Cheers again and credit for this one goes to the very funny folks at xkcd.com.

Everyone out there is talking about social media, the new opportunities and risks it poses, and how to best use it. In response, your peers have begun an aggressive push to figure out what the various tools, sites, and techniques can offer their business. This is a great thing, one that I’ve been cheering on since the start.

In reality, we’ve only taken baby steps toward really getting this all figured out in both a personal and business context. With so much left to learn and so many different opinions about this fast-changing area, it’s easy to get carried away with the excitement of mastering some new tricks.

“Generate content. Generate more content. Be sure it’s relevant. The eyeballs will come!”

What about the “eyeballs”? Sure, relevant content written in a compelling manner will attract attention. That should make the information sources happy. Who is looking out for the consumers of the content?

Citizen Journalism: Fact Vs. Opinion

In case you are unfamiliar with the term, Citizen Journalism involves the “public” taking an active role in researching, analyzing, summarizing, and sharing new, information, data, gossip, multimedia, etc. that other members of the public would want to consume and/or discuss. If you think about all of the social media tools available to us — bookmarking, blogging, networking, content sharing — they are geared toward exactly that means.

This sort of empowerment of voice is truly a breakthrough that the Internet has been so kind as to provide us. But how would one know when something is “true” or “correct”? Sure, there are easy ways to do this based on public opinion, but then again, does popularity really prove anything, except the fact that a writer can get and hold your attention?

It is essential that you take a critical eye toward everything you read online. Even the stuff written by the “experts” or “thought leaders”. The following is a quick 6-question guide for completing a “stink test” on anything you read online.

Do I know and trust them already?

This is the no-brainer, and the premise behind Google Caffeine. If you know someone, their intelligence level, their credibility and trustworthiness, and their ability to assimilate information, why wouldn’t you put credence into their thoughts and opinions? If they are trustworthy and dependable, you know they won’t bend the truth just to make a point. And if you know them, you likely also know what their area of specialty is, which should significantly enhance your confidence in their writings on said topic.

Whether you are a fan of Caffeine (the search logic, not the stimulant) or not, it was built on a sound assumption that I anticipate will be proven useful. Don’t just search for me based on cryptic formulas and keywords; also filter those results for the colleagues and friends with whom I’ve already established a base level of credibility.

Was it recommended to me by someone I know and trust?

Extending out one more degree away from you (even Kevin Bacon would be proud), you don’t have to necessarily know someone personally to quickly establish credibility. When a trusted contact of mine makes a recommendation, I take it at face value. If you are like most of us, you likely do the same.

Think about Twitter for a moment. They’ve taken this concept and run with it. For example…Retweets, Lists, and even Follow Friday. Those traditions are all various methods of connecting people to each other (or to each other’s content) via recommendation. They are popular for a reason, and this is it.

Are they known as a reliable source?

This is where reputation comes into play. The first two tests are the most obvious and easiest to answer. For anyone who doesn’t make it through those filters, it makes sense to then consider public opinion. Are they a well-respected thought leader, a’la Chris Brogan (Social Media), Erin Jacobs (IT and Information Security), or Seth Godin (Marketing Strategies)? Do many of their peers seem to link to them?

It is important to consider whether someone is popular because they are already in established media, or whether they were popular on their own right before going in print or on the radio/television. All the three examples above established strong personal identities on their own merit. That’s what you need to look for.

What else have they written or said?

Perhaps the person under question for you is an unknown commodity, to you, your peers, and to the general public. Don’t just assume that means their opinions are not important. If you like a piece they’ve written, take a few moments to peruse more of their work. Share some of the “eyeball” love! You just might be the person whom your peers will trust when they are evaluating the same individual’s work in the near future.

What are the top minds in the space saying?

Hmmm, so you and your peers don’t know the person, they aren’t an established thought leader or information source, and you’ve read more of their work…but you still can’t determine the difference between fact or “quack”.

Compare notes. Do a quick search on the topic under question. See what others are saying. Is this a popular opinion or a unique one? Do you agree with popular opinion or not? Perhaps the masses are still singing the same old song while this one person truly gets it! Or perhaps the writing was hammered out while under a peyote-induced haze. This is where you need to really insert some of your own rationale into the process, as in…

What does my gut tell me?

