Let’s face it, in terms of networking and business growth, it is critically important to be in regular communication with a growing network of people. Staying “top of mind” and being considered the subject matter expert for your line of work offers credibility and a regular stream of new contacts. In the area of online communications there are several ways to accomplish this: newsletters and blogs, serving as a contributing author to one or several publications, Facebook and Twitter updates, etc.

There are a few things you want to consider when deciding how to leverage these tools to grow: what format will your targets appreciate the most? Do your target audiences Tweet? Would they peruse a magazine? Do they keep their eyes on Facebook updates? Will they read the newsletter or unsubscribe? Obviously, these answers vary by business, and realistically, each business likely has constituents that would be interested in some of these formats, and not interested in others.

Since each format has fans, we must consider this from another angle: where do you feel you can thrive? Are short frequent messages (Twitter, FB, etc) easier for you? These are great as in 30 seconds a day, or several times a day you can publish something that says “Just left such and such location, good thing I was there,” “ABC just happened,” “be sure to XYZ.” With these you are always staying in front of people, and at that moment when you want them thinking about you, they go to their smartphone and there you are.

With publishing a newsletter, blog, or other articles, you can put together deeper insights and build your credibility. This is valuable for obvious reasons. Here again, you need to consider distribution. There are many opportunities to serve as a contributing author in industry specific periodicals. Being published by a third party is great as that publisher certainly has reach that you don’t, yet. Find one that is relevant to your business and see what kind of information you can provide that would benefit them, be of interest to their readers, and find out what format they would prefer. Make sure to have a one or two line bio about you and or your business with reference to your website. In my observation, people are inundated with information and thus not reading all that much these days, unless it is from a desired source. Therefore, they will probably not read your newsletter in completion unless you prove to be providing something incredibly valuable. If you are going to send regular communications, be sure to have consistently good content. If not, don’t put yourself on the hook to do this.

This offers a look at the value of a blog. Here you can post good content when you are ready to do so. You can set this up to distribute to specific followers with little technical infrastructure. The more you do post, the more likely someone’s internet search lands on you. The other value here is that blogs are typically searchable on the same site, so someone can search a topic and find only what they are looking for. If you do go the newsletter route, try to find a way to make your newsletter archives searchable as well.

In summary, all social media and online communications can be of value. The question is how much can you invest, either in time or $, and what format can you best leverage to maximize your returns.