MarketingSavant

In a Social World, Go Direct

2012-02-03T12:22:12Z

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In a world that seems overrun by the daily chatter about social media and the need for every business to jump on the bandwagon, there are some businesses that have been notable holdouts and that are doing just fine by their decision.

Spring-Green Lawn Care is one such organization that prefers the direct approach to going full steam ahead into social media. In an article for NBC Chicago, James Young, president of Spring-Green talked about their decision to focus a majority of their efforts on direct mail and how they supplement the mailings with social media.

We tend to like direct mail. It’s very transactional. You have to go with an aggressive promotional offer. We can target it and it’s focused. But we absolutely need to provide all the different demographics with the vehicle to come back to us. Whether that’s a blog where they have questions and I can answer them… we’re not quite to live-chat, but we’re certainly looking at it. Social is still a very small part of our overall campaign.

Spring-Green’s approach fits well with its go-to-market strategy which employs local franchies at the point of service so that even the reply envelopes from their direct mail overtures route back to the local franchise. Their targeted direct mail pieces are customized down to the neighborhood level based on local franchise knowledge. That’s something you can’t get with social media.

According to Young, social media does have its place, however.

Social media to us is more about loyalty and retention than it is about acquisition. In other words, there isn’t this natural place or metric for us to go into social media channels and talk about lawn care. There isn’t a cult-like following or community around people who want to outsource their lawn-care to somebody because, quite frankly, it’s counterintuitive.

Take a fresh approach with an old standby when trying to grow you business. Go direct to the customer.

Source: http://www.nbcchicago.com/blogs/inc-well/Spring-Green-Lawn-Cares-President-Mows-Down-Traditional-Online-Marketing-124422484.html#ixzz1lJunYUPd

What NOT to Do With Social Media Marketing

2012-02-02T13:12:53Z

As a marketer, I spend a lot of time teaching people about how to use social media for marketing purposes. We talk in great depth about what to do in order to be effective social media marketers, but I haven’t yet touched on the pitfalls to avoid with social media marketing. Here is a list of 10 social media faux pas. Try not to make the list!

1. Create an Account and Promptly Abandon it

The only thing worse than having no social media presence, is having a social media presence and letting the cobwebs creep in because you let it sit for weeks or months at a time without touching it. There are a couple of ways to avoid this:

Don’t launch your social media marketing campaign until you are absolutely ready
Make time for it once it’s launched. You don’t have to invest hours on end, 10-20 minutes a day is enough to actively participate

2. Update Your Status 100 Times a Day

A sure-fire way to lose followers and fans is to Tweet or update your Facebook status every minute of every day. I know this sounds awfully picky: “don’t let us forget about you but also don’t be too involved in social media.” But trust me there is a fine line between being active in social media and bombarding your followers with your status updates and Tweets. Only post or Tweet when you have something truly interesting to share and try not to annoy your beloved followers with an overactive Facebook or Twitter presence.

3. Post Links Without Captions

It takes very little effort to post a link to an article on Facebook or Tweet a link to an article. Find a way to add your own personal touch to the link. Highlight your favorite part of the article, extract a quote, or ask a thought-provoking question. Do something to show followers that you actually read the article and you know there is valuable information within.

4. Text-Only Facebook Status Updates

Yawn. Excuse me, sorry were you saying something? No matter what you’re posting about, try to include some type of attachment to spice it up. Try to find a picture, a link to an article, a video, or statistic to make the post more dynamic and encourage engagement.

5. Share Political Opinions

Politics always have been and always will be a hot-button issue. No matter how tempted you may be to share your support or disdain for a candidate or political topic, don’t. I’m sure you have friends on Facebook that do it, and maybe you even do it on your personal account, but your political beliefs have no place on your Fan page and Twitter account. It may result in some support from a few followers, but you’re guaranteed to make enemies in the process, possibly even resulting in lost customers. People take politics very seriously. It’s a topic best left alone.

