As the Quad Cities premier referral, business connection, and networking group, we should all be working hard helping each member of our group market their specialties. The “million dollar question” is, “How can I do this in an effective and beneficial way?”

Here are a few suggestions that I hope will help:

1. Have a cup of coffee with each group member and learn all you can about them, their passions, and their business specialty. If you don’t really know someone, their motivation for doing their job or being in business, or what exactly they are good at, it is really hard to market them with people you meet.
2. Read/subscribe to each members blog (if they have one). By getting regular updates from the writings of our members, we can learn about and understand industry trends that will help us to recommend our members to our family, friends, and business connections. By the way, if you have a thought that would add to the conversation, leaving a comment at the end of a post will add content to their blog and help their rankings in the search engines. This will allow more people to find them as they search the members specialty online.
3. Follow each member on Twitter, LinkedIn, and even like their Facebook page. These social media helps are like passive word of mouth advertisements for our group members. Every time someone clicks “@referralsqca” on Twitter and sees our web address, there is a possibility that they will visit the site, learn something new, and contact us about the group. The same thing is true about every members Twitter account, website address, facebook page, etc.

These are just a few easy steps we can all take to help the whole group market their businesses. As group members, we have become “cogs” in the referral engine for each company represented. Let’s do our part for each member of the group!