Congratulations! You have joined the 21st century of networking by creating your LinkedIn profile. You were told everyone has a LinkedIn account. You couldn’t be left behind. You check your LinkedIn mailbox each day, but nobody has contacted you. What happened to all of that online networking?

Networking, both traditional and online, takes work. LinkedIn has given you a posted profile to talk about yourself and your business. Have you finished your profile? Did you post your picture? Please make sure your have a professional headshot. Seeing you doing gardening or working on your car will not give your potential clients trust in your business abilities- unless of course you are a gardener or mechanic!

Your LinkedIn profile is the first place to begin your LinkedIn experience. You must be informative when writing your business description. Explain why a client would want to chose you over your competition. Show your experience and background clearly. Make certain to add your contact information as well as your website address. This profile is your 30 second elevator speech, however, without your personality. Make sure readers get a sense of who you are through your words.

After your profile is complete, the fun begins. Imagine that you have your business cards in hand and are about to walk into a networking meeting with complete strangers. Are you nervous or excited? LinkedIn takes some of the anxiety away from approaching new prospects, but as described before, takes the “human” touch out of the initial meeting. You can’t give a warm smile when approaching a new online contact. Instead, you must use your words to convey your confidence and personality. But where do you find people to “talk” to?

The first and easiest place to begin is your own email accounts. LinkedIn has an application which will search your address books on certain accounts to find current friends or business associated whom are already on LinkedIn. You simply send them an invitation to add you as a connection. Once they are added, you can then examine their connections for possible introductions. Just like you use your current “ins” to get an introduction now, so you will do the same with LinkedIn. You can ask your current connections for an introduction to someone within their connections whom you would like to “meet”. It’s that simple.

Being on LinkedIn does not mean you will not network traditionally. As you meet your new contacts outside of the computer, ask them upfront if they are on LinkedIn. Many of them are, but they too may be confused on how to use their account. You can use this as an opportunity to become an expert to them. When they tell you that they do have an account with LinkedIn, ask if you can add them as a connection. By doing this, your connections will increase dramatically.

Once you have your feet wet with navigating adding connections as well as asking for introductions through your connections, venture now into joining relevant Groups. LinkedIn has a large selection of industry Groups  to which you may request to be added. What profession or professionals would be a good referal network for your buisness. Do you want to target a certain industry. Joining LinkedIn Groups allows you to do just that- find a targeted audience. For instance, your target may be women-owned businesses. They are various Groups for women business owners. If marketing companies are a better fit for you, they are many LinkedIn marketing groups to which to join. All you have to do is request to be added to your chosen Groups, then await your approval. However, you must create a “buzz” for yourself within the Groups once approved. You can do this by either starting or responding to various discussion which other members have begun. By doing this, you will become an instant expert. It is another opportunity to show your experience and “personality”.

LinkedIn is an excellent avenue to expand your networking reach into geographic areas otherwise unreachable. However, you must dedicate time and effort to your online networking efforts. Once you commit yourself to working your LinkedIn account as described above, you will dramatically broaden you sphere of influence. The ultimate goal of networking is to find either potential clients or referral partners. LinkedIn allows you one more way to accomplish this.                          

Not bragging…but I’ve been saying good-bye… well actually firing clients social media marketing lately.

Some people are buying into the idea that you MUST participate in this recession thingy.

Personally I’m not. It’s not that I don’t think we are experiencing weird economic times…we are. I just have been blessed with paying clients…too many in fact. Well to be more exact, too many that are too far away.

I have been lusting after one thing — local and regional clients. How nice would it be to not have to do skype calls and white board presentations in the middle of MY night? How great would it be to meet a client for lunch…YES actually meet in person… and develop more of a long lasting relationship. You know the kind…where you invite them over to your house for Super Bowl parties, or you bring them to Chamber of Commerce functions or Meetup meetings just to get them out of the office or store? Real world “stuff”… the kind of ”stuff” that makes a CONNECTION.

“But waaaaiiit,” you say, ”I thought this social media stuff was the end all, be all for business?”

Nope.

You take social media for what it should be: blended into your marketing efforts. You don’t stop advertising or doing traditional marketing and replace it with social media… not unless you’ve got lots of money and resources to throw at it. Let me give you the analogy I give my clients…

It’s alot like the card game of poker. You don’t win with just ONE card in poker; I don’t care how good that card it. It’s not how it’s played (unless you’re playing one card poker: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~ggordon/poker/.)  Instead, you win with a number of cards that work together. Synergy.

The unfortunate rub in this is most advertising is bad. Clients forget the rule of advertising:

It’s what you say times how many times you say it times the quality of the people you say it to.

What you say is the ad. Most advertisers have no budget — or for that part,any idea how to test their advertising. Most just “wing it.” And they usually experience FAIL ad results.

How many times you say it if the repetition factor. But a bad ad repeaqted over and over  still doesnt get you results, or the results you desire. 

Which leads us to the last part of our equation: the quality of people you say it to. If the target audience or demographic of the viewer/reader/surfer is not YOUR target audience, then you FAIL again. Fourteen year old skateboarders do not buy Lexus’ cars. It wouldnt matter how many times you repeat that message, even a good message to them, it still is a FAIL with the audience.

What’s this have to do with social media marketing? Many clients do the same FAIL habits with social media as they do traditional advertising. Get the first one right and repeat it on the second one. Clients from all around the world sometimes need the same hand-holding to change marketing habits as so the local and regional clients do. In fact, I’ll venture to say it’s harder with a client around the other side of the world. Sometimes being able to sit down with the client, shake their hand, look ‘em in the eye and tell it to them straight is the best way. It’s that CONNECTION I talked about.

I want more local and regional clients. I want to make a difference in MY community, MY state, MY country.

What does this have to do with social media? For me it’s the answer to “what’s my responsibility to help in these strange economic times?” For me it’s this. How can I help, who can I help? What can I do that’ll make a real world difference?

I told my plans to a good friend of mine. He blurts out, OK… but is there a market locally and regionally?” Well I am situated ideally between about 10-12 million people within a 2-3 hour drive. So I’m not too concerned about that. But even locally, I searched LinkedIn.com and found:
 28,083 results within 25 mile radius
64,779 results within 50 mile radius
985,204 results within 100 mile radius

I was slow out of the gate to use LinkedIn.com due to my use of Twitter and various other social media and social networking sites. But I have fallen in love with what LinkedIn.com offers a small business person like me. So if I was a betting man, I’d say the odds are in my favor that I’ll replace that revenue quickly.

My point is: opportunities are all around. Most business people drive by more business on a daily basis that they could adequately handle. You must get rid of what you don’t want (like the “driftwood” in your life and business) to make room for what you truly desire and want. So my question to you is: do you have any clients you SHOULD fire?

G. Wayne Clayton is the founder and Chief Visionary Officer of Integerol LLC  along with SocialMarketingExpert.org.  He’s a former newspaper publisher and investigative journalist. He has been seen seen and heard on CNN, Fox News Talk radio, quoted in The Toronto Star and is a Guest Blogger on FastCompany.com.