6. Go Share- or Like-Happy on Facebook

Does a Facebook Like even mean anything anymore? It’s so easy to do that people end up abusing the Like and Share buttons on Facebook. Do your part to cut down on arbitrary liking and sharing of content on Facebook. If you really like something then go ahead and press the Like button or share it with your fans, but at least have the decency to add an insightful comment to go along with it.

7. Ignore Your Fans’ Comments

If a fan takes the time to comment on one of your posts or write on your wall, they’ve earned a response from you no matter what. Social media should consist of a dialogue between you and your fans, so when someone talks to you, make sure you talk back!

8. Act Like a Broken Record

We know, we heard you the 5th and 6th time you mentioned the upcoming clearance blowout sale at your store. If something’s really important to you and you want to make sure people hear about it, mention it on the social networks and send out an e-invite so people put it in their calendar.

9. Retweet Everything

The repeat Retweeter is just as bad as the habitual Facebook Liker I mentioned above. Retweet with caution and consideration and you should be in fine shape.

10. Badmouth the Competition

Remember what your mother told you, “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” People can see straight through petty bad-mouthing. Stay positive on the social networks and you can’t lose.

It’s easy to be critical and point out the bad behavior on social networks, but of course nobody’s perfect so if you find yourself slipping up in one of these areas, don’t beat yourself up over it. Try to focus on the things you’re doing right and always strive to improve.

5 Marketing Podcasts You Need to Listen To

2012-01-31T23:26:37Z

Podcasting may not be something that you’re actively involved in as a marketer. I get that. You can’t be doing everything in social media. Podcasting, while mainstream, isn’t exactly burning up the charts, according to the most recent (meaning, 2010) from Edison research. That said, you can benefit from podcasting by listening to podcasts from the smart marketers on the Internet who’ve been doing this for years.

Since you can’t spend your entire day listening to podcasts, I’ve put 5 podcasts in here, one for each day, that you can gain something from each week. Even if you only listened to one podcast each week, you’d be a better educated marketer than your peers who aren’t learning along with you.

1. For Immediate Release – The Hobson & Holtz Report
Frequency: Weekly
Avg. Length: 1hr
Topics: Marketing, PR, social media, current events in PR, interviews, book reviews

Well into podcast 630+, Shel & Neville have been podcasting since 2005 and have covered all of the trends, interviewed all of the greats and have some keen insights into the world of marketing, PR and social media. If you listen to no other podcast, Hobson & Holtz is really a must listen to.

2. Six Pixels of Separation by Mitch Joel
Frequency: Weekly
Avg. Length: 40-50 minutes
Topics: Social media, interviews, technology

Mitch Joel has a real sense of the social media marketing pulse and that, along with the great interviews and tech topics make this podcast a must listen to. Keep a notepad nearby when you listen (actually, that goes for all of these). Mitch’s podcast is almost at episode 300. He knows podcasting and how to get the most into 40 minutes of marketing better than most.

3. I Love Marketing – Dean Jackson & Joe Polish
Frequency: Weekly
Avg. Length: 1hr – 1:20
Topics: Social media, interviews, technology

Dean and Joe cover all forms of marketing and I get at least one good idea from every podcast. Check it out and listen in for some of their specific ideas, action items and so on.

4. Marketing over Coffee – John Wall & Christopher Penn
Frequency: Weekly
Avg. Length: 20-25 minutes
Topics: Social media, interviews, technology

Hosted by John J. Wall and Christopher Penn, the podcast Marketing Over Coffee is among the best marketing podcasts on the Internet. The podcast covers both classic and new marketing and is recorded in a local coffee shop every week. They get some great luminaries for their interviews and ask great questions.

