Facebook and Twitter aren’t just for teenagers anymore – today’s social media sites now offer legitimate marketing tools as well.  And with leading sites attracting a significant number of visitors each day, social media has become a key player in today’s marketing plan.

But before you dive straight in, develop a targeted strategy just as you would for any other aspect of your business.  It’s easy to get carried away once you get started, so stick to your plan and make it work.

• Prioritize. Focus on sites that are most likely to help generate business leads.
• Choose the right avatar. It’s your social media logo, and a good picture is worth 1,000 words.
• Be active.  Interact with your users instead of just creating a static site.  People appreciate consistent responsiveness.

As cost efficiency and user-friendly formats drive their popularity forward, the number of social media sites is growing.  But not every site offers the same format or function.

• Content Posting – Share visual media such as videos and photos.  (YouTube and flickr)
• Networking – Connect with friends, family and colleagues.  (Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn)
• Bookmarking – Store, organize, search, manage and share bookmarks of webpages.  (del.ici.ous, Ma.gnolia and Furl)
• Sharing – Recommend business-related or news worthy links.  (Digg, Diigo, Stumbleupon, Reddit and BizzBites)

With more and more people integrating social media into their daily lives, we have seen only the tip of the iceberg.  Coming up, we’ll be looking at some possible benefits of paid advertisement through one of the most popular social media sites.

Tags: Social Media

This entry was posted on Friday, June 11th, 2010 at 1:18 pm and is filed under Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.