When Andy Nathan started using Twitter, he had no idea he’d soon be one of the top 50 users in Chicago. Now he lends his expertise in social media & blogging to businesses as the owner of Smart At The Start. Nathan expanded his business by blogging, focusing on blogging consistently- meaning at least five times a week for a year. “I knew if I were to do something once a week or once every two weeks, I’d forget about it,” says Nathan. “Andynathan.net is not my first blog, it’s just the first one I’ve consistently pushed and the first one I’ve been able to consistently market.” Nathan said it was the last thing he was going to do, and he tells his clients to make it the last thing they do as well, because it’s such a commitment. Instead he helps them with bite-sized networking pieces, with a focus on branding. “For social networking, it’s really about branding. It’s about making sure you can get across your message to clients so they understand what you do so they buy your services,” says Nathan. “Don’t sell in social networking. That’s the biggest thing and the biggest mistake.” Spending your time on social media putting out deals and offers simply won’t get you the clients you are after, says Nathan. Instead, he suggests putting out information so that you can garner an in-person meeting at a later time. But all in all, Nathan says social media should be fun. “It’s sort of like a game in terms that you get to make all these great connections, so it’s a really cool thing to meet people,” says Nathan. “I have connections all over the world. The fact that I can have conversations one day through email with friends in Egypt actually as stuff was going on, and then the next day I could have conversations with someone in northern Ireland, then the next talking to friends on GoogleVoice in LA, it really just moves things around. I have business partners all over the world. I can never imagine being able to do this without social media.”
