In case you missed last week’s Nor’easter, there is a new storm brewing off the coast of the Virginia Beach oceanfront and it’s due to arrive this January!  Social Media at the Beach is coming and this social media event is designed to blow away the myth that social media is only for tech savvy ‘experts’ and people who spend all their time in front of a computer!

Social media is for busy people who want to stay in touch with their friends and other interesting people they like to network with and this new school relationship tool that uses old school principles has a tremendous potential to generate business!

So if you want to learn how to blog, use social networks like Facebook, and maximize you’re company’s SEO power on the web, register today and I’ll see you at Peabody’s on January 23rd!

Are you using social media to grow your business? I get a lot of questions from business owners and other busy professionals about how to develop strategies for business growth using social media. My goal has always been try to simplify the social networking equation, and through my calculations I have determined that social media can be simply describe down to a three step process that when implemented properly can explode your business online and in person.

Having a well developed social media profile on a website like LinkedIn or Facebook is the first step toward growing your online presence. Before you can attempt to share a single product or service online, you must first be able to sell yourself (branding if you will). Branding yourself as a person first and not a sales robot instantly creates a unimposing medium for your friends and potential customers to become aware of who you are and hopefully what you do.

Blogging is simply a medium for relevant material. And what is relevant is relative to the viewer. First you have to find out what is relevant to your target audience, then you use your blog to convert that material into a format that is attractive to them. The more relevant material you provide, the more your expertise becomes apparent and your popularity grows.

Cycle of Social Media

Finally, you need the website you probably already have. What you don’t know is that unless you have something and/or someone pointing to your website, you’re probably wasting valuable time and money that you put into it. Blogging and social media outlets do the pointing for you. On the surface, they give people a reason to want to know more about you. Beneath, they are a free way to lead the google spiders right to your website.

The key is constantly having your social media trifecta pointing at something of relevance. Your blogs and profiles should always be pointing at your website and vice versa. Constantly be looking for relevant links, events, and other info you can share with your target audience. When they see value in what you have to share, they will also see value in and want to do business with you.

Since I started sharing Social Media with business professionals in Hampton Roads, I have come across success driven people from all industries! Though many are wary of the seemingly unpredictable affects social media can have on their careers, none have been more resistant to riding the social media wave than those from compliance based professions. Financial Planners, Stock Brokers, and Mortgage Brokers for example are professions that are heavily regulated by company policy. Ironically, many compliance based professions have the potential of receiving the most benefit from using social media platforms.

So the question is, how can compliance based professionals use social media without getting fired? The key is developing a strategy that takes the information emphasis off of you as the individual but still gives you the opportunity to be a valuable source of information for your friends, and clients. The foundation of your strategy is branding, or in this case, re-branding. If people is your business, your face and your personality is your brand. In the social media world, you have to be a little creative and develop a separate brand or personality in the blogosphere.

As long as the internet has been around people have been using it to create a new identity for themselves. The beauty of the internet is that anonymity is automatic. You start with a blank sheet of paper and with a little creativity you can draw your own picture essentially developing a new personality or brand online. Though Social Networking Profiles are centered on names and faces, blogs are centered on information.

Assume Your Social Media Alter Ego

As a compliance based professional, you can use your blog to express your opinion and be a source of information and expertise ‘anonymously.’ Then, use your social networking profiles like facebook and twitter etc. as a pointing device to this great information you’ve located online. People are smart and they will get the message. “Person X is always posting the best stock tips… she must be a stock broker or know a good one.” Bam! You’re in there.

If you are in a social profession, social networking is essential to your survival long term. Everyone in your target market is flocking to social media and they are looking to do business with people they can relate with and connect to. Be that person and seize the social media moment that can make your career!

Are you curious about this phenomenon called social media? Social Media is rapidly becoming a primary method of communication and information sharing. With Facebook reporting more than 200 million active users and Twitter boasting growth from 14 million users to more than 21 million users, social media is clearly here to stay.

With the growing popularity of social media, businesses are also beginning to understand that they can use this new communication tool to benefit them professionally: but how? At first glance social media appears complicated, time consuming, and almost pointless. After all, how can you generate business from posting random material about your life?

With all these questions many business professionals are ignoring the 800lb social media gorilla in the room. They know its there, they know its not going anywhere, but they don’t know what to do with it so they’d rather ignore it than deal with it.

That’s where we come in. At Guerrilla Social Media, we make sense of social media by educating our clients about social networking profiles, blogging and how they work in conjunction with your website to establish your online presence. You are not alone we are hear to guide you! Let the journey begin.