Growing a large following is something many new Twitter users struggle with. They see all these big accounts with 20, 50 or even 100K followers and wonder how did they ever get there?

Today we will give you some tips and tools on how to grow your following steadily and we’ll also make sure that you stay within the Twitter guidelines to avoid account suspension. There are certain practices that are not allowed and the last thing you want is to get your account suspended after you worked hard to get a decent following.

Quality or Quantity?

This is the first thing you have to ask yourself. Do you want a small number of followers where you can easily keep track of the timeline and interact with everybody or do you want to grow as big as possible and utilize Twitter lists to keep up with the tweets you care about?

If you have a Twitter account for personal use, the first option will probably work best for you. If you have any commercial aspirations and would like to promote your brand or business to the world market, your goal will be to reach as many potential clients as possible. Growing your Twitter following is an easy and low cost method to promote your business or brand worldwide.

Tools of the Trade

These are a few tools we use to manage our account. There are many more tools out there but today we will stick to the tools that work for us.

FriendorFollow

Simply enter your user name and it will show you who isn’t following back, who is a fan and mutual followings. If you connect with Twitter, it will also give you the option to follow or unfollow users.

Manageflitter

Similar to FriendorFollow but more advanced and it can filter your account for a variety of stats such as users without a profile image or users that are quiet or tweet a lot. There is a pro upgrade available but the basic mode has all the features an average user will need.

Socialoomph

When your account starts to grow exponentially it becomes hard to keep track of all your new followers. If you want to set up a welcome message for all your new followers, this is the tool to use. You can set up an auto DM and welcome new followers. DO NOT add a link to that message because that’s what everybody is doing and will only tick people off. Come up with something creative and original within the 140 character limit.

There are also features that will allow you to auto tweet status updates but that is NOT done as you should keep it real on Twitter, more about this at the end of this blog post.

Twiends

Fun and addictive would be the best way to describe this tool! You can actually use this to grow your stats on Twitter, Facebook, Website and YouTube. You can earn credits for connecting with other Twiends users and use those credits to let others connect with you. Sort of like a marketplace. You can even tweak your setting to get higher quality followers and there is an option to purchase credits if you don’t have the time to earn credits manually.

Twellow

If you want to find followers in a specific geographical area or category, this is the tool for you. It lets you search for users per city or from a directory of categories. This is great if you have a local business and you want to connect with all the Twitter users in your city for example. You can also follow and unfollow within this tool.

Now How Do I Get Followers?

All the above will help you to manage the new followers as your account starts to grow. Obtaining new followers can done in many ways.

* Follow users from follow back lists. Many users have created lists consisting of people that returned the follow so there is a good chance those users will follow you as well if you start to follow them.

* Just Google: “follow back list twitter”.

* Use the Twellow tool to find users in your niche or city and connect with them.

* Add Twitter links to your website, blog and email signature if you use one.

* Use the Twiends tool to get new followers.

As your new followers start to roll in it’s time to use the account management tools such as FriendorFollow and ManageFlitter. Find out who followed you back and who didn’t. You can also unfollow people that didn’t return the follow if you wish but DO NOT mass unfollow people or unfollow those who did return the follow. These are bad practices that could get your account suspended. We’re not celebrities that have 500K followers and only follow 10 users back. Your account should have a healthy follower ratio.

Remember that you can only follow 10% more than your follower count when you pass the 2000 follower mark. Example: 3000 followers will allow you to follow 3300 users.

Keeping It Real

This is what it’s all about. It’s alright to try and get a large following but don’t do any of the following:

* Don’t spam your product link over and over again.

* Don’t use auto tweet tools except for a meaningful auto DM perhaps.

* Don’t mass follow and unfollow since this could get your account suspended.

* Don’t unfollow those who return the follow just to make yourself look more popular.

If you stick to these guidelines and use the above tools you can easily grow your following to any size you want.

There’s a lot of fuss surrounding social media these days. If you still haven’t jumped on the bandwagon and aren’t sure why so many people are making such a big deal about it, here are 14 benefits of social media for your business and you from Success magazine.

