Ok, so I’m not a professional marketer at all and this is NOT a marketing list. I don’t think 🙂 Tell me if you think I’m wrong.

Anyway, I am trying out social networking on LinkedIn and Alignable to see if I can find some business owners or department heads who are interested in taking spreadsheets to the next level or already have an Access database they are looking to improve.

The majority of my business I have gotten through word of mouth, but then I typically just work with that client for a long time and do a lot of work for them. I might have 2 or 3 of these clients active at any given time. I’d love to find some small projects though and have a larger number of smaller clients (who may be larger clients at times) to support my work hours.

So far, the organic approach to posting on social networking isn’t super fast, which I expected. I think as I am seen and build up more trust, I may get more business using this channel.

What do you guys think? I know there’s a number of small Access businesses out there. Do you have many clients? Do you niche down on a particular type of work, Excel to Access conversions, or specific industries? How do you find customers and build trust with them?

If you do advertising, what kind do you do? Google AdWords, local networking, mailers, cold calling, door to door sales?

I’m interested in both what works and what doesn’t for you.