Tag Archives: Google

Using LinkedIn and Google for Prospecting

Recently looking at some numbers from Google’s Trend service, I found that I could use these top 10 numbers to help spot potential clients. How?

One way to find prospects is to use the Trend service to find the top ten states and cities for your keywords. You can filter the results by region, sub-region, language, and a number of other criteria.

The results may surprise you, as it did me. I found that although a number of places were expected to show up, the others were informative as to the demographic I need to target as a professional.

By analyzing the resulting data, you can then go to Google+ or LinkedIn and type the combined keywords into the search box and the results will show you people in or interested in those keywords in those places.

For example, I’m a professional genealogist and want to know what other genealogists are seeking, so I typed in “genealogy”, with the quotes, to find out where these potential clients will come from. I also typed in separate queries for “family history” and “ancestry” to get a larger perspective, and also to spot some outliers that others may have missed. Those results were also informative and gave me a broader base to work with.

Using LinkedIn, I was able to connect to other professionals who might want to work with me on trans-continental research projects. With Google+ I was able to connect with genealogists, both professional and hobbyist who might want to retain my professional services.

This form of marketing, while not the trendy organic sort, is necessary to find out where your viewers are and where your potential business is. Decision-oriented-thinking (©) like this is necessary in order to better address things such as knowing your audience and knowing what else they are interested in, the basics of good marketing.

The possibilities of finding your demographic audience for blog and website posts are also great as the numbers, although a bit general, show you details you can use in client and customer prospecting.

NPM

© 2012 N. P. Maling — Sea Genes – Family History & Genealogy Research

 

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How-to Genealogy: Google tip

When searching with Google, you can exclude certain sites that insist on advertising within the content of their pages, like ancestry.com and wikitree.com. To get rid of those results and cut down on the number of hits by several hundred to several thousand, use a search including this:

-"ancestry.com"

or

-"wikitree.com"

You will get better results and see more potentially relevant info, too.