For Business:

Establish a Brand and Raise Awareness

Since the majority of the population is already visiting social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, getting your brand name all over those networks can help let people know that you’re around. If you have yet to create a company image online, social networks are the place to do it.

Create a fun YouTube video that entertains and informs. Funny videos tend to make their way around the Internet a lot faster than any other kind, so when making a video, keep in mind that you want it to be interesting enough for your target audience to want to share. Using Facebook and Twitter to create a fun online community that your customers will want to visit will boost brand loyalty and drive traffic to your Website, allowing you the chance to make more online sales.

Spy on the Competition

Follow your competitors on Twitter and Facebook and you’ll be able to see what they have up their sleeve. Just make sure to provide a better deal than whatever they have going on.

Pitch Products in a More Human, Interactive Way

Since people visit social media sites to get personal rather than be bombarded with ads, discuss your business in a fun way and engage your customers with questions. Ask their opinions and entice them to respond back. This way you’re making a valuable connection that will help grow your number of return customers.

Bring Attention to Your Products

Featuring a product on a social media site is one of the fastest ways to bring attention to it. Give a promotion along with it for your online community members and watch your sales skyrocket.

Incréase Customer Loyalty And Trust

Speaking to your customers in a personal way will make them feel like they are talking to a friend, not a company. This will help build their trust in you, which will make them do business with you rather than your competition. It will also improve the chances of customer recommendations.

Listen to Your Customer’s Opinion

Social media sites are an awesome way to see what your target audience is saying about your company or your products. Take their constructive criticism and use it to enhance your product to better meet their needs.

Conduct Market Research

Listen to what your customers say about your products and track what links they click on and you’ll begin to see what your customers like and respond to. People love to express their opinions on social media sites, which will allow you to hear the truth. Then you can use your new-found information to tweak your product or service to please them as well as continue to post more information and links that they will enjoy.

Strengthen Customer Service

Social media networks allow your company to answer your customers’ questions and concerns directly in a timely manner. This will improve customer satisfaction and also save you monéy on long distance customer service phone calls.

For You:

Build Your Personal Reputation

Social networks allow you to get your name out to the world and talk about things that matter to you. This will help you build a good online reputation, which is critical nowadays if you’re looking for a job or even a new business contact.

Display Your Resume

LinkedIn allows you to display your full resume online for any future employers or recruiters to see. This will help bring you new opportunities that would’ever have existed otherwise.

Find a Job

Jobs are posted every minute on social networks like LinkedIn and Twitter along with the links or information you need to apply for them.

Showcase Your Talents And Establish Yourself as an Expert

If you’re passionate about a certain subject, whether it’s work-related or a hobby, the Internet is a great place to show off your knowledge. Soon people will be coming to you for the breaking information on that topic, and talking about you to friends.

Enhance Your Business Contacts and Enhance Personal Relationships

Through professional sites like LinkedIn, you can build your number of business contacts and enhance your reputation as an expert in your industry. You can also connect with those long-lost high school and college classmates, old colleagues, and out-of-town family members.

Share Information with Like-Minded People

Connect with other professionals in your field to share information. Where else would you be able to connect with industry professionals across the globe to swap stories and advice?

Twitter is a wonderful business tool, not least because it’s free; all it will cost is your time (and if that’s in short supply, you can hire a social media marketer to manage it for you).

Used well, Twitter can provide good exposure for your business; but you can also damage your brand with social media marketing if you’re not careful, so it’s worth learning the biggest dos and don’ts before you start using Twitter.

Tip 1: Be yourself and be human

The beauty of Twitter is that it’s a huge global community of human beings (mostly; there are spammer accounts but they’re easy to spot, block and report). So do show your human side, especially when using your business account. Talk about things that matter to you: funny things your children say, recent achievements, your favourite band or TV show, and so on. Join in with conversations that interest you – be friendly, show emotion, and use smilies if you want to.

On the other hand, don’t be too human. Don’t share anything you wouldn’t share at a real-world business networking event; keep intimate health problems and controversial or potentially offensive opinions to yourself.

