I know you keep hearing about certain businesses that are successful using social media marketing. You think “Sure, it’s easy if you are a restaurant or ecommerce site but what about me? As a CPA how can I use social media to connect to my market?”

You don’t need a product to leverage social media. Professional businesses such as bankers, attorneys and CPA’s can also create a successful social media marketing strategy. Your main ally in this campaign will be LinkedIn, the social site where professionals go to make connections and gain information.

Social Media Strategy with LinkedIn and Your Website

The first step to any social media strategy for a business is to create a blog. You can post weekly or bi-weekly, but you need to create consistent, valuable content for your website. If you find you have a hard time coming up with post ideas, use Google or your favorite search engine for possible topics. Not only will it make writing posts easier, you will also help your site increase in rankings by blogging about relative content.

Many businesses give up on their blogs after a few posts because they don’t see the number of visitors increase at an exponential rate. This is not Field of Dreams, if you create it they won’t come on their own. You need to put the content in areas where your audience frequents.

This is where social media comes in. Feel free to create a twitter and Facebook page for your business and post the blog on these pages. But the real key is to build a LinkedIn Company Business Page.

LinkedIn Company Business Page

LinkedIn allows members to create pages for their businesses and websites. You can use this page to communicate with your customers and other professionals in your market who are looking for information. You can post your blog to your business page so that prospects can learn more about your company and your expertise.

The Power of Connections

Connections are the way that you can make new contacts on LinkedIn. The more connections you have the more people you will be able to communicate with on the site. A great way to make connections is to join Groups.

There are hundreds of LinkedIn Groups for different niches. If you join up to 50 groups where your clients and those in your market frequent you will receive referrals. These referrals can lead to hundreds of thousands of connections. That’s not a typo: hundreds of thousands of connections, it’s that powerful.

After you join these groups you will want to post your blog to each group every week. Frequency helps by helping you to earn top contributor status. Anyone who joins these groups will look at who the top contributors are since they are touted as thought leaders in their industry. Your status as an expert will bring new contacts to you as they ask questions and seek advice. You and your company will be in the forefront of the minds of your prospects and they will investigate your blog and website in an attempt to learn more about your business.

Caveats

This strategy can work and will work if you put in the effort. But I want to issue a few warnings for professionals who want to use LinkedIn to grow their business:

• Stay Informative: don’t sell on your blog, be informative
• Be Patient: It can take up to 3-6 months for this strategy to work. Understand this is an investment, not a shortcut for growth.
• Study Analytics: You will want to watch your LinkedIn profile demographics and Google analytics to see how much traffic is generated by this strategy.

If you have questions about this strategy or are looking for advice, please call or email us. We can help you set yourself apart from your competition.