One of the most effective means to market a company is through personal relationships both locally and online in the virtual communities of blogging, “micro-blogging”, social networks and web forums.

It’s true we get some business from people doing web searches and finding and contacting us but the greatest bulk of our business has come from local networking efforts. We are currently involved in the following groups in the upstate of South Carolina;

• GSATC
• Greenville Mac User’s Group
• Upstate Carolina Linux User’s Group
• Greenville Area Security Professionals (GASP - love that Acronym )
• Upstate Women in Technology
• South Carolina Women’s Business Network
• Upstate Entrepreneur’s Forum
• Professional Network Connections

We have also participated in the Innovision program sponsored by the Innovision Technology Awards which included a creativity seminar and forums on business innovation in the upstate of South Carolina. We also have plans to join the local camber of commerce. Of course we are not restricted to these groups and are always looking to get involved in any social situation where we can share our services during appropriate times. If you would like us to be a part of or attend on of your meetings in the upstate of South Carolina please let us know. These local groups have helped us get our name out in the community and make connections with other businesses that need our services.

At this very moment I am using the blogging feature on our web site to connect with site visitors and at the same time I have made great connections with other bloggers who are experts in their fields. Another place we have found clients is by participating in online forums where a lot of people gather to discuss specific topics. Other interesting tools for getting the word out are “micro-blogging” tools. Right now we using and testing out Twitter, Jaiku and Pownce and the results are more interesting and productive that you would think. A couple of the social networks we are using are Facebook and Linkedin.

Technorati Tags: blogging, business, clients, communications, culture, fellowship, innovation, Internet, leadership, linking, meeting, security, twitter

This entry was posted on Friday, July 20th, 2007 at 4:02 pm and is filed under Greenville,SC, Innovation, Internet, Security, Tips, Upstate,SC, blogging, branding, marketing, networking, social networks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.