Building connections and relationships are crucial components of the marketing function of your business. But life happens and sometimes you just cannot get out of the office or house, if you have a home-based business.

As a single parent, I need to be selective about my travel and it’s best if I am home early morning so in order to nurture and grow meaningful business relationships, I have had to get very creative with my methods for meeting people online.

Social Listening

 Your target market and the media are online talking, asking for what they need and in many situations saying things online that they would not say to anyone else because they are just venting and think no one is listening. The impact is very powerful when you show up with a solution when it is totally unexpected. Give it a try.

I was recently in a conversation with a small group and there was one person who was asking for help yet talking over everyone. One of my friends stopped her and said “you have 2 ears and 1 mouth.” We got her attention and actually helped her through her problem.  This applies online too.

Be in the Right Place

There are so many places you can hang out online, but is your ideal client there too? Take a little time to discover where your target market spends time online and that is where your should be too.

Again, it is really simple, but if your market is spending time on LinkedIn and you are in Pinterest you will not connect. A few suggestions, use Google and the search function in the various social media sites. They all have very advanced search features.

Engage, Do Not Sell

Once you find your market online, engage with them… ask a question, offer a solution, connect them with someone else. It is called “social” media, not “sales” media. The medium is much more effective when you invest the time to build the relationships and them people will buy from you because they WANT to. When this starts to happen you will understand the true value of social media and why it is important to be present.

Stay Connected

Once you make the connection stay connected. It is so easy to do this on social media, simply retweet one of the tweets, comment on a blog post, share a resource. Without leaving the house you can build and maintain incredibly valuable relationships.

This is not something you can outsource, there are many tasks around social media that can be outsourced, but never your voice or your conversations. Tools like HootSuite make this easy to do and the opportunities that are waiting will astound you.

Hashtags – Conversations

Become well-versed in using hashtags – these are the words that anchor conversations online. You can join relevant conversations that are already happening online by simply tracking and using 3-4 related hashtags. One of my favorite tools for identifying the best hashtags to use is Hashtagify.me.

How do you connect online? Please share below.