Zealand and many of my clients are internet

based, global or going global. I’ve now unsubscribed from most email and hardcopy

newsletters and rely on twitter as almost my sole information feed.

The second thing which surprised me is how great a “trust engine” twitter is. People

make a conscious choice to follow you and see what you are tweeting. If they don’t

like it, or you miss the mark with the content or tone, they will unfollow you or just

not pay any attention. That’s quite different from email newsletters and the

clunkiness of unsubscribing or anything else I can think of. Even beyond that, if you

are saying something that has value, they can reinforce that value by retweeting

your message to their followers. In doing so, they are effectively saying to all their

followers (who may number in the thousands) “hey, this guy has said something that

I think you might like to see”. Professional services are generally obtained via word

of mouth referral. Retweeting is online word of mouth referral.”

You can read the full interview at

http://marketingforprofessionals.co.nz/2011/10/25/lawyer-successfully-leverages-

twitter/

5. Strengthen relationships with your existing clients and referrers – provided your

existing clients and referrers are on social networks, these provide additional

channels to communicate with these people and get in front of them. You can share

content that they will value, ask and answer questions, or put them in contact with

other people you know who they might benefit from meeting. Social networks

increase your visibility, allowing you to stay top-of-mind. A few lawyers I’ve spoken

to have won work as a result of sharing information relevant to existing contacts on

LinkedIn. For example, one lawyer reconnected with a former client and met with

his contact but nothing came of it. A few weeks later he noticed one of the sales

people from his contact’s firm was active on LinkedIn. He joined a group this person

2 The # symbol, called a hashtag, is used to mark keywords or topics in a Tweet. It was created

organically by Twitter users as a way to categorize messages. Clicking on a hashtagged word in any message shows you all other Tweets in that category. If you Tweet with a hashtag on a public account, anyone who does a search for that hashtag can find your Tweet.

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belonged to and answered a question the sales person posted. As a result the sales

person picked up the phone to him and gave him a piece of work.

6. Attract more of your ideal clients – you can find and engage with prospects online,

begin to build credibility and trust and then take these relationships offline.

Ultimately, you can generate new business via social networks - but this won’t

happen overnight. An employment lawyer set up a LinkedIn group for HR Directors

and Managers. He invited 100 people to join and 60 accepted within a fortnight. The

group now has over 900 members and this lawyer has built his client base on the

back of this. He explained to me that this is the most successful business

development initiative he and his firm have ever undertaken.

I mentioned earlier the accountant who generates between $20-30K of new work

per annum via Facebook. One of his target audiences is property investors. He

regularly writes blog posts for property investors in New Zealand and lets them

know about issues they should be aware of. He began to share these on a Facebook

page lots of property investors looked at. He also started answering questions

property investors posted on that page. As a result he was contacted by a property

investor in the South Island needing some accounting advice. Shortly thereafter he

was contacted by a US-based property developer who was targeting NZ investors

and wanted to recommend an accountant to help the potential investors with their

local accounting needs. It’s grown from there. The accountant has connected with a

number of these property investors on Facebook and has built an online rapport.

They are now ‘friends’ and see his personal Facebook updates, giving him another

chance to share information they will find relevant. Some people are happy to mix

their personal and professional lives. Others aren’t. However, the professional

services successes I’ve seen via Facebook have all been people who have shared

‘professional content’ via their personal accounts or on a page where their target

audience is currently active, rather than via a company page.

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Should I use social media?

Social networking is fast becoming a mainstream form of marketing – precisely because it is

interactive and puts the user in control. It enables you to engage with your target audience,

share valuable content with them, and get them involved. The more you build credibility and

trust online, the more people will want to connect and converse with you, and the more

likely they are to share content you’ve generated with others. But, you have to be authentic,

visible and active in order to really leverage social networking and see a good return. And

you have to take the relationships you start to build via social networking offline. Social

media will never replace face-to-face meetings (and nor should it) BUT it can help you get

those face-to-face meetings.

Social media can amplify your messages, increase your reach and is another way you can

connect with, and get in front of, your existing and prospective clients – but it’s not a silver

bullet. It works best when you integrate it with your other marketing and business

development initiatives. It takes time and commitment, so be sure you’re prepared to invest

in the long term.

