Loading

Grow Smart Business


teaserInfographic
Close

Search Articles

Most liked posts



Recent Articles

Popular Tags

accounting and taxes blogging blogs Branding Business Development business travel Capital Access Compliance Customer Service ecommerce Email marketing entrepreneur entrepreneurship Facebook Generational Marketing GrowSmartBiz Conference Grow Smart Business lead generation LinkedIn Marketing michael dougherty mobile marketing networking online marketing Raising Capital Resources retail sales sales process SBSI Search Marketing seo small business small business accounting small business hiring small business loans small business marketing small business resources small business technology Small Business Trends social media Technology Twitter Web Design Workforce

Categories

Posts Tagged ‘Social networking’


B2B Social Media Beats B2C: Let Us Count the Ways

August 22nd, 2011 ::

Twitter bird chirping

I’ve written about the differences between B2B and B2C companies before, so I decided to do a little more research into how they’re different when it comes to social media marketing. From what I can tell, B2B companies have the edge over B2C’s when it comes to effectively reaching customers through social media.

1.  You can bet on it

Because B2B product lines change less frequently, you can bet that the social media content you’re producing today will be around a lot longer. The longer shelf life of B2B products means your marketing efforts will continue to create value longer, making them more effective and less expensive than their B2C counterparts.

B2B social media marketing is more reliable in another way, too. In general, fewer people are talking about B2B companies online than B2C’s, so you have more control over what is being said about your brand. It follows that B2B’s generate less negativity online as well, so you have less negative content to handle. Sure, buzz is great, but only if it is enhancing the value of your brand, rather than keeping you running in circles trying to put the lid on any negative vibes.

2.  You can’t beat the relationships

While B2C relationships are rife with impulsive or emotional buying decisions, B2B purchasing decisions are more relationship-driven. Businesses tend to interact directly with customers many times to educate prospects about their products and services. They can engage prospects throughout the entire sales cycle and can continue after a sale is finalized, through support, upgrades and continuing education.

The B2B buying process usually involves multiple colleagues and is reliant on recommendations, so it evolves over time, helping to solidify relationships. This emphasis on building relationships suits social media to a tee.

3.  The community is smaller and tighter

The B2B market is a smaller, more focused market, compared to the B2C. As a result, you can use social media to connect with prospects and start building relationships faster and easier. B2B buyers also tend to rely on recommendations and feedback from this smaller community. You can use social media to generate product feedback, helping to influence purchasing decisions.

B2B social media practices also create an opportunity for you to demonstrate your business value. Show the community you are reliable, responsive, and knowledgeable, and watch your sales grow!

In your experience, does B2B or B2C social media win? How have you found them to be different?

Image by Flickr user ivanpw (Creative Commons)

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in Marketing, Social Media | No Comments »

Video and Mobile Marketing: Just-Released Stats and What They Mean for Your Business

August 9th, 2011 ::
This entry is part 1 of 2 in the series Inbound Marketing

People using mobile phonesIn the first of this two-part series, I shared data on inbound marketing and online advertising and how it related to your small business – all based on great marketing statistics in the just published “The Marketing Data Box.”  In this, the second post, we are looking at video marketing and advertising.

If you have thought about producing and sharing videos online as part of your marketing strategy, consider that Americans watch 14 hours of online video each week.  That translates to an average of 179 million Americans watching video each month.

Based on those numbers, it is pretty safe to say that video marketing is a good idea due to its high level of engagement.  It probably comes as no surprise that YouTube is the dominant channel (77% of market share), trailed way behind by Hulu (6%) and Bing (4%).

It is also worthwhile to consider advertising using online video ads, as they reach 45% of the U.S. population an average of 32 times per month.  Obviously, you need to make sure your target market is in the demographic mix of any online video channel before committing.

If they are using Hulu, you might want to advertise there, as that video channel generated the highest number of video ad impressions at nearly 1.1 billion.

What about mobile?  We are all very reliant on our smartphones to do just about anything–well, at least the 31% of us who have a smart phone.  Nielsen found that Americans spend 38.5% of their smartphone usage time on email.  Social networking is a distant second (10.7%), which, quite honestly, surprised me, but only because so many people I know update Facebook constantly while on the go.