5. On the Media from NPR
Frequency: Weekly
Avg. Length: 52 minutes
Topics: Social media, interviews, technology

While On the Media is not a traditional marketing podcast, per se, this podcast hosted by Bob Garfield and Brooke Gladstone is one of the most entertaining to listen to (of course, as it’s produced first as a radio show for NPR, so production quality is high) and keeps you up to speed on the world of traditional and social media. They cover the controversies of the day and interview some of the most interesting people in the world of media.

[BONUS]

6. Inside PR
Frequency: Weekly
Avg. Length: 13 – 20 minutes
Topics: Social media, trends, PR news

Inside PR is a Canadian + US podcast about public relations and social media, hosted by Gini Dietrich in Chicago, Joseph Thornley in Ottawa and Martin Waxman in Toronto and produced by Thornley Fallis. Each week, the three industry veterans take a look at the state of the PR industry, explore topical and provocative issues, discuss listener comments, and even interview an interesting guest or two.

Why People Can’t Get Work Done at Work (Hint: M&Ms)

2012-01-31T23:28:10Z

Jason Fried has a radical take here on social media (and why it’s the modern day smoke brake) and work and why work doesn’t happen at work.

[Sidebar] I actually shared the stage with Jason back in 2006/7 when we did AMA social media events in Chicago. He’s gone on, obviously, to do amazing things!

5 Ways Service-Based Businesses Can Use Social Media for Marketing

2012-01-31T17:10:24Z

You can’t touch it, see it, smell it, or hear it, so how does one go about marketing it? If you’ve been presented with the challenge of marketing an intangible “product” you know how difficult it can be. Maybe you run a consulting business, or perhaps your company sells some other type of information service. Without the luxury of a tangible item to present to prospects, it can be quite challenging to prove the quality of your service. Especially when it comes to social media marketing, where visual media is so important. That doesn’t mean there’s no place for social media within your marketing strategy, it simply means you must get more creative. Here are 5 ways service-based businesses can use social media to market their business.

1. Customer Reviews are Paramount

Since you don’t have anything tangible to show for your business, people have to rely on your word, or more importantly, that of satisfied customers when deciding whether or not to patronize your business. There are plenty of opportunities to collect reviews and testimonials online. LinkedIn provides you with a great opportunity to collect testimonials from satisfied clients with their Recommendations feature.

Another way to showcase happy clients is to feature client reviews on your website or blog. There’s no shame in asking satisfied clients to jot down a few thoughts about your business, and most people will be happy to do so.

2. Get Creative with Facebook and Twitter

So you don’t have a product to showcase in your photo strip or weekly discounts to promote to all of your followers and fans, but Facebook and Twitter can still play a significant role in your online marketing strategy. As always, you can use the social networks to draw attention to your website and new blog posts. But going beyond that, you can find ways to reward your followers. Once a week select a fan to receive a free or discounted consult. If that particular fan was on the fence about hiring you, the free consult may be just what it takes to tip them in the right direction.

3. Create Content

There are so many ways to go about creating and sharing content. Pick one or two that work for you and get into a schedule of creating content on a regular basis. For example, blogging is a great way to share advice with your followers and drive traffic to your website. Webinars are another more creative way to show potential clients that you really know your stuff.

Especially in the consulting industry, a big concern people express to me is that if they give all of their secrets away, who’s going to pay money for their services anymore? Won’t people just take the free advice and run with it? The answer is no. People will appreciate the advice and possibly even employ some of it on their own, but by and large people still want that one-on-one interaction with you and the custom advice that goes with it.

4. Show What You Know

When you provide a service it’s okay to be a smarty pants because people will only hire you if they think you know more than them. You can use social media to show off your expertise in your given line of work. Make sure that you’ve filled in your LinkedIn profile as thoroughly as possible, including all degrees, certifications, and related accomplishments. Celebrate any major achievements among your staff on your social networks. It’s important to back up your claims of brilliance with hard evidence. Use LinkedIn Answers to provide thoughtful and original answers to the questions posted that relate to your business.