In order to answer the question ‘Should I use social media?’ you need to think about your

business development and marketing goals and consider whether LinkedIn, Twitter or

Facebook (or a combination of the three) can help you to achieve them. You need to use

these as part of your marketing arsenal and be very clear about how you will use them. This

will prevent you from wasting time online.

If you are nearing retirement or have too much work, then LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook

may not be for you, but if you’re building your practice/business, want to drive client loyalty

or need to demonstrate an understanding of technology in order to win work, then you

should look to get ahead while you can.

If you are on LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook for professional purposes then you at least need

to ensure that your profile clearly positions you and that your account doesn’t look

abandoned. If you’ve signed up, have an almost blank profile and have no intention of using

one or more of these channels, delete your account. The danger of not doing so is that

existing or prospective clients may well take a look at your profiles (these feature highly in

Google search results). What will they find? If yours doesn’t convey who you help and what

you help them with, I recommend you update it now!

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How do I determine where to start?

Start by looking at the platforms on which your existing and target clients have accounts, or

where they’re planning to be.

Broadly speaking, if you are targeting business-to-business (B2B) clients, they will be on LinkedIn, whereas consumers are more likely to be on Facebook (with Twitter and Google+ attracting some of both).

Some easy ways to find out where those you wish to engage with are online:

1. Ask them. When you go to a coffee meeting or talk to a client, prospect or referrer, ask them if they use social media (or if they plan to), which networks they are on and how they use them. You could also ask them if there’s anything you could do via social media that would provide value to them. This is a good way of getting additional ideas about what your clients want from you.

2. Google search the names of those you want to engage with. See if any social media profiles appear in the results.

3. Look for your clients on Linkedin. Type their name into the people search box in the top right-hand corner of your screen. To find out which groups they belong to you can scroll down to the bottom of their profile and join the same groups.

Be aware that journalists also frequent the social networks. They monitor LinkedIn groups,

and follow people on Twitter. Sharing valuable content and engaging in Group discussions is

a great way to get on their radar.

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How much time do I need to spend on social networks?

A commonly asked question to which there’s no clear answer is “How much time do I need

to spend on social networks?” It really depends on your objectives and the cost/benefit of

LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook versus other channels.

Any time you can put into LinkedIn, provided you’re clear about what you’re doing and why

you’re doing it, is time well spent. Even if you only have limited time to invest, you can still

get traction. It’s just a question of using it wisely.

You may also be able to enrol the help of someone else in your team, such as your personal

assistant/virtual assistant or another colleague. They could monitor LinkedIn, Facebook or

Twitter for you and alert you to anything you should take a look at. The person monitoring it

needs to be clear about what you are interested in and what you would like them to look out

for.

If you only have time to do one thing yourself online, ensure that it is engaging with others.

You have to identify those you want to connect with and to build the relationship with them.

Everything else can be outsourced, if necessary, but this is the one thing that should never

be.

By way of example, a UK-based IP lawyer who has won business through LinkedIn and who

wants to use it to better effect, has taken a portion of the time he spends on offline

marketing initiatives to spend on LinkedIn. He has allocated one hour every Friday morning

to go onto LinkedIn to check what people in his network and groups are saying and to make

targeted contact. Because part of what he’s doing on LinkedIn is keeping in touch with

existing clients he’s saving time elsewhere.

Social networks never will, and never should, replace face-to-face time with your clients and

prospects, but they can make it easier for you to get face-to-face time and can lessen

prospective clients’ reservations to working with you as they will already have a sense of

who you are and how you can help them.

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A 5-phase process to leveraging social networks

Once you’re clear about how you will use social networks to help you achieve your business

development and marketing goals (and which platforms you will use), you may wish to

follow my 5-phase process. I’ve tailored the information below to LinkedIn but the 5-phases

apply to any social network.

Phase 1: Getting the basics right: Setting up a complete and compelling profile

Imagine that a client or contact has recommended you, along with two of your competitors,

to another prospective client. You've all received glowing reports – it’s a level playing field.

