So you are thinking…why in the world do I need to Tweet, update my Facebook Fan Page, and all this other crap? Who pays attention to it and how does it build my business?

Hold on. I’m about to tell you why and how you can do updates easily. Micro-blogging is about mini messages that you send out to your “posse” following you on the various social networks you belong to. Here’s the deal, don’t think about these social networks, and the communication as a one time “streaming” event where someone needs to be sitting by their computer or mobile handset to read your “tweet”. That is not the point. Micro-blogging is about search and becoming an “authority” in a market. Let me explain…

Facebook is now the third largest search engine on the planet after Google and You Tube. Twitter is not far behind. Places like Biznik, Squidoo, Hubpages and other social media/Web 2.0 sites are places where people search for ideas, solutions, partners and all types of things. So, when you publish a micro-blog post and distribute it to all those places, you and your business can now be found in an much larger footprint that if you just relied on your website. Your casting a much wider net. And here’s the best part, building a page and publishing content to these sites is FREE!

So here it goes, 3 reasons to micro-blog and how you can get contractor leads:

1. Expand your reach and company profile and be included in search results with your micro-blog posts across the web. If you are posting solid information that is helpful to people looking for contracting services, they will want to find out more about who you are and how they can hire you. That simple.
2. If you have a website that is structured properly with great “link bait” you can link micro-blog posts to your website pages and convert those visitors to leads. This also gives your website important SEO benefits with the links pointing to your landing pages.
3. Breaking though the cluttered advertising and messaging market is tough today. Consistent micro-blogging provides and a way to break through that clutter and stack the deck in your favor.

The key to being successful is to be providing great tips, ideas and link to content that your target audience will benefit from. You can create systems and use tools like Hootsuite to make micro-blogging very easy to work into your normal business work flow…especially once you have your social media sites set up.

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• Study shows consumers trust brands that micro-blog (newstatesman.com)
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Social media is a great new tool to generate contractor leads. So many contractors get hung up on the long list of things they should be joining and doing that they never start doing anything. Let’s change that right now. We put together 3 easy to implement tactics that will help you immediately get leads and close sales.

1) Follow up with Prospects

Use social media  as a way to follow-up with prospects you meet. Say you go to a Home and Garden Show and engage with a prospect that wants you to follow-up. Your probably thinking you will call and leave a voice mail. What if instead you found them on Facebook or LinkedIn, asked to be connected, asked to be connected to them, and then shared an information rich article  (or video) that contained tips about the very thing you chatted about at the Home and Garden Show. Then offer to give them a free inspection of their home project…because now they think you are a nice guy and an expert in the field!

2) Easily stay in touch and encourage customers

Staying in touch with your customer base is always a challenge, and is costing you money! Many businesses are using email-marketing programs to follow up on leads, and some of the more ambitious have newsletters to keep in regular contact. But social media can make these regular customer touches much more natural, fun and productive.

Staying in front of your customers and continuing to educate and up-sell them is a key ingredient to building a successful contracting business in today’s marketing environment. I wrote a book called Disrupted that goes into more specifics on this strategy. This is an area where social media tools can excel.

A blog is a great place to put out a steady stream of useful information and success stories. Encourage your customers and prospects to subscribe and comment. You’ll be surprised how this can lead to further engagement. Recording video testimonials from customers and uploading them to YouTube to embed on your site (and Web 2.0 pages like Facebook) can create great marketing content and remind your customer why they do business with you. Use your Facebook Fan pages as a way to implement a client community around a specific subject (e.g energy efficiency, local real estate or the high school sports team) and offer education and networking opportunities online with non-competitive businesses

3) Keep up on home contracting services industry

Keeping up with what’s happening in the home contracting services industry and your local market is a task that is essential these days. New products and services are always emerging that you might not otherwise be aware of because you are not distributing that product line or they have not hit your local market yet. But you need to be able to be an expert because you potential clients are searching to research their projects before they even contact you. So, keeping up with what key industry players are doing including, competitors, industry journalists and manufacturers is critical to building your businesses authority in it’s niche.

Here’s the good news, new, easy to use monitoring services and tools make this an easy task. Subscribing to blogs written by manufacturers, competitors and journalists and viewing new content by way of a tool such as Google Reader allows you to scan the day’s content in one place. Setting up Google Alerts and custom Twitter Searches (Surefire Social Contractor members video)  or checking out paid monitoring services such as Radian6 or Trackur allows you to receive daily email reports on the important mentions of industry terms and people so you are up to the minute in the know.