If you want to reach smartphone users, think about finding a mobile game developer. Some 44% of US mobile phone users have played a mobile game at least once; 33% of respondents have played a game in the past month; and nearly a quarter (24.6%) have played in the past week, making them  “avid mobile phone gamers.”

“The Marketing Data Box” is a quarterly series published by Watershed Publishing’s Data Insights, based on HubSpot’s data and using graphics supplied by MarketingCharts.com. 

Image by Flickr user garryknight (Creative Commons)

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Marketing | 1 Comment »

5 Social Media Crimes to Avoid

July 26th, 2011 ::

HandcuffsGiven the prevalent use of social media among professionals, small businesses, huge corporations, and everyone in between, it still surprises me that five social media crimes are continually being committed.

The funny part is that all of these crimes totally ignore the fact that social networking is social.  Communicating on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter is no different than talking to someone in person, on the phone, via text, or through email; it’s just a new platform for doing so.

OK, time to get up on my soapbox.  In no particular order, here are the five social media crimes you need to avoid commiting:

1. Sending LinkedIn invitations without personalizing the message

“I would like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn.”  Great, but why?  And also, please remind me where we’ve met if we’re not super good buddies.  Throw in something you remember me mentioning for extra brownie points.  But basically, don’t be so lazy you can’t take 30 seconds to compose a short note to me.  It smacks of sloppiness.

2. Sending LinkedIn invitations to total strangers

If I had a dollar for every invitation I’ve received from complete and total strangers (who also always commit Crime #1), I could go to a very nice restaurant for dinner tonight.  Doing this is akin to walking up to someone on the street who you’ve never met and asking them to be your friend.  It’s weird.

Instead, go through our mutual connections and request an introduction from someone we both know.  Or, for Pete’s sake, take 30 seconds to write me a personal note and explain why you want to be connected with me.

When I get one of these invites, I reply very nicely with something like this: “I am so sorry, but your name doesn’t ring a bell.  Have we met?”  Then I go scream into a pillow.

3. Using Twitter like it’s a megaphone

By now, I can spot the Twitter spammers: They’re the ones who have 10,000 followers and three tweets.  But when I get a notification that someone is now following me on Twitter, I generally check out their feed to see what they’re tweeting, if they’re retweeting, if they’re mentioning other people and companies in their tweets, and if they’re having conversations with others.

If you are not doing any of this and are just using Twitter like a megaphone to push out your own content and tweet your own ideas, I have zero interest in following you back.

4. Locking your Twitter account

Will someone please explain to me why it’s OK to restrict your Twitter account so only select people can see it?  Doesn’t that defeat the purpose of Twitter? A few times a week, I get followed by people with locked Twitter accounts.  I have to then ask their permission to follow them back.  Not very social, is it?  Why don’t they just hang up a velvet rope around their account and hire a big burly bouncer while they’re at it?

5. Not sharing photos or videos on Facebook

Facebook is a very visual medium.  If all you do is update your status with text, you are boring, and by extension, so are your brand and company and products and services.  I like fun people and companies, as I am sure you do too.  I don’t want to work with boring people, and if I think you’re boring, I won’t work with you.

Any other social media crimes that you want to add to the list?  Leave a comment below!

Image courtesy of Flickr user Vectorportal (Creative Commons)

Tags: , , , , , , ,
Posted in Marketing, Social Media | No Comments »

Want to Really Increase Your Website Traffic? Try SocialToaster

June 3rd, 2011 ::

If you’re a small business, one of the goals of your marketing strategy is to drive more traffic to your website, where you can convert those visitors into leads.

To generate traffic, you need to publish great content that is interesting and useful to your target market.  You can write a blog, newsletter, white papers, press releases, articles, how-to guides, whatever, and then you’ll push out all of that content to your audience via email or social media.

Well, how about tapping into an audience on social media that goes way beyond your followers?

Check out this Baltimore-based startup, SocialToaster.  I first wrote about them for Tech Cocktail back in March.  I have zero affiliation with them, but their idea – and the technology behind it – is really interesting and super useful for small businesses, so sharing them here at GrowSmartBiz has been on my to-do list for a while.

So, here’s how they work:  Ask customers, employees, Facebook fans, and anyone else you’d like to be your ambassador (their term, not mine).  You’ll share content with them, and they will spread the content on their social networks (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and/or LinkedIn).  Naturally, there are built-in analytics so you can track website visitors to see which ambassador sent them.