So how can you tip the balance in your favour?

It's highly likely that, prior to meeting you, the prospective client will conduct a Google

search so the question you need to ask is: what will they find under my name?

Try it and see. While your website is likely to be up there so is your LinkedIn profile. So, if

you want to use LinkedIn for business development and marketing purposes then it’s

important that your profile positions you correctly.

What sorts of information should I include in my profile?

I frequently interview clients of law firms (and other professional services firms) to find out

how their advisers are performing for them. I’ve spoken to well over 200 clients of

professional services firms over the past two years and 83% said they hire the individual

rather than the firm.

However, the backing of a well-established firm is an important criterion for many clients,

particularly when matters, projects or cases are large and complex.

Clients define the right individual adviser as:

Someone with the necessary technical competence/expertise as defined by:

o Their past experience working on similar projects/matters/cases

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o Their reputation, including their ability to influence decision makers

o Their knowledge of their subject area

o Their level of professionalism.

Someone who is the right fit:

o At both a personal and a team level (including the wider team of consultants and

other experts).

Someone who understands, or shows they are willing to learn about, the client's

business:

o An adviser who will anticipate needs and protect the client's interests.

This ‘horses for courses’ approach to appointing professionals provides huge opportunities

for professionals who can demonstrate they are the right person for the job. You can use

your profile to begin to demonstrate your capabilities, experience and approach in as many

ways as you can.

At the very least, your profile should convey:

who you help

how you help them

some of the results you've achieved

who you are as a person

a call to action.

11 Steps to a Compelling Profile:

1. Instead of simply stating your job title in your professional headline, say who you

help and how you help them. For example, ‘I am a business development and

marketing consultant for the professional services sector’, doesn't tell viewers about

how I help them; 'helping professional service firms retain clients, grow clients and

attract more of their ideal clients' does.

2. Include an appropriate photo that’s in line with your organisation’s brand.

3. Consider why you're on LinkedIn and write your summary accordingly. If you are

there for marketing/business development reasons, specify who you help, what you

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help them with and some results you've achieved. You could include information on

your working style/approach, and a little personal information. The aim is to give

people a reason to connect with you and to begin to position yourself.

4. If you have a specialties section below your summary, load your keywords here.

When people use LinkedIn’s Advanced search function and type in a keyword to find

an arbitrator or mediator, the results are based partly on keywords in the specialties

section. Results are also determined by keywords in your current job title and in

the Skills section, the number of recommendations you have and your activity on

LinkedIn.

5. Be sure to add keywords in the Skills section, which appears to be taking over from

the specialties section. You can insert up to 50 skills. Repeating 3-5 main keywords

will make you appear high up the LinkedIn search rankings.

6. Think about additional sections and applications that could help you build your

profile. For example, if you’re a lawyer you might want to add the Legal Updates

application. If you have a business blog, or Tweet regularly, add these applications.

You might want to add a Slideshare presentation on the types of issues you help

clients solve or a common issue your clients face. The Add Sections link is above the

summary section when you view your profile.

7. Over time, ask for recommendations from clients, colleagues, business partners etc.

Themes will quickly emerge and recommendations give people a real and valuable

sense of what you're like to work with.

8. Include a link to your website. When including the link, instead of selecting

Company Website, scroll down and select Other. You can then name your website

either with your firm name or with a short enticing sentence to encourage click-

throughs – such as ‘Mediation Toolkit’.

9. If you Tweet regularly (for business purposes) add a link to your Twitter account.

10. Include some information in the Interests section - people want to connect with like-

minded individuals, because ‘people like people like themselves’. A common interest

is a good conversation opener.

11. Put your basic contact information in both the Personal Information section and

the Contact Settings section - this will ensure people who find you through both

LinkedIn and Google (or another search engine) can contact you.

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In order to get found before your competitors, you will need to optimise your profile by

incorporating relevant keywords throughout. You can use free tools such as Google Adwords

to find out the best keywords to use.

Once your profile is complete and you are happy with it, you can begin to connect with

others.

