How successful is Social Networking for you?

I spend few hours a week updating my Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn profiles by adding connections, posts, followers, et cetera (in short, everything that should help me to promote my business). I have improved my profiles by adding pictures, information about my company and contact details. Now, I am waiting for the results and in the meantime I would like to ask you if you have tried already this way of promoting your business and how much goodness has it brought to you?
 
Obviously the more people that know you, see your work, know your business, see your skills, the better. So putting it all into the social network scene is a good thing to do. It certainly won't harm your search for new clients.

Any client looking for a designer won't just look on Twitter/Facebook or Linkedin for a designer. So I wouldn't rely on this alone for work requests. You might get a few enquiries, which is good as an added extra, but I'd concentrate on getting your site visible online, getting in touch with businesses personally for the main bulk of your jobs.
 
Obviously the more people that know you, see your work, know your business, see your skills, the better. So putting it all into the social network scene is a good thing to do. It certainly won't harm your search for new clients.

Any client looking for a designer won't just look on Twitter/Facebook or Linkedin for a designer. So I wouldn't rely on this alone for work requests. You might get a few enquiries, which is good as an added extra, but I'd concentrate on getting your site visible online, getting in touch with businesses personally for the main bulk of your jobs.

I agree. The business we get the most if from word of mouth and referrals, as well as having an easily accessible website.
How about business networking? Does anyone do any of this kind of thing? I used to be in the BNI but didn't find it that beneficial.
 
Obviously the more people that know you, see your work, know your business, see your skills, the better. So putting it all into the social network scene is a good thing to do. It certainly won't harm your search for new clients.

Any client looking for a designer won't just look on Twitter/Facebook or Linkedin for a designer. So I wouldn't rely on this alone for work requests. You might get a few enquiries, which is good as an added extra, but I'd concentrate on getting your site visible online, getting in touch with businesses personally for the main bulk of your jobs.

Completely agree with this. I see a lot of companies making the mistake of constantly trying to sell on twitter/facebook etc. A few company twitter accounts are just tweet after tweet of offers and promotions. They aren't ENGAGING with anyone. The clue is in the name.. SOCIAL media.. it is a form of networking. No guarantees of work but the more people that are exposed to your company the better, social media exposure costs nothing but your time.
 
Completely agree with this. I see a lot of companies making the mistake of constantly trying to sell on twitter/facebook etc. A few company twitter accounts are just tweet after tweet of offers and promotions. They aren't ENGAGING with anyone. The clue is in the name.. SOCIAL media.. it is a form of networking. No guarantees of work but the more people that are exposed to your company the better, social media exposure costs nothing but your time.

But time is money... I agree, spending too much time on social networks promoting a business is a bit waste of time, especially if you are a one-man-company, so I can afford only few hours a week, just to keep Social Accounts live.
 
To me - social networking is about building and maintaining relationships. Much more of a long term marketing exercise - less so an immediate sell - that said, immediate sells do happen.
 
Iso print is really getting famous in social media day by day and i do not doubt that you getting over 30% of your business from Social Media. I think Being in Social media marketing is going be one of the greatest achievement over the coming years
 
I'm surprised no one has said that it should be enjoyable? Using twitter and maybe less so facebook, should be a fun experience. You can find out information, reach a huge range of people whatever. If you hate every moment you spend on there, you're probably doing it wrong.
 
I find it very useful for my photography business.... i would say 75% of my commissions come from facebook alone

It's also very successful at wasting my time :D
 
@Helen - impressed if 75% of commissions come from Facebook! Do you specialise in one thing? One of my friends is a fashion photographer in London - I'm sure she gets a huge amount from Facebook also.

I'm with Peter Minuteman and see it as a long-term strategy.
 
@Helen - impressed if 75% of commissions come from Facebook! Do you specialise in one thing? One of my friends is a fashion photographer in London - I'm sure she gets a huge amount from Facebook also.

I specialise in children's outdoor photography..... I prey on all the bored stay at home mums ;)

It sounds impressive, but I suppose if you think about it like this..... I take on 4 shoots a month, 3 of which come from face book.
A lot of them are recommendations through past clients - they send their friends my link, who then send their friends my link...... A bit like a pyramid scheme!
 
I started Facebook/Twitter accounts last year and I'm glad I did, I haven't strictly had any work from it but I like the fact that other local businesses/restaurants/independants are following me and are aware of my services and local location etc. Funnily enough, I was found by a BNI member on Twitter and was invited to a meeting ..which led to another meeting which then led to some work! So I guess indirectly I have benefited from social media.

I agree. The business we get the most if from word of mouth and referrals, as well as having an easily accessible website.
How about business networking? Does anyone do any of this kind of thing? I used to be in the BNI but didn't find it that beneficial.

I'm glad you mentioned BNI (I know this is slightly off topic), I went to two meetings (different locations) and ended up with a couple of jobs from one of the meets. At the first meet there was minimal pressure to pay and join, very relaxed and me and the other first time "visitors" got given the form to take home and think over. The second meet was very different, 100% pressure to join/pay from the leader (even followed up with phone calls the day after despite my direct decline) - But I did meet some like minded people there who were also first time visitors and ended up getting some work from them which was very welcomed. If I had the money to spare I would have considered joining but over all (hindsight) I am glad I didn't as I doubt I would have been able to "scratch their back" in return for finding them referrals for work etc. which would have left me in the dark I feel.

