A New Generation Marketer

Ready to jump onto the social media bandwagon?!

Do you consider yourself technologically savvy or very socially connected? Make sure you are using the below social media sites, and using them correctly!

1. Facebook: If you are a business, create an informative but not overwhelming Fan Page. Connect with others in your demographic market and geographic location, interact with them, and post valuable and meaningful information for fans to read. If you are an individual marketing yourself online, ensure to clean up your profile, i.e. no bad pictures, create appropriate status updates, and watch what pages you become fans of and what groups you join. Then, start networking with professionals and professional groups through Facebook.

2. Twitter: If you are a business, develop an original background that conveys the image and look and feel of your company. Interact with others in your industry, thought leaders, key consumers, and proponents of your brand. This will help you disseminate your information in the most direct way, and those people will be more receptive to it. Make sure you do not over-promote yourself, or followers will be turned off. Post valuable information about your industry in general, and make sure to interact with people! If you are an individual, create an original background that conveys your personal brand online, connect with friends, co-workers, favorite brands, and even those in your industry that you want to network with. Search for topics or industries in the search box to get involved with people doing involved with that on Twitter.

3. LinkedIn: If you are a business, create a strong description of your company and join all relevant groups to your industry/product/brand, etc. Post your blogs to those groups and ask others for their feedback. In the same way, respond to others and interact to be seen as a thought-leader and a ‘socialite’ on LinkedIn. If you are an individual, create a strong description of what you do or what you hope to achieve by networking with others. Get involved with groups that are relevant to your area of interest or speciality, post your blogs, and respond to others as well. The more active you are on here, the more recognized you will be, and you may even land a job offer!

4: Blog: Today, blogging is more important than ever for everyone to be doing. Blogging allows you to be seen as a thought leader or expert in your field. For blogging success, read Chris Brogan’s blog titled 40 Ways to Deliver Killer Blog Content.” Tell Facebook friends about your posts, Tweet it out to the Twitterverse, post it to your groups on LinkedIn, and even make them into video blogs to post them on YouTube for additional exposure!

5. Commenting on Blogs: You know it feels good to see that someone has commented on your blog, so as common courtesy, comment on other blogs as well. They appreciate it as much as you do. By reading other blogs, you can learn more, learn about different perspectives on issues, interact with new people, share that information with others, and get your name out there.

6. Pictures/Videos: Giving a visual representation of your daily activities or thoughts is a great way for a reader/viewer to interact with you and learn more about you. For example, if you are traveling into Boston for the day and want to take a video of you recapping the conference, people will want to see your video blog review if they were not able to attend. Also, if you are at a really cool restaurant, saw a neat car, etc. you can take a picture and upload it to TwitPic or Flickr to share with all! Visual representation of what you are doing is more powerful than you may think!

For those of you starting off in social media engagement, take these steps slow and carefully so you develop your content in a planned out and effective manner. It does take time, so don’t rush it. To monitor your online presence, occasionally search Google for your own name to see how much content is on the web about you. If you are getting involved with Internet technologies for a career, future employers may be Googling you more than looking into your resume.

For those social media gurus reading this, any other suggestions to add?