Phase 2: Connecting with others

The more people you are connected to, the more people see your updates and the more

second and third degree connections you have access to. Second degree connections are

contacts of your contacts and third degree connections are connections of your second

degree contacts.

When inviting people to connect be sure to tailor your message rather than rely on the

LinkedIn boilerplate text. Let the other person know what’s in it for them. Even if it’s

someone you know really well you have an opportunity to ask how they are or to suggest an

in-person meeting or catch-up. Don’t let that opportunity pass.

If you would like to connect with someone you don’t know such as a journalist, a second

degree connection or someone with whom you have had a dialogue (for example in a

LinkedIn group discussion) you must tailor your invite.

In the case of second degree connections if you identify someone you’d like to meet, view

their profile to find out how they are connected to you. You could then ask your contact to

introduce you, but think about why they should and why their contact would want to

meet/connect with you?

A quick way to connect with people you know is to import your desktop email contacts to

LinkedIn. Click the Contacts button on the top toolbar, and select Add Contacts. Click on the

Import your desktop email contacts link at the bottom of the blue box, then choose and

upload the relevant file. If this doesn’t work, the ‘Learn more’ option will take you step-by-

step through how to create and upload a contacts file from various email programmes.

Another good feature is the ‘People you may know’ box, which appears on the top left hand

side of your LinkedIn home page. If you select ‘See more’ within that box, this will open a

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screen of people that LinkedIn thinks you might know. You can then scroll through and

determine if you would like to connect to any of these people.

You can also use the LinkedIn search feature to look for specific individuals to whom you

would like to connect.

Phase 3: Engaging with others

This is a key component of leveraging LinkedIn and any other social network. If you are on

LinkedIn but do not engage with others, you are highly unlikely to generate new work.

The beauty of social networks is that they promote dialogue so they enable you to begin to

demonstrate your expertise and to position yourself without overtly ‘selling’. This means you

can have the conversations you would like to with the people you would like to talk to.

The key things to remember are to be authentic. Be yourself. Let your personality come

through. Ask questions and be curious. Focus on helping others rather than how they can

help you. Be clear about the types of conversations you want to be involved in (this will

ensure you don’t waste time online) and the people or types of people you wish to engage.

There are a number of LinkedIn features you can use to engage others. These include:

Status updates – which appear in the updates stream of all those people to whom

you are directly connected.

LinkedIn email – which you can use to send emails to any of your connections,

second degree connections, members of your groups.

Inmail (paid emails via LinkedIn) – these allow you to email anyone who is on

LinkedIn.

Groups – by searching for and joining those groups to which your ideal contacts

belong, you can look to converse with them here.

Answers – LinkedIn’s Q&A feature. You may wish to answer questions within your

area of expertise occasionally.

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Events – you can find, register for or post events here. This is a great tool for

promoting your events to a wider audience.

Advanced Search and Signal (to identify those with whom you wish to engage) – you

can use these tools to identify prospects in specific industry sectors, or with certain

job titles or who may be looking for someone with your expertise.

LinkedIn Today – this is essentially LinkedIn’s newspaper. It is a good source of

information that you can share with those in your network or with your clients and

contacts who aren’t on LinkedIn.

Polls – you can run, vote or comment on polls. This is great for some simple market

research such as what topics people would most like to hear about.

It is at this stage that you begin to turn the traditional business development process on its

head. Rather than meeting people offline and then connecting with them on LinkedIn, you

meet people on LinkedIn, converse with them there and then take the relationship offline.

Phase 4: Taking relationships offline

You are very unlikely to get new business simply by being on LinkedIn. Sharing valuable

content and starting to build relationships with others via LinkedIn all help to build credibility

and trust. However, if you really want to benefit from your online conversations and win

new business, you need to take the relationship offline.

Some ways you might transition from online to in-person include:

Follow up a discussion via LinkedIn email and suggest a meeting or phone

conversation.

If someone who is an ideal contact has looked at your LinkedIn profile, email them

introducing yourself and asking if you can help. One Barrister I spoke to does this

and has generated new work as a result.

If someone has shared something that you’d like to find out more about ask them if

they’d mind talking to you further about it. I have done this with a number of people

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and they’ve always been happy to chat. I’ve got some great information and

contacts as a result.

