Getting More Social

Welcome to Week 16 of my adventure of following the Start Up Version of the Grow Your Business Marketing Plan + Calendar.  In my posts, I talk about my voyage down the road of self-employment as a virtual marketing assistant, my achievements and roadblocks along the way, and I include a weekly recap at the end.
 
Glad to say after my detour last week, I’m back on the road this week.  I picked myself up, dusted myself off, and things are going well.
 
I also took some time to look at what I could be doing better on a regular basis. 

While I’ve been continually identifying new prospects, I’ve been slacking a bit on my social networking.  Today, in my outreach efforts, I realized that with a basic (free) Biznik membership, you can message three people per day without upgrading.  Instead of dwelling on the fact that I must not have tried to message three people in one day until today, I decided to use this to my advantage. 

Biznik is a network of entrepreneurs and small business owners dedicated to helping each other succeed. Its tagline is, “business networking that doesn’t suck,” and its true- it does anything but suck.  It’s a friendly, helpful network with great articles, events, information, blogs and groups.  If you don’t already have a profile, why not create one? (I’ll be your first connection!) They recently added some cool videos on their homepage that tell you what it’s all about.

Since I really think Biznik is a useful community, I’m going to reach out to 3 people a day and introduce myself. I find that when I’ve done this in the past, people are happy to join your network and help you in any way they can.  
 
Week 16 Recap:  This week, my promo piece is almost done.  I’m happy to have something to send out when people ask for more information.  And, I turned the page on my calendar and I see that May is when we start research calling!  I’m actually REALLY excited for research calling.  I have all these prospects, and I’m ready to get talking to them.   

Comments

[Dan McComb]

Introducing yourself is a great way to meet people on Biznik. Here's another one: post comments on articles. I've observed that more than any other online feature, the comments in articles are a great way to make a first connection. But only if you approach it correctly. Here's how:

When you post a comment, make sure you're not posting a "throw away" comment like "Great article!." That doesn't add any real value. When you post a comment, aim to do one of these three things:

1. Extend the dialogue. For example, if the article was titlted "Top 10 Marketing Mistakes" you could add #11.

2. Ask a question. This one's easy - every article leaves something unanswered. In the aforementioned example, you can say "I don't quite understand #4. How do that Apply to MY business?"

3. Challenge the author. Using our example, you could come back with "I agree with 9 of your points. #8, however, doesn't work for me. Here's why."

Comments like those will make you memorable, and pretty soon you'll be seen online as someone people WANT to not only talk to, but be friends with. And when you're growing a business, you can never have too many friends.