Social Media, the ultimate goal is to be seen, right? Being seen consistently, strategically, is the path to consistently growing your business.
This week we’re going to talk a bit about injecting some PR into that path.
Here’s the definition of PR from PRSA (Public Relations Society of Ameria) “Public relations is a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics.”
A few months ago the PRSA North East region chapter had a conference, and I was a speaker at the conference. I got to see first hand how people were leveraging PR and Social Media together. Christina Daves and I have known that for years, we’ve interviewed dozens of people for our Get Seen Be Heard YouTube channel! But it was great to hear all kinds of angles on making this work most profitably. And I realized I have NEVER talked about this on my blog!
So here it is, my top 5 ways to use Social Media and PR together, profitably.
Connect with journalists who cover your industry. Make sure you’re connected on Twitter and LinkedIn primarily. Create a Twitter list for these journalists and be sure to retweet and converse with them regularly! Please don’t pitch them, be of service, save the pitches for the exact right time.
Use LinkedIn Inmail. If you’re following me, you KNOW you need to have a great profile (need help? Start here) (link to first three things page). Once you’ve been connected for awhile and you’ve been sharing their content and being of service, it’s time to take the next step. An InMail is a great way to stand out from the crowd. Maybe you’re just asking permission to pitch them in the future, and asking them how they prefer to be contacted.
Snail Mail rules. Remember the days when your mailbox was overflowing with bills and crap? Now, your email box is, and mail stand out. Send a nice note, include something that has your social media accounts listed so they know how to follow you. They will remember this, I promise.
Read your content – to the journalist and in general – out loud. Make sure it Blog sounds like YOU. If not, rework it. Please don’t sound like a robot or use all kinds of corporate jargon. Be real. It works every time.
Monitor relevant hashtags. Primarily on Instagram and Twitter. You’ll see who’s talking about your topics, and you can jump into those conversations. These conversations can help you develop your next pitch.
That’s it! Pretty simple when you put a process to it. Wondering where to start? I put together this FREE video series showing some simple ways to use social media and PR to get more customers. Check it out! www.gmctips.com
Your business is on Main Street, not on Wall Street.
You see the Fortune 500 companies doing it, getting publicity and visibility, but what about YOU?
It’s just as important to build credibility and trust when working locally, I’d say even MORE important if you want to STAY in business. Now, are you wondering how can you do that virtually through LinkedIn?
Here are five tips on how you can use LinkedIn to increase your local business:
1. Establish Yourself as a Local Expert
Increasing familiarity with your business is so important when building a profitable foundation in a local business area. Showing local clients what you do, how you do it and your success rates right from the beginning will attract the local client base and establish trust in your abilities.
You might even want to get a LinkedIn company page up and running to focus solely on your businesses brand. Once you have it made, go ahead and promote yourself! LinkedIn has multiple options now that allow you to promote your page as advertisements to target segments. Get your business out there, get connecting with people and show them your successes. And don’t be afraid to brag a little!
2. Attract Top Employees
Every business needs a strong employee base to enhance productivity. Once you’ve established yourself as a local expert, recruiting top tier members to support your business is essential for growth.
Make use of the job postings section. Seek out suggestions from credible sources and get digging on which you believe can enhance your business.
3. Build a Network of Local Business Owners
As I mentioned in my Social Media Quick Tip: Local LinkedIn Networking Groups article, I love local-based networking groups. People love to do business with associates, which make it a key topic to consider when growing your local business and network of clients.
Join a few local networking groups and see what the conversations about; or even start your own! From there, you can engage with local business owners, give recommendations, post blogs and mention events you may have coming up. From here you can establish connections, as well as gain multiple clients from your participation in these groups.
Once you’ve built this network, connect with your local clients! It’s a great way to stay in touch, further your client base and support the people who support you!
4. Host Events and Promote in Local LinkedIn Groups
Getting face-to-face meetings with potential clients is the ultimate goal in building relationships with local business owners. By hosting events relative to your audience, you create the opportunity to get in front of these businesses that may need your help.
Promote these events in the location-based groups you have created, as well as post your events to other local groups that attract your target audience.
5. Don’t Forget Personal Branding!
When it’s all said and done, your business is nothing without your personal brand. Be sure to stay true to what you have a built and maintain these positive social networking relationships through your brand image. After all, you are what you post!
