Social media is all about listening to people one-on-one. It is also about individuals, not companies. This is great news for small business owners who ARE the company. All this time you have tried to look bigger than you are, conveying messages of size without stretching the truth. Now, your on-line presence needs to be all about you—who you are, what you do and why you can help someone. THAT you can talk about!

In social media, there are the big “parties” like LinkedIn and Facebook, and then there are the smaller “events” that don’t get as much traffic but are still worth checking out. Both serve their own purposes and can be useful. Just like a party, a smaller party offers more opportunities to talk to people while a larger one offers more individuals with whom to talk.

In addition to all the benefits, it is very important to “own” the information on the web that is about you. If someone met you, remembered your name but not your company, phone or email address, what would they do? Most people would throw what they knew into Google and check out what came up. So what comes up about you? Shouldn’t there be a whole page of results about a person as interesting and unique as you are?

So how to get started….. First, do just that—put your name and location into Google and see what comes up. How many results on the first page are about you? Next, make sure you have a LinkedIn profile. It should have some details about you—even if it is just former companies and titles. Your next step is to set up profiles on other sites. There are MANY to choose from so decide which ones you want to use and fill them out. The nice thing is once you’ve written a short bio, you can use it over and over again. At a minimum it is recommended to be on Plaxo, Google Profiles (google.com/profiles/me ) and Yahoo. It sounds like a lot but can be done in about two hours. You don’t have to put up much information, but once this is done, when you Google yourself the next time you should own the whole first page of results. Be sure to check that out periodically.

Now, wherever a person is they can find you. You will appear connected, technologically savvy and well-connected. Who doesn’t want to work with that person?

Service providers want to say they can do anything you need but how can you be sure? Ask them to describe a time they went above and beyond for a client or what was their most challenging problem to solve and how did they solve it.

The last stage of references is of course is to provide them to the client. Instead of just giving them dry, similar responses, because you asked behavioral interviewing style questions, you now have something unique that can truly provide insight into the candidate.

For example, if I did a reference on a former co-worker of mine, I would say he was hard working, diligent, knowledgeable and accommodating. Great. But if you ask for a story, I would tell you:

“The President called me in and asked for a new piece of software. We were overloaded with work, everyone was stressed and I dreaded having to ask him to work on it. When I got back to the office, before I even said anything, he looked at my face and said, “we can do whatever it is—we’re all in this together.” We then worked together on the project spec, I was able to reassign some of his other projects to someone else because he had them documented so well and he completed the new project ahead of schedule.”

WOW! Don’t you want that guy working for you? And if you can then tell about how the manager told the story—she was clearly still grateful for his attitude five years later—it solidifies an already impressive reference.