As you implement these ideas, make sure you are using the information you are getting back about/from potential partners and customers to comment and engage with them on their own blogs, Facebook pages and other social media outlets. You’ll be surprised how making that extra effort will get you visibility to your market and important influencers you could have never dreamed of networking with otherwise.

Now just go do this stuff and let us know how it’s worked for you.

We all know how easy it is to get on a social media network, like Facebook. All you do is sign up, create a login, and you are on your way. But there is one problem…you need followers.

Your social media networks will amount to NOTHING if you don’t actively build your community and brand your business. Therefore, it is time to implement a strategy and I have some ideas.

These will only take a short amount of time and make a world of difference. Try these 3 social media strategies to start building your following, finding prospects and increasing your lead generation.

1.   Use Your Email Signature to Your Advantage. Whether you use Microsoft Outlook, MacMail, or and other online web service provider, you have the capability to add, and change your email signature, which will be seen by EVERYONE you send emails to. Put your social media sites (i.e. Twitter, Facebook Page, Blog, etc.) on your email signature. What could be better than gaining fans and followers without doing ANY work?

2. Search Social Media Platforms.  Facebook and Twitter offer their own searches that allow you to look for particular keywords, names, locations and businesses.  They are free, very useful and a great way for you to find people in your target market.

3.  Take your networks offline. Although social media revolves around the online community, who says you can’t recruit follower’s offline?  Put your social media sites on your business cards, signs, door hangers, and every other offline method of marketing you can think of. Not only does this attract more people into your marketing funnel, but also it makes your business look buttoned-up and up-to-date with the current online marketing tactics.

Social media is about building a community, establishing trust, and increasing your lead generation efforts. So, get your feet wet, go exploring, and get your business on the map!

Ok…it’s time to come clean here. Let’s talk about what Facebook is and what it isn’t. Facebook is an easy way to stay connected with friends, family, business associates and even famous people and companies you consider important. You can find just about every imaginable group, company person you would ever want to meet on Facebook with over 450 million users worldwide.

Facebook is NOT the best way to do straight up traditional advertising. That’s right. You need to find cleaver ways to provide something of value to people on Facebook because they are not their to buy. They are their to get away from life’s little stresses and connect with friends and make new ones. Yes, increasingly they are using Facebook to search for products and services as Fan pages become more popular and friends recommend places and people to do business with. But at the end of the day, you will need to get attention from adding value to the discussion, not interrupting the conversation (like traditional media).

So, how do you get contractor leads on Facebook given what we just discussed? Well, we are going to use this networking that people do to our advantage. Their is no magic bullet. All this will take is some time, and if you can’t spend the time, pay someone else to do it for you. Ready? Here we go.

Step 1: Add all the people you know and have ever met as your friend on Facebook. This includes the “list” of customers and prospects that your business touched over the years. Send an email to your list and invite them to “like” you page.

Step 2: Update your profile and create a Fan page with real photos of yourself, your work, customer reviews, new products. Keep updating your Profile and Fan pages with new posts and content at least weekly. If you want to get fancy, you can customize your Fan page and provide links to your website landing pages. This is a great way to add SEO juice and build Facebook traffic to your website.

Step 3: Search for at least 10 groups to join that are relevant to your business or local community. Find groups that are active and have at least 50 people in them.

Step 4: Contribute useful information to these groups. Answer and ask questions. Get into conversations with people.

Step 5: Add as many people in the group to your “Friend” or Fan list. It’s important you first participate in the groups and become known before you do this step.

Step 6: Find out which of your “new” friends or Fans has a blog or website about your local market or service. You can find out if they have a blog or website by looking at the “Info” tab on their profile or Fan page. You will be surprised what you can find…people in your business like distributors, suppliers, manufactures that have website and blogs that can get you more exposure (for FREE). Also, people in your community who are leaders and want to be helpful to others. Your “content” (advice and tips) could be really valuable for their audience.

Step 7: Ask your “new” friends if they would allow you to contribute some content to their site or blog in return for a link back to your site. This will get you lot’s of SEO juice for your website which will translate in search engine rankings. You’ll also reach an expanded audience and potentially drive them to your site for a new lead.

Step 8: Send a unique blog post or other content to your new “friends” and many will post them on their site of blog. Make sure you have anchor text links within your content back to your site.

This process will take some time and work, but you will start to see results quickly. We put together  a video, 7 Tips in 7 Minutes that outlines some of these concepts, and much more. Sign up for right on this website.