Fact is, there are business owners that are just too darn scared of even using social media. So to help ease your fears I have gathered some tips and advice to help you get started.

Choose wisely

Pick a social networking site you feel comfortable joining (could be a site geared towards music, business or even arts and crafts) Keeping in mind that you’ll want to join a network that is within your interests and goals. The main home pages usually have a “sign up’ button. Simply click and add your information. Don’t rush it and start joining dozens of site – get a feel of how social media works and just take it from there.

Getting a Feel for the Community

Its best to learn how the network flows and simply observe. Take notes of what seems to work, or not work, what you like about the site and so forth. What are the members chatting about, what are the popular discussions. Is there real activity or very little movement on the site.

What’s the plan

What are your goals? Are you looking to use the medium to gain new clients, keep in touch with current ones, check out the competition? Setting up a plan will help you review your accomplishments as well as areas of improvement.

Observe and Learn

An vital part to an effective social media campaign is to keep track of who may be chatting about your business or company, what are they saying, and how is the community are reacting to it. Monitoring what may be said about your business will will help you tweak your marketing plan and benefit from it…it may even help you gain new business.

Be a part of the Community and Action

Although your goal may be to gain new business, don’t come across as just business. Interact and be social. You’re time on social network does not have to be all business. Being more real like sharing your day to day comings and goings, special events, likes and dislikes will make you more approachable.

Get Feedback

Ask for feedback, reviews and insight to help you reach your target more effectively. One powerful use for social media in business is as a customer service tool. Instead of waiting for a customer to air a complaint, use social media as a way to engage and interact with your audience. And be sure to thank everyone who chimes in individually.

Consistency is Key

Your profiles, comments, posts and conversations should stay true to your company’s overall mission and values. If more than one person is posting on behalf of your company, it’s vital to have a standard tone and guidelines for consistency. Once you expand your reach to more than one social media site, consistency is even more important.

Social media networks are ever changing; from guidelines, features to design. What may work today, such as being the top searched term or phrase on Twitter, may not work tomorrow.

You’ll quickly learn that the more your participate the more people you will reach, the more exposure to your business you’ll receive and the more traffic you will get.

* 57.7% of respondents “ideally” plan, and

* 56.3% “realistically” plan to include social media in their media plans next year.

The key phrase here is “plan” as without a well researched social media strategy, there will likely be numerous failed social media initiatives.

Here is some steps social media strategy that Sally Falkow developed and has presented at several social media bootcamps:

1. Listen to conversations – what good or bad things are they saying about you and your competitors?

2. Establish share of voice – there are already conversations going on – what share do you have?

3. Set goals/benchmarks – using the data collected work out your goals and benchmarks (i.e. what your starting point is).

4. Find bloggers and communities – locate the bloggers and communities that will be of interest to you going forward.

5. Identify influencers – who do your customers trust?

6. Develop a content strategy – what content will your target communities and influencers be interested in?

7. Pick tools – should you blog or be on Facebook, Twitter or other sites?

8. Create and deliver the content – create the blog posts, Twitter posts and so on.

9. Engage and facilitate conversations – don’t just publish content, engage with your audiences. A conversation is two way.

10. Measure results – set up and monitor metrics to manage the program.

1. Extend your marketing strategy
It’s important to use Twitter as an extension to your current marketing process. Take what you’ve already got as ads and strategies and implement it on Twitter too. This can’t serve as an independent mean of getting yourself known, but it’s best exploiting it like a new discovery. Don’t give up what you’ve already created, but extend it to what’s new and catches the eye of the public.

2. Announce your deals and discounts through Twitter.
Twitter is a micro-blogging platform. What does this mean? It means that it’s a combination between a blog and an instant messenger. This makes it great for announcing the latest news. If you are using Twitter for your business nothing can catch better than a promotion and a 24 hour discount announced in the last minute.

3. Build a community of real, true fans.
True fans are not just any fans. They are the followers which are literally interested in what you have to say or what you have in store for them. A true fan won’t just buy your products, but he will also tell all his other followers about it. True fans are the ones which do the real marketing for you. You tweet something – they re-tweet it the same day.
A community of 1000 true fans is in fact worth 100 000 ordinary fans. This is because real fans promote you to others just like you would do it yourself.
So, rather than investing your time in getting in superficial contact with lots of people, just find the ones which are really interested in what you have and keep them connected, create a community for them.

4. Create intriguing discussion around your products.
Twitter is the one place where negative publicity is not necessarily bad. People will talk about it and there’s always room for conflict. So if you have a negative report on what you are selling Twitter is the place where that can be discussed and transform into something positive and productive.

5. Gain credibility.
Ever felt like your buyers feel distant? I bet you’ve tried lots of methods to get them closer. It’s all about creating a warm feeling around your products. Again, using Twitter you can give a more human look to your company. You will be closer to the people who like your products, you will be ore credible and ultimately sell more.

We all do some sort of social networking with our friends, colleagues and business associates. We reach out to people when we need advice, referrals, lead generation, etc. Social networking is about advice.

Social media is using all the different tools on web sites to communicate socially. (Examples: www.Myspace.com; www.Facebook.com; www.LinkedIn.com; www.Twitter.com)

Blogs and video syndications are also unique ways to communicate. If you combine all the social media tools to reach out to people, we have definitely experienced a paradigm shift in relationship building strategies.

Now you can reach out to anyone. You can reach out to complete strangers you really do not know and can get advice or even share your advice online. This allows us to store great advice digitally. Each of you have probably given or received advice but it may be forgotten after a week or so. Now you can connect with others online for advice from different element s and store and save this information indefinitely.

This switch to social media allows us to communicate more effectively and efficiently.

At the end of the day, they are two different things. Social media is an enabler and is a way to do things faster, better and store the information. Also social media can be used to drive people to your face-to-face events or trade show booth, while exhibiting at a conference or tradeshow. We actually Blog at shows while online to talk about how the show is going or deliver content that others may want to hear. You can also upload a video and/or images of an event or exhibits at the show. You can interview attendees and post the video and images online and Blog about them.

The social media marketing tools like Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, and Better Networker & WordPress could do wonders for you. The idea behind the social media marketing tools is that they have a network, which could be used to your advantage to sell or promote whatever you are interested in. The tool being on a network is capable of a chain reaction. From one it would get to others and each of the people who has been passed on the information about the product or service that you are trying to promote would spark the others connected to them through the network. Thus, if you have managed to create a sensation for your product and service with one, you could expect the chain reaction promoting your product and services in no time.

Using social media to market your home business like Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, and Better Networker & with WordPress is the latest trend. It is not only a way to reach out to a number of people by igniting a spark, at the same time it is quite and effective & cost efficient way to target potential customer. It is great to be using all the social media marketing tools like the once mentioned above however, when it comes to consistency and managing, you should be prioritizing the same based on the target group for your product and services. Like for example, you are a Training Consultant, you could have your presence in all social media marketing tools like Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, and Better Networker & WordPress but you could be concentrating more on Linked In to start with. As this would empower you being on the network, where you would get people from various organizations and industries that would have training needs. Hence, if you are able to make a successful way in to Linked In for yourself you would be setting up for a chain reaction in favor of your training Consultancy.

The success of the social media marketing tools – as an advertising & promoting ground, has been mounting over the years. The reason of the same being, that more and more people are realizing how important it is to socialize through these social media marketing sites and at the same time they know that they would be able to get better links for their own business and services through it. Hence, social media marketing tools are guaranteeing visibility & acknowledgement for your product and service which would be ripping the potential customers into actual customers. By creating your own profiles to brand yourself as a leader you could use these sites for personal branding as well.