Seven Tips on How to Make Money from Social Media

  1. Social Media – Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, to name a few — should be considered additional marketing channels – no more, no less. There are other marketing methods that are cheaper – referrals, to name one. So my first tip is to add social media to your marketing mix, but only after you exhaust other lower cost methods.
  2. Just like any other marketing method, you have to build and maintain relationships. The content you post should be ½ value-added tips, quotes, and links to high-content pages, ¼ personal or relationship-building, and ¼ sales pitch. Social media is a great way to keep in touch, but unless you direct-message your contacts, you don’t know if you have their attention or not.
  3. Use a scheduling tool such as Social Tomorrow to pre-load your content and have an assistant do it from a Word file that you’ve created that has a full week’s post in it. Be consistent and keep up with it every week. Repetition is key because the attention factor is so low. Two to six Facebook statuses a day are enough during rush hour. Ten to twenty tweets per day aren’t too many, but one LinkedIn status a day is enough.
  4. Keep business and pleasure separate. It seems so ridiculous to advise you not to whine about your personal life in front of your business contacts, but I see all ages doing it, and it doesn’t make them look good.
  5. Use Twitter to announce limited-time specials, such as one hour free or half off a package. Your followers will love it when you do it randomly and infrequently.
  6. Tara says to go one step further when it comes to doing research on your prospects. She explains that in the 1960s we learned how to define our prospects in terms of demographics – gender, economic level, education, age, race. In the 1990s we added psychographics – trying to guess motivation and why they buy. Today we add socialgraphics – the details we can find out about our prospects. Using social media tools, we can research and collect information on hobbies, likes, and habits to further develop details about our potential client. We can use this information to create new ways to interact, form bonds, and develop roles to enhance value on both sides of the equation.
  7. Learn what your social value is by trying live search tools such as www.topsy.com. Enter your name and view all of the social media links about you and how popular they are. Interesting, huh?
On January 13, 2010   /   social media for accountants