SocialToaster is a great way to gain brand exposure and build up your sales funnel, but it is dependent on you producing content on a regular basis.  You don’t need to go crazy writing new stuff all the time, though.  If you already blog, you can ask your ambassadors to share your posts.  If you publish a newsletter, ask them to share that.  Each SocialToaster post contains a unique URL and appears to come from the ambassador themselves, so your clickthrough rates will be higher than traditional online advertising.

So, what’s in it for your ambassadors?  Rewards, at least for the people that drive sales leads to you, furnished by sponsors.  Recruiting them is up to you.  You can send an email to employees, newsletters to customers, post something on Facebook, blog about it, or tweet it – or anything else you can think of.

The SocialToaster software can be integrated with your existing content management and CRM systems including Drupal, WordPress, SugarCRM and SalesForce.  As for pricing, you pay a flat monthly subscription fee based on the number of SocialToaster posts you want to push out.  Their most basic plan is free.

Image Courtesy: SocialToaster

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Branding, Business Development, Email Marketing, Marketing, Social Media, social media | 1 Comment »

6 Ways Your Blog Can Build Your Social Media Audience

April 11th, 2011 ::

While blogging is often used to increase search visibility, establish expertise on a topic, and drive traffic to your website, it’s not often used to build your audience on social media, whether you are trying to build up your Twitter following, Facebook fans, or status on Tumblr.  It’s a lost opportunity, as there is really nothing better than building on an audience you already have.  (Of course, this can work in the other direction too—use social media to build up your blog audience.)

When building your social media following, just remember that quality of fans totally trumps quantity.  And by quality, I mean the kinds of fans who engage with you, retweet your tweets, comment on Facebook posts, post to your Facebook wall, and, of course, become customers!

Let’s start with two very basic, common-sense things you need to do:

1. Add social share buttons at the bottom of each blog post to make it easy for your blog readers to spread the word about your fabulous blog and build awareness of your social media presence.

2. Add social media icons on every page of your website, especially if your website and blog are one and the same, which is becoming more and more common.  Make as easy as possible for people to follow you on social media.

And here are four common-sense things you might not have thought of:

1. Promote your social media presence (with links to the accounts) in the bio you supply for guest blogging gigs.  You’ll be reaching a whole new audience, and if they like what you wrote, hopefully they’ll feel compelled to connect with you on social media.

2. At the end of blog posts, add a link to the social media account you’d most like to promote, asking that people follow you there.  This sounds so simple, but you will be amazed by what you can achieve just by asking.

3. Mention your social media accounts in blog posts.  We’ve all got so much going on that we cannot remember everything, even if we have the best of intentions.

4. Reference tweets or Facebook posts, either from you or your audience, in your blog posts when relevant.  Add screen shots if you can.  You can also build entire blog posts around the conversations that are happening on Twitter and Facebook between you and your audience.  People are very lemming-like, so the more you show your engagement on social media, the more people will want to be a part of all the fun you are having.

Image by Flickr user Holger Zscheyge (Creative Commons)

Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Marketing, Search Marketing, social media | 2 Comments »

9 Ways to Not Suck at Facebook

March 28th, 2011 ::

Happy fingersI hate Facebook so much that today is the first day I’ve been on it for, like, 3 weeks.  I have a community manager, so I don’t need to worry too much about it, but still…I feel like I can’t make the time for it, even on a personal level.  (Did I miss it?  Not at all!)

However, I am sick of sucking at Facebook, so though I may loathe it, I also want to be good at it.  I want a happy little community of smiling faces, just like in the photo.  So, as part of my ongoing education, I just skimmed a great new eBook from HubSpot called Facebook Page Marketing.  (See my other post for examples of 5 companies that are using Facebook creatively—and to great effect.)

Now, we already know lots of basics about Facebook: engage, push out interesting and useful content, have a personality, blah, blah, blah.  Those aren’t being repeated below.  Instead, I want to share 9 common sense things I learned in the eBook that are easy to overlook—or that you might not have thought of in the first place.

1. Use the Wall to build a sense of community with your fans. Interact with them in non-promotional ways.

2. If you want to grow your fan base, try using ads.

3. The number one reason people become fans is to take advantage of promotional offers.

4. Post on the weekends and in the mornings if you want more engagement on your page.  Optimal posting frequency is about every other day (yes, this surprised me too!).

