Social Media to Build Reputation and Reach Prospects – More Ideas

Based on a question I posted in LinkedIn, Serena Ehrlich posted How to Use Social Media to Find Prospects... Or Sell a House... and provides the following list of suggestions for ways to use social media to build a reputation and to reach prospects.  Her list included quite a few things that would likely be much farther down my list:

• Create short videos of your presentations. Set up accounts on YouTube and Mixx (try Tubemogul.com) and use these videos to highlight the best of your presentations
• Create a commercial for yourself, put on above sites
• Tape record your presentations and make them available via podcast

For most service professionals, they might create one or two of these.  They still will need ways to get this out to an audience.  My experience is that it's okay to embed this places to get some additional traction, but it's probably not a great place to start unless it's key to your business.  That said, for professional speakers, they definitely should be thinking about video on their site to show them in action.

• Answer questions in LinkedIn to enhance your professional reputation

I've found some great people who answered questions on LinkedIn, but I'm not convinced it provides that much value to spend time answering questions.  On the other hand, you might blog your answers and post a link.  That way you get value both places.

Her other suggestions around blogging, LinkedIn, twitter use pretty well align with how I think about it.  Thanks for the thoughts Serena.

Tom Humbarger had some great suggestions in his post Visible Networking with Tony Karrer – Los Angeles Social Media Starters.  You should likely check out some of his ideas from posts:

5 Ways to Maximize Your LinkedIn Profile

1. Add a picture
2. Update your status
3. Get recommended
4. Update websites
5. Get your name in your public profile

Great suggestions.  Couple of additional thoughts… First, have a photo ready so you can add it to any social networking site.  It's important.  See Profile Photos.  To make life easier to update your status, especially across multiple sites, use Ping.fm.

His other posts have similarly great ideas for twitter, LinkedIn Groups, and more.

• Best Practices for Corporate Twittering
• Simple Advice for Brands on Twitter
• Community Managers and Quarterbacks
• Adding A LinkedIn Group To Your Community

Great stuff Tom, thanks for sharing.  Look forward to discussing this more with you.