I recently heard from a friend who was having trouble logging into her LinkedIn account. She wrote to me asking why she was Locked Out of LinkedIn. She said every time she went to log in LinkedIn from her work account a page would appear telling her “Server not recognized” and she could not get any further. Since this friend is also a hospitality executive not being able to network with her work mates and clients presented a problem.
After some brief scanning on Google and other pages I was able to easily identify the answer to her problem. She had two accounts. In fact, I confirmed my suspicion by doing a simple LinkedIn search and her profile appeared twice. One had a personal email address the other was linked to a work account. Answer in hand I set off to her offices to help her out of the jam she found herself in.
When I arrived at her offices I was quite proud of myself that I had found an answer to her problem and I was very excited to share the answer with her. Once inside of her offices her sales manager had a couple social media related questions for me. Being that social media is a passionate subject for me I found myself chatting with her for over 45 minutes before I was able to get to the question that brought me into her offices.
When I thought we were going to broach the subject that brought me down to her offices she shared with me about a conference she was planning that would take place in NYC and how they were looking for a New York band who had Maine roots. This provided me a great chance to share with her my incredibly talented brother in New York, Mike Pride and his band Bacteria to Boys. It so happened that she loved my brother’s music and they are now in negotiation’s to book the gig.
Shameless Plug:
At this point we hadn’t even got to the subject of her LinkedIn problem. So we finally began the conversation and I shared with her the simple fix. While discussing this simple fix I mentioned to her one of my favorite social media monitoring tools that Rich Brooks turned me on to, NutShell Mail. A great tool that summarizes all of your social media networks into one simple daily email. It even tells you who has stopped following you…which can get depressing. 
As I began to leave my friend’s office another associate of hers came to me and asked if I could help their marketing person with some social media marketing issues. I said I would be happy to help, even though I had already been there over 2 hours at this point.
90 minutes later I was leaving the marketing executives office. Total time spent 3.5 hours – total bill $0.00. The next day I took an additional 45 minutes and composed an email to the employees that I met with and summarized what we went over, and provided additional support materials. Their response and gratitude made my day. Have I seen any immediate monetary return on this time investment? No, not right away. Here is what has come about since then though.
1. One of the employees asked me if I would be interested in addressing social media in a conference setting for hospitality executives. Having a chance to address a crowd as an authority is priceless and typically results in new leads.
2. The executive who’s problem I have fixed now thinks of me as a person she can go to with social media questions and concerns. She also now feels comfortable introducing me to her friends as someone who knows social media.
3. I landed a new client.
4. My brother may book a fun gig.
5. I felt good giving my time, and creating a lasting relationship with 4 new friends who I now know more about. I was able to give the time, and I tried to give more than they asked for. In return – they feel special (and they are), and I get to know that I made their day easier, helped them out, and helped increase my own business.
I’m sure we all have stories like this, I would love to hear your story of doing a little pro-bono work and how it resulted in some great new relationships and even some new business. After all, isn’t that what hospitality is all about? Making people feel special, unique, and important? This sounds an awful lot like the goals I set for my social media marketing campaigns. Make you realize you’re special, realize why you are unique, and then, I earn a chance to get your business.