By Guest Blogger Rod P. Burkert | Burkert Valuation Advisors LLC

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What do business valuation practitioners need to know about using social media to effectively market their services?

“LinkedIn is, by far, the most popular social media platform used by business valuation and forensic litigation services (BVFLS) practitioners,” Burkert observes. He believes there are two reasons for its popularity: it is the easiest of all the social media to get started with since it deploys a familiar resume-style layout to gather and display content describing who you are and what you do, and because of its ease-of-use, LinkedIn is where most of our like-minded ideal prospects hang out.

“But that does not mean that everyone on LinkedIn is doing it well,” Burkert warns. He argues that using any social media poorly is not better than not doing it all.

“Never use social media to market your services,” Burkert explains. “Social media is not about you or your services. It’s about courting relationships with your ideal prospects, sharing useful content, and connecting people who need help.”

Burkert says that the use of social media should mimic how you get business in the face-to-face world. “You wouldn’t walk up to attorneys you don’t know and immediately start pitching your services to them,” he says. You would introduce yourself and establish common interests and relate to other people you know. You engage and draw them in with the faith that, if the chemistry is right, they will want to do business with you.

He advises those who have not gotten the results they expected from social media to “Stop trying to generate leads. Start genuinely helping people, and watch what happens. The social media world embraces authenticity, altruism, and validation by third parties (what other people say about your on social media sites). It quickly rejects advertising and self-promotion.”