Social Media Starting Points

Do you have profiles on any of these (or other) social media websites?

• LinkedIn
• MySpace
• Facebook
• Twitter

If so, why?

Perhaps to drum up business, connect with old friends, network for new opportunities or because everyone else is doing it? A lot of professionals looked at social media sites as a waste of time or just for kids. While many social media sites did start with younger people, there is no doubt social media is a powerful part of business development … and it’s here to stay.

So the question is, “How do you use Social Media in your marketing efforts?”

That’s a trick question. Here’s why. Have you ever been on a blog or in a forum and read comments from people who weren’t really interested in contributing to the conversation? They were clearly there to just pitch their stuff.

Timing is everything. With social media, and everything else on the internet, you need to realize you can quickly get a bad reputation if you violate social protocols. These norms vary depending on the site.

Get to know the social media website.

It’s best to get to know the site and understand how people interface with each other. You can also consider setting up separate accounts for your business and your personal identity. For example, Facebook made a change in recent months that allow businesses to open up special accounts. Business can ask people to become a ‘fan’ of the organization.

As you get to know the sites, you should begin to study best practices recommendations from the site itself. You can read internal forums and support information to get a feel for the best way to optimize your social networking. This is a good way to learn the ropes and what may or may not be socially acceptable.

Once you have a good understanding of how you can be a good citizen of the social network, then you can dig in and learn more about appropriate ways to begin to consider a marketing conversation. A key Stratworx precept applies here; ‘Take your time and get there faster.’ If you ruin your social networking reputation, it’s hard to get it back.

Cheers,
Steve

Steve Olds
Founder and CEO
www.STRATWORX.com

This entry was posted on Friday, May 15th, 2009 at 12:27 am and is filed under Newsletters. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.