Social Media 101 Where to Begin? Which Networks Matter?

• Who's on it? Almost 750 million people!  And most likely many of your customers and prospects. Facebook’s user profile cuts across ages, races, and locations making it the best known and most used social network in the world.
  
  
• What do they do there?  Facebook makes it easy for people to share their experiences through short posts, photos, videos and by “Liking” and sharing interesting content they discover online.
  
  
• Why you should care:  The sheer volume of Facebook usage makes it important to know about, but more importantly, people are doing more than connecting with friends. Close to half of Facebook’s users are connecting with businesses and non-profits and sharing the news, deals, and other content from those organizations.

• Who's on it? Twitter is ranked as one of the 10 most visited websites and enables all types of people to share and consume information they find interesting.
  
  
• What do they do there? Twitter users post news, articles, promotions,  and jokes all in 140 character chunks. By “following” someone on Twitter you can see all of their posts and easily share them with the people who “follow” you.  For many, Twitter is a great source of real-time news and insights about the things that matter most to them.
  
  
• Why you should care:  Twitter gives your organization a voice and is another fast and easy way to share messages and get feedback from your customers, members, and prospects in real time.  And because it is so easy for messages to spread quickly, Twitter can bring you to new audiences that you might not be able to find through traditional marketing like tv, newspapers, and radio.

• Who's on it?  LinkedIn is the most widely used social network for connecting people professionally (e.g., based on their business profile, not their personal life) and is a social media home base for lots of B2B organizations.
  
  
• What do they do there?  LinkedIn users create professional connections based on their interests and experience, often participating in group discussions and answering questions relating to their industry or areas of expertise.  They also stay on top of and share relevant industry news.
  
  
• Why you should care:  LinkedIn is a great way to create professional connections that can give you ideas and advice for running your business and to help spread the word about the value you are providing to your customers.

While there is no one-size-fits-all answer, most small organizations start with Facebook because it's flexible, your customers are likely to be on it, and the pace of activity is more manageable.

Not sure if your customers are going social?

• Send out a survey via email asking which social networks they are on
  
  
• Ask in the course of other conversations
  
  
• Get started and see what happens! (experimentation and social media marketing go hand in hand)

Ready to start building a presence?  Choose a network for step by step instructions on how to get started and successful.

• Facebook
  
  
• LinkedIn
  
  
• Twitter