Social Media – Fad or Foe?

Are you fighting the invitations to join all the social media networks?  Or are you waiting for them to pass?  According to Guy Kawaski, Founder of Alltop, Inc. and entrepreneur-in residence of GarageTech.com, "Most entrepreneurs still don’t know how to use Twitter. They still think it’s a social network to update their friends on the current state of their pets or the lines at Starbucks. For entrepreneurs, Twitter is the ultimate marketing platform, and they need to embrace tools like Tweetdeck, CoTweet and Objective Marketer".

Social networking and social media are here to stay.  If Facebook has 300+ million users and LinkedIn has over 50 million, just think of who you could reach.  I’ve been reading a lot about how to maximize the social media experience; the most common takeaways I’ve found are to:

1. Strategically choose your social media venues to get the most out of it.  Rather than sign up for everything at once, pick a few to get started.  For example, Facebook, LinkedIn and another one that is industry-specific. 
2. Know your market and who you’re trying to reach.  Who is your customer and what is the best way to reach them?
3. Take it in small steps!  It is easy to get overwhelmed and overloaded if you’re new to social networking.  It’s also easy to get caught up and spend way too much time on these sites.  Learn about applications that you can post to one spot and it will update your Facebook and Twitter accounts.
4. Respect other users and practice good web-etiquette. Constant postings may backfire on you – I know I’ve hidden some Facebook ‘friends’ (businesses included) who posted constantly, and really don’t appreciate getting daily emails (or in some cases, more than once a day) from the same person or group reminding me of upcoming events.     
5. Take advantage of as much FREE social networking as you can.  I’ve always said, "If it’s free, it’s me", why pay if you don’t have to?

Not sure how to start?  Here’s a great link to "How to use Facebook for Businesses" by Hubspot.  It even has a downloadable manual and instructional videos on social media.  What is your most valuable social networking tool?  What is the best thing you’ve learned about social media?