Are you using social media to grow your business?

Do you still use the Yellow Pages to advertise to prospective customers? Is this approach working for you?

How about the other traditional methods of bringing in new clients? If you’re not getting the results you once did, it’s likely a reflection of several factors:

Newspaper circulation continues to dwindle, which means no one is reading your ads. Young people continue to gravitate to the Web for online gaming, and increasingly, to view video content. So they aren’t watching commercials. Millions now listen to music and talk shows on their iPods, which means they don’t hear your radio spot. After decades of interruption marketing, consumers have learned to tune out unwelcome marketing messages via direct mail and other vehicles.

None of this is to say that marketing is dead. Far from it.

Marketing is just evolving from a broadcast model into a closer relationship between you and your existing clients -- and more of a targeted hunt for new clients.

If the scatter-shot approach of the past isn’t working well for you, you must now be smarter about how you identify, locate, connect with and engage your prospects. This means going where your prospects and clients are, and speaking to them in their own language, about the things they care about.

If you are marketing business services, you should probably be establishing a presence on LinkedIn, where there are millions of business professionals. If you are launching a hip hop act, MySpace is the place to connect with your future fans. If you want to be viewed as a trusted expert in your field, there’s nothing like the immediacy and intimacy of a blog to establish your credibility in your field.

You don’t have to be absolutely comfortable and proficient in your use of these tools – they’re going to keep changing anyway. But if you haven’t already, it’s time to dive in and get started. And it’s not difficult or expensive. For instance, this blog is hosted at Blogger.com. It’s free and you can easily launch your own blog and start connecting with your customers today.

Likewise, there’s no excuse for not being on LinkedIn. Your prospects are there now, waiting to connect with you. Get started now!