7 Ways to Land Clients With Social Networking

If you’ve been running a business for any amount of time, you know the importance of finding, pitching, and landing clients. The process usually involves cold-calling, referral followups, requests for proposals, face-to-face meetings and/or some combination of the above. Online, while it’s significantly harder to have a face-to-face meeting (or easier if you’re using a VOIP telephone service like Skype), it’s still possible–and sometimes more effective and efficient to pitch and win clients. Here’s an overview of how I use social media to guide and land my biggest projects:

1. Listen. If you haven’t heard me slam it down your throats about listening, go check out this and this. Either way, understand that to get any traction at all from your social media campaigns, you need to be listening. I set up Google Alerts, Twitter search feeds, and run relative searches regularly. This way, I know what my audience (you) is saying, doing, feeling, and thinking.
2. Join the conversation. Once I have an idea of the type of content my crowd wants to consume, I create it. This creation can take place on a blog by writing and posting my own content, Tweeting useful tips and advice, and joining in Facebook or LinkedIn discussions. But, it could also mean Re-Tweeting others’ useful advice or posting guest articles on my blog.
3. Be helpful, not forceful. I don’t ever want to come across as overbearing or a know-it-all, but I do need my target customer to see me as an expert–how else can he justify paying me? Expertise doesn’t always mean a smart-ass attitude, but it could work for some.
4. Ask questions regularly. Questions can be “give me advice” type or “do you need advice” type. Both ways will help me see what my audience of future clients knows and/or want to know. Once I’ve answered and asked enough questions, people will start to see me as a “real” person, out to help others. Then and only then will I start “marketing” to them in the traditional sense.
5. Begin marketing. Once you’ve achieved “expert” status (at least self-declared), try to slowly talk others into why they should pay you to do what you do best. Use a gentle push, yet guide them to your landing pages and optimized website. Don’t have one? Let me know and I’ll help you get one. See how easy that was?
6. Hold their hand. Even though you may be marketing to web-savvy, computer-oriented folks, don’t think for a second that they know your business as well as you do. I never assume that a client already understands why they should have a Twitter account (even if they say, “I totally understand why I need a Twitter account). I explain it to them anyway.
7. Give them more than they asked for. If a client is paying me to design and maintain a newsletter, I’ll set them up with a Twitter account, Facebook page, and a blog to ensure that their newsletter has a “backup.” If referrals are one of the strongest and easiest forms of landing new clients, than over-delivering is the best way to guarantee those referrals will keep rolling in.

Landing clients really comes down to developing a product or service and then putting yourself out there enough to ask people to pay for it. Using social media in doing so can speed up the process significantly, but it should never take a backseat to the quality and sincerity of your message. Don’t use social media as a faster way to tell people nothing; it’s still nothing. Find something worthwhile to say or provide, and use social media to exploit the value of communication.

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