5. Experiment with different types of content—videos, photos, video blogs, etc.—to figure out what engages your fans.

6. If you really want to generate conversation, one of the most popular topics on Facebook is…Facebook.

7. Create custom landing tabs that allow people to subscribe to your email list or include a call-to-action.

8. People become fans of a brand for 3 reasons:

  1. The brand directly invited them through their email or on their website
  2. They saw an ad
  3. They were referred by a friend to take advantage of a promotional offer

9. Find your customers on Facebook by taking advantage of their ad platform.  You don’t actually have to launch an ad, but go through the process.  Because their ads are highly targeted, the process will allow you to learn how many people fit your target demographic.

Image by Flickr user peyri (Creative Commons)

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Marketing, Social Media | 3 Comments »

Women in Business: Striking a Balance Between Entrepreneurship and Motherhood

May 19th, 2010 ::

If you’re lucky, every once in a while you meet someone who totally changes your life.  Staci LaRue is just one of those people.  As a holistic nutritionist and personal trainer who specializes in Pilates, Staci helps lots of people change by helping them live healthier, more balanced, and less stressed lives.  She changed mine in a big way after a consultation this past winter.  After 17½ years of being a vegetarian, I did a 180˚: I started eating meat and stopped eating soy and wheat (not as hard as I thought it would be!).  Because LaRue Wellness is such a niche business, and because Staci manages to balance the demands of running a new business with being a wife and mom to a toddler, I wanted to share her story with you.
 

 

Staci LaRue

Staci LaRue

As 2009 was coming to an end I realized that as much as I was enjoying motherhood, I also enjoyed my career as a fitness and nutrition professional.  My former office space only allowed me to hold nutrition appointments, and I really wanted to add the personal training component back to my client programs.  I needed to expand, and the only way it made sense financially was to do it on my own.  LaRue Wellness unofficially launched in January 2010, but thanks to Mother Nature’s snow generosity things didn’t really get going until February.  

I like being in control of my client relationships, scheduling, and having everything I want and need in my space to create the perfect atmosphere for wellness.  As great as being your own boss is, it also adds some extra pressure and schedule demands, even more so for a one woman operation like mine.  It is always a challenge to find time for client emails, accounting duties and maintenance, along with all the requirements of mommy hood.  It’s a hard balance but I wouldn’t have it any other way.  I love the challenge and being my own boss keeps me busy and I think makes me a better mom and role model.  

Spreading the Word

Thus far I have done a little social networking on Facebook, but the rest has been word of mouth. I have been blessed with some great clients who have helped me spread the word about my new business.

Growing and Changing

My goal is to maintain the balance of being a mom and wife while continuing to help my clients become and stay healthy.  In the immediate future, I would like do more corporate and group wellness programs.  So far I have only had one corporate client for a 5 week weight loss workshop, which was a success.  I have also hired an evening trainer who can utilize my facility while I am home being mom, which will help LaRue Wellness grow.

Advice for the New Business Owner

Set realistic goals, make time for your home/personal life, and don’t forget to pack a lunch!

As told to Monika Jansen via email

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in small business | No Comments »

Best Of… Social Media — From Your Online Persona to Twitter to Job Searches

May 7th, 2010 ::

by Robin Ferrier

http://www.flickr.com/photos/benimoto/ / CC BY 2.0

There is so much good information floating out there in the Web-o-sphere — or the Interwebs, as one of my friends likes to call it — that it’s easy to find yourself in information overload. I see it every day with all the great articles my friends are posting to their blogs, their Twitter accounts, their Facebook pages… so I thought I’d start a regular “best of” feature for this blog that would be a regular round-up of some other great career resources/articles. (After all, why reinvent the wheel, right?) With that in mind, our first “Best of…” feature gets underway with a look at some of my recent “favs” regarding social media.

How I balance personal & professional on Twitter
from Denise Graveline (@dontgetcaught) of Don’t Get Caught communications

With tips ranging from why you should include some personal information in your tweets to advice on what you should leave out, Denise Graveline does it again, providing a thoughtful, insightful look at best practices in Twitter use.