5. Reward for Referrals

Since service-based companies often rely heavily on referrals, you could start a referral program that rewards fans for referring their friends to your Facebook page and your company. If your clients truly are happy with the service you provide, they will be more than willing to tell their friends about you. After all, this is the recommendation generation.

Just because you don’t have a physical product to sell or a store front to attract people to doesn’t mean you can’t take advantage of the marketing benefits social media has to offer. The more creative you can get in your social media strategy, the better results you’ll see.

My 10 Favorite & Most Helpful Social Media Books (the First 5)

2012-01-30T15:27:46Z

Here’s a quick quiz for you. How many books have been written on the subject of “social media?” Hundreds? Could be. 1500, wow, that seems like a lot, but OK… Try again. According to a search in the Amazon Marketing section alone there are 3,109 books. If you broaden your search to the Business & Investing section, there are over 16,000 books!

I have by no means read all of them, but I have been reading books on social media since Rebecca Blood’s “The Weblog Handbook” in 2002. Imagine that – 10 years of reading social media books. Time flies… In that time, there have been a lot of great books and a lot of not-so-great books on the subject of social media. I’d like to share 10 of my favorites that come to mind here. This is by no means a comprehensive list, but if you were to start with a modest budget and set out to get the best books you can to get up to speed on the subject, I recommend that you start with these books.

1. Engage – Brian Solis
I use Engage as a textbook in my Social Media & Thought Leadership Marketing class that I teach at St. Norbert each January. It is, by far, the most comprehensive book that one can find on the topic, and even at that, there is still so much that is covered in the remaining books here. Engage is dense and is thus not a rapid read (at least it wasn’t for me) but it gives the soon-to-be well-read social media practitioner a strong knowledge base in the discipline.

2. Connected Marketing: The Viral, Buzz and Word of Mouth Revolution – Justin Kirby & Paul Marsden
This book is unfortuantely becoming a bit dated, but it’s such a rich resource for ideas and cases topped off by a complete bibliography of sources cited that it’s actually one of the few books (along with Engage) that I’ve actually re-read. Published in 2006 by a group of smart authors, it captured some of the state of the art ideas and viral & buzz marketing cases of the day. While some of the tools mentioned might be dated, the ideas and methods are evergreen and that’s what keeps this book at the top of my list. It’s a backup resource in my class as well.

3. 31 Days to Better Blogging – Darren Rouse
While this is an e-book, it’s still one of the best resources on blogging that I’ve seen. It’s so practical and so full of managable concepts that any would-be blogger can grasp that if you read no other book on the world of blogging, this book would be it. Darren has built an amazing empire on blogging and this resource walks you down much of the same path that he’s walked to get where he’s at.

4. Social Media Marketing in an Hour a Day – Dave Evans
This book is also getting a bit dated, but Dave did a wonderful job of laying out the practical/tactical approach to doing social media right, day-by-day. Dave has been doing social media for as long as anyone (read: we spoke at the same events together around 2006…) and has a grasp of the daily realities of social media. More to the point, the book introduces some social media models that inspire some realism in how we think about how to implement social media in businesses of all sizes.

5. Influencer Marketing: Who Really Influences Your Customers? – Duncan Brown & Nick Hayes
While this is not specifically a social media book, its fundamentals on the concept of using influencers in your marketing are the foundation on which much of our work rests. The book not only lays out how decisions are made and how influencers work, but also gives you a series of tools and models to use when crafting an influencer marketing strategy.

Bonus: Don’t waste your time/money on…
The Social Media Bible: Tactics, Tools, and Strategies for Business Success – absolutely the most useless book I’ve ever reviewed on the subject of social media. I evaluated this as a text book and was thankful that I didn’t actually have to pay for it as an evaluation copy. I would have sent it straight back to amazon had I purchased it. It’s basically a list of tools with a description of each…not much to be “learned” from this book.