Tip 2: Watch how you write

Some people write well, others don’t – that’s true in all areas of life, not just on Twitter. You don’t need to be a bestselling novelist to use Twitter, but it helps if you have basic literacy skills (and if you use Twitter at the website instead of through a client, your Tweets will be spellchecked as you type anyway – which helps).

However good (or bad) your writing skills are, with Twitter’s 140-character limit you’ll need to be creative with your Tweets. Your Tweets need to be concise yet informative, and often you’ll be trying to squeeze in a URL too (URL shortening services like bit.ly and tinyurl.com are lifesavers).

One definite don’t is using text speak. Text speak is fine if you’re 13, but as a professional adult promoting your business you’re just going to look silly, and won’t communicate your messages efficiently – unless you’re targeting 13 year olds.

Tip 3: Share and share alike

If you have some good news – related to your business or your personal life – share it; everybody loves a good news story.

Do share links – to your website, your blog, your local news service, or anything else that interests your followers – this is a great way to get conversations going. But do remember to explain what the link’s about, or your followers will feel less inclined to click it. And don’t Tweet the same link over and over; people will quickly become bored and may stop following you.

Do retweet your friends’ links, too; they’ll be grateful, and so will your followers if the link is interesting and relevant. But here’s a very big ‘do’ – DO make sure you click the link and read the content before sharing it with your followers, or you could end up sharing a page that’s irrelevant or offensive, or which contradicts your usual position on the subject.

Tip 4: Be part of the community

Don’t treat Twitter as your personal billboard. It’s not: it’s a community, millions of members strong, and the community as a whole is not very tolerant of users who constantly advertise. Try to stick to the 80-20 rule when you use Twitter for business: no more than 20% of your Tweets should advertise or self-promote, and at least 80% should be non-promotional. If you can get the ratio down to 90-10 or 95-5, even better.

Listen to what people are saying, and join in. Twitter is a network of conversations, so it’s good practice to listen and respond to parts of those conversations that interest you; don’t just stand in the middle of the room with a megaphone, shouting “I’m fabulous! I’m selling widgets at 20% off this week!” Again – if you wouldn’t do it at a business networking event, don’t do it on Twitter.

Do retweet your friends’ requests for help (for example, charity appeals and sponsorship requests), and do introduce friends that are new to Twitter and could do with some followers. And again – do retweet useful, interesting links from people you follow, but always check links before sending.

Tip 5: Mind your language

Don’t use offensive language when representing your business on Twitter; even mild swearwords can put sensitive souls off following you (and besides – cursing in public is hardly professional).

Use Twitter to answer customer questions and solve their problems, by all means; many organisations use Twitter as a customer services tool very effectively. But never, ever use an impolite or impatient tone with a customer. On Twitter, everything you say is out there for everyone to see, so leave your followers with the best possible impression of your brand at all times… the Internet has a very long memory!

Finally – consider this a bonus tip, since it’s not really connected to any of the previous ones – try to enjoy yourself when you use Twitter. Try to embrace all that’s good about Twitter – the new friendships and business contacts you’ll make, the fun hashtags and trending topics, the strong community spirit – and before long you’ll be singing (or is that Tweeting?) Twitter’s praises to anyone who’ll listen.

Remember that kid from high school, you know the one who really didn’t know how to socialize with others. He may have been home-schooled or secluded for the first 16 years of his/her life and as a result was socially challenged? You know what I mean? They would make inappropriate comments, add irrelevant content to a conversation, or just try to impress you with how smart they were by using grammar most people in college would not understand let alone a bunch of high school kids. We often refer to these types of people as, “socially challenged.” The question I have for you is: Are you socially challenged in your social media marketing?

The main reason that people become socially challenged is that they did not have the chance to experiment and see what social aspects are acceptable and which are not, what actions gained friends and what actions gained enemies, what actions got praise and which got ridicule, frankly how to not only be social but be socially acceptable.

The problem I continue to see is that with the advent of the Social Media Age and the potential power of social media, people are jumping in without understanding the rules of the play ground and have thus become social media challenged in an arena that focuses on being socially acceptable. The following is a short list to help you be more social. Think of this as the beginners guide to being social.

