Get Social
Who would you prefer to give business to? Someone you like and trust, or some random company that you know nothing about?
Look around. It seems like everybody is doing some form of social networking. Got a facebook account? Do you use Twitter? MySpace? Got a profile on LinkedIn? You can use these same platforms for your business too. You can use these to talk to people you already know, reach out to new people, see what people are saying about you, answer questions and leverage yourself as an authority in your field.
Create a Blog
A blog can be a useful tool. It helps build pages on your site, so that search engines always see fresh content.
It engages people. If you have an interesting blog, people will keep coming back to your site. If your blog is informative, people will rely on you for good information, making you a trusted authority in your field. If it’s personal, people will get to like you as an individual, making them want to do business with you.
It’s not all pointless babble. Many people use Twitter to let people know when there’s a new blog post up. You can use it to reply to questions. You can ReTweet someone else’s great post. Got an event coming up? Send out a Twitvite. It’s short and sweet and can really be useful in staying in touch and building an identity.
FaceBook/MySpace
It’s amazing who has pages on these two sites. Whether you’re a famous actor or an insurance agent, people will join your group or follow your fan page. You can post photos or videos, send out invitations to an event, keep people up to date on new products, the list goes on. It’s all about building a personality and a rapport with your targeted audience.
It’s not just a place to post your resume, or hire someone. There are plenty of groups on LinkedIn you can join. These can be great to get information on, as well as give it. People can connect with you by looking for your name, industry, affiliations, etc.
Social Bookmarking
There are tools out there to bookmark your site. These let other people see you, as well as giving you a link back to your site. Some of the bigger ones to look at include Digg, Delicious and StumbleUpon. Create a profile and bookmark pages that you like. Don’t forget to bookmark your own!
Multimedia
Got lots of video or photo content? Got a story to tell? Sites like Current, YouTube, Flickr, Vimeo and PhotoBucket all let you upload your video and photos. You can also put them up on FaceBook and MySpace. More and more people are watching video online. Get in on the action by creating some short video content to add to your brand personality.
