Networking Tips | Business Networking Life

4 Steps to Enhance Your Business's Social Networking

Oct 152010

Are you ready to stop chasing the next dollar and start really building a business through social networking? Than these are 4 invaluable tips you must adopt today.

Before you can solidify your decision to take your business’s social networking to the next level you need to accept that this whole technology wave isn’t going anywhere. In fact, it has barely even started! There is probably some 13 year old kid in Wyoming messing around with an idea that is going to blow away everything we already think we know.

Everyone out there who is not only serious about their business’s online presence, but is also making money from it, understands this whole concept goes deeper than just setting up a website and a bunch of social media profiles. These people have taken these 4 steps that work wonderfully offline and implemented them online.

#1. Become an Attractive Member of the Community

Your presence is what makes you approachable. Your approachability is the determining factor to whether or not most people will choose to engage you further.

Build your name and your reputation into something that is appreciated and recognized, even if it is by only a few at first. Everything must start somewhere. The second you adopt the philosophy “I can’t achieve what they did,” you lost. McDonalds, Coca Cola, Oreo, and every other house hold name brand did not start out like that.

It is the little things compounded over time that establishes your reputation and creates massive success.

#2. Engage with others regularly

I have worked at home and I have had an office; do you know where my business grew the most? Panera Bread! Why? Because I was surrounded by people I didn’t know.

Every time I had a meeting over lunch or coffee I was engaging with the person I was meeting with, but more importantly I was engaging with everyone around me who could overhear my conversation. Meeting after meeting someone would approach me afterwards or sometimes even during the meeting, and ask for a card or pass me theirs for me to contact them.

Sharing, commenting, blogging, tweeting, re-tweeting, and all the other forms of communication we partake in online do not go unnoticed. Answering questions on LinkedIn, unconditionally (fancy way of saying don’t pitch to the people you respond to) has led to countless deals for so many people, because someone else with the same questions went back and read the thread and contacted the perceived expert.

#3. Know Where to Spend Time

If you have a lawn maintenance company it wouldn’t be the best use of your time to go to a health and wellness expo trolling for clients, right?

Learn how to categorize your contacts after doing your research.

Ninety plus percent of us are guilty of logging into Facebook and four hours later we are watching Youtube videos when we look up say “Whoa! Where did the day go?”

One of the coolest features in pretty much all the social networks you use for your business is lists. Once you have these lists created you don’t have to subject yourself to the noise of all the people, who are still valuable, but who you just have not yet researched. This will reduce your time messing around online exponentially.

(Click on Tutorials to learn more about list)

#4. Be Yourself

I love what Gary Vaynechuck says in this video, “When our grandparents did dumb $#!* it got lost in history, yea its gone. Everything you do wrong it’s gonna be known for ever.”

Let your personality shine through, sharing and posting things that you like, that are funny, or you just think is cool draws the attentions of those who dig the same stuff as you do.

There is absolutely, positively no cookie cutter business social media plan, or any internet marketing plan for that matter. You can talk to 10 facebook “experts” and get 10 different ideas/ strategies. Does that make 9 out of 10 wrong, NO!

Business social networking is a profitable way of marketing, the only downside for most businesses is that you need to stay on top of new trends. Please share any golden nuggets of your own below!

Business Networking: Old School vs. New School

Business Networking, Networking Tips 35 Responses »

May 302010

I walked into a bank for the first time in years yesterday…

You see, I tend to look at banking as a line item on my checklist and all I want to do is check it off in the most efficient way possible. Walking in and waiting in line to complete a financial transaction is not efficient in my eyes. So, I’ve spent years becoming really good at online banking, frequenting ATMs and calling 800 numbers to answer any questions I may have. And I’ve been very happy. But yesterday, I had to set up an account that I was unsure how to structure and because my boyfriend goes to the same bank, I figured I’d tag along and do everything I needed to while I was there. (Side note: my boyfriend is the exact opposite of me when it comes to banking. When we walked into the bank, he was greeted by a symphony of hellos from the employees who obviously knew him well. And when he pulled out checks he wanted to deposit, my mouth dropped out of shock as I asked, “you don’t deposit those at the ATM?” He laughed when I later commented, “Wow…you’re so old school!”)

We sat down at a desk across from one of the Account Managers (who my boyfriend was talking to about movies, just as they did every time he came in) and I immediately began asking the questions I needed answered in order to open the account appropriately. Though the gentleman answered kindly and knowledgeably, you could tell I had caught him a little off guard in my forwardness. My boyfriend sensed the discomfort and jumped into the conversation with more movie talk. I sat back and surrendered to the situation: I was in a “belly to belly” situation here…I needed to play the game of relationship building in order to get my needs met.

This situation got me thinking…as we’re deep into the age of the Internet, just how important are those “belly to belly” situations?

The Internet has changed the game for all of us business owners and here’s why:

1) You now have access to a Global market.
2) The playing field has leveled (you have the same resources at your fingertips as giant corporations).
3) The point of entry is a comparatively cheap (you don’t have to have a $1 million marketing budget to get the word out about your company).

