I took part in a great roundtable conversation at tonight’s PATCA meeting on “Low Cost Marketing and Advertising for Consultants” Here were a couple of suggestions that I made in response to situations or challenges that other consultants put on the table.
Five Things to Consider
- You get hired based on what you say, what you write, what others say about you (case studies, testimonials, referrals), and getting found when prospects are looking (ads, SEO/SEM, Craigslist, tradeshows).
- if you are invited to speak at least make an audio recording so you can post excerpts on your website, you always sound better when speaking to a group of people than sitting at your desk.
- Consider an article as a leave behind for a talk instead of your side deck, it’s more easily digested by someone not at the talk and can also be content on your website.
- If you don’t have an audio or video up on your site considering adding at least on short one (video 60-180 seconds, audio 2-5 min).
- For enterprise clients ask them personally for a LinkedIn reference, you can post that on your website. This finesses the “we cannot give you a corporate endorsement” challenge.
Five Things to Avoid
- Use LinkedIn messages and InMail’s sparingly. They often cannot be replied to and if forwarded don’t contain an email address that will allow the recipient to contact you.
- When reaching out to your network, do it in small batches. Don’t send a single large mail blast. You want to customize as many messages as possible and be ready to reply very quickly when you get a response.
- Treat form fills as phone calls: when someone fills out a form on your website requesting information or a follow up act as if they left you an urgent voice mail. Sure some folks are kicking tires, but if you can contact them within a few minutes they are less likely to have moved on to their next challenge and lost the context for why they reached out to you.
- Facebook still seems to be more for friends and family unless you are in more of a personal services business (dentist, barber, veterinarian, etc..). LinkedIn still seems to be the best fit for professional contacts and conversations.
- Comments and posts in LinkedIn groups become very difficult to find after a few weeks, have a strategy for recycling them onto your blog or website if they represent a commonly occurring question or issue you are often called upon to address.
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