Was you a BNI member for long? Would you join again?
 
Was you a BNI member for long? Would you join again?

I was in the BNI for about a year and a half. At first I quite enjoyed it; it was good to meet other business owners and I got a bit of work, mostly business cards and the odd leaflet. But once they had business cards, they didn't want much else. There were a few external referrals but most were fairly lukewarm.

It works well for people in trades such as plumbers and electricians. A builder or bathroom fitter only needs one extension or bathroom to pay for their fees, but for service providers like Graphic Designers, it's more difficult. The members think that giving someone a wee business card order won't cost them too much but will give them points in the system, so they don't put much effort into getting you anything more substantial.
There's a lot of pressure to 'perform', and a lot of the members pass around referrals which don't lead to anything but get their 'stats' up. I did find it difficult to speak to my clients about whether they needed artex removed during a design consultation, so I probably didn't put so much effort into getting forced referrals for the other members.
After a while, most of the members get stuck in a rut and end up saying the same things over and over and are quite happy to take any business going. Also, some of the 'Directors' are known to put a lot of undue pressure and stress on some members, whilst being quite patronising and treating the members (grown up business owners!) like school children.

In saying all that, there are benefits. It's great for boosting your confidence, as you have to speak in front of your group and it's good for meeting other business owners. It works for a lot of people. However, for me it wasn't that cost effective.

I would be interested in a different kind of networking group though. One that doesn't have as much pressure to perform, where you can be yourself and concentrate more on selling yourself rather than others. :icon_biggrin:
 
I could sense the "pressure to perform" which is partly what put me off. I didn't want to pay the fee's and then two months down the line find that I wasn't getting "fed" because I couldn't feed the group in return. The commitment was slightly daunting because I like to head up north a few times a year for a week at a time, I was told I would have to supply a substitute in my absence "somebody from your company, or somebody in the same field as you" ..I'm a one man band and don't see the logic of placing (technically) a competitor to take my paid spot when I couldn't make the weekly meet.

I also got an interesting reaction from many at both meets when I told them I was a web designer - "Oh! You're a web designer, We get a lot of you come and go, you guys don't stick around for long", This rang alarm bells with me because if joining was worthwhile (as a web designer) then why didn't they stick around etc. - one member said to me "web designers don't stick around because they get SO MUCH work that they just can't juggle it all and have to leave", okay, I thought this 'could' be true but I had my doubts - I put it down as a tactical comment to try and persuade me joining was a good idea (after all, this was one of the 'leaders' who said it to me).

One of the biggest (and instant) benefits I saw by going in as a web designer was people saying to me "I could use some help with my website, it needs updating" and then planning a meet with me so that we could do business (even a member), and yes, some had said they could use help with their website - "once I'd joined" (it was obvious to me that these were hardcore members who were more interested in me signing/paying rather than getting their website sorted). I feel that the benefit is that a web designer can deliver immediately without much fuss, if their portfolio is good then it's easy to consider, where as a builder would be checked out first/build a sense of if they can be trusted etc., obviously there's a lot more money involved when it comes to construction which requires more consideration. What I'm getting at is I doubt that a builder has visited on their first day and walked out with a new/willing client.

Like you stated, It would be great to join a different style of members group which doesn't hold so much pressure.
 
Hi there, I'm new to the forum but wanted to reply to this question. I' ve just finished an online print website and in the middle of promoting it. The print trade on the whole seems to be stuck in the middle, most companies have an established client base and are happy to stick with that while others are convinced the way forward is via the web. only a small percentage are willing to connect the two, as far as I'm concerned this is the only way. Seo is vital for website, and using social media is a great way of spreading the word of your company, the larger search engines are favouring searches with links to social media, Facebook, twitter, blogs. There a good way of buiidling an audience but as mentioned by other replies you do need to engage in iinteresting subjects. Seo is vital, it does not guarantee immediate sales but it's the ability to convert the clicks into sales.....there's plenty of apps out there to enable you to do this.
 
Almost all markets are based on social media, if they aren't on twitter, they are on facebook. All of your potential customers are there, it is how you get to them that is the issue.
 
Social networking provides me with the perfect platform to get more traffic for my website. It took me some time to establish a good network on Facebook and Twitter, however now these websites have become the major traffic sources for my website. I have also started creating a presence on Google+. I am extremely happy with the response I get for the posts I update in my profiles as well. Social networking is something that will never change for the years to come.
 
Hi, after months of promoting my website through social media networks I found that Facebook and Twitter are really good tools for exposing my articles and posts that I write for my design blog. Plus, pasting a link on Fb and Tw of your new written article makes it indexed really fast, so articles can bring you more traffic from Google straight away after publighing them. Does anyone do similar things or maybe someone knows better ways of doing that?
 
I've also been finding lately that if you promote and network a lot on Twitter, it's a great resource for building up contacts and clients.
 
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