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The Importance of Social Networking for Your Practice

written by kgonzalez

Being successful in your practice in the online world today is just as important as being successful in the ‘real world’. We all know the benefits of networking whether it is at conferences, tradeshows or events. Yet with today’s ever-growing popularity of social networking sites, it is important to follow with technology and grow your own practice through these sites. Joining sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter (which are a few of the most popular for business purposes) are great ways to keep in touch with new contacts as well as with your own clients.

Of course, there are some fine lines when it comes to social networking, which include keeping an entirely personal account for yourself as well as one for your practice use only. Yet you want to make sure that you are still acting like a human, so-to-speak, on your professional site as your contacts want to connect with a person and not just a business. Keeping your profile and sites current is essential as you want your visitors to keep coming back to your site. Adding blogs, updates about your business or tips for your clients will keep them coming back and thus help to reinforce your expertise in your line of work.

I found some interesting statistics from The Future Buzz  and Digital Buzz Blog websites that I felt compelled to share with you in order to show you the importance of jumping on the social networking bandwagon:

 Twitter Statistics

1,111,991,000 - number of Tweets to date (see an up to the minute count here)

86,078 - number of followers of the most active Twitter user (@kevinrose)

 63% - percentage of Twitter users that are male (from Time)

Facebook Statistics

150,000,000 - number of active users

170 - number of countries/territories that use Facebook

35 - number of different languages used on Facebook

LinkedIn Statistics

 30,000,000 currently active users

 $4.7 million in capital when launched in 2003, and now up to over $100 million raised to date

 As you can see, the statistics and ever growing number of users reinforce the importance of social networking to help promote your practice. Don’t forget to check those sites out if you haven’t already. If you have any suggestions about social networking, tips or other sites that you’d like to share with other ICONs, please let us know!