Author page: Peg McDermott

Social media, when included in an overall business development plan, is very effective in generating targeted leads. The key is to work your network across multiple channels. Use Twitter as a lead developer vehicle for identifying and engaging with prospects. Invite your new follower to become a fan of your Facebook Fan page. Once engaged, provide an incentive to your new fan to opt-in to your marketing lists. Give your email campaigns and other marketing efforts more reach by cross promoting in your social network. Use Google Analytics (free), and other measurement tools to measure social media, web and blog traffic. Trackur is a social media monitoring tool that tracks nearly every element of online media, from blogs, RSS feeds and Tweets, to images and video. It start at $18/mo subscription but also offers a free version.