One more… Ekaterina Walter, a social media strategist at Intel, wrote a post on her 12 Most Helpful Books on Social Media – it’s got a few different ones from my list with a bit of good editorial on why she chose the books she did. Check her list out as well.

I’ll cover the next 5 in a post next week. In the mean time, happy reading! Catch you later!

The New Normal Consumer: Setting Boundaries for Sales Success

2012-01-26T20:41:29Z

Have you met the New Normal Consumer? While their optimism has increased over the previous several months, according to Gallup, consumers’ worries over everything from paying the bills to losing their job are as high as they’ve been since 1992.

Americans’ worries about maintaining their standard of living (51%), or being able to pay medical bills (43%) or losing their job (34%) in the next 12 months are among the highest Gallup has measured in the past 20 years, on par with the levels seen in 1991 and 1992.

What’s a marketer to do? Are people still spending money? (Yes, of course they are!) What do we need to do to attract the New Normal buyer?

Set Boundaries

Consumers who feel a lack of control over circumstances seek boundaries — including physical borders, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research.

Keisha Cutright of the University of Pennsylvania authored the research, which indicates that people who feel a lack of control seek tangible boundaries, such as frames around paintings, fences around yards, or prominent borders surrounding a firm’s logo. Moreover, boundaries can manifest in other ways, which marketers can use to their advantage.

Using boundaries and borders in printed material. Time Magazine has done this for years under the guise of “everything worth knowing fits in our red border.”
Add structure to your pricing and service offerings. Bundle, package, set parameters and leave less to interpretation.
Reduce uncertainty in terms and conditions and seek to reduce the randomness in working with your company.
Offer realistic guarantees that inspire confidence in your brand.
Logically organize your purchase or shopping experience for maximum sales. In Cutright’s experiment, she found the retail layouts with a disorganized structure led to lower purchase behavior than in stores with an organized or “bounded” structure.

TIME’s iconic red border symbolizes a bold, even arrogant idea. Everything inside that red border is worth knowing, and whatever is outside of it, well, not so much. That idea contains a concept that is even more essential today than it was when we first proposed it 87 years ago.

Look around your organization, look at your catalogs, your marketing materials for this year and other brand touchpoints. Are the bounded or unbounded? Organized?

Simple changes to add boundaries and structure to your offering could pay large dividends in the world of the New Normal consumer.

Management’s Top 5 Objections to Social Media With Corresponding Rebuttals

2012-01-27T17:00:16Z

Are you a social media fan boy or girl, dying to jump-start your company’s social media marketing campaign, but you can’t get past the miles of red tape? It’s probably frustrating to see so many companies thriving on the social networks while you stand and watch from the sidelines because management has a laundry list of reasons why they don’t want to get involved. If you’ve tried convincing the upper management team of the benefits of social media marketing only to be met with 101 objections, here are a few rebuttals for you to fire back the next time the conversation comes up.

1. Difficult to Measure ROI

If you read any social media related blogs you’ve probably seen some pretty obscure formulas for calculating the return on investment for social media marketing. However, if a company is going to invest in this new form of marketing, it’s understandable that they would want to see what kind of results they’re getting in the form of real figures.

Although I don’t know that there really is a bullet proof way to calculate social media marketing ROI just yet, there are ways to track your progress and sales leads. Focus on convincing management of the benefits of social selling and the various ways you can track sales leads via social media.

2. Giving up Control of the Message

A big fear of social media marketing stems from the lack of control a company has over their message when they surrender to the social networks. But giving up control of your message isn’t necessarily a bad thing. For example, your Facebook fans love you! That’s why they’re called “fans.” Let them write what they want about you online, chances are it’s going to be positive. Whatever negative things people have to say about your business online can be handled in a professional way as long as you monitor the conversation and stay in tune with the online community.

3. The Dreaded Time Suck

Many managers fear that if they allow employees to go on Facebook or Twitter during the work day, productivity will go down the tubes. That’s a legitimate concern, but there are ways around that. If management is truly concerned about giving employees free reign of the social networks, they could designate one or two employees as the social media managers and block access for the rest. I would recommend laying out a streamlined process for optimal efficiency, regardless of who will be managing your social networks.

