Twitter and LinkedIn for Busy Professionals

Bob Palmer, CPA.CITPThe news is full of articles about social media. Social media includes facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, and a host of other sites. For businesses, LinkedIn and Twitter seem to get the most press. Here is a quick description of these sites and a couple of ideas about how to use them to generate business and improve relationships with current customers and contacts.

What Is Twitter?

Technically speaking, Twitter is a microblog. You can see what my twitter account looks like at http://twitter.com/Bobp5. As you'll see, the "posts" are limited to 140 characters, the length of a text message on most cell phones. Some people post what they had for breakfast on Twitter, but that's not the reason to use it for business (see below). You can sign up for your own account for free.

What is LinkedIn?

If you have a facebook account, LinkedIn is the equivalent for business. It has more protection on who can see your information and who can connect with you. More and more business professionals are using LinkedIn as a sort of "rolodex." One of the things about LinkedIn is that once you're connected to someone, you're likely to stay connected. If they change jobs or move, you can still locate old contacts. There is also a new plug-in for Outlook that makes LinkedIn extremely easy and friendly to use.

How Can You Use These for Business?

Here are a few suggestions (in no particular order):

Set up your own account on Twitter and LinkedIn
Connect with a few business associates, perhaps just people within your own company.
Make sure your profile contains information you want people to know about you; contacts will read your profile.
Upload a picture so people you invite to connect can connect with you.
Load the LinkedIn add-in to Outlook, and try to find people you already know on LinkedIn. The add-in will identify whether someone has a LinkedIn account on email you receive.
Tweet a bit and see if you get any followers (a Tweet is a post on Twitter). Links to useful articles are popular.
Search for products or ideas you work with (like accounting or tax software, political issues, and groups) on Twitter. Follow groups that discuss the ideas and products you are interested in. You might search for "health care reform" and "global warming" for interesting results.
Also watch the trending topics (listed on your Twitter homepage). As I write this, "Iron Man 2" is a trending topic.
(most important) Post a status in LinkedIn and tweet about anything important your company is doing or news you see. If you're a tax attorney, you might post a link to a discussion of new tax legislation, or tax changes.
For professionals getting started, consider LinkedIn and Twitter as relationship building tools and tools for reaching a small but growing list of contacts. Use links to other things you have on the Internet to build traffic and interest.

The more you use these tools, the more you'll see opportunities to build your business relationships with them.

If you'd like to chat about your software, give me a call at 901.452.4585 x 118, or use the contact us page.