1 – Be Social

It is important that you are not only posting content about whatever your subject matter is, but that you are also reading and commenting on others content. There are some obvious reasons to do this, such as building links back to your site, but it is even more important that you are being social. The most important thing to remember here is that you are READING the content. Your goal should be to try and understand what the blogger is saying, then make a thoughtful and intelligent comment. Whether you agree or disagree make sure you add to the conversation. Here are some good and bad examples:

“Good Job, loved the content, keep it coming ;0)”

This is a terrible comment. It is idle praise you can save for your dog. Don’t do it on blog comments.

“Fantastic analysis of the internal propagation for insightful analysis of verbal and written interaction in a cacophony of media.”

What? Are you serious? Quit trying to impress us with how smart you are. You have offended most of the readers and all you have proven is that your are socially challenged.

“I agree that it is important to make comments on other content, but remember that you need to make comments on content that is relevant to you and what you do. It doesn’t do any good to comment on a blog about bikini’s if you are trying to sell stoves.”

Great comment. Although I don’t necessarily agree, it is an intelligent comment that adds to the conversation.

Hopefully you are starting to get the picture of what is acceptable and what is not. Remember we really are trying to be social and we want to learn from others comments that hopefully add to the conversation and get people interested in what we do and what we think. We are really looking for friends and the more friends you have the easier it is to be social.

2 – Write Yóur Own Content About Another Person

No I’m not talking about plagiarism, I’m talking about the biggest form of flattery. That’s right, if you read something that really made sense to you, share it with others. People who are taking the time to put content on the internet are excited to know that somebody read it, commented and then shared with others (just make sure you are giving credít where credít is due). Think about this from a social aspect, when people are talking they always say “well ________ said ________,” “I heard ________ say ________,” “Did you hear that ________ thinks ________?” This not only adds credibility to your conversation, but also gets the original person interested in what you are saying.

3 – Don’t Push People Down the Slide

There are a lot of people who write content that may not have been completely thought out (I’m guilty of this more than once a week), but it does not help the situation if you are the bully at the top of the playground pushing everybody down the slide. Not only is this not socially acceptable it’s just mean! Remember no one likes the bully, but most people like the guy/gal who has an opinion and is willing to help others.

In a meeting several years ago, one of my young loan officers was supposed to be giving a lesson on the Real Estate Purchase Contract or REPC. The young man had obviously not prepared for the presentation when he stood up and told us he would be teaching us about the REPC, turned to the white board and wrote in large block print “RUPC.” Most of the veteran loan officers started giggling at this obvious spelling faux pas, but one loan officer quickly commented, “Sorry James I told you the wrong spelling, it is actually REPC, which is a short abbreviation for Real Estate Purchase Contract.” It was obvious to all of us that the senior loan officer had not said anything to James, but he set the mood for a respectful conversation and diverted the ridicule from a young loan officer to one whom no one would ridicule.

4 – Become the Expert

In the world of social media there are thousands of pieces of content written daily, but only a handful of people are commenting. A recent study suggested that of all the comments that are being written 90% of them are written by the same 10% of people. Not only will you be learning how to be social (frankly the more you do it the better you will get at it), but you will soon be recognized as an expert in your field. You need to set down some specific times of the day to make sure you are researching for new content and posting comments on the content that is relevant to you and your product or service. Start by looking for the most influential people in your arena, but don’t forget to keep looking for new and fresh content.

5 – Invite a Friend Over

One of the first things we learned as young people is that you can learn a lot from a person if you invite them over to play or have dinner. You can do the same thing for your blog and content. Not only does it help you to establish better relationships and really be social, but it also exposes your content to a larger audience. By having a guest blogger you not only expose your product/service to your clients, but also the guest blogger’s clients as well.

At the end of the day you need to look at your social media as just that; being social, not just trying to sell product and services. People purchase from people. They like to know who you are and the more they know about you and your expertise they more likely they are to not only purchase from you but stay with you and refer others to you.