That’s right. There is no perfect system, but at the end of the day, what do you really think? Did the writing move you to change your mind about something? Is that a sensible reaction or not? This isn’t saying to blindly accept something as fact, but quite the opposite. By this point, you’ve done enough consideration of whether they are credible or not. You’ve seen what peers, experts, and popular opinion think about them or the topic. Read, analyze, draw your own conclusions, and move on. Or maybe you can just post your thoughts to a blog, citizen journalism style!

Conclusion

Everyone is jumping on the citizen journalism bandwagon these days. That can be a great thing, but you want to be sure to use some calculated filtering of what you read out there. This isn’t just limited to blogs and social media; be critical of the established media as well.

What approach do you use with user-generated content? Do you tend to believe everything, nothing, or something in between? Do you have a better approach to the “stink test”? Fill me in!

Judging by the pageview stats and general response, it is pretty clear that my last post, Social Media is NOT a Strategy, really caught your attention. Since I’m on a roll with the whole “not” thing, let’s come at it from another angle.

Like I said last week, I am a huge proponent of using social media for specific business purposes, particularly when you can measure it.  This is in addition to my “doesn’t have to be said” stance that everyone with an online identity should be using it for personal reasons. But just because it’s a no-brainer for personal use and is a great new tool for business, that doesn’t say it is right for YOUR business.

When is Social Media Not Right for Your Business?

Keep in mind what I said last week about getting your objectives figured out prior to attacking social media without any direction. That’s always the first critical step. However, even if your objectives might suggest that social media could provide value for you, that might not always be the case. Here are 3 situations where you might want to try other avenues first.

Your Target Audience Is Not Online

This is one area where my previous post should ring most relevant to you. Obviously, you want to make sure your customers and prospects can actually be found through whatever mediums you select upon which to execute any of your most critical strategies. For example, Facebook stats show that there are precious few elderly folks with profiles. The same holds true across most platforms.

I had someone approach me a while back about whether they needed to be on Facebook. Guess what they were selling…hearing aids! ["Um, lemme think for a sec, NO!"] In fact, the oldest demographic of our population is least likely to be computer literate at all, let alone actually savvy enough to move beyond games and email to social media. It’s not hard to find them…just rely on the established mass media and direct marketing techniques that they grew up knowing and understanding.

You Have Not Gotten The Basics In Order First

Not to harp on the topic, but the OST (Objectives, Strategies, Tactics) approach can help prioritize what the most important business objectives are. Then you designate the strategies and align against it. The next step, which should most certainly be undertaken prior to experimentation with new technologies and tools, is to get the actual PR, marketing, networking, etc. activities figured out using the tools that you already know and understand.

Granted, some of these don’t work like they once did, but I’m a staunch believer that you need to understand the past to move on into the future. Make sure you establish operating procedures, processes, and other business critical variables first. Then and only then should you start to throw darts at a wall to see what sticks.

Your Team Cannot Commit To It

Regardless what anyone says, social media is in no way free. Sure, you can throw together a profile on the various social media properties at no cost. You can start posting content to a blog or Twitter daily, hourly, whatever you deem appropriate. Is that free? What is your time worth? Who will do it for you?

If you or your team has to spend time on something, it is crucial to consider the opportunity cost associated with that activity. What would you or your marketing team be doing with that time otherwise? Will social media get the level of attention and effort it deserves? I hope so. The worst thing you can do is jump in with a head of steam and then drop it mid-stream, as soon as other priorities start to interfere. Just look at the trail of dead blogs out there and you’ll see what I mean.

If you intend to do it, you simply cannot cut corners. There is a real time and effort “fee” associated with social media. Do the calculation of your expected manhours, the cost for that time investment, and what you are leaving by the wayside to do so. Then decide if that number is large enough to hire someone full-time or as an outside consultant to execute on your behalf. If you aren’t willing to invest in it at some level, you’re better off sticking to your established methods of doing business.

Conclusion

Social media is a major shift in the way we can interact and market ourselves. It finally uses the internet as intended…in a fully interactive and organic fashion. But you simply cannot get so excited about it that you jump in without considering if it is actually relevant to your business. Surely there are other situations where you are better off delaying or ignoring social media as a communication medium, but here are three biggie’s that I see overlooked frequently.

Have you seen any other situations I’m missing? Did you experiment with social media and find that it is not a fit? How did that impact your business? I’d love to hear some real-world accounts of this, so please share your thoughts.

It finally happened to me. I never thought it would, but it sure did.

