Marketing Your Accounting Practice: Attract Clients to Your Practice with LinkedIn and On Line Networking
Overwhelmingly accountants are well aware of the significance of networking in growing their firms. Regrettably loads of accounting firms are still failing to realize the right way to integrate online instruments in that effort. There are loads of such instruments available. Facebook, Twitter, Ping.fm, Multiply, Google, Tumblr... and accountants who are looking to the future need to familiarize themselves with all of them. Probably the most important of these instruments, from a business networking point of view, is a website called LinkedIn.
LinkedIn is like Facebook in many ways in that it uses profiles, status updates, and groups, but concentrates on less on your "social" and more of your "professional" life. Instead of your connections sharing pictures of their cat, the focus is on employment, networking, references, and virtually anything else you'll need in the business world.
This is reflected in your profile, which is dominated by your current employers, and expanded on further down by descriptions of your experience, past and present, recommendations from clients and coworkers, and a personal "summary" where you can highlight your specialties. You can also include your website, Twitter, and even any instant-messaging handles you may have at the bottom.
Once you have all this filled in (LinkedIn will give you a percentage-to-completion box on the right side, indicating how ready you are to get out and start networking), you're free to start connecting with contacts, requesting recommendations, and joining groups. Linked is is very much like a dynamic resume. You keep it updated as your career progresses providing an ever changing face for potential clients.
LinkedIn provides many opportunities, but it requires your involvement to work.
Blogger and Director of Tech at the KAF financial group Barry Macquarrie recently posted an outline of "Seven Essential LinkedIn Activities" on CPA2Biz that the key to making contacts on LinkedIn is participation. His first four activities are fairly straightforward. They basically cover the process of setting up a complete profile, keeping your status updated, and connecting with your clients and employers. The other three are more involved, such as joining groups, which will allow CPAs to interact with those they share interests with, sharing links, and following other companies and competition.
In addition, Macquarrie has also provided a list of the sort of groups CPAs should join, such as those maintained by their company, competition, and practice. He also recommends his own group, SocialCPAs, AICPA, your state's CPA society, and the International CPA Association.
Accountants are ill advised ignore the benefits of a business site such as LinkedIn as a means of elevating themselves and their practices, as well as interacting with other CPAs from other firms. There's no telling how far it can take you, and like most new technologies it's the people that adopt it first that will benefit the most from it.
About The Author
Brian O'Connell is the CEO and founder of CPA Site Solutions, one of the country's biggest website design firms dedicated entirely to accounting website design. His company presently provides websites for more than 4000 CPA, accounting, and tax preparation firms.