Understanding Social Media for the non-geek.
How can I use social media grow my business?
You are your business. Through social networks you are connecting to everyone you know and everyone they know. You can greatly accelerate your network by tapping into social media as long as you understand why and how to use them effectively.
Social media is about "relationship building" through personal and professional connections and is therefore a hard metric to capture. It's about engaging and interacting with your audience by giving them something of value which will keep them coming back for more.
When using any social media site remember, you are marketing YOURSELF. It is important to be personable, but not provide so much personal information about yourself that friends from high school start posting pictures of you taking bong hits from that awesome graduation party... You need to monitor what and who you are interacting with and be aware of how information is being shared with your various networks. Be consistent to who you are and how you present yourself.
There is etiquette to social networking. Each site has it's own set of rules and parameters. Search blogs, wiki's and forums to educate yourself on this etiquette.
Twitter
When using twitter, you are creating a "following" of people. People who are interested in what you have to say. It's important to offer your followers something of value. Twitter is about who you follow and interact with, more than it's about who's following you. Build content. Engage with people you may not otherwise engage with. Give and Take. That's the key.
Using hashtags while tweeting (#freelancecamp) brings the greater world to one location. When some one is searching for freelancecamp it will narrow down the search to be more contextual. It creates an association and over time creates credibility.
Linked-in
Linked-in is a professional networking site. It allows you to create a professional "work identity" that is purely business. The great thing about Linked-in is you can see how people are traveling through their careers and allows you to connect with a broad range of business professionals.
Facebook
There was limited conversation on facebook during this session. Here's a link to an article titled "32 ways to use facebook for business" that has some great insight: http://webworkerdaily.com/2009/07/21/32-ways-to-use-facebook-for-business/
De.Lic.ious
De.Lic.Ious is a Social bookmarking service that allows you to categorize a piece of content or database reference which will help others find data in different ways (similar to keywords). Overtime the information categorization will help narrow down searches to be more contextual.
