Marketing your practice and marketing yourself is a lot easier today than it was 20 years ago. Today, you can control most of the elements of marketing, as well as the costs.

Some easy ways to become known or marketed, at low or no cost, involve technology and the internet.

1. Create a blog and write on something that will be of interest to your target audience. Here are some examples of blogs. Click on the links to see some popular topics:

• GrowthForce
• Cubepros
• Taxmaven

The first two are on actual websites. The blog articles can be “tweeted” out to draw people to the content. The third one is just a website that was created to house articles that were published in other places and aggregated with an active Twitter feed. Content is rotated on the blog.

2. Create a twitter account with an easy to remember handle. As in the case of a blog, tweet on areas where you can position yourself as an expert. In my case, I tweet on tax matters, technology and client accounting services @DavidBergstein. LivePlan is a Twitter feed that I follow because I want to keep current on the tools that this company offers to accountants to help them offer advisory services.

It is easy to get started on Twitter, and it is free. All you have to do is go to www.twitter.com and click on sign up and follow the prompts. If you don’t want to create original tweets upfront, but you have an area or specialty that you want to tweet about, just read an article and tweet it. I read a lot of articles in AccountingToday. If I see something of interest, I click on the share button and it allows me to tweet it or share it on LinkedIn with a single click. Actually, I wrote the article below so it is easy to share on all the social media sites, as well as my blog.

3. Another way to market yourself is to create a LinkedIn account in the same manner as you do to create a Twitter account, and follow the prompts to sign up. Click on this link to see an example of a LinkedIn account. It’s not unusual to see an entire conversation grow from comments on something I’ve posted. 

4. There are many other ways to market your practice or yourself that involve no cost and only the time you allocate to it, such as creating a YouTube video, or a podcast with just audio or audio and video.

5. Non-virtual ways of marketing are also available. You can volunteer to speak on an area that you are knowledgeable in. It gets you in front of an audience that will have prospects that can turn into clients, as well as being able to help people in general. I have volunteered in the past to teach VITA courses that help people prepare low-income tax returns for free, which is rewarding in and of itself. In some cases, I have received referrals from people that I’ve taught. Networking by attending meetings and business groups is also another way to market yourself in a face-to-face setting. You can check Meetup for different groups and events in your area.

There are many other ways to market yourself using technology or other traditional methods, which I will discuss in later posts. Feel free to reach out to me vial email at David@bergsteincpa.com with your questions.