What am I talking about? Information Overload

We’ve seen a slew of blog posts, studies, articles, and general commentary about this phenomenon. There are even psychological analyses and studies on this topic. Surely you’ve seen the various viewpoints…those who think our newly adopted, manic multi-tasking culture is a natural evolution, and those who think we were never meant to operate in this fashion. The Millennials / Net Generation / whatever you want to call the folks born from 1980 forward are experts at it. They operate differently, and they seem to have no problem with hopping from topic-to-topic, conversation-to-conversation, rapidly absorbing, filtering, and interpreting as many data points as they can possibly access.

Personally, I think it’s a natural evolution in behavior. As a species, we have always evolved to take advantage of new innovations. In fact, there’s a little concept we call Darwinism that explains why certain members of each species manage to survive over the long term, and why others do not. If you can’t keep up, you get left behind, as sad as that reality may be.

But there’s another issue here. That model of evolution makes a lot of sense, but it has historically conspired over extended periods of time, decades, centuries, even millenniums. But now we are making large-scale advancements between generations and even decades. Many Baby Boomers simply don’t understand or condone the younger sect’s way of operating. That doesn’t make them superior or more right. After all, they were raised in a different time where mass media was the primary form of communications. That medium, by its very nature, is a single stream of content on which you need to focus.

I find myself in an odd between state, where I can often be much more productive via focusing, but where my normal mode of operation is fragmented like the younger group.

A couple of things changed that put me over the tipping point.

First, I decided to dabble with foursquare over the course of several months. My initial reaction to the service was negative. Thoughts of an Orwellian future filled my head on first glance. Why do I want to advertise where I am? And as we’ve seen, why advertise where I am not? Well, the repeated advice from social media “gurus” that I needed to get on the Geolocation train finally broke me down and I started to play the game. Those of you who know me personally have already likely heard about my concerns, even while I was using it (probably a mad effort to rationalize it for myself, actually).

Second, my job changed a bit and became significantly more busy. Like 14 trade shows in 4 months busy, on top of my existing messaging, social media, and other responsibilities. I also inherited all of MarCom for Anue Systems.

Of course, sooner or later, something had to give. I was already juggling a full time job, family, blogging, and a list of other items. But a couple of weeks ago, I got this mad feeling to go hide under a rock. Yep, it was full-on Information Overload.

So I had to make a very important choice: Simplify.

Go cold turkey on foursquare.

Start removing those I follow on Twitter with whom I have no relationship to speak of or who provide no value to me. If they stop following, oh well. Quality over quantity, right?

Focus more on conversations rather than content. And strongly focus on real people in my locale who I can meet and engage with offline. This was the most refreshing of all of these changes!

Now I feel much better. Call it a social media spring cleaning. It’s something we should make a habit.

How is social media treating you? Are you still getting the same value out of it? Could your activities use a fresh spring cleaning? Have you ever experienced Information Overload? Tell me your story in the comments. If I get some good enough conversation going, I’ll assemble them into a post for my Posterous page to share with the world!

Earlier this week I was talking to some colleagues of mine about “corporate speak”. You know what I’m talking about…all of those made up words (a.k.a. generic jargon, buzzwords, etc.) that aspiring young professionals in big companies use to try to sound smarter. Surely you’ve seen resumes, proposals, or other business documents that were littered with nonsensical words, most of them of many syllables and tenuous definition.

Don’t get me wrong; this isn’t a diatribe about using big words and good grammar. This is about playing a little game we used to call “Bullshit Bingo”. If you’re not familiar with the game (and surely many of you are), it was an old joke where you could put a list of these made up words on a Bingo playing card and cross off each of them as some pompous “know-it-all-wanna-be” started littering their “thoughtful” comments with them during a meeting or presentation. I know the game helped me make it through many an aimless meeting in my previous corporate life.

Here’s a little video I found on SPIKE.com that elaborates on the idea behind this whole concept.

Funny you say? Yes, but unfortunately, this video only exists because this actually happens in real companies today.

Well, I’m taking it upon myself to call Bullshit on Bullshit Bingo.

I want to start by calling out a grammatical error which is so common that it has been included on some BS Bingo boards (at least I know it makes it onto mine, because it’s a near certainty that someone in the room will do it). It’s not a made-up word, but it has been so bastardized that this has become one of my biggest personal pet peeves. I’ve even seen it used incorrectly on blogs and social media, which is less offensive than in a face-to-face business meeting, but still a huge issue if you  are using those media for personal branding or conducting business.

