• By Cathy Goodwin
• Published 09/8/2009
• Writing for the Web
• Rating: Unrated

Social marketing media can be a terrific way to attract clients and meet potential business allies. But it is easy to make a mistake so your efforts actually backfire. With all the buzz about how to use social media, we’re still seeing service business owners make some critical social marketing media mistakes. These business owners realize that social media marketing can help their business. They have been successful with other forms of marketing, often including live face-to-face networking. What most business owners don’t realize is that social media marketing depends on a special form of communicating, which is essentially a unique application of copywriting principles. Without an understanding of these ideas, you can find yourself wasting your own time and inconveniencing your potential prospects and allies. If you place a value on your time, it’s worth learning what’s working, what’s wasted and what actually has the potential to cause harm.

When you use social media to grow your professional business, you naturally want to introduce yourself to people you don’t know. But you need to use a few copywriting techniques to develop your invitations. You put yourself on

the line when you agree to identify someone as a friend. So many experienced social marketers screen friends most protectively for LinkedIn, next for Facebook and much less for Twitter. Here’s why there’s a natural red, yellow and green light progression. I’ve gotten requests to “meet” someone on my LinkedIn list. People really do look at recommendations there. Facebook makes it easy to identify your Friends and relate to them as a group. Twitter is “easy come, easy go,” although I personally review each invitation before I follow someone who is following me. When I review my invitations to Facebook and LinkedIn, I sometimes come across someone who seems totally removed from my world. When I email back, I ask, “How did you decide to connect with me?” I can’t understand why someone would respond, “Frankly, I don’t know.” Or (as one potential connection said), “Gee, I don’t remember. Did we talk on the phone?”

In contrast to these invitations, I received a delightful note from someone on Facebook: “Any friend of Linda Smith is someone I’d like to connect with. Here’s where you can learn more to decide if you would like to connect with me.” The tone was so warm and friendly! I went to the sender’s Facebook page, liked what I saw and accepted the invitation immediately.