If your client is corporate, it may involve LinkedIn. While LinkedIn hasn’t zoomed to the top like Facebook in recent months, its still a platform used my millions of business people all over the world. Its set up exclusively to connect with other business owners, and provides you with everything you need to find connections, prospects and clients.

If you haven’t looked at LinkedIn in a while, head back over and give it a try using these five steps.

Step One: Build A Dynamic Profile

If you’ve ever created a resume, it’s easy to assume your LinkedIn profile should resemble your resume. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Take a moment and think about how people would search for you. Would they search for President of ABC Company? Or would they search for your type of business or niche: product photographer or retail marketing expert for instance? Keywords are important in the online world because people search by keyword, not by business name. You can also be found in a variety of ways, including on LinkedIn and on sites like Google.

Make sure you fill out a complete profile, and make it as detailed as possible. Put in a professional portrait of yourself – not your business logo or a photo of your dog. People want to connect with you as a person, and build a relationship before they take the next step. A professional photo gives you more credibility, and helps people visualize doing business with you.

Step Two: Add Contacts

Start by searching the database for people you know. If you have more than one person in your company, start with your employees or teammates. Then branch out and look for people you work with in your community. Vendors, clients, networking connections, power partners, friends through work or school – anyone you’ve connected with in the past that may help you connect and grow in the future.

Remember, this isn’t like Facebook. You don’t have to have thousands of friends to build a successful strategy. Instead, focus on finding people that can help you grow along the way.

Step Three: Add Recommendations

Once you connect with people, pick out clients and vendors you’ve worked with in the past, and ask for recommendations. People will generally give you a testimonial on your profile if you ask. And if you know them well enough, ask them a couple times if they “forget”. Because we all get buried in email and “chores”, it’s easy to forget to carry through on an email request. If you don’t hear from someone in a couple of months, try it again. Try to get 5 to 10 to start, and keep it proportional to the amount of friends you have. 50 testimonials with 50 friends may seem a little too good to be true.

Step Four: Join Groups

The only way to make connections is to get active. LinkedIn has created a variety of groups and associations that you can join with a click of the mouse. Search for groups based around your line or work and your interests. Don’t forget to look for places your target market hangs out, and connect to people in a variety of ways. Then get involved in discussions.

Just like with any social media site, never jump on and promote. Social networking is not about promoting. Instead its about connecting and proving your expertise – the selling will come after you’ve built strong relationships.

Step Five: Answer Questions

The Answer section is my favorite area. Every day people head over and ask a variety of questions in a variety of areas. Search for areas where you can showcase your expertise, and start answering. Don’t give quick bullet points; instead give knowledge and answers like you are communicating with a prospect on the phone. Not only are you showcasing your knowledge for all to see, but you’re also connecting with potential customers. And if your answers are selected as the best, you’ll have added depth on your profile showcasing your knowledge. A win win for everyone.

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Television is now using interaction between viewers and technology in order to be a part of the production of the show. Shows like Dancing With The Stars allow you to vote off one contestant by voting online or by texting. Shows like Heroes allow you to interact with other fans on their sites, and see more in depth highlights by being a part of their online fan club. And last night, America’s Got Talent wrapped up their final week of looking for talent – but you can still participate by uploading your video to YouTube. Head over to YouTube and you can vote on the top videos, and help choose which one will join the final run in Las Vegas.

Social isn’t just a fad. It’s a way of controlling your business. People will talk about you whether you want them to or not. The eyes and ears are everywhere with cell phone cameras and the power of commenting. You can’t avoid it. But you can control it.

America’s Got Talent has a tremendous marketing budget, and can afford to market in a lot of different ways. Yet one of their strongest methods is a YouTube channel.

As a small business owner, you can have a YouTube channel too – and its free.

So emulate their ideas. Why not start a YouTube channel just for your prospects and clients – the best video showcasing your product gets free products or services?

Start your own YouTube channel and make it into a how-to television show – ever seen one of the shows on HGTV? If you’re a plumber, hvac or painter, you can give tips and strategies, prove your expertise, and create quite a following at the same time.

The tools are there. What are you going to do with them?

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In the case of Yelp, it started out as a great way to build your business. Yelp is a review site that allows you to search your local area for everything from restaurants to professional services. If you are heading out to dinner, find out what other people are saying about places in your area. Or if you have something to say about another business, login and write up a testimonial yourself.

Sounds like a great idea, and many small business owners are encouraging their clients to write reviews for it, and even link to Yelp from their own websites showcasing the reviews.