Search and social go well together, and the search engines are finding more and more ways to use them together. In fact, the right combinations of these two elements could eventually dictate who has the most useful tools for users.

It’s become more and more clear over time that having a strong social presence is helpful in building a strong search presence for a variety of reasons, but it’s not been so clear, just how the search engines have looked at things like Twitter and Facebook profiles when it comes to organic search ranking.

Search Engine Land Chief Danny Sullivan posted an important article about this very topic, with some rare and surprisingly direct answers from both Google and Bing. While, neither exactly gave away their respective secret sauces, it would appear that they have set some things straight.

Google

Google reportedly uses when an article is retweeted or referenced in Twitter as a signal in organic and news rankings (even though links on Twitter are nofollowed). They also use it to enhance the news universal results (based on how many people share an article).

Google “computes and uses author quality” for when someone tweets. When Sullivan asked if they calculate whether a link should carry more weight depending on who tweets it, Google Responded, “Yes we do use this as a signal, especially in the ‘Top links’ section [of Google Realtime Search]. Author authority is independent of PageRank, but it is currently only used in limited situations in ordinary web search.”

Google says it treats links shared on Facebook Fan pages the same way as tweeted links, but they have no personal Facebook wall data. Authority for Facebook Pages is also treated like Twitter.

So, the more authoritative the crowd sharing links to your content, the better. Not that different than PageRank.

Bing

When it comes to Twitter, Bing tells Sullivan it also looks at social authority of users and more specifically, looks at how many people they follow and how many follow them, adding that this can add “a little weight” to a listing in regular search results (though it carries more in Bing’s separate Social Search). Bing decides when links should carry more weight based on the person who tweets it.

As far as Facebook, Bing currently looks at links shared on Facebook that are marked as being shared to “everyone” and those from Fan Pages. “We can tell if something is of quality on Facbook by leveraging Twitter,” as Sullivan paraphrases Bing’s response. “If the same link is shared in both places, it’s more likely to be legitimate.”

Bing does not use its new Facebook data in ordinary web search…yet.

On a related note, Bing is finding other interesting ways to utilize Facebook with search.

So, clearly it pays to tweet and build a credible Twitter presence. This means gaining a significant following in number, but also getting authoritative users to follow you (and hopefully retweet your links). This would appear to be good for plain old fashioned organic rankings as well as other supplemental search results. More importantly, it pays to create good content that will attract authoritative Twitterers to share it with others.

These things of course pay anyway, but it’s nice to know that they actually do have an effect on search rankings as well.

It’s not surprising that Twitter is currently playing a more important role in to search engine ranking than Facebook, simply because Twitter is public by default. Facebook is much more walled, meaning that most of the good Facebook data is private. Though it will be interesting to see what happens when Bing does integrate its newly acquired Facebook into its regular search offerings.

This wall of Facebook’s is also a factor into why Facebook could potentially unleash its own legitimate search engine. It’s got a search feature now of course, but there is a great deal of potential for them to do a whole lot more and really get under Google’s skin. More on that here.

Sullivan provides more background and context around the search engines’ social signals, as well as the full with both Bing and Google, and details about the Twitter Firehose’s lack of nofollow.

Coming up with a social media plan isn’t always the easiest thing to do for businesses. There are so many factors that come into play, even beyond the landscape of communities that actually exist. For example, business leaders need to ask questions like: How much time should be spent interacting with social media sites? How many people should be representing the company on social sites? How much of their time should be dedicated to it? Should it be the full-time job of one person? The full-time jobs of more people? Only part of the job for a lot of people? Etc. Etc. Etc.

No matter how much time and how many resources are spent on your brand’s social media presence, more can always be done, so many will have to find they have to be selective in areas of participation and time spent. If your budget and time aren’t as restricted, you can build an enormous social presence around the web in the places that matter. Just remember, more can always be done. We at WebProNews certainly have plenty of room to expand and improve our own social strategy, and chances are you do too.

So, with all of that in mind, here are some ideas you can use to build your social presence.

