Don’t Miss a Single Opportunity to Connect

You spend several hours marketing your business during an average week.  You implement solid strategies like social networking, SEO and business blogging, but are you doing everything that you can to actively promote these efforts? There are two very simple and virtually free methods of getting the word out about your blog and various social networking profiles that you probably aren’t taking advantage of.

The first, and fastest to implement, is something that you use every single day – your e-mail signature.  You’ve probably got your name, title and possibly a link to your company webpage, but this is a perfect opportunity to make connections on all fronts.  You should include a direct link to your business blog as well as links to your Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn profiles. Our Google hosted email allows us to use a Firefox add-on called WiseStamp. It adds a terrific customizable signature to our emails.

Think of how many e-mails you send on a given day and how many of those e-mails may get forwarded on to third parties.  This simple change can be done in a few minutes and gives you the opportunity to engage other professionals in your niche, current customers and prospects in a number of ways with the click of a button.

The second step that easily increases connections lies in your business card.  You probably don’t hand out quite as many cards as you send e-mails, but there is still plenty of opportunity for connection there.  In addition to your phone number and e-mail address, advertise on your card that you can easily be reached through Twitter or your Facebook fan page.

These two steps require absolutely no effort beyond the initial set up, but could result in countless new connections.