All That Social Networking Nonsense

Earlier this year I redesigned my own website. All of a sudden I find myself not having to utter the words “The cobbler’s children have no shoes” and going into a deep explanation of how I am really focused on my clients, blah blah blah. The redesign took many design hours, many writing hours, several hours finding resources, time hounding clients for testimonials, and so on. Even after all of those hours were put in, I still have only accomplished about 45% of my goals for the redesign.

In about 20 minutes I spent some time creating a Facebook business page and uploading the same resources I had on my website (8 photos of websites, 7 photos of brochures, 5 photos of catalogs). Then an interesting thing happened.

A flood of people became fans.

Ok, it was really only about 20 people. But considering I have only 100 Facebook friends, it was a high percentage. Most of these were just friends being nice, friends who don’t own businesses and whatnot. Some of them were old classmates that I really don’t know very well, but are Facebook friends nonetheless. That is when the interesting thing happened.

Three of the old classmates and casual acquaintances were business owners. They were interested in my work and interested in discussing new projects with me. These are people that I would have never solicited for business, and would have never gone to my actual website (even though there was a convenient little link to do so right on my personal Facebook page).

Additional steps

Since then, I have created a Twitter account and linked it to my Facebook status. I was already making regular Facebook updates, so why not do them in such a way as to gain double exposure? In a very short amount of time I have gained 80 followers, most of whom I had no previous connection to.

Because of these connections I have had interesting banter with marketing professionals at large and well-known local companies. The U.S. Representative of Indiana's Fifth Congressional District found me and began following me on Twitter. I had a brief text conversation with him (or one of his staff members pretending to be him, anyway). I have networked with designers in other states, and one passed a very sizable Request For Proposal my way.

I have also begun to leverage my LinkedIn account in interesting ways. I have had a LinkedIn account for several years, which has basically acted as an aging resume that I used to accept invites that my clients sent to me. I have only begun to understand its true power and the ability to gain new relationships through LinkedIn groups and online discussions.

So what are you waiting for? Give that social media a hug. It is not so bad. And if you need help getting started, give your local friendly neighborhood web designer a call at 317-816-9353.