BS Bingo No More: Learn how to use the word “myself” properly!

The biggest offense I’ve seen here is the use of myself as the subject of a sentence, as in “Bill, Tom, Jane, and myself will be organizing the event.” [ACK! Even writing that is like nails on a chalkboard for me.]

How should the word actually be used by literate adults? It’s reflective people!

What does that mean? Unless you’ve already used the word “I” in a sentence, the only other potentially acceptable way to use it is as the subject of a preposition. And never, ever, ever use it as a direct replacement for the word “me”, even in a preposition. Confused? Perhaps some examples will help.

Correct Uses:

• I myself will be giving the presentation.
• I really created a bad situation for myself.
• I somehow injured myself.

See what I mean? That could have been pulled straight from classic literature. Or a really well written journal.

Let’s look at some misuses in more detail now.

• The team in attendance will include myself, Marie, and Barb.
• For this project, all requests should be sent to myself.
• To drive this project, myself will need a bigger budget.

That last one kind’a bothered you didn’t it? I had to include it. You see, the most frequent misuses of this word in my experience are in badly structured passive tense sentences (which should never be used in business writing; save it for the freeform poetry) and in serial lists. You can find passive tense by using your “Yoda” voice to test it…if it sounds like Yoda, it’s probably passive tense. Serial lists are like “myself, Marie, and Barb” above, where you list out multiple people. I guess it’s easier to get lazy with grammar when the sentence is already convoluted or you can bury it in a list of names.

Either way, myself is reflective. It’s a simple word and a simple concept. And it doesn’t make you sound smarter to misuse it. It has the opposite effect, at least on those of us who know better. Now we all do!

Now go out and help spread the word. If you hear someone use Myself wrong, call them out. They may not thank you for it, but they’ll owe you one for helping them appear less ignorant to the rest of us.

Now enough ranting; I’m going enjoy some SXSW fun!

Last week while traveling to San Francisco for the RSA Conference 2010, I finally took the time to figure out how to use TwitPic from my mobile phone. It was like a revelation! For those of you who follow me, you may have seen as I posted various photos from the trip out there, my dinner the first night, etc. I had a shiny new toy!

Then on Monday night during the opening reception, the show was relatively slow. You see, they open the show with a two-hour open Expo, and the organizers treat attendees to beer, wine, and food. Because of the treats and eats, very few of the attendees are actually interested in engaging in business-related discussion of any sort. Of course, as an exhibitor (@AnueSystems, actually), we are required to man the booth in case we are approached by anyone with questions or interest in our products.

Since we were mostly standing around looking for some meaningful conversations to crop up, I decided to partake in one of my favorite pastimes when out in public: people-watching. RSA presents a very interesting range of people from all around the world. There were business types in suits, hard-core security techs in t-shirts and jeans, booth talent in various getups, marketing and sales folks in company branded attire, and just about anything else you can imagine.

About an hour into the show, a woman approached the booth across from us in a very peculiar outfit. In fact, it looked as though she were dressed by a color blind, stylistically-challenged imp! We had a nice chuckle among our group, and of course we snapped a couple of photos. Then it dawned on me…I had to share this one on Twitter. It would surely elicit some nice laughs by my online friends, so I opened up email and teed it up to send with the following message included: “RSA 2010: Not a fashion conference”. After a few minutes, I had second thoughts about whether this was a smart thing to do, but it appeared the email had already sent, so I was all in.

The next day while having lunch with Jennifer Leggio (@mediaphyter), Social Business blogger for ZDnet, I shared this story to see what she thought. Her reply? “What if that is one of your customers?” Of course, I was just about certain it was not, but as I pondered her feedback further, I grew more and more concerned about doing something so stupid without thinking first. Now, I’m a guy who is no stranger to the taste of my foot, but at this point in my life, I’m most certainly too old to blame such a gaff on the folly of youth.

That night, I logged into Twitter to see what maelstrom of feedback I may have gotten to the picture, and it unexplainably wasn’t showing up in my stream. I was befuddled! Can it be…did the email never in fact deliver? So I went to TwitPic and logged in, and alas! I did manage to successfully cancel the transmission, which was the result of either luck or badly-needed common sense [maybe a little bit of both].

