Are You Connected?

Surviving business in hard times, may mean boosting your presence in the market. But you don’t have to exhaust your budget to do it! Here are some tips to get you started:

• Explore cost effective opportunities such as business networking – both offline and online – to build on new relationships, including engaging in speaking and PR events. To access new connections, take advantage of the “free” online social media channels such as LinkedIn, Facebook Fan Page, Twitter, Flickr, hi5, etc.

• Develop a new process to connect with other businesses to foster the knowledge and best practices others are doing to get through tough market conditions.

• Be more engaged and seek meaningful business relationships with other like minded peeps.

• Promote and provide education, enriched content and communication to evolve greater interest in your business.

• Build on new leads by igniting your connections today and utilize the social media marketing channels to reach a broader audience.

For example, by actively engaging in a micro-blogging medium such as Twitter, there’s opportunity to connect with hundreds to thousands of people around the world. Twitter and other micro-blogging platforms can be trivial because it’s an open medium for the public to post anything, including personal innuendos. But as Pete Cashmere, CEO and founder of Mashable.com sited,

“… Twitter, its inspiration, information, news, gossip, humor and remarkable personal stories. Twitter is all that we are, from our most exalted moments to our most mundane – and everything in between.”

If you are not already tweeting and want to join the Twittersphere, click here to learn how it works and understand the many ways Twitter can be used.

Another option for a business to extend their reach is through a Facebook Fan Page. This we will cover in another post as there is too much information to absorb to ensure you take the right steps and precautions before launching your page.

In the meantime, get connected, be engaged and start boosting your online presence today!