Send someone something related to the topic you’ve been discussing, and ask for

their opinion, advice or feedback because you’d genuinely value their input.

Ask a person you admire or who is a subject matter expert if they would like to write

an article for your newsletter, blog or website.

Set up a coffee meeting with one of your LinkedIn connections each week or

fortnight.

Phase 5: Measuring and reviewing

There are three stages to measuring and reviewing your social media activity:

1. Actively listening

2. Measuring what matters

3. Interpreting and reporting measures

Actively listening

An important component of measurement is actively listening. One objection I hear from

professionals about using social media is ‘what if someone says something bad about me or

us?’ My answer: ‘they may already be doing so, wouldn’t you want to know about it so you

can determine whether and how to respond?’ I know I would.

People may also be saying positive things about you. Either way, if you know about it, you

can respond (if appropriate) with a simple thank you or an ‘I’m sorry you had a bad

experience, I’ll call you now to discuss how I can put things right’. The benefit is that others

who see the comments will also see that you have responded and that you are someone

who listens to, and cares about, others.

Another benefit of actively listening to social channels is that you may uncover

opportunities. For example, there are often people looking for a lawyer on Twitter. If they’re

looking for someone with your skills you can respond. You may even pick up a new client.

Measuring what matters

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What you measure will really depend on why you’re using LinkedIn. Any measures need to

be tied to this. Measuring things that have little bearing on your business or marketing

objectives is pointless. My advice is to pick a few key measures and focus on these (looking

at trends over time) rather than trying to measure everything.

Remember that LinkedIn is the means to an end rather than the end itself so you will want

to measure the success of specific activities in conjunction with offline activities. As such,

you may want to measure things such as growth in media requests, growth in attendee

numbers at your events, growth in requests to speak at industry conferences and

workshops, or growth in number of inbound enquiries.

There are a number of monitoring and measuring tools out there both free and paid. A

comprehensive list of measurement tools can be found at:

http://wiki.kenburbary.com/social-meda-monitoring-wiki

As mentioned earlier, good free tools that do the basics are Google Alerts -

http://www.google.com/alerts and Social Mention Alerts - http://www.socialmention.com/

Interpreting and reporting measures

For those of you in larger organisations, it’s important that you analyse and interpret your

measures and report these to your Managing Partner, Board or other interested parties in a

way that will appeal to them. Getting new work via LinkedIn isn’t typically something that

happens overnight and that you need to have realistic expectations. However, there are

indicators you can measure to establish if you are on the right track. If referrals from

LinkedIn to your website grow over time or if more of those in your target audience are

signing up to your newsletters, seminars or blog, then you are seeing traction. If not, you

may want to test and measure new ways of doing things. The beauty of these tools is that

the same thing won’t work for everyone so you can be creative and try new things. You’ll

know very quickly whether or not they’re successful.

By interpreting the data you can regularly assess what is/isn’t working and tweak things

accordingly.

The book Social Media ROI by Olivier Blanchard is a fantastic resource for those thinking

about what and how to measure their efforts.

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©Kirsten Hodgson, 2012

Integrating social media – in action

Social media is one weapon in your marketing arsenal. To be effective it needs to be

integrated with everything else you are doing. The following 3 scenarios set out how social

media can improve the success of existing initiatives:

Scenario 1: Running an event

If you are going to run an event you might want to use social networks to find a good

speaker or to find information you can use in your presentation. Twitter and LinkedIn are

both great sources of this type of content. Once you are ready to promote your event you

could share it on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn with a link to your sign-up page. You could

ask your colleagues to do the same. You might also want to send a private message to one or

more of your contacts on each of these platforms.

If the event is large, you could set up a Twitter hashtag so that those attending can live

tweet from it, and organise to meet other attendees, while those who aren’t can follow

along on Twitter.

Post event you may want to share your presentation slides via these channels, offer them to

people in a LinkedIn group, or adapt them to a blog post, article, video etc (or series of posts,

articles, videos) which you can again promote via social networks.