Whew, what a close call. For those of you who know me, you’re aware that I’m always up for a good laugh, but seldomly in such a disrespectful way to fellow professionals (and yes, even those with no fashion sense deserve respect on an intellectual and business level). I try very hard to foster productive and mutually beneficial relationships. In fact, networking is one of the most important things I do outside of work and spending time with my family.

But in one fell swoop, I nearly let the my fervor for a newfound toy throw me off my course. Never forget, social networking is still about people first. Anything you say or post online is available for public consumption, and with your “it’s me” stamp of approval permanently attached. Sites, tools, software, and cool apps are great, but they are just methods by which to interact with real people. Think about how it might affect the person on the other end, and in this case, the “butt” of the joke. It’s just not worth doing something potentially offensive for a cheap laugh. Oh yeah, and if you’re in the job market, be sure your Facebook account won’t scare off your interviewer. If you don’t think they are looking, think again.

Special thanks to @Mediaphyter for her voice of reason. If you haven’t seen her work, I highly recommend you take a moment to do so.

On that note, namaste my friends.

Most of you likely looked at the title of this post and wondered, “Tommy, what the heck are you talking about? Fantasy Sports is not social networking.”

On the surface, it’s easy to see why the game could be viewed that way. But I’m here to tell you that fantasy sports are as much a vehicle for social networking as Facebook, Flickr, and even foursquare / gowalla.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the game, let me elaborate. In its most simple format, 10-12 participants join a league before the season starts. Pretty much every major sport has a fantasy game associated with it. Prior to the first day of the season, the team owners get together in person or online to draft teams of real players from real teams, assembling a lineup in accordance with the league rules. Then, when the season starts, they start or sit players depending on a variety of factors (healthy vs. injured, good vs. bad matchups, etc.). Teams then receive credit for the actual statistics each player tallies. The overall goal is to end the season as the best team in the standings or to win the playoffs, depending on how the league is set up.

To many of you, this may sound rather pointless. In fact, there’s even a rebellion by “Fantasy Widows” as some have called them (you can learn more about on the Women Against Fantasy Sports website, complete with a line of related apparel). But these games play a role much more important than killing time and maybe blowing a little cash.

Believe it or not, fantasy sports are every bit a vehicle for social networking that many of the leading services are. Let’s take a quick moment to look at some attributes of the game that lead me to this conclusion.

1. Tribe-based – All activities happen in pre-determined leagues where all the participants agree to play within the same scoring system, by the same rules, using the same tools and features. This sounds a whole lot like my friends on official social media sites.
2. Online - Although the first fantasy game, Fantasy Baseball, was originally administered by avid fans using box scores from their local newspaper, the game has migrated completely online. So what if it started as a truly social activity and not a cool new web toy. It was social before it was online, so it most certainly qualifies.
3. Interactive - Fantasy sports are all about the ongoing activities you must undertake to win a league. All of the team managers must take part in a live draft, with full chat functionality in the online draft room. Then, the season is  a mix of lineup decisions, trade negotiations, and adding and dropping players from the free agent list (a.k.a. the list of players who are not already on a team).
4. Real-time – If anything is real-time, fantasy sports fit the bill. Games happen every day or every week, and real-time scoring is a must for the hardcore fantasy sports players. Team rosters can be adjusted in many ways on a daily basis. Team owners can work out trades at will, post messages in a threaded format (like blog comments), talk smack right on their team pages, and email back and forth between participants. Sure, the bulk of the action happens during live games, but whom among you spends 24 hours a day on social media sites anyway?
5. Content-heavy – An entire industry has been built around fantasy sports blogging, analysis, advice, products, and games. Breaking news is a huge piece of this puzzle, and tools like Twitter and Facebook now play major roles in the dissemination of real-time player-related information. If you don’t believe me, you should have been paying attention to the chatter on Twitter leading up to the NBA trade deadline on February 18.

I know there are as many perspectives on this topic as there are fantasy games to choose from. What is your opinion? Do you play fantasy sports? Do you see it as a social networking activity? Is it just gambling, or old fashion bonding and honest fun? Let’s get a good conversation going in the comments, because I think it’s due time that fantasy sports gets the positive press it deserves.

For more information about the fantasy sports industry itself, read more from the Fantasy Sports Trade Association website. Industry writers also have their own Fantasy Sports Writers Association, of which I am a proud member.