But allegations over the past couple of months may change the way you feel about Yelp. Several lawsuits have been filed on behalf of small business owners, claiming extortion from Yelp’s management team.

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2010/03/17/small-businesses-join-lawsuit-against-yelp/tab/article/

According to the lawsuit, sales reps would offer to remove any negative reviews – if a small business agrees to advertise on Yelp and pay the monthly fee.

This makes Yelp, well, just another advertising site. The idea behind a social site is to allow the general population to have their say. No interference by the site itself, or by the small businesses affected by the social site. Good or bad, it’s all there for people to see.

While Yelp is denying any wrongdoing, only time will tell.

As a small business owner, the best lesson you can learn is to keep track of what is being said about you and your company online. Don’t put too much merit on one item – look at things as a whole. No business is perfect, and you’re always going to have the occasional customer whom you just can’t satisfy. If someone searches and finds 100 positive reviews and 1 negative, they know to question the negative. As long as you have your finger on what’s being said, it’s easier for you to control and put out the fires before they get too strong.

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This is just the latest incident that shows once again your past can catch up with you in the online world. Whether through email, a blog, or your Facebook account, the item will remain online, and have the ability to come back and haunt you at any time.

Which is why I was surprised recently as I found a large group of parents talking about Facebook and their children. A number of parents stated, “being a friend on their child’s Facebook account was like reading their diary – no way, no how”. Really?

When my daughter turned 13 and decided she wanted a Facebook account, I was her first friend. As a 13 year old, we can talk and talk, but that occasional 13 year old attitude kicks in once in awhile and who knows what she would write. So as a friend of hers, I know she’s constantly thinking, “mom can see this”. And I mention things once in awhile as well. “I saw Amy went skiing, did she have fun?” I’m always letting her know I’m protecting her, and making sure she keeps herself safe online. That’s what a mom does.

My daughter also has a diary – it’s tucked up on her bookshelf in her room. She’s the only one who reads it, and she loves writing her hopes and dreams in it. I agree with parents on one issue – I would never read her diary. That’s hers to write about anything she chooses.

The difference is her diary will always belong to her, no one but her will read it, and it will never have an impact on her life unless she chooses to do something with it.

If she writes something on Facebook, it could impact her getting into a college, or landing her “dream” job. It could impact her relationships over the next few decades, and be found and used against her in any shape and form – for the rest of her life.

To me, that’s a huge difference.

It doesn’t matter if you’re protecting your child, or protecting your own image. You have to make a choice when you head online.

You should always be asking, “How would this impact me 5 years from now?”

Think before you write

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Like everything with Google, Google Buzz is associated with your global Google account. If you already have a gmail account, login and you’ll have immediate access to Buzz. Simply click on the Buzz link in your navigation, and activate your Buzz account.

Buzz is a similar in concept to Twitter, though it has a platform that offers you a lot more ways to connect. Add a link, and the content is instantly pulled in for you to use. You can add your own comments, or send it out the way it feeds in. It also pulls the images from the page, allowing you to select which images to showcase in your feed.

It’s also easy to add friends. You can connect with the people you’re connected through gmail with. Or search based on your keywords. Then click the add button and you’re following them.

The feed is similar in concept to Twitter, you’ll be able to browse through the latest posts from all you’re following. But with the expanded space for words, photos and graphics, its a pleasure to read.

Will it catch Twitter soon? Only time will tell.

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Now you can add another social site to that list as well.

Foursquare is a social site that’s just celebrating its first birthday, and already has tens of thousands of users, and businesses adding their name to the lineup everyday.

Foursquare combines a friend finder and a social city guide, along with game mechanics that allow users to earn points and received special prizes along the way.

To join the Foursquare network, you start by downloading either the iPhone app or the Android app, or using a mobile website with other phones (a Blackberry app is in the works.) Don’t have a web browser? Not a problem – you can check in by sending text messages. Then when your out at a restaurant, bar, café, park – someplace you may want to connect up with friends, you simply check in via Foursquare. Every time you check in, you’ll be awarded points. There are different badges for a variety of things, such as discovering new places, and spending too much time in one location.

As a business, where do you fit in? By watching who’s visiting of course.

Foursquare offers a mayor badge to a person that has visited a location more than anyone else. When the mayor enters your business, you can offer them deals and enticements – how about a free drink or a free appetizer?

You can even combine your social campaigns. Announce on Twitter a special for the first person to become the official mayor of your restaurant.

