We all know, as successful business owners, that networking is crucial for business growth and life!

Why? It’s a way to form tight nit relationships, trustworthy referrals, expose your personal brand ,a strong support network, a feeling of belonging, being surrounded around like minded people….the list goes on!

I have spoken to a few people of late who are saying Twitter is for the anti-social – people that are too scared or too lazy to hook up face to face! What a load of bull crap! I have been on Twitter for quite some time now AND my social fixes on Twitter are like injecting myself with 20 cans of Redbull!

 The relationships I have built up on Twitter are strong, powerful and true. Twitter is another form of networking and it can be done from the comfort of your own home to hit a global audience, I believe the people that say it’s anti – social just totally don’t get this space…YET!

A few weeks back I had a brain surge-and I nearly had to go into hospital!

I found that I was engaging in conversations with many people from Melbourne (where I live) on Twitter.  I don’t know about you, but when I tweet with people,  I picture in my mind the type of person they are, what they look like and also what their office/house looks like too? Random I know!

As a social media enthusiast and people lover who has a zest for life, I just had to fizz with these extraordinary twitterers.  They all gave me something on twitter – whether it was support, exposure, a belly full of laughs, referrals, business ….. I JUST HAD TO MEET THEM, face to face!

It was an absolute no brainer to take powerful relationships that I had made on twitter to a whole new level! We all know the power of twitter in lead gen, personal branding and networking. Combine this with an offline networking meet up and shaaazam – add another power marketing strategy to the business model!

@tweetupmellers was born – and for the first meet up,  22 of twitters top talent showed up ! If you are curious to see the  strength of this space then click on this !

My point? Online networking is gold. Combine this with offline networking then you have just hit the jackpot my friends!

Were any of the people that showed up lazy or anti social? Quite the contrary! They get this space and got straight in! They showed up, put in the time and by the end of the night our twitter network was stronger than ever. They all know, as you do that you have to put in the time, care about your network, give great content and be real! When you do THAT then the opportunities are endless.

Twitter is a social networking tool and it’s strength has now lead to an offline networking group too! Both are crucial to any business and both generate powerful results.

Twitter for the anti-social –ppppphffffft – check out @tweetupmellers and the group, then get back to me, wouldn’t you agree?

I am always looking for quirky and powerful ways to market the business online, whilst exposing our clients too! WIN WIN!Being a Web strategist, I need to keep it fresh, original and catchy for my target market and reader base. I also need to think about how I can increase good quality traffic to my website via the platforms and keywords I choose to use – then capture the viewers interest so as they keep coming back for more.

Last week I had a MASSIVE brain energy surge (thanks to my broken leg).You know the ones I mean right? Those entrepreneurial light bulb moments, that wake you up like a bolt of lightening…usually around 3.30ish in the morning! Shazam!  

Here is what the early morning hours injected me with. Why don’t I utilize my supportive leg cast as a means of advertising space? Here I can softly promote the outstanding businesses I consult for (Rob Hartnett and Think Tank Media) ah, and of course Let’s Refresh too!  This strategy could be used to gain exposure via all the juicy web2.0 platforms in a unique, catchy and extremely powerful way. Now stick with me here!

Click here to see how we did this. It was such a fun and entertaining ‘cast paint branding session’ guys, with a few gin and tonics thrown in….because we can!

We used many platforms to expose the leg cast in a text based, picture and video format, this gained us an unexpectedly high amount of traffic and attention! We received a whole bunch of emails, tweets and we even saw people sharing this with their friends .Yet why? 

I put my inspector cluedo hat on (I do have one you know!)   and delved deeper.  I asked my trusty followers on twitter why they were sharing this. Here are some of the answers I received:

1.       Business owners saw it as a way to gain THEMSELVES attention-immediately (on twitter). Interesting hey!

2.        They wanted to help me out (sometimes people love to assist others, they find it easier to promote other people rather than        themselves-gotta love human behaviour for this-use it to your advantage guys!)

3.       Using our quirky pictures and videos got them more click throughs to their own websites.

4.        They believed their follow base on twitter increased due to “retweeting  this” (sharing my post on twitter via their tweets) .

5.       It got them thinking outside of the box, with new ways to promote their own business.

6.       They had a resource, some material and content that they could write about in their blog posts. Blush blush!

We even got asked how much would it cost to advertise on the cast! Hmmm… interesting!!!!So, they were using our pictures as a way to gain themselves attention yet at the same time, they were passing on our message (WIN bloody WIN)!

This is why social media and social networking works – I love it!  It’s all about word of mouth (and THAT my friends is one of the fastest ways to gain exposure, attention and build up a trust worthy fan base for you business – then drive traffic to your site).

What did I (as a small business owner) take from this, apart from a whole bunch of ideas and some quality feedback? Plain and simple – a new strategy to our business plan.  Let’s Refresh can now utilise Web2.0 even more. By using this strategy we can add value to our clients by gaining them some powerful and free exposure, yet at the same time we get a healthy promoting session too.

Each month we decided we would offer one of our lucky clients the opportunity to be promoted exclusively in an extremely quirky and catchy way- I’m excited already! When I say promoted, what I mean by this is giving them viral exposure, growing their presence through the wonderful web2.0 platforms (eg. on our blog, twitter, facebook, flickr, bookmarks, youtube plus many of the video platforms we use and drive traffic to their site too). It will be unique, catchy, and different! It also raises my heart rate above 100BPM, and I’m guessing you now me by now, I love that!

 Have a think about what you have just read!

How can you use web2.0 to shamelessly market your business?

How can you add value to your clients/target market through the Web2.0 platforms?

How can you make it fresh, different, catchy and at the same time make it a win win?

Click the comments section below-I’m really interested to hear what you come up with. If you need any quick ideas then feel free to comment too and I will get straight back to you!