5 Social Media Tips for Professional Services Branding.

What's the number one branding question we've been hearing from our professional services clients these days? "Should our firm be using Social Media?" Any guesses what my answer is?

"Nope." That's right, nope.

5 Ways to Enhance Professional Expertise with Social Media.

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Not unless you have a strategy for how to make it work.

In reality, Social Media can greatly support your efforts to brand your professional services firm as thought leaders and experts in your field. So what are we recommending to our clients who are committed to making Social Media a part of their branding and marketing mix? If you're operating a legal, accounting, consulting, architecture or engineering firm, you may want to read on.

1. Develop a Social Media strategy.
When considering Social Media, first devise a plan. As marketing goes, it can seem easy and inexpensive, but it requires planning, time and energy to implement well. Your biggest cost is the time of the people who are managing your Social Media.

You'll need some goals to think through which strategies make the most sense. Do you have a sales goal? Database growth? Hopes for PR or public speaking? You'll need a solid strategy to get there.

2. Understand how Social Media is unique.
It's not like advertising or even in-person networking. It’s a two-way conversation that allows and even encourages others to take part in the discussion. It can reveal a level of authenticity (or lack of) in your brand. And you'll want to understand the SEO implications of Social Media as well. In some sense, it's like word of mouth marketing that everyone can see and comment on.

3. Demonstrate thought leadership.
As I mentioned earlier, Social Media is a great opportunity to build on your brand's reputation as thought leaders or establish a unique positioning for your firm. It's a matter of sticking to what you know, taking a unique point of view, and asking for feedback.

Compelling thought leadership can also attract top talent to your firm.

4. Use the right tools.
Not every social medium is right for every business. It all goes back to the strategy - who are you trying to reach, why, and what do they want to hear?

LinkedIn, Twitter, and even Facebook Fan Pages may be good fits for most businesses, but for deeper content sharing, consider blogging, compelling videos, or even taking an active role on other industry blogs.

Meanwhile, don't forget to incorporate your social links into your other more traditional branding efforts - website, business cards, and email signatures.

5. Social Media is not the end game.
Thought leadership, in the end, is only one strategy to build your brand. If you're selling legal advice, it may be a great strategy. If you sell cardboard, it may not be. Consider your audience, and develop the right social media strategy for your brand.

Social Media isn't going away anytime soon, so before you jump in, be sure to spend time thinking through your strategy. It can be a great avenue for professional services firms to brand themselves as thought leaders.

Who are the thought leaders in your industry, and how do they use Social Media? Please share your thoughts:

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Designing your Mission:Simplifying the Rational, Emotional and Radical.

This past weekend I was reading an article in Fast Company that reminded me of a speaking engagement I had a few years ago.

I was asked to discuss corporate website basics--what websites need and where most go astray. If I remember correctly, the first words out of my mouth were, "Take your mission statement off of your homepage, because nobody cares." I think I had their attention.

I went on to explain how so many corporate websites showcase their bland, forgettable mission statement prominently on their homepage. A website isn't helping anyone by telling the world "our team empowers life-long learners to achieve the utmost quality and customer satisfaction in every..." Zzzz... Does that sound like an excerpt from your corporate mission?

I have talked about the importance of niche positioning and how a mission statement often reflects poor positioning. Which should come first, the mission or the positioning? I'll be the first to admit it's a bit of a chicken/egg thing. We prefer to begin by developing a strong positioning and let the mission statement flow from that language. But to be fair, today we'll look at the mission statement as a starting point.

Ideally your mission statement should be the guiding light that directs the course of your business. If your mission is a little lackluster today, let's look at four ways to reconsider where you're going.

1. The Rational:
What do you do? What is your product or service, and who do you do it for? What is your market? How far is your reach? What are actions that your company uses to describe its services? This step should be pretty straight-forward. Once you've wrapped up, move on to step two.

2. The Emotional:
How does your organization make the world a better place? Who does your company benefit? Who would miss you if your organization disappeared? Why should anyone care? Make a list of some of the most emotionally charged benefits of your company. If the world reaped the utmost from your benefits, what would that look like? Once you've given this ample consideration, move on to step three. Still scratching your head? If you're stuck on this one, consider enlisting some professional support.

3. The Radical:
What is the one thing that you do better than anyone else? Are you the best at it in your market or region? Can you claim "only-ness?" Complete this sentence: We are the only (blank) in (blank) that does (blank). When you fill in the blanks, what do you get? If it sounds the same as your competition, you may need to dig deeper. Give this plenty of thought before moving on to step four.

4. Simplify:
Taking what may be several pages of notes from the above exercises, begin simplifying the message into statements. If you're really focused, you may be able to distill it down to a few succinct words. One of our clients has their corporate mission statement polished down to two words. "Inspire Hope." Here's a hint: Corporate senior leaders need to own this. Hiring a professional to help word-smith your mission statement is wise, but this is not a task meant for a committee. That's important. No mission statement committees. Got it?

So how do you know when it's right? It should be clear, concise and inspirational. A two-word mission isn't the right fit for everyone, but if your mission is unclear, ambiguous or wordy, keep working. Are you inspired yet to get started? It's your business. Make it your mission.

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Website Redesign - Is Your Site the Problem or the Symptom?

Is your company considering a website redesign in the coming months? If you're like most companies, you're trying to figure out how to get the most out of every dollar spent. Marketing budgets are no exception. Because it's usually the first place potential customers will go to learn more about your service, even relatively strapped businesses grasp the importance of their website.

