At one of the VA forums I belong to a member asked if someone could explain how a small home transcription business can grow their business using Facebook, Linked-in or Twitter or is it more for the merchant business?
My answer was brief – there’s a lot to cover for each of these tools, but hopefully this will help answer it for others thinking the same thing.
Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter work quite differently but often with similar results. I’ll try to explain briefly here:
Facebook helps give a ‘face’ to those you connect with, you can create Fan Pages for people to follow what you have to say and if you’re promoting a product, service or event, Facebook is a great way to be able to send out invitations to people to get involved and it’s permission based. That means they’ve already connected to you so they’ve given you permission to send things to them via Facebook.
LinkedIn is probably the most professional of business networks I’ve seen – more business than ‘social’ although it is often lumped into the social networking category. Strictly speaking you should only send invitations to people you know personally to join you, but once you’re involved with it you’ll often get invitations from others you don’t know. This is because they’re trying to build up their numbers. There is a Q&A section there called Answers which is the best place to go – to ask questions and/or to answer them and get people to notice you exist. Their recommendations section is excellent for building up testimonials from peers and clients.
Twitter – Both Facebook and LinkedIn have adopted the small 140 character type set up – what are you doing now? function that works so well for Twitter (although Facebook allows you to have a lot more characters).
Twitter is about following people – anyone who interests you and having people follow you. There’s no need to know them personally. It’s a good way to ask questions, get answers and promoted products, services and events.
What is most important and many people forget this. It’s more important to give than to get. The more you give of yourself (information, assistance, just for the sake of helping someone) the more others will take an interest in you and what you do.
So with all three, and with any other networking type tool (even this forum for example) it’s important to build relationships and the best way to do that is be involved, be engaged, take notice of other people and when you are able, offer assistance.
Hope this helps.
toni says
Thanks for informative blog. Found a lot og new thing.
Dawn Pigoni says
Social Networking should be a part of any business networking strategy. But it is so true that each network is different and you need to learn how to use each one to the fullest and by interacting and sharing you will grow your business.
Lia Parkinson says
This is a brief and great explanation on what social networking sites can do for you. Do not forget to be yourself, be consistent and, as Kathie says, give more than you get. And remember to engage no to broadcast your product all the times.
Carol Ann says
Good information. That same questions is asked by many business owners on a daily basis. Each business’s needs are different but all can definitely benefit by creating an online presence through social networking.
thnx.
Executive assistant Services says
A nice articles for VA that how these social networking sites could be used .Thanks kathie!!
Philippine Virtual Assistant says
Great information and thanks for pointing this out to everyone! We are just so glad that a lot of social networking sites nowadays greatly help us to disseminate the information about the business or industry that we are into. I agree, the more you introduced yourself, the more people you will know. 🙂