Social Media: Leverage Your Marketing Power

Source: AICPA CPA Insider

The following includes excerpts, reproduced with permission, from an article by Rick Telberg.

The technologies and tactics of new social media marketing can provide CPAs with never-before-seen avenues for connecting with clients and colleagues, competitors and peers, says Michelle Golden, the author of the AICPA PCPS Social Media Toolkit, and now the new book "Social Media Strategies for Professionals and Their Firms."

The social media phenomenon is helping to level the playing field. “You can compete with the big guys,” she says. Making the most of social media is not just about networking; it's about leverage — using messaging in one medium to reinforce messaging in another.

For example:

• Freed Maxick Battaglia in Buffalo, N.Y. blends old and new media into a multi-channel strategy. In one case, the firm rented a digital billboard to display the firm's Tweets, directing motorists to tune in to a live radio show featuring partner Dave Barrett speaking about estate taxes.
• Mark Bailey & Co., Reno, Nev., offers Gray Matters, a blog delivering “resources for public company CFOs and controllers.” In the blog's first days, a visitor left a comment — a prospect, which the firm converted into a client. Even the most skeptical partner in the firm exclaimed, “I am a convert!”
• McKonly & Asbury, Camp Hill, Pa., offers a blog master-minded by partner Scott A. Heintzelman, CPA, CMA, CFE — The Exuberant Accountant — who systematically profiles local family-owned businesses and their issues. Some are clients, some aren't. Among those that aren't, many are prospects. And some of those are becoming clients.
• The key, most agree, is to practice a philosophy of generosity and abundance, sharing what you know and a little bit about who you are and how you think. Some call it “give to get.”

For the complete article, read www.cpa2biz.com/Content/media/PRODUCER_CONTENT/Newsletters/Articles_2010/CPA/Dec/FacebookFactorCPAs.jsp">"Facebook Strategies for CPAs."

From AICPA CPA Insider, December 6, 2010, www.CPA2biz.com.