She was on LinkedIn one day and noticed a question posted asking for recommendations for Italian restaurants in the area.  The person was new to the area and needed some ideas.  She shared she top two favorite Italian restaurants and why she liked each of them.

The person who asked the question thanked her and noticed she was a Mary Kay consultant.  Since he and his wife were new to the area, his wife had not found a new Mary Kay consultant.  And you guessed it, he now has her contact information when his wife is ready to order more products.

Yes, it is true you can build your business by building relationships with people on LinkedIn and the other social media properties.

1. You can avoid having your email wrongly marked by spam filters.
2. Send a follow up email with your resume attached.
3. Create a easy way to stay also stay connected.

Get Your Email Read

It has happened to all of us in we send a follow up email only to discover our email finds itself in the spam folder of the person we are sending our email to.  And we know that it really just depends on the day, if we take time to glance at our spam to see if any emails have been wrongly tagged.

With LinkedIN, your email will always be delivered!

Send a Note of What You Are All About

No more structuring an email reply that gives a bit of information about you and your services, your LinkedIN profile will do it for you.  Sending an email through LinkedIN will allow a person to learn more about you without going to a different site.  A person is much more apt to click over to look through your LinkedIN profile than find you online.  And we all know once you go online, how easy it is to get distracted.

Self Updating Address Book

How many times have you went to call someone only to discover that you did not enter their latest information into your address book? Or you cannot find that random piece of paper with the phone number scribbled on it? Or you cannot quite remember their name just a face and maybe one other person?

Well LinkedIN can solve all these issues for you.

As part of a person’s profile on LinkedIN, the person updates the preferred way of contact. So you can use LinkedIN as a self updating address book.

And Yes It Does Work!

After using LinkedIN to follow up with about 15 business cards (of people I actually met), I had a number of people respond about information listed in my profile and 4 that want to get together for talk about doing business. Not bad for a follow up that only said – It was great to meet you! with absolutely nothing more about my business and services.

Start using LinkedIN to be a powerful followup method for your business.

Well there is a way that Facebook allows you to customize your profile to show information only as you are feel comfortable with others that you are connected to on Facebook. You can make decisions about your Facebook profile with each information area separately which is great.

So you can share your status updates with your friends but only you see the pictures you are tagged in.

Let’s walk through the process so you can customize the privacy settings to meet your networking and personal needs.

You will need to first log into your facebook account. On the top right side you will see the ’setting’ tab. Highlight this tab and it will bring up 3 options. Choose the privacy settings. Then choose the profile option.

Once you are at the profile privacy page you have all of these options.

Facebook Privacy Settings

You can change your privacy settings on everything from your status updates to pictures to education information.

Choose the area you want to change. You will then see this screen.

Facebook Privacy Custom Options

This screen will allow you to customize all of Facebook account settings to your what you need.

But the use of a facebook page really goes beyond communicating your message through text.  With a facebook page you can put an opt in box to collect email addresses to grow the reach of business and to create relationships with those people on your list.

You can also highlight your facebook page directly on your website.  This facebook page badge can be created within your facebook page.  This badge allows website readers to connect directly to your facebook page, shows the latest feeds on your facebook page, and displays the pictures of those people who are your fans.  A very cool tool!

Here is an example of the tool for a pickleball page.

You need to go to http://www.facebook.com/username and follow the directions.  I have listed below the process you will go through to make your facebook url.

You then follow the directions given. Facebook will give you suggestions for a username. If you decide you do not like the suggestions you can create your own.

You then choose the ‘check availability’ option to be sure the username you want is available. If the username you want is available then choose ‘confirm.’

And now you have a personalized facebook url that will read www.facebook.com/usernameyouchoose.

In the future if you change your mind, you can change your username only once. You can make the facebook url change through the Settings tab of the Account Settings page. Choose “username” and click “change.” Facebook will then give you step by step instructions for the change. After this change this the username forever, so be sure you really want to change it.

Some business owners are even choosing a twitter account as a first step online ahead of a website.  There are some very good reasons for this choice.  As you know the internet is not a build it and they will come structure where once you have a website people flock to your pages.  You must strategically position your website in front on your audience with a carefully choosen domain, site structure, keyword research, and all the fancy stuff that I do for business owners to get their websites ranking well in the search engines.

Upon the first follow on twitter, a business owner is able to connect with real people.  Then if necessary give the follower the ability to go to the company’s website through a link in the profile and a customized twitter background.

To read the full article which includes testimonials from business owners. Mom-and-Pop Operators Turn to Social Media