Build Your Online Brand (Before Someone Else Does)
Source: CPA Success
The following includes experts, reproduced with permission, from a blog entry by Bill Sheridan.
E-mail? Phone? They're so Nineties. If you want to stay relevant today, your communications arsenal had better include a healthy dose of social media.
And yet there's a gaping social divide between large and small companies. Communications firm Burson-Marsteller says 84 percent of the world's largest 100 companies are using social media, compared to about half of small- and mid-size companies. “And only between a quarter and a third (of small- and mid-size companies) use it in any structured way,” reports CFO.com's Alix Stuart.
Michelle Golden, a thought leader on the social media front, says social tools offer smaller businesses some huge advantages in business development and brand management. The first step, though, is much more personal. CPAs who haven't already done so need to build their individual online brands ... and they need to do it now, before someone else does.
The reason, says Michelle, is simple: Everything is online today. We need to be, too.
“All CPAs should have a really solid LinkedIn profile and claim their Google profiles. Both of those things will help elevate your Internet presence,” she said. “LinkedIn is a great place to start, for a couple of reasons. One, it's the only social media platform that was created exclusively for business. Two, it gives you the ability to update your status, which is a little like Facebook. It lets you answer questions, which can feel a little bit like blogging. And it gives you a home page with a running feed of what your contacts have to say, which is very Twitter-like. So it gives you an introduction to the types of things that other social media tools offer.”
The bottom line: Don't wait. In an online world, your online brand should be near the top of your priority list.
For the complete article, read “Claim your social space, and do it now.”
From CPA Success, the blog of the Maryland Association of CPAs, www.cpasuccess.com, May 26, 2011.