It’s all about having fun, playing the game, and attracting a whole new crowd to your location.

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Yet most people are missing the opportunity of a lifetime.

Let’s start with LinkedIn.com. When you fill out your bio, Most think from a resume standpoint, and put something like this:

Jane Doe
Director of Recruiting at ABC Company

What does that really tell you about the person? When they are out answering questions in the Q&A section, or inviting you to be a friend, that’s how you make an initial decision. Compare that to:

Lori Osterberg
Small business online marketing expert and coach, author, trainer, social networking expert and photographer

When that shows up, it tells you my specialties – what you can expect out of building a relationship with me. It tells you my knowledge base, and more importantly, what I’m hoping to capture by building relationships. Oh yes. It also provides a ton of keywords so if anyone is searching for a photographer and a social networking expert, I’m more apt to place high in the search results.

Compare that to the Director of Recruiting at ABC Company. I guarantee most people will never search for those keywords.

And it doesn’t stop with LinkedIn. Head over to Twitter and you’ll see the same thing. Instead of putting a title in your bio, put in your keywords. It makes it easier for people to find you based on your common interests, not based on your job description.

In the new economy, it’s not about what job you have or what title you use. It’s about your skills – your keywords. If I want someone with your level of expertise, how can I find you?

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During this past July, Facebook attracted 87.7 million unique visitors in the U.S., up 14 percent from June. Compare that with Twitter, which saw 21.2 million unique visitors during July, up 6 percent from June. (full stats here)

In either case, the numbers look great. Where else can you head out and interact with millions of unique visitors all in one month?

So of course you should jump on to both Facebook and Twitter, and enjoy the ride.

While that’s a great strategy, you may be overlooking something that will work far better for your business. First ask yourself a series of questions.

• Who is my ideal client?
• Where can I connect with them?
• Where are they most likely to hand out online?
• Is there a way to restructure what I do to reach out to more people?
• Can I niche my business, and reach out to individual groups in different ways?

The whole idea behind social is it allows you to connect with prospects and customers, and provide them with more information in your area of expertise. The more expertise you can provide, the more clients you’ll find by being in tune with them.

Start by listing out your ideal clients. Be specific, thinking of individual clients when you create your list. Then categorize them. As a massage therapist, your list may look like this:

1. people recovering from auto injuries
2. people referred by chiropractors
3. people who work out at a gym regularly

Now you have three distinct categories of people you can connect with. You can look for people that list this in their bios on places like Facebook and Twitter, and you can also look for specific social groups that target these specific areas.

Keep up your postings on the main sites, but spend more of your time connecting on the niche sites as well. With smaller sites, you may not have to post as option to have a big impact. And you can also pull out from the crowd as an expert quicker, giving your business an even bigger boost.

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Most people don’t. They have never put down on paper exactly why they are using Facebook, or how Twitter will help grow their businesses.

But just because it’s a free tool doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a plan of action for what you are doing. Like all other forms of marketing, you should give some thought to why you are doing it, and how you will implement it over a long period of time.

1. Don’t use social networking for marketing your business unless you understand how it will impact your overall business.

Too many business owners start using Twitter or Facebook without having a plan and understanding how it will impact their business models. Sure they are free tools. Yes you can reach out to a ton of people. But statistics show almost 95% of all people on Twitter have 100 or less followers, and rarely post more than a few times.

That’s not a strategy. There are no checks and balances to make sure you are on target. And you probably won’t have any results because there is little effort in a strategy like this.

2. There’s a cost to everything.

Whenever I meet with people and they find out I help people develop social networking strategies, the questions pour in.

How often should I post on Twitter?
Can you really build business relationships with Facebook?
Is LinkedIn a successful tool?

Sure, all of these are free resources for you. But the trouble with each of them is they take time to fully put to use, and to see the results.

I’ve been on Twitter for 1 ½ years, and have only had measurable results since January. Is it a significant part of my business? No. I have different streams coming in from all over. But Twitter is bringing me in income every single week.

My goal is to make it a stream of income, and to use it effectively. Which I’m doing fairly well.

The cost to me is my time. It takes time every day to build up the relationships, and to understand how and when to promote each piece of my business.

When you are developing your own strategy, its important to understand that just because its free, doesn’t mean you will see instant results and have it work for you with your limited knowledge on the subject matter.

You have to be willing to learn how to use it better, not just use it knowing what you know.

Start developing your own strategy and find out what’s truly possible with social marketing.

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