For most of you, this post is way too late but I have talked to many people who are still just getting into the social networks and trying to figure it all out.
So if your behind the eight ball, let me give you some starter tips.
First off, you need to understand what social marketing is because I would argue that it is really not a marketing platform as many will suggest.
Dave Evans wrote a book on "Social Media Marketing - An hour a day" and stated "Social media involves a natural, genuine conversation between people about something or mutual interest, a conversation built on the thoughts and experiences of the Participants".
I believe in this statement full heartedly and is the one thing to really remember when starting your social networking.
IT IS A "SOCIAL" NETWORK You can't just throw up some stuff now and again and hope someone notices.
This is your chance to show your involvement, communicate with customers and genuinely interact with them.
You'll find there are many companies who will help you with setting up a network (including us) but really the challenge is not setting them up, it's keeping it updated with genuine comments and interactions.
People don't want to see just posts of "hey look at us, we offer nothing but please look!!" You want to try to provoke conversation, interaction with you and your company.
Can you throw in a special now and again? sure, but with tack.
If all you're doing is selling, they'll block you and your time and effort is wasted.
When we get to the office, we will log on to our network and see what customers are talking about and try to interact as much as we can.
Birthday's, announcements or just a "howdy" can go a long way when building relationships on-line.
Many of the network services like Facebook make these types of interactions very easy.
This is why I would suggest starting there on Facebook.
There is literally hundreds of social networks to be evolved in.
Some are very cool and some are really bad but Facebook has created the largest and easiest tool (in my humble opinion) to get started with.
Keep in mind however that Facebook is not designed for companies.
It is design for personal interactions not advertising so creating a page for your business is sometime challenging.
In many cases, you will need to create a personal page then add the "like page" to your site that will act as your business profile.
Like I mentioned before, we can help with this process and is usually free (depending on how crazy you're wanting to go).
This gives you a starting place anyway and I am hoping to create some more tips in this section because of the number of questions we get over it.
So keep checking in every week for more updates.