Who’s the Person Behind the Profile?
Who’s the Person Behind the Profile?
With 202 members to date and only thirty or so appearing in the flesh at the Biznik Happy Hour events, how do you distinguish between two or more members who offer the same service? You can visit their web site and look at their creative portfolio if they have one. You can browse the members listed in their Referral Network (displayed at the bottom of their profile) and ask another member for a reference. And you can read the person’s blog.
Dan and I are huge advocates of blogging. One of the reasons I believe strongly in them, is that they give potential clients and business collaborators a glimpse of the person behind the service. Word-of-mouth marketing is an extremely effective way of getting business. About 90% of the business I get through Studio LEAF is through word-of-mouth referrals. Yellow pages are an article of the past. Most people who need a service like an acupuncturist or a computer networking guy, are going to ask their friends for a recommendation before they open the advertising section of a phone book or newspaper. Our intention in forming Biznik was to create a network of friends, and friends of friends where people could come if they were looking for a service.
If you’re a member of a fast-growing network like Biznik, you need to find a way to distinguish yourself and introduce yourself to the people who don’t know you. The best way to do this is through blogging about yourself, your service and topics that interest you.
If you don’t have a blog, don’t know how to set up a blog, or have questions about blogs, email Dan McComb. He’s willing to give any Biznik an hour of his time for free to help you get set up. This is a great opportunity that a lot of people have taken advantage of - if you’re not one of them, you should be. Also, you can mirror your existing blog headlines to your profile page if you have an RSS2 feed. Email dan if you’d like to set that up (a tool that will allow you to do it yourself is in the works).
February 8th, 2006 at 6:29 pm
Lara,
Great bit of information. I am relatively new to Ecommerce and have been blogging for a few months. Not sure how to get traffic to my blogsite or my website. Maybe an article to the BizNik membership on how to get traffic to your site would be benefitial.
Also, after spending 31 years working for SBC Yellow Pages, I am not shy about providing my stories on how investing all of your marketing budget in yellow pages advertising will bankrupt you. However there are a lot (more like millions) of people doing it. I would be happy to visit with anyone on the ends and outs of YP advertisement..