I get updates for industry groups of which I’m a member on LinkedIn. After an exchange with a friend about one of these I wrote him:
LinkedIn is great for job seekers. Not sure of its value for generating business/clients. It’s mostly people bloviating with the hope someone will stop their own bloviating and pay attention. Like Facebook for business people.
One can waste a lot of time on useless social media. Posting comments read only by people in your industry, most of them national not local, is good for your self esteem but won’t get you much business. I’ve been going through this a lot lately with my wife. I’m trying to convince her that she needs to talk more about the value her clients receive instead of her experience, what she does or the latest continuing education class she’s been to.
It’s the same for all of us as we maintain and grow our businesses. We have to be asking and talking about what our customers want and need, not what we think is important. This applies to professional service business, manufacturing, distribution, construction and every other business.