5 Ways to Activate Your New Business Toe
The biggest DANGER of social media…is doing nothing. Not only does “doing nothing” mean sitting idly by and watching your competitors blog/post on LinkedIn, but it also means starting a program and not “activating” it. Merely dipping your toe in the water isn’t enough; you need to fully immerse yourself to make social media work for you.
ACTIVATING social media can manifest itself in several ways, with the following 5 being paramount:
1) Keeping content current. The last thing you want a prospect to do is come to your blog and see that the last entry was 3 months old. It makes you look old.
2) Keep content on target. It’s easy to just talk about nothing of value and to get off the mark of what your messaging is/should be. If you’re all about being the value-added healthcare insight provider, stay on message and continue to reinforce that equity.
3) Participate in other social sites. Get your name out there and provide perspective in response to blogs in spaces that make sense for your business. If nothing else, it will help you build SEO.
4) Integrate your efforts. Place a post on your blog. Tweet it and post it on Facebook. Drop a link into LinkedIn. Make all the mediums work together, with the ultimate goal of driving more traffic to your site.
5) Bring it to life. I’ve said before that social media is inherently passive…but it should be. Simply posting and not doing all that I’ve outlined above will limit your exposure and the benefits you can reap from a social program. Use your content in other ways beyond the social space. Incorporate elements into perspective pieces pushed out to prospects. Talk about ideas posted when you are on the phone with a potential new client. Write a white paper on a collection of posts that tie to one central theme – and mail it to top prospects on your list. Bring it to life and it will simply work a lot harder for you. It’s not unlike what many of us in the professional service firm world do every week or every day – we push out thematic emails that ultimately try to drive all types of firms to our blogs.
So bottom line is: don’t fall into the danger trap of doing nothing….by not participating…or participating by only dipping your toe into the water.