This week, Return On Now has the privilege of sharing with you a guest post by Aaron Strout, CMO of Powered Inc. right here in Austin, TX. In addition to running marketing, he also serves as a key “social voice” for the company.  In that capacity, Aaron continues with his speaking, blogging, podcasting, and social networking activities with an eye toward creating awareness and lead generation for the company. Aaron co-hosts the Quick-n-Dirty weekly podcast with Jennifer Leggio, he maintains a social media blog titled Citizen Marketer 2.1, and he is well-known as a thought leader in online and social media marketing.

For today’s post, Aaron has agreed to give his overview on B2B and how social media can actually be used to benefit the business. With all of the discussion surrounding concerns about measuring impact to the bottom line, I felt that this would be an important topic for all to hear.

__________________________

Why is it that, when it comes to conversation about social media, business-to-business (B2B) seems to get the short end of the stick every single time? As someone who does a lot of webcasts, blog posts, and speaking gigs, the question/comment that always comes up is, “what about B2B examples.” Fortunately for me, I’m able to mention companies like BreakingPoint Systems and Hubspot that do a great job tapping into the power of social media, but I often wish there were more examples (with public results) that I could discuss.

In thinking about this topic, one of the main reasons that B2B has taken a little longer to adopt social media into its marketing mix is that it’s harder to do effectively. It’s also feels risky because there is less control then  in other channels. With that said, I personally believe that B2B companies stand to benefit the most from social media because they live and die based on the strength of their customer relationships. On top of that, many B2B companies actually know exactly who their prospective customers are, so seeking those folks out in a meaningful way and creating relationships with them can have a huge impact on the bottom line.

Given that I’m a prescriptive kind of guy, I’d feel remiss if I didn’t offer up some tips about how companies can start thinking about putting social media into practice. There are obviously tons of ways, but here are a few (including a diagram that provides more color commentary on item number three):

1. Start listening. This is easier to do than you think. Set up a Google alert for your company’s name, your competitors’ names, and keywords for your industry. If you’re already doing this, consider hiring a “listening” service like Techrigy, Radian6, or Meltwater Buzz. This will help you find where all the relevant conversations in your space are happening.
2. Create a Twitter account for your business. However, resist the urge to put up links to press releases, product specs, and links to press that are singing your business’s praises (at least out of the gate). Instead, talk about things that people in your industry care about. For instance, if you create bill payment software, talk about the needs of small-to-medium sized businesses across the financial spectrum (payroll, credit, vendor management, etc.) Link to reports and industry analysis. Point out other peoples’ blog posts and magazine articles.
3. Set up a blog. Before you do this, though, make sure you have someone (ideally internal) who is willing to commit to posting at least 5-6 times/month. This can be someone on your marketing, product, or PR teams, or even better, one of your executives. Think about creating an editorial calendar to help guide your topics. Most importantly, spend time looking at other industry related blogs — in fact, you should spend at least a month doing this before you set up your own blog. Be sure to comment on those blogs (talk about the topic, not your company). This will help with getting to know the relevant “social” people in the space.
4. Create an online community. Once you’ve gotten comfortable with items 1-3, start thinking about an online community. Ideally, this is for both current and prospective customers. Some businesses feel more comfortable about creating private communities where customers can talk to one another. The key in either case is to hire a great community manager and let them help you create relevant content via webinars, blog posts, and conference calls (see diagram below). A community manager will also help you draw out your customers and ensure that conversations stay relevant and productive.
5. Measure, measure, measure. This is less difficult than you might imagine. This really should start with looking at your current goals — i.e. new customers, greater retention, larger share of wallet, referrals, etc. Then make sure you benchmark (i.e. look at your webstats and current KPI’s) before you launch your social efforts. Then, look at how you’re moving the bar over time. A key place to look is your web analytics, to see what kind of traffic and engagement your Twitter feed and/or blog efforts are driving. Also, it doesn’t hurt to survey customers and ask them if your efforts are impacting their loyalty to your company.

I won’t lie to you; everything I mentioned above takes effort. But it’s worth trying, especially when it’s done right, because it will yield results. One thing that I failed to mention is the importance of integrating the recommendations above with your existing marketing/channel activity. Social media doesn’t live in a vacuum, and if nobody can find the fruit of your efforts, you may as well not have exerted the time and resources.

Am I missing anything? You bet I am. But that’s where you come in. What types of social media have you tried? What’s worked? Please feel free to share in the comments section below.