By Cindy Novotny, Master Connection Associates

Too often in special events and wedding planning teams the entire idea of social media is sharing pictures. Although this is important and the best way to show active and exciting content, it cannot be effective in growing your business without good engagement with your followers. Take some time and consider a social selling platform. Using all the technology available – Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and LinkedIn you can begin to strategize on the best tools to use at certain times. It is a fallacy to believe that Facebook is not for corporate and social event planners are not on LinkedIn. Not true!

So here are a few tips to consider in growing your business with social media.

Create a 30 second video clip (commercial) on your business and put it on your LinkedIn profile as well as Facebook and Instagram

Continue adding contacts to LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram that will increase your circle of influence and engage with these new contacts

Don’t spam! If you are asked to connect with someone who you do not know or there is not mutual connections or similar business – do not discount them and immediately delete their request. Send them a message through the social selling platform thanking them for reaching out to you and politely asking ‘how your connection will be mutually beneficial.’ You will be surprised by the answers. About 30% of the time you will get an immediate response telling how they know you or why they would like to connect – so accept! 70% of the time you will get no response to your message – so DELETE!

Follow your prospective clients, current clients and competition. Be on top of trends

The last and most important tip on using technology and social media is to only spend about 15 minutes in the morning and 15 minutes at the end of the day on these platforms. The rest of the day should be spent actually engaging with clients to build your business.