Scenario 2: Preparing for a new business meeting or RFP response

If you’re like most professionals, you’ll likely attend new business meetings or be required to

respond to RFPs occasionally. Using social networks for research and planning purposes

could make the difference between winning the work and not doing so.

Prior to a new business meeting you could perform a Google search on the person/people

you will be meeting. You may find some social media profiles turn up in the results. Take a

look at these – the person may be tweeting in which case you can have a look at the content

they share to ascertain their interests. You may want to retweet (i.e. share) one of their

tweets with your followers. This is a good way to get on a person’s radar. They’ll see you’ve

done this and will likely thank you for doing so. This is a good way to initiate a conversation.

If the person/people are on LinkedIn have a look at their profile and their recent activity.

Again this will provide you with some insights you may be able to use during the meeting.

When looking at the person’s profile see which LinkedIn groups they belong to. You may

want to consider joining one or more of these and contributing to discussions so that you’ve

already begun to showcase your knowledge and expertise before the meeting.

You may also want to see if the organisation you are meeting with has a twitter account, a

Facebook page and a LinkedIn company profile. If so, take a look at these and follow/like

them. You can then keep up to date with what’s happening within that organisation. This

may assist you to better prepare for meetings and RFP responses.

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©Kirsten Hodgson, 2012

If you follow or connect with others on social networks they are likely to follow you back.

This means they will see any updates you share. This gives you another opportunity to share

information they will find valuable and to position yourself in your area(s) of expertise.

Some (typically larger) professional services firms strategically post content prior to tenders

coming out in order to position themselves as an authority in the areas of interest to that

client. They then point to this content in their RFP response. This is a good tactic and one

that could work for all sizes of organisation. But it does require a bit of time and effort.

Scenario 3: Positioning yourself as a go-to specialist in your field

There are some professionals who work hard to build their profiles. They speak at

conferences. They write books and articles. They run seminars. They comment in the media.

Leveraging social media can help you to create more of these opportunities.

For example, I recently spoke to some legal and business journalists who said they use

LinkedIn and Twitter to source stories and commentary. They follow or connect with

professionals in their areas of interest and look through LinkedIn group discussions to see if

there are any potential stories there. If you want to be quoted in the media then initiating

and contributing to LinkedIn group discussions is a great way to attract journalists’ attention.

You may also want to follow selected journalists on Twitter (they may then follow you back)

and connect with them on LinkedIn. If you then tweet or share status updates on topical

issues the journalists may see these.

The journalists I spoke to said they are always looking for new sources and don’t like to keep

going back to large firms. However, large firms tend to have a corporate affairs person who

responds in a timely manner. This highlights the need to respond promptly to journalists if

you are contacted by one through LinkedIn or Twitter – even if it’s to say you can’t help this

time. Not doing so means they are unlikely to contact you again.

Sharing valuable content (both that you have created and that others have produced) via

social networks increases the chances of conference organisers, publishers and prospective

clients contacting you. As a result of sharing a free guide on a LinkedIn group, I was asked by

a leading professional services marketing magazine if they could reproduce one section in

their magazine. I also received over 400 requests for the guide, have connected to many of

these people and have generated new work as a result.

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©Kirsten Hodgson, 2012

Summary

To realise the benefits of social media you need to be active – consistently so.

Whether you use LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook to reconnect with dormant clients or former

colleagues and to rebuild the relationship from there, or you harness their power to

strengthen existing client relationships and to find and help prospective clients, the

principles are the same: focus on the other person and their needs, be yourself and build

relationships one at a time. If you do this you’ll reap the rewards.

Good luck. I look forward to hearing about your social media success story.

Want to find out more?

If you are interested in attending one or a series of practical, mastering LinkedIn workshops

designed to get you set up and comfortable and knowledgeable about how you can use the

network for business development and marketing, email me at

Kirsten@kscopemarketing.co.nz

You can find various blog posts about social media at http://marketingforprofessionals.co.nz

My book ‘The complete guide to LinkedIn for Lawyers: connect, engage and grow your

business’ is available from the LexisNexis website – www.lexisnexis.co.nz or you can email

customer.service@lexisnexis.co.nz