MY ADDITIONAL TIP: Look at your tweet balance. By this I mean, how much is personal (in my case, my work on the Gaithersburg Book Festival, complaints about bad service at stores or restaurants, anything related to wine, dogs, or writing) vs. work (in my case, generally anything related to: marketing or PR, economic development, career development, or Johns Hopkins University)? I tend to think you should, in general, want to be 66-75% “work” and the remainder “fun.” (By the way, I tweet at @rferrier. Feel free to follow. You’ll find links to additional career resources and articles.)

Make sure your online self matches your real self during job interviews
by Jennifer Nycz-Conner (@JenConner), a Washington Business Journal reporter and blogger… and contributor to this blog

Jennifer writes about the importance of making sure your “online (unofficial) resume” matches the resume you’re presenting to employers.

Dear Bev: How Should I Use Social Networking In My Job Search?
from MediaPost Publications

A look at how you can EFFECTIVELY employ LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter in your job search.

MY $0.02: Yes, you should be on LinkedIn. Do it now. It’s one of the top professional social networking sites. As to recommendations on LinkedIn, make sure yours are not just from friends. The recommendations should come from your university professors, supervisors at summer jobs or internships, etc. Also, don’t underestimate the value of using the Answers section of LinkedIn. (In the interest of full disclosure, I don’t use them enough. But Jason Alba from JibberJobber is a pro at this and writes about the topic on a regular basis!) Ask questions. Answer others’ questions. It can help you start to establish your professional persona.

4 Ways to Utilize LinkedIn’s “Follow Company” Feature
by Andrew G. Rosen on Social Times

Did you know LinkedIn has a new “follow company” feature? I didn’t… until I saw this post. (Thanks, @GenerationsGuru for the tweet about this!) Andrew Rosen provides some great tips on how to use the feature, including a reminder that you should be targeting companies you want to work for as much as you are looking for jobs that fit what you want to do.

MY THOUGHTS: Where you work is as important as what you do. It truly is. A lot of people would benefit from following Andrew’s advice. I think there’s a lot of merit in taking a less-than-perfect job — at least according to its job description — if it’s for a company you admire and for which you want to work.

So there’s a round-up of some of my recent career-related readings. What about you? Any good articles you’d recommend? Or do you have your own advice related to these topics? Let us know. Weigh in below!

Robin Ferrier is the editor of What’s Next, Gen Y? and Communications Manager for the Johns Hopkins University Montgomery County Campus. She is also the President of the Capital Communicators Group and the co-chair of the Marketing Committee for the Tech Council of Maryland. She has inadvertently become a frequent career / professional / job hunt resource for friends and colleagues due to a career path that has included five jobs in 12 years.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Job Search, Networking, Personal Brand, References, Robin Ferrier, social media, Uncategorized, WhatsNextGenY | No Comments »

How to Leverage Facebook for Inbound Marketing Success

April 15th, 2010 ::

Image representing Facebook as depicted in Cru...
Image via CrunchBase

As we continue our monthly theme of Inbound Marketing we would be remiss if we didn’t talk about Facebook. If you are on the web and do anything social networking related, you have probably heard of Facebook.

It started out as a social network for college students and then opened up to corporations and then to the general public. Over time they opened up their back-end and launched the F8 developers platform and the gold rush of games and all kinds of applications launched.

This was the catalyst for millions of people who never considered getting on a social network before. I will be that you probably have a Facebook profile and you might have even let your mom be your friend (if you are on Facebook you will get the joke). You can probably guess that the impact of Facebook is staggering but I will bet you don’t know the real size and reach of this social network that seems to be a place some people live and play (even while at work). Here are some basic stats from their site:

  • More than 400 million active users
  • 50% of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day
  • More than 35 million users update their status each day
  • More than 60 million status updates posted each day
  • More than 3 billion photos uploaded to the site each month
  • More than 5 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) shared each week
  • More than 3.5 million events created each month
  • More than 3 million active Pages on Facebook
  • More than 1.5 million local businesses have active Pages on Facebook
  • More than 20 million people become fans of Pages each day
  • Pages have created more than 5.3 billion fans

Yeah, that is pretty impressive isn’t it? This is why this is the new tool for marketers to leverage and create an outpost for their inbound marketing activities. While I could write a book on Facebook (and many people have) there are a few things that you should be familiar with as you explore Facebook and incorporate it into your inbound marketing strategy.

