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Connecting
the dots of social media
Many accounting firms are missing out on an opportunity to promote themselves
for free. In fact, most are.
What we have come to call social media offers a wide range of tools
for firms to tell their clients and prospective clients, what’s
going on in the world around them, and, as a result, generate some new
business for themselves.
But what is social media?
Well, from an accounting firm’s perspective, the major players,
as I see it, are:
• Youtube
• Linked-In
• Facebook
• Blogging
• Twitter
• Pocasts
There are many more sites that pass as social media, but from a business
perspective, the six mentioned above are the major players you need
to be concerned about. So, what are these sites and what role can they
play in promoting your services?
You Tube
In my opinion, this is the big one, the must-have, AND the place to
start. Check out YouTube!
If you own a PC and a home movie camera, you have all the tools you’ll
need to get started. Make a short video and post it on to your newly
created YouTube account. People love to watch videos to learn new skills,
so don’t make a video that just promotes your services and tries
to sell something.
People use You Tube to find out how to do something, tape a session
of you talking into the camera lens that provides useful information
on building a better business, creating wealth, providing for retirement,
selling a business for maximum tax-free cash, or, indeed, anything that
potential clients would perceive as having high value.
An instructional video that dove-tails with your services is fine, and
if you can inject a bit of humour in there too, then so much the better!
So, how about a short clip showing the 10 most common errors you see
in ‘Quickbooks’ files or any of the popular accounting software,
and then give useful tips on how to properly record each item. Youtube
offers so much potential for those with a creative flair.
You should, of course, show your firm’s name, address, website
and phone number at the end of the video for those who see the clip
and want to make contact with you. It sounds obvious, but you’d
be surprised how many people forget to add their contact details at
the end of a video clip!
Linked-In
LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network with over
55 million members and growing rapidly. LinkedIn connects you to your
trusted contacts and helps you exchange knowledge, ideas, and opportunities
with a broader network of professionals.
It works a little like the six degrees of separation, and is good for
getting referrals for a whole host of different suppliers for example.
It can also be a very useful tool when recruiting.
Facebook
Some use facebook as an online diary, others post pictures from their
travels, taking their friends on vacation with them, virtually as opposed
to literally, of course, while other groups use the site as a fan club,
artists post their works for sale, bands and musicians update fans on
tour dates and accountants can post their seminar dates, tax saving
tips and much more on Facebook!
In short, it can be used for whatever the heck you want.
The great thing is that when you post a message onto your facebook page,
all of your ‘friends’ get notified, so they know what you’re
up to. It’s a great way of keeping friends, family and clients
up to date on what’s going on in your life, or in your firm, depending
on what you use it for.
If you aren’t on Facebook yet, do it now! It’s absolutely
free to set up a Facebook account.
Once you’re registered, you will have access to a slew of free
applications and functions on Facebook to help you in the development
of your practice online.
Now, if, like many, you are labouring under the misunderstanding that
Facebook is for teens and college students, then you really do need
to think again!
People of all ages are regular Facebook users. There are over 200 million
members, and it’s growing every day. Take advantage of the reach
and scope of the Facebook community to grow the e-commerce side of your
practice!
Blogging
Start a blog! Having a blog is one of the best ways to generate some
free buzz about your business. Keep it updated with fresh content and
encourage readers to provide their input.
For those who are not sure what a blog is, again, I’ll take a
stab at defining what that is for you.
Here goes...
‘A blog is a website in which items are posted on a regular basis
and displayed in reverse chronological order – most recent first.
The term blog is a shortened form of weblog or web log. Authoring a
blog, maintaining a blog or adding an article to an existing blog is
called “blogging”.
Individual articles on a blog are called “blog posts,” “posts”
or “entries”. A person who posts these entries is called
a “blogger”. A blog comprises text, hypertext, images, and
links (to other web pages and to video, audio and other files).
Blogs use a conversational style of documentation. Often blogs focus
on a particular “area of interest”, such as Washington,
D.C.’s political goings-on. Some blogs discuss personal experiences.’
So that’s the quick run-down on blogging, but a word of warning
- don’t try to use your blog to shove your business down everyone’s
throat. Instead, give readers something of value that can be passed
around and shared.
As accountants, we should be looking to use a blog for providing weekly
or monthly tax tips, for example, or cash collection tips and ideas,
how to grow sales, or cut costs, the lists of topics you could blog
about is limited only by your imagination, and it doesn’t have
to take up a lot of time.
If you type at a reasonable pace, and you have a creative flair, one
can write a blog posting within an hour. Do this every month and you’ve
invested 12 hours over the year, not a lot to ask.
Twitter
Get on Twitter and start Tweeting! Twitter is huge! Dell Computers and
many other giant corporations have discovered the value of Twitter and
have made astonishing growth in sales due to Twitter. If they can do
it, so can you, but what is it?
Well, I’d call it a form of micro-blogging. It’s intended
to be short and sweet and updated often, and messages are restricted
to 140 characters or less for each posting.
If I had to choose, I’d leave this until last if you’re
just getting started, to avoid overload, and at the end of this DVD
I’ll run you through what I think is a sensible action plan if
you haven’t taken advantage of any of these tools.
Podcasts
Everyone is familiar with the famous iPod, right? Well a podcast is
nothing more than an audio recording that is made available, usually
for free, via iTunes.
Some large and some very small accounting firms are already doing this,
and having thousands of downloads every month acting as a viral marketing
machine for their firm.
Making a recording is not expensive, heck, you can do it on your PC
or Mac for next to nothing, but the benefits are tremendous if you take
the time and trouble to do it right.
Connecting the dots...
So, now you have a few video clips on Youtube, you’re on Facebook
and Linked-In with a profile on each site, and you’re running
a Blog and using Twitter and you’ve created some audio files for
distributing as a podcast or two, how do these all relate to marketing
your firm?
Well, let me give you an example.
Let’s suppose you’re interested in developing a niche market
in the manufacturing sector.
You want to hold a seminar called ’21 tips for growing your manufacturing
business’ and you want to reach out to manufacturing companies
to come along and attend.
First, you can post the details on your own web site (you MUST have
a web site!) and then post a link to your Youtube page. Film a 3 minutes
explanation of what the seminar will do for those attending, and post
the video to your account.
Take the audio from that video recording and turn it into a podcast
and make that available from your website and/or iTunes. Then, in your
next newsletter, promote the seminar and include links to the Youtube
video and the iTunes audio files.
Then, in your blo0g, announce the seminar and include some bullet points
of what attendees will learn, and repeat this in your Tweet.
On Facebook and Linked-In you can also make these announcements and
link all the above options to your people, and now you’re starting
to use social media to promote your firm.
These are just basic ideas intended for the beginner, there’s
so much more that social media can do to help you grow your practice,
but for now, the above should get you started.
© 2003-2011,
Steve McIntyre-Smith. All Rights Reserved. |
