Networking in High Heels for Women in Business
The Marketing and Networking Guide to Women-Owned Businesses
Jun 28, 2009
In the past, women business owners have found it hard to compete with their male counterparts in networking to build their customer base and create viable contacts. With the invention of social media marketing and networking, the ground has radically shifted to provide many women business owners with the ability to electronically reach out to other women. From web-based groups that support to business women electronically to physical gatherings set up in online groups, the web has changed networking opportunities for women across the world.
Among the thousands of networking and social media marketing avenues available for women business owners, there is one small catch. Without a dedicated focus of expending marketing and networking efforts in a focused direction, the waste of time can quickly add up into a significant waste of money. The primary steps to incorporating and executing a practical networking plan into any business strategy are the location of your market segmentation and the niche market approach to achieving measurable ROI (return on investment). For women business owners, each individual marketing effort must lead to the prospect of gaining market share with potential customers or finding contacts that present creditable marketing partners.
Biznik for Business Women
Biznik is an empowering online venue for networking between business owners and solopreneurs. The largest benefit for business women is in the ability to seek support and contacts in a local area or across the globe. With a specialty in electronic article publication about an expertise or a business interest, most women business owners find Biznik the perfect place to connect with like-minded women to share their road to success, gain invaluable feedback, and post events for other business women.
Twitter to Target Audience
With a restriction of 140 characters, most women find networking via Twitter either exhilarating or exhausting! Twitter can easily deceive with numbers; hence, identifying a market segment ahead of time and continuing to approach that audience is vital to successful conversions for ROI measurement. Specifically for women in business, if the market audience is segmented by females only, such as with many mommy groups, then people who do not fit into the target audience need to be un-followed regularly or added to a secondary segmentation to avoid contamination of a primary marketing ROI.
Facebook for Finding Friends
Facebook marketing brings a whole new meaning to finding friends. With a general understanding that joining fan pages and causes can produce networking opportunities, the groupings in Facebook are more focused around causes, interests, and individual connections; therefore, joining groups in an excellent way to make “friends” and “fans.” The easiest way to connect with others via Facebook is by using connections from other networking sites. With connections on Twitter, Biznik, or LinkedIn, the chances are good that co-workers, clients, and business contacts have the same networking accounts. By inviting people from outside of a networking circles and joining groups, women business owners receive additional exposure and the opportunity to connect with others who might value their goods or services.
LinkedIn for a Connection Networking
LinkedIn provides the occasion to interact with professional women with experiences that build valuable business partnerships. The basis of LinkedIn is the degrees of separation between any three people; hence, by connecting to co-workers and current business contacts, women can construct a powerful network of like-minded women with the same business goals. By joining groups that include potential contacts, savvy business women can directly request a connection with other business owners or solopreneurs to form alliances based on their participation in the same LinkedIn groups. From media contacts to potential business partners, LinkedIn can give women in business a comfortable and effect way to reach out to other business owners.
To connect with LinkedIn members in groups, add them as a connection with a personalized message that includes intentions. This increases the chances the approach will be successful. It is an electronic networking cold call, so give a connection a reason to warm up and respond.
Blogging and Blog Marketing for the Masses
Although blogging and blog marketing does not technically fall under the category of networking for many social media experts, those who blog regularly will explain that it is highly possible to connect to customers and potential business partners through a blog. By building links in a blog roll or trackbacks to blog postings, a niche audience can be developed by women business owners seeking to draw traffic through good SEO. Further, as blog is a living stream of constantly changing information, the type of information provided is targeted toward the type of audience in the market segmentation.
Eliminating the need to connect through the traditional routes of pounding the pavement in high heel shoes with loads of business card, the addition of social media and networking to the marketing efforts of women owned businesses can increase exposure to a large audience of potential customers, build brand recognition, and supply viable business development opportunities.
In reality, social media marketing and networking are natural outlets for women business owners due to their evolved communication and social skills. Providing a “safer” environment and a relative amount of anonymity, most women effectively use the power of social media marketing and networking to assemble vast followings of potential customers and contacts. By setting goals ahead of time and targeting market segmentation with a powerful niche marketing message, social media marketing and networking can be a cost-effective, efficient way for women owned businesses to gain market share.
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