What separates the successful firm from the firm that is just doing it to do it? Successful firms:
1. Think strategically about their goals first and then decide which social media tools best suit their needs.
2. Use listening tools like Google Alerts and Twitter Search to collect data and find out where the people (potential clients) are.
3. Consume information in your niche and follow/comment on other blogs regularly and often (especially on blogs of potential A clients). This introduces you to people you want to influence and positions you as an expert.
4. Go to where the people are. You can no longer launch a website and wait for people to come to you. Identify your targets and play in their “sandboxes”.
5. Create content (blogs, video, podcasts, ebooks, tweets, email marketing, etc) that is focused; carve out a niche for yourself. If it’s too general, readers won’t know what to expect from one day to the next and they’ll lose interest if they can’t relate.
Bonus:
6. Remember that social media is a process, not an event. It takes a long time to build a community of followers. So I refer back to #3 and #4 – go to where the people are and comment and share. Eventually, they’ll return the favor and before you know it, you’ve built a community of loyal followers.
The successful firms understand that the sales cycle consists of awareness, education, negotiation, purchase, support and renewal. They build this into their strategy and use social media to create awareness and educate potential clients about their firm. They’ve spent lots of TIME building community and positioning themselves as experts in very niched areas. Because, as Jeffrey Gitomer says, “all things equal, people want to do business with their friends; all things not equal, people still want to do business with their friends.”