4. Your Target Market isn’t on SM

This objection is the most common amongst managers of B2B companies. A lot of people have the misconception that connecting with other businesses via social media is just not necessary or even feasible. Well, that’s just not true, and you can use some pretty telling statistics to prove your point. Start with this one; 44% of decision makers at small- to medium-sized businesses use social media. Furthermore, 71% of companies are already on Facebook. Your company’s target market can be found on the social networks, it’s just a matter of figuring out which networks and making the connections.

5. Your Business is Already Established

This is like saying, “my company doesn’t need a website because we already have a solid customer base.” In this day and age, it’s almost unheard of for a company not to have a website. Pretty soon, the same will be true for companies without a Facebook page, Twitter account, and blog. There are plenty of ways established businesses can benefit from social media, aside from the obvious name-brand recognition that you’ve already acquired. Besides, would it be such a bad thing if your customer base expanded as a result of social media marketing?

If you’re going to win the battle in favor of social media marketing within your company, it’s important that you’re armed with one very important weapon: Knowledge. Know your stuff and it will be hard for management to say no to you.

7 Tips for Attracting More Twitter Followers

2012-01-26T12:22:10Z

So you’ve set up a Twitter account for your business and you’re up to speed on the Twitter basics, but for some reason you haven’t gained much ground in picking up new followers. Especially when you’re starting from ground zero, gaining new Twitter followers can be quite the challenge. How do you let people know you’re out there, ready to share some really great information with the World?

Unless you or your businesses already has some level of celebrity status, attracting new Twitter followers does take some work, but luckily it’s not impossible. Here are 7 tips for building a sizeable, meaningful Twitter following from the ground up.

1. Follow More People

One of the fastest ways to attract more followers on Twitter is to follow more people yourself. However, I would caution you to exercise some discretion with this tactic, as people tend to frown upon Twitter users who simply follow thousands of random people simply to get a follow-back. Find people who have interests that parallel with your business, and avoid going on a “following spree.” Choose 10 to 15 new people to follow each week, rather than 100 in a day.

2. Charitable Promotions

You see this tactic being used by celebrities quite frequently, but there’s no reason why a charitable promotion couldn’t work for your business too. For example, you could promise to donate $1 for every new follower to a charity during a month. Make sure you talk to the chosen charity about it ahead of time, and ask them to endorse the promotion on their end too so that followers know that it’s not a scam.

3. Find the Right Tweet Frequency

If you’ve been using Twitter for longer than a week, then you’ve probably already noticed that some people just love to bombard your Twitter feed with meaningless garbage, just for the sake of exposure. I understand the need to be heard over the white noise of the 200 million other Twitter users, but I don’t think bombarding your followers with a steady stream of tweets all day is the way to do it. Figure out what the best Tweet frequency is for you and when it comes down to it, exercise quality over quantity. So if you don’t have anything significant to Tweet about, wait until you do.

4. Interact

Twitter should be used as more than just a platform from which you project your message. People who use Twitter as a means for two-way conversations and quality interaction with their followers are the ones who get the most out of the social network. Find people with interests that align with your business or industry and see if you can strike up a conversation with them. Take this practice one step further and try interacting with more high-profile people in your industry. Not everyone will respond, but odds are pretty good that eventually someone will like what you have to say and engage in a meaningful conversation with you.

5. Use Hashtags

Twitter Hashtags give users a way to categorize tweets so that people can easily find tweets on a specific topic. For example, if you are Tweeting a link to your new blog post, you can include a hashtag with the main theme or topic of the article. Simply type the “pound” (#) symbol in front of the word you wish to emphasize. If I were to use a hashtag for this post it might look something like this: “#twitterfollowers.”

