Getting into Social Networking Site's ...is it worth it ?

I start with a confession. I am a Twitteraholic. I’ve been hooked on Twitter for more days than I can remember.

I even hate myself for not being able to look away from my TweetDeck of followers and people I’m following because, well, I kind of have to get some other work done. In other words, I’m a fan.But I also realize that there is much more entailed with building a true social media strategy and I think some folks are missing the point if they feel that just being on certain sites like Twitter and Facebook is how a brand automatically grows. Not so.

Worse yet, you probably have some people from within or outside consultants saying, “We need social media!” or “We need to be on Twitter!” or “We need to be on Facebook!” or several other methods. But they aren’t explaining why you need to be on those things. Why, because everyone else is doing it? That’s kind of a lousy strategy. And what will you do once you are on some of these sites? Just talk about yourself? That’s not a particularly good way to establish a relationship.

So you get social media is important, but you don’t understand all the areas of it that have relevancy to you, how to fully harness its potential in relation to your brand and how to tie it back to the concepts you may be more comfortable with, like customer satisfaction, customer retention, ROI and brand loyalty. Am I anywhere near the challenge you’re facing? If you are challenged by any of the above, you have good company.

For the time being, let’s not talk of what type of social media you need to use. Considering this or that technique before appreciating what motivates your audience is not the right way to approach brand building, whether you use social media or not. Put another way, it’s like a doctor making a diagnosis before he or she knows the patient’s symptoms.

Now how one can build a more appropriate social media plan :

1.If you want to gain maximum exposure, keep yourself on the “public timeline” so everyone sees your tweets. To do so, leave the “Protect Your Updates” box in the Settings area unchecked. If you check this, then your Tweet updates will become private and you’ll have to approve who can follow you every time. It will also keep your updates out of search results within Twitter and you don’t want that to occur as this dramatically reduces the ability of others to find your company.

2. Use the ‘Find Other People’ or ‘Search’ tool on Twitter. Just type a name or particular concept such as branding, culture, marketing, etc. This can be huge if you type in people in your industry and then find others that are following them. It opens up your reach significantly within your targeted industry or area of interest.

3. Post Tweet updates (messages) regularly (i.e., several times daily but don’t bombard your followers). Share your knowledge and resources (remember 140 characters or less) on something of interest and that will help others such as case studies, business events, key ideas, etc. Don’t forget to provide any links to the information.

4. Make your Tweets understandable, inviting, compelling and informative. You want to attract the right Tweeters as followers and you’ll want to follow those that have a common interest in what your business brand has to offer. So, make sure the information you Tweet is useful.

5. Use hashtags by using the hash symbol (#) before a subject (e.g., #brand) in your update. This allows the search engines and others in the ‘Twitterverse’ to find your updates on the subject.

6. Use Twitter to make connections, identify prospective customers and point others to your company’s website or others’ website for resources. This is a huge opportunity, as you build

followership, to share your knowledge, communicate information on what you are doing, create a mini-press release, share info on your products and services, new product or service launches, or other resources (e.g., white papers, research, etc.) you may want to point others to.

7. Create multiple accounts to exponentially expand your company’s (brand) exposure.

Now points to remember :

• Social media is not all about you.
• Think about your target audience 

  and how they use social media (if they do).
• How do you plan on conversing/sharing 

  info with audiences in these realms?
• Just because it’s popular 

  doesn’t mean it’s right for your brand.
• Consistency, consistency, consistency
• You can have strong ROI ,

  Depending on how you view the “I.”