Ready to get started? Check out this free video series! www.gmctips.com You’ll learn some fun ways to get more clients!
In this video we look at local LinkedIn networking groups. Watch the video for how to search for local groups.
I love local-based networking groups because they tend to be really active. Not to mention, you can see in the group in the video, there are 11,000 people in this group and this is just a New Jersey group. Even though I’m not only looking for local people to do business with, my business is really world wide, people like to do business with people they feel are local. I get a lot of business by being active in my local LinkedIn networking groups.
I encourage you to go to LinkedIn, join the local networking groups for your business, especially if you have a local business and get active in these groups. Go into these groups and see what the conversations are and don’t just pitch. Go in there and throw your weekly blogs in if you have them or talk about events you have coming up, but get active.
Take a look at articles posted in the groups. Read them. Comment on them. Get involved in these groups. Comment on these posts and people will start to get to know who you are. It’s a great way to develop that local network and establish yourself as an expert with your local business owners, with your local community. I can’t tell you how powerful this is for me and I don’t have a local business. If you have a local business, this is something you need to do. Stop what you’re doing, right now go over to LinkedIn, join some local networking groups.
Subscribe to my YouTube channel to see more videos!
In this tip, we are talking about one of my favorite reasons to use LinkedIn, and that’s LinkedIn Recommendations. In the video I show you my profile and what the recommendations look like. You’ll see that recommendations are in LinkedIn in multiple places. They’re under each one of your titles so they can be associated or they will be associated with a specific type of experience. But then there’s also a section, and mine is all the way at the bottom, you could reorganize these, but I like when people read them in the sections anyway, where you have all of them are listed together.
This is so important because this is not just social proof, it’s social proof on steroids! If you have recommendations or testimonials on your website, I believe them. I believe that these people actually said these things about you. But I don’t know who these people are and I don’t know what they know about you. I don’t know if they’re really credible, if they’re your brother, or aunt, or your uncle, or if they really even have a business. On LinkedIn however, I can click right through to the profile of the people that have recommended you.
Really cool stuff. This is something you don’t want to overlook. Often people ask me, “How do I get recommendations?”, “Do I just ask people?” There are a few ways to do this.
First and foremost, anytime somebody says something nice to you, like if you’ve done an event, or you worked with them, and then they said, “Thanks so much, you were great.” The next words out of my mouth are always, “Thank you so much, it’s so great to hear that. How would you feel about putting that in LinkedIn as recommendation for me? That would be really helpful to me.” Most people are more than willing to do that.
Another way to get LinkedIn recommendations is go give LinkedIn recommendations. Just give them freely; be really generous with who you give recommendations to. Give recommendations to your hairstylist. Give recommendations to your personal trainer, your physician, but also think strategically. Have you worked on a project with someone that you can give a recommendation to that might recommend you back? Be generous across the board, but also be generous strategically, and think about who might be able to give you a recommendation back.
Be an accumulator of LinkedIn recommendations, and I think you’re going to find it’s one of the most valuable things you can do for your business marketing.
Subscribe to my YouTube channel to see more videos!
Today, we’re in my LinkedIn group. I want to show you one of the most powerful things you can do as an owner of a LinkedIn group, and this one tip alone will make you think twice about why you should own a LinkedIn group.
What we’re going to do here is we’re going to message everyone in a group. I’m going to go to the “Manage” tab, and I’m going to click “Send An Announcement.” What happens when you send an announcement is it goes into their email box. It’s not a spamming kind of thing. You’re not going to get dinged with the spam act. You are going to be able to send an email to everybody in your group no more than once a week.
So, once a week, you can put it on your calendar. “What am I going to email my group this week?” It’s a much more powerful way to get in front of them than just posting in the group. We want to hit our prospects from multiple angles. We’re not looking to bombard them by any means, but we want them to see our stuff. So, by emailing them with your regular email list, but also by using this one tip here, you’ll be able to get in front of them more often.
This is really powerful stuff. I hope you can see the power of this and find ways that you can use it for your business. It’s a great reason to actually be an owner as opposed to a member of a LinkedIn group.
Subscribe to my YouTube channel to see more videos!
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