May 13th, 2009
by Lorrie Thomas
I spend a fair part of my day playing the role of “professional explain-er” helping professionals understand the wild, wild web in “closed captioning”-esque manner.
Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter are Interactive Rolodexes!
When I am asked about social media and get the “what do I do with social media for marketing”? question, I stop the conversation and suggest that the brain get re-trained to think of social media as an interactive Rolodex.
We don’t “tweet” to make millions, get on Facebook to win new accounts or get on LinkedIn.com to get venture capital.
We use social media to make, build and sustain relationships!
Marketing is all about maximizing relationships - what makes social media marketing such a remarkable asset to organizations it’s ability to manage relationships and stay in touch for life.
If you are on Facebook, you will likely update your photos, status and more. On LinkedIn, you will update your job status, position and email address. With Twitter, your contact base will grow and if you are part of the active tweepulation, then you’ll be able to connect forever. It’s never about using one social media tool - it’s about using several social media tools to build your credibility, visibility and relate-ability.
Your current and prospective customers will use social media differently (some like tweeting, some are big on blogs) so be in several places and keep current so the people that are seeking you out can find you. In this ick economy, more people are using LinkedIn to reconnect with colleagues to get that next job or reach out to contractors since they are managing more work with fewer resources.
Business cards are sooooo 1982 - use social media as your online Rolodex to stay in touch (and get rid of those old-school biz card holders!)
Web Marketing Therapy Related Links:
- Use Social Media to Store Your Business Card Contacts
- Streamline your Social Media Marketing - Get Hellotxt
- The 2009 Reference Guide: 99 Best Social Media & PR Blog Posts
- Tools to Make Your Social Media Marketing Smarter Via HootSuite
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Web Marketing Therapy » Blog Archive » Feeling PLAXOdaisical?
(July 23rd, 2009 at 6:08 pm)
[...] tweet-vent had everything to do with projecting ownership of interactive Rolodex onto me…I have nothing against the [...]
Calla Gold
(October 11th, 2009 at 6:50 pm)
I liked the concept of this blog entry. I guess I’d like a bit more advice on how to keep track of the people. It’s pretty easy on Facebook, but it seems more challenging on Linked in as there doesn’t seem to be a listing of all your contacts alphabetically like in Facebook.
Calla Gold
The Marketing Therapist
(October 11th, 2009 at 7:23 pm)
Calla,
Thanks for the comment. Keeping track of people varies per professional. The way I see social media as an “interactive Rolodex” is that it allows us to search our contacts by:
-Name
-Company (any one you remember)
-City
-Title
-Key phrases (job description)
and as we grow and our contacts grow, we have access to them all in one easy log-in (or a few like Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter)
Best feature for me is that the accessability and updated contacts is great!
There IS a way to see contacts alphabetically - log in and go to the Contacts area in Linked in on the left side.
Best way to use this is to get in, click around and see what works for you!
It’s all about you and what works for you! Just enjoy the nice contact storage, test, track and see what works!
Web Marketing Therapy » Blog Archive » Marketing Therapy Tip - Use Social Media to Store Your Business Card Contacts
(January 22nd, 2010 at 9:24 pm)
[...] Use social media as your business card storage tool. I think of social media as an “interactive rolodex“, storing my contacts in a way that is easy to access AND updates [...]
Shana Pearson
(January 25th, 2010 at 12:34 pm)
Love it! Putting it on my to-do list… I also like separating my facebook contacts into \Professional\ groupings just so I can target my posts, messaging, etc.