Facebook Groups

The concept of groups have been around for a long time and they are a basic way to gather people together. Groups have an advantage in that any group member can send out “bulk invites” to their friends which means that this is better for growth via viral marketing. You can message your members via a private message and you can host a discussion and use the wall like you can do with a fan page (more on fan pages in a minute). However, you can’t get statistics, use social ads (more on that in minute too) or create related events or invitations.

Bottom Line Use: Groups are generally better for hosting active discussions and getting attention quickly.

Fan Pages

Fan Pages are the most popular feature on Facebook because of a primary function that it has over any other function on Facebook – fan pages are visible to everyone, even unregistered vistors and are indexed by Google. Yes, that is sweet and fantastic for reputation management. Facebook pages also let you use vanity URLs – CAVEAT: These vanity URLs can only be set once and you can’t change it once you set it. The allow for inclusion of Facebook applications, which can be a good or bad thing depending on how you feel about Facebook apps. You can message all members via updates, get statistics, create events and promote the page with social ads.

So you have probably deduced that this is your home page on Facebook and people are creating pages for companies, products, celebrities and just about any brand or wanna-be brand that is looking to build a community around it.

Bottom Line Use: You can see that fan pages are fantastic for building long-term relationships with fans, readers, customers and anyone else that you want to connect with.

Ads

While advertising has been in social networks forever, it is how many social networks business models operate. However, with the growth of the F8 developer platform and the incredible growth of its use base it is really a self-contained ecosystem. This means that people can run ads within Facebook to advertise their pages (and any other web page) within Facebook.

The advantage of these “Social Ads” is that from your profile they know everything you let them know (age, gender, religion, interests, relationship status, location) which makes advertising super-accurate and with ongoing attention, better results than almost every other type of advertising.

Bringing it “Back to the Hub”

As you work through your inbound marketing strategy think about how this content outpost can help your business. This can bring people to your site and be the place they discover you and your brand. What I want to emphasize is that one tool is not better than the other and your organization could use all three of these or just one but at the very least I would recommend that you sign up for one and begin experimenting. But take note, you need to have dedicated resources to participate and update the site.

Are You Utilizing Facebook?

Are any of you readers out there using Facebook Groups, Fan Pages or Social Ads in your current social media strategy? We would love to hear your perspective and experiences to share with our readers.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Marketing, Search Marketing, small business, social media | 15 Comments »

Social Networking Etiquette 101: 5 Ways to Mind Your Manners While Online

December 2nd, 2009 ::

When I first joined Facebook, I got a friend request from a total stranger.  Turns out she was a “2nd”, aka, the friend of a friend.  That’s really ballsy, I thought, but I wasn’t totally surprised.  It’s happened to all of us.  While having a total stranger follow you on Twitter is flattering, LinkedIn and Facebook are a bit more intimate.  Being approached by a stranger on those sites is kind of stalker-ish.  Needless to say, I blocked the person who tried to “friend” me.

I do wonder, though, why social networking causes so much mindless behavior.  Perhaps it’s because we’re in a rush, or perhaps we’re just trying to stay active on all those social networking sites, or perhaps it’s because some of us were raised by wolves in the outback.  Most of just really want more connections on LinkedIn and more followers on Twitter.  Whatever the reason, though, gazillions of people out there don’t think before they type…or click…or send friend requests.

So, here you go: 5 ways to mind your manners while online.

  1. Don’t automatically subscribe someone to your e-marketing or e-newsletter program.  Engage with that person first, then ask if they’d like to be added to your distribution list.  And be sure that instructions for unsubscribing are clearly stated somewhere in your email.
  2. Do not attempt to “friend” someone on Facebook or connect with someone on LinkedIn unless you personally know them.  If you’d like to meet them, figure out someone you have in common and ask for an introduction.  If that fails, email them through Facebook and introduce yourself.
  3. Don’t ignore attempts to connect.  Respond to someone’s note with a note of your own and suggest an alternative way to connect.  However, if you don’t even know the person (see above), go ahead and block them.
  4. If you are attempting to connect with someone you only met briefly, remind that person how you know each other.
  5. Don’t attempt to connect two business acquaintances, colleagues, or friends without a heads up to both people.  Fair warnings are always appreciated.

If you have any other etiquette tips, email me at monika@jansencomm.com. If I receive enough suggestions, I’ll write them up in a future blog post.

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in small business | 3 Comments »