It was April of 2011, and I had been writing for some time. As I reflect back now, it was well over a year that I was carrying around a notebook and writing about sales, sales management and leadership. But I was feeling lost. It felt like I was stranded on an island, wondering if my message would have meaning to anyone else. I was quickly coming to the realization that Google was “letting me down” when I needed it the most.

What I mean by that was I was having trouble finding out what I really wanted to know about sales and who the key players were. I wanted to connect with influential people in the industry, but just did not know how. Then I saw a commercial from the website www.ancestry.com and it inspired me greatly. Their tagline was,

“You don’t have to know what you are looking for, you just have to start looking.”

I was pumped up! I was going to dig deep online and search for influential people who were doing similar things do what I wanted to be doing.

Shortly after I started my search, I came across a website called:

www.salesandmanagementblog.com

Paul McCord’s fantastic website and blog not only provided great value for me, but he also had a “Blogroll”. For those who do not know, a Blogroll is a listing of favourite blogs that the author follows. It was like I had won the lottery! Many of the influential sales leaders that I follow today are on that list, and I have thanked Paul personally for enabling me to connect with a great group of people. I immediately started to follow their blogs, but it was time-consuming.

Fast forward a few weeks, and I was visiting an account for work. One of the employees was on Twitter and enjoying it a lot. I made fun of her a bit, and stated that I did not need to know every little update of celebrities and regular people. She said that I had it all wrong, and gave me a quick tutorial. I was very impressed and kicked myself that I had not joined sooner!

After work that day, I rushed home and feverishly started searching for people who I had recently discovered in the sales space. Many or them were actually on Twitter! I started to follow them. The first thing that I noticed was the time savings for following blog posts and other valuable content. As an example, if I was following ten blogs and had to go to each of their pages on a regular basis, it would take a long time. But if I was following them on Twitter, they were all updating their profiles with new tweets and I could see what was new in a fraction of the time. That was awesome!

As I progressed and became a daily Twitter user, I realized that the social interaction was becoming very beneficial to me as well. I was having a blast, and contributing daily! I must admit, trying to get my point across in less than 140 characters was a challenge, but I learned to adapt. As the list of people I followed quickly grew, I proceeded to group them in to sub lists, to keep each list of people to follow a manageable size.

LinkedIn was a website that I had previously used for job searches. I soon realized that it was much more than an HR platform. I started to connect with people in the sales space, fellow entrepreneurs, and old friends! I have now connected with close to 900 people, and am looking to add to my network daily.

Starting a Facebook fan page and joining Google+ a few months ago has provided me with other platforms to share my message on. Internet marketing leader Gary Vaynerchuk put his spin on social media during an interview with Tony Robbins once. He was posed the question about where people should be connecting with social media. His answer was a very emphatic “ALL OF THEM”. His explained the point with this analogy….

“If you were invited to several important business mixers, would you attend all of them, or just one?”

If you are attempting to spread your message to as many people as possible, the correct answer is all of them of course!

Social media has changed my life. I now know others are interested in what I have to say (which is an incredible feeling). I post my content in all the social media outlets mentioned above!

If you are looking to connect with people in your areas of interest, social media is certainly an incredible venue to do so. If you are looking to take things a step further and start, sustain and eventually grow a business, it is a must!

Most of you reading this are already connecting on social media, so congratulations! But please consider your connections that are on the fence, and send them the link of this blog post! It changed my life, and will hopefully change theirs too.

One last thing… if we are not connected on social media, I would love if you joined me at:

Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/SellLeadSucceed

(Don’t forget to like to stay connected!) 

Twitter

https://twitter.com/TimMushey73

Google+

http://bit.ly/XvkjRr

YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/user/TimMushey