“So, gentlemen, I want to thank you for your time. I appreciate, and have listened to, what you’ve had to say, and I just want to tell you, I’ve been around this business for thirty plus years,” proclaimed our host.

“And I just got to tell you, this social media nonsense won’t work for us,” he said, and promptly crossed his arms.

I looked down, glanced at my partner, who had just spent the better part of thirty minutes walking our prospect through a presentation about social media, and how integrating it into his marketing program was an important way to get the edge against his market space competition.

“Well, give this some time to percolate, and we’ll continue our dialog in short order,” said my parter.

“No no, my friend,” laughed the host. “I am just telling you, this dog won’t hunt.”

My partner slowly nodded his head, thought for a moment, and was about to respond when our host said “Wait, you guys have to see this video that someone emailed me from YouTube!”

He swiveled his squeaky old chair around to pull up his email on his desktop. Spent a few moments muttering to himself as he thumbed through a bunch of emails, and ultimately found what he was looking for, and said “There. I just emailed the link to you. I think you’ll love it. I really like what that company is doing with their new product! Really creative stuff.”

I coughed up the stale coffee I was politely trying to sip to be nice to the secretary who had delivered it to me. I tried to get my partner’s attention via eye contact, when all of a sudden…

“You know, both you fellows should sign up to their email mailing list. They are always sending out really great videos, podcasts, and other cool stuff. I think you’ll find it a great resource,” said our host, excitedly.

“Um,” I said, “Do you realize what you’re saying,” trying desperately not to come across as an asshole.

Our host looked at me confused, paused for a moment, and then said “But yeah, this social media stuff will never sell anything to old guys like me.”

###

[editor's note: this was a true story. the names are removed to protect the innocent.]

[drawing by hugh macleod]

Ok, so over the years, you have cultivated meaningful relationships with many people who are serving as referral partners to your business. They occasionally refer business to you. Some may even be incented to do so.

So, in these busy times, how in the heck do you stay top of mind, how do you complete for their mindshare, so that they are always thinking about you when opportunities present themselves?

Well, here are 5 strategies – using social media – to achieve just that:

1. Twitter — First of all, I’d recommend using a Twitter platform such as Tweetdeck or Hootsuite. With these apps, you can create a special column that you can lable “Referral Partners.” Next, I’d suggest placing all your referral partners, those with Twitter handles anyway, and add them all to this list. Once this is set-up, it becomes easy to keep an eye on what your partners are doing and say…providing you easy opportunities to connect and stay top of mind.

2. Google+ — You can do virtually the same thing with Google+ circles. Google+ is a growing network, and the individuals and brands investing time and building a community there are going to be the early influencers on this network. So, it is worth it to compete for their attention here. But by placing your referral partners into a circle entitled “Referral Partners” — you can keep tabs on what they are doing and talking about, and maintain dialog.

3. LinkedIn — I’ve talked before about the power of feeding your LinkedIn connection’s status updates to your RSS feed. This is a great way to receive a digest of what all of your connects are doing, saying, and connecting to. You can have all your connections go to one place, where it becomes easy to quickly scan and look for opportunities to connect. I have landed business this way too.

4. Facebook — After all, aren’t these people your friends? And Facebook is great for keeping up with friends. But acknowledging birthdays, and admiring their recent family trip to Disney World will go a long way towards deepening the connection with your referral partners.

5. Email Autoresponder — Put your critical referral partner contacts into a separate email list, and just naturally feed them a weekly, or even a monthly, digest of helpful and meaningful content that serves them and their clients well. And don’t force them to join this autoresponder list. Let them opt-in. If they don’t want to be on this list, connect with them via the four ways above.

Finally, you don’t have to have a doctorate and send these folks Pulitzer-prize winning content every day to keep mindshare. Sometimes it is the simple things…noting a birthday, saying hello, recommending a good book, wishing their child well when she is battling a cold…

It is those kinds of little actions that mean a lot to people. Even business people (yes…we are humans too). The beauty of the social web is that the applications make it easy to keep in touch with people important to your business.

You don’t have to sell them every day. They already know who you are and what you can do. But you do have to keep yourself top of mind, and demonstrate that you are evolving with the times…

What do you think? And what are some other ways to do this?

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[drawing by hugh macleod]