6. Integrate

If your company has a well-rounded web presence, take the time to integrate Twitter into everything else you do on the Internet. For example, do you send out a monthly e-newsletter? Make sure to encourage newsletter subscribers to follow you on Twitter and embed the follow button right into each newsletter. It’s fairly common to include a Twitter share or follow button on your blog, but have you thought about including a live stream of your Tweets on your website?

7. Complete Your Bio

Have you ever been followed on Twitter by someone who is represented by an egg? It’s not very impressive and it doesn’t make me confident about following them back. It’s important to fill out your profile completely and include a picture of yourself or your brand’s logo so that people can easily identify you.

Of course everyone on Twitter wants more followers. It’s about being heard, but there’s also a reputation factor that comes into play. Because everyone can see how many people are following you on Twitter, there’s more motivation to have a higher number of followers as validation that you are a popular person to follow on Twitter. However, I would make the argument that quality is better than quantity with respect to Twitter followers. Focus on quality, and quantity will be soon to follow.

Social Media for the Trades: 5 Ways Accountants Can Utilize Social Media Marketing

2012-01-24T12:53:50Z

Accountants are in high demand this time of year. Everyone’s scrambling to scrape together financial statements and receipts from the past year and people need answers to questions before they can move forward with their tax prep. Many will attempt to file their taxes on their own, while others will pass on the burden to a professional accountant. Either way, there’s a high probability that questions will come up in the process that require the expertise of an accountant such as yourself.

While other accountants are hiding behind a computer and stacks of financial statements, you can make yourself available via the social networks. Here are 5 ways accountants can use social media to educate clients year round and mitigate the stressful flurry of activity from clients come tax time.

1. Twitter Tax Tips

Everyone’s looking for ways to pay fewer taxes. Writing out that check every year or every quarter takes a little piece of our soul, so any way we can reduce the size of our payment (legally of course) is greatly appreciated. Captivate your followers on Twitter by handing out free tips on how to find tax breaks. You can also use Twitter to give advice on maintaining financial records so that everything is readily available and easy to digest come tax season.

2. Facebook Reminders and Updates

Tax laws change frequently, but keeping up with these changes isn’t a top priority for the average citizen. Since you have to stay on top of these changes anyway, why not share the news with your followers? Facebook is a great way to keep clients informed so there aren’t any surprises at the end of the year. You could also use Facebook to remind followers about important deadlines and remind them when it’s time to start putting financial information together.

Contests are a great way to pick up Likes on Facebook. You could hold a contest once a year where followers can enter or compete to win a free or discounted tax preparation from you. Of course, if you work for a firm, you probably want to ask permission on this one.

3. Blog About Taxes Year Round

A good way to avoid that flurry of inquiries come March and April is to keep clients informed and educated all year round. Expand upon those tips and updates that you write about on Facebook and Twitter by maintaining a blog.

4. Open up the Lines to Questions

Encourage people to reach out to you on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter with general questions that would benefit the rest of your followers as well. As an accountant, you know all there is to know about accounting and taxes so it may be hard to think of questions to address. However, chances are, if one follower has a question, they’re not the only one. If possible, address these questions publicly on the social networks in order to help as many people at once as possible.

5. Get LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the ultimate social network for trade professionals such as accountants. LinkedIn is inherently great for networking and picking up new clients. But it’s also a great tool for establishing yourself as a thought leader and being known as an expert on any given subject. LinkedIn Answers is a forum where people can post a question and anyone can answer it. Of course some answers are more thorough and helpful than others, so the person who asked the question has a chance to select the answer that was the most helpful and mark it as the best question. For every “best answer” you submit you earn expert points, and people can see on your expert status on your profile.

As with a lot of professions that deal with personal or confidential information, there is always a concern about violating privacy with social media. Of course, it’s important to use your discretion when deciding what is appropriate to write on the social networks. Try to stay generic when addressing your followers at large and reserve the personal advice for private consultations and meetings.