This boils down to the fact that you and your business have great potential to hit it big. The trick to the Internet game, however, is learning to use this “global” tool to make your audience feel intimate and local. With the advent of Web 2.0 and Social Media (interactive and user-centered experiences), out of touch, non-interactive and static websites are quickly losing business to their connected, interactive counterparts. All this being said, it is still about being in touch with what your customers want so you can offer it to them when they need it.

One of the biggest complaints about the Internet is that it’s allowing us to become way too disconnected and out of touch with one another. Even though Web 2.0 answers that issue with its interactivity (c’mon…how cool is it that I can know exactly what my college roommate is up to on a daily basis when I get onto Facebook?), it’s vital that as a business owner, you never lose touch with the foundation of those “belly to belly” interactions that may feed your business.

There are two kinds of business people out there: those who love to network and those who loathe it. A few of us fall smack dab in the middle…we know it’s vital to business so we do it, and we enjoy it just enough to continue with it at our own pace. No matter where you are on the networking spectrum, it’s imperative for you to accept the fact that those in-person interactions are the best places to not only build relationships with clients, but also build relationships with business allies who can elevate your own game.

The bottom line is that in order to thrive in business today (let’s be honest, none of us want to “survive”…we want to thrive!), you must utilize the tools around you – from the “old school” ways of belly to belly relationships to the new ways of the interactive online world.

Even though I was frustrated sitting in the bank for an entire hour, I was thrilled when I downloaded the iPhone app that keeps me digitally connected to the accounts I had just set up. I recognized in that moment that this bank had done an amazing job marketing. They knew they had a world of customers just like me, who wanted to be “left alone” to do my banking business (just give me the tools and I’ll do it fast!). And they also knew they needed to service people like my boyfriend, who wanted to know everyone’s name and make every transaction in an actual banking facility. All they did was make sure to have their services and products available in ways that appealed to us both.

So, what do your clients want? How do they want to have access to it? How are you integrating your “belly to belly” interactions with those of your online presence?

Katie Krienitz is the Chief Operations Officer for The Wealth Building Annex (http://TheWealthBuildingAnnex.com), a mastermind and resource community for Entrepreneurs. She’s also a Relationship Author who sells her book online. You can find out more about Katie at http://KatieKrienitz.com or http://MyTrueLoveTV.com.

Business Networking: Old School vs. New School

Networking Tip: Evaluating Your Web Designer

Networking Tips 10 Responses »

May 222010

I come to you, my BNL family, to hopefully shed some light on something that I recently feel forced to address. My objective with this post is to help you evaluate the people you pay to “design” your website. I am going to be super blunt because I am so passionate about empowering my followers and I am getting tired of seeing people get taken advantage of by those who have no idea what they are doing.

After hosting internet marketing trainings and consultations for the last few years I have come across numerous “web designers” and I feel this is the only quote to express my feelings adequately…

“I knew it. I’m surrounded by A$$#*!&$. Keep firing, A$$#*!&$!” -Dark Helmet, Spaceballs

I am by no means a website designer or a development expert nor do I want or claim to be, but there just seems to be too many companies out there toting their web design expertise and have no business doing so. I want to give you a few things to look for when choosing someone, and more importantly paying someone to develop an online marketing campaign, particularly your website.

These are 5 of the most important things you must evaluate when hiring someone to put together a website for you:

What platform are you going to set up my site on? (Content Management Systems (CMS) is a MUST, WordPress or Joomla are the best and the only competent options. If they don’t mention these, RUN!)
How are you going to design my site? If they say anything about “writing it,” “coding,” “custom style sheets” or anything other than creating a custom theme for you they are more than likely not operating efficiently and are going to set up something that will cost you more in the long run.
Look at other sites they have created and try to highlight the text in a few areas. If the text doesn’t highlight and you are able to drag it like an image, RUN! That site is TOTAL CRAP and they have no idea what internet marketing or SEO is.
How are we going to capture information? You must, must, must have a call to action on your site. Your list is your businesses equity. If you are not growing that list your business isn’t growing as fast as it could be and you have a stagnant, useless site with the hopes to sell to random people that may stumble upon it. Auto-responders like Aweber, Constant Contact, and iContact are the some of the best.
Your costs should be between $400-$10,000, depending on the desired functions of your site. I know that is a pretty big gap, but there many degrees of the complexity when designing a custom web presence. If you just need a simple site with a few pages, some custom images, a contact area, and the training to update it yourself $400-$1,200 is a fair price.

Again, I am not a website designer, but it costs significantly more to duplicate a site that was done by people who really have no business promoting themselves as a website developers. Sorry for the touch of negativity today, but 3 students of mine in the last week have been swindled out of a quality site that they deserved and paid for.

This post is a little bit of an over simplification, but if you get anything from it please just evaluate the people you pay to do web design for you. Just because a site “looks good” does not mean so!

I value and appreciate all of you. Have a spectacular day and I look forward to seeing you at the top!