photo courtesy of Gary Hayes

In last week’s post, I asked you to start poking around in various social media outlets and start listening to what’s happening in your “space”. I assume you’ve had a chance to mull over twitter and Facebook, and perhaps you’ve done some exploring in LinkedIn, Ning and a few industry blogs as well.

So now its time to start jumping into the game! Where to start? Think of what sites you found most relevant to your market, and then consider the original questions I asked you about your willingness to invest, and your ultimate goals for your social media strategy. From there, decide where you want to focus your social energies. If you’re time strapped, I’d look at social networks like Twitter, Ning, Linkedin and Facebook and avoid blogging and podcasting (content creation assets) until you have more time and inclination to generate material.

Here are a few words of wisdom when selecting your preferred social media sites. There are as many communities out there as there are interests. You would simply overwhelm yourself if you tried to manage more than 2 or 3 portals to start. I recommend starting with 1 or 2 sites that you enjoy spending time on. I’m personally a huge fan of Facebook, because it offers me a personal window into the worlds of my community. I intentionally seek out my target customer and friend them, so I can really get to know them. They also get a chance to see the real me as well. I also find blogging to be wonderful for building personal relationships, but it takes more time to create the two-way conversation. Twitter is hit and miss for some people as it’s so condensed and vast, but it can become much more manageable when you track your conversations on Tweetdeck. Ultimately you will be most successful if you focus on sites where you enjoy spending time, and your customers do as well.

A note about claiming your personal and business names online: If your name is Jane Smith and you’re not on Twitter yet, there’s a good chance someone has already claimed that profile name. Many site provide vanity URLS (your personal name in the web address) and you need to consider whether you want to get out there and put a stake in the ground of every social media site with your name on it, or just own the sites you want to work on. The key to claiming sites you don’t want to populate is to have a way to point visitors to your active sites. Otherwise, it just looks like no one’s home. A great site to see where you can “claim your name” is www.beknown.com. Don’t forget to claim your biz name and any major product brand names as well.

So this week, I’d like you to pick 2 or 3 sites that you will focus on building. Create your profiles, bling them up and start to engage the world around you within your new community. I’ve listed a few links to some helpful tools to build your social savvy fast. Enjoy!

Build A Facebook Profile You Can Be Proud Of

Make Your LinkedIn Profile Work For You

17 Ways You Can Use Twitter: A Guide for Beginners and Businesses

How To Create Your Own Social Network On Ning

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