Many professional services firms come to us planning to discuss a website redesign. Often, after a brief discussion, they realize the need may be deeper. And that need is proper positioning.

We explain to our website design clients that we are first and foremost a brand strategy firm. To build a great brand you must first begin with great positioning, and that requires a great strategy.

It's easy to get intimidated by the word strategy, but on the most basic level, it's focusing on how you want to answer some basic questions. Here's a few you might consider when reviewing your company's brand online:

Who are we?
This should be the easy one. Is your name, product, or service memorable, fun to say, easy to read, and somewhere that customers will recognize it? Do you look and feel like your competition, or are you uniquely you?

What do we do?
Again, this seems kind of obvious, but what is it that your company does? Are your complimentary services visible, or are you inundating your visitors with a laundry list of services.

Why do you matter to the marketplace?
Who do you work for, and how is that different from your competition. "We help make sure you get quality, on-time service every time." First of all, who is "you"? And second of all, that statement could represent a law firm, a florist, or a plumber. The point is, there's no differentiation in that statement, and worst of all, it's nothing unique or memorable. If that's on your homepage somewhere, we should talk.

What do you want your customers to do?
Your visitors may not knowingly ask themselves this question, but your team should know the answer. Do you want your visitors to browse a photo gallery, sign up for e-news, call the 800#, or fill out the contact form?

If you've never taken a moment to consider those questions, pop open your web browser at some point today, and take a look at your homepage. How do you think your potential customers would answer those questions for you?

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A three step strategy for sharing expertise on Twitter: How professional firms can use Twitter to position expert brands.

Are you a little leery of jumping into Twitter? I think that's a common feeling among many high-end attorneys, accountants, architects, engineers, and technical consultants that we've spoken to over the past few months. It's not that these professionals don't have anything valuable to say, they're just not sure how best to get started.

All you need to do is jump online and post what you had for breakfast, right? Easy there... let's take a step back first.

Let's pretend for a moment you don't need me to convince you why you should be tweeting and that you've already established a solid set of goals for utilizing Twitter with your branding and marketing team. Let's assume after a long, focused discussion with those teams, your vision looks something like this:

1. Expand your network online to create top of mind awareness of your firm
2. Establish or reinforce your firm's areas of expertise
3. Attract the top talent in your space by showcasing your firm's thinking

You'll want to spend some time designing a vision specifically for you, but that's a good direction to begin implementing your Twitter strategy. From here, nearly everything you'll need to get started can be included in one of the three following categories: Start, Share, and Expand.

1. Start - Basic recommendations to get you tweeting:

- Choose your handle. Visit Twitter.com to select your own unique handle. It will be your username, and your posts will show up with "@" in front of them. Pick something like your name or your company's name. I'm @joshmiles. You can also upload your own avatar or photo and customize your page.

- Explore different user interface options. You don't have to be on Twitter.com to use their service. Tweeting functionality is built into various websites, smart phones, and desktop applications. One of my favorites is a free desktop application, which has a companion iPhone app called TweetDeck. It allows you to manage tweets in groups, shorten links, post photos, and even allows for multi-account support.

- Make smart posts. In general, stick to what you know. This doesn't mean you have to be robotic, but if you're tweeting about sushi more that you tweet about your area of expertise, some followers may lose interest.

- Schedule your tweeting. Choose specific times in the day or specific days in the week to spend some quality time on Twitter. It could be 5 minutes or 5 hours a day, depending on how Twitter best fits into your overall communications strategy. Bottom line - decide how important it is to your own strategy, and get in the habit of making regular updates.

- Follow smart people, or anyone you like for that matter. But since we're talking about building up the reputation of your firm, be smart about who you choose to follow. Clients, vendors, coworkers, and even other experts are great people to follow.

2. Share - What to tweet:

- Share your firm's thought leadership content. One obvious use of Twitter is to share your firm's ideas, links, and articles. Just remember: share, don't "sell." Users follow people for various reasons, but few will continue to follow users who post blatant sales messages.

- Share great posts, blogs, etc. Anytime you read a great relevant article, post a link to it. You can also forward other users' posts to your own followers, called a "ReTweet."

- Don't limit your thinking to what you can fit in 140 characters or less. You can link to longer content such as websites, videos, blogs, etc.

- Company Blogs. Speaking of blogs, every posting at your firm would be greatly complemented by a Twitter mention.

- Email Newsletters. Do you have an e-newsletter? Provide occasional links for email newsletter sign-ups.

- News, Events, and Awards. Twitter is a great platform to make announcements, share news, awards, mentions, etc.

- Have Fun. If used in good balance, Twitter is a great way to showcase some of your firm's culture or some of your personal interests. But like we discussed earlier, don't get carried away on the personal stuff.

3. Expand - Don't stop there...

- #Hashtag Keywords. For some topics, you may want to "tag" your post the with the pound sign such as #branding or #followfriday - click here to learn more about #hashtags.

- Stay on top of your account. Keep an eye on who's following you, and choose who makes sense to follow in return. Find other users who talk about similar keywords, and consider following them as well.

- Hello my name is @joshmiles. Add your handle as another piece of contact info: email signature, email newsletter, blog, website. If it makes sense, consider even adding your handle to print materials (business cards, etc.) or sharing it in articles, presentations, or networking events.

Remember to commit some time to discussing your goals and strategies before jumping right in, but don't sit back for too long. Being an active Twitter user may be one of the best ways to position your brand as an expert firm.

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