Twitter

1. Post regular Twitter updates everyday. That doesn’t mean spam or post them constantly all day long, but there should be enough regularity to where your followers know you’re there and don’t forget about you. That said, don’t talk just to talk. Have something valuable to say. If you produce content, share your links. Some may not think it’s a good idea just to pump out your own links on Twitter, because it’s “about the conversation”, but the way I look at is this: if someone is following me, they’re probably interested in what I have to say. If I’m writing articles, those are in essence, what I have to say. That doesn’t mean that it’s not about the conversation.

2. You should engage in conversation on Twitter. Start conversations that don’t necessarily pertain to your own links. Listen to what others are saying, and join conversations with them, regardless of if they are directly related to your brand or not.

3. Monitor your brand. Respond to @mentions (good or bad). Respond to direct messages.

4. Post pictures and videos using services like TwitPic, TwitVid, Yfrog, etc. These things can help humanize your brand and increase engagement with others. They can be conversation starters. People like visuals.

5. Create relevant lists. Create lists of other Twitterers that can provide value to others. You don’t necessarily have to, but it might be a good idea to create a variety of lists for subjects related to your niche. If you have a car blog, for example, you might have a list of car brands, a list of other car bloggers, a list for mechanics, a list of auto part vendors, etc.

Facebook

1. Have a Facebook Page for your brand. If you’re running a business, you need a Page, not just a personal profile. What you do with your personal profile is up to you, but your page should be up, and it should be promoted.

2. Post regular updates throughout the day. Just like Twitter, I see nothing wrong with sharing links to your content here if you write articles or blog posts. I should note that this should be actual helpful content though – not just posts about why people should buy your product. Nobody wants to be a fan of a page that does that.

3. Respond to comments on your Page. Get involved in conversations.

4. Update your photos and videos. You don’t have to use third-party services for this on Facebook.

5. Experiment with landing pages for your Facebook Page. It doesn’t have to go right to your wall. You can direct fans to any information you want to provide.

6. You can use “notes” to put blog-style content right in Facebook should you choose to do so.

7. There is a virtually unlimited number of Facebook apps. Look for ones that might be able to add value to your page and get people engaged in a helpful way. This will also take some experimenting.

YouTube (and other video sites)

1. If you create videos, you need to have them on YouTube and other video sites/networks. This is key for getting your videos out to a wider audience.

2. These sites are also communities. Respond to comments and subscribe to others. Make friends in the communities.

3. Push subscriptions to your channels. Keeping people subscribed means keeping them engaged as you continue to produce content. This can help build a following.

4. Even if you don’t create your own videos, it doesn’t mean that you can’t get involved in conversations and comment on others’ videos.

5. You can create “favorites” lists of videos that can be helpful, even if they’re not your videos (similar to the Twitter lists).

MySpace

1. MySpace may not be the current flavor of the week, but make no mistake – it’s still got a lot of users. Makes friends on MySpace with like-minded individuals and businesses, and expand your network here.

2. Like anything else, keep up with your comments and direct messages, and engage in conversation on and off your own page.

3. Have a professional-looking design for your page.

4. Highlight your best content.

5. Update your page regularly with new status updates, blog entries, videos, etc.

Google Buzz

1. Update Buzz regularly throughout the day with links and general conversation. Basically, treat it similar to Facebook or Twitter.

2. Engage in conversation on and off your own Buzz posts.

3. Spend some time making your Google Profile (which is connected to Buzz…and appears in Google search results) the best it can be. Provide links to your other profiles.

4. Integrate other options that are available and applicable to you (Google Reader sharing, Picasa photos, Orkut, etc.)

5. You can apply these to other networks like LinkedIn and FriendFeed as well.

Digg, Reddit, Delicious, StumbleUpon, etc.

1. Share links to others’ content on social bookmarking sites like these regularly. This will help you build a following.

2. Have buttons to make your own content easy to share on these sites.

3. Engage in conversations in the comments of links you share and links others share on these sites.

4. Become friends with others like-minded and interesting people on these networks.

Forums

1. Find relevant topics in forums that are also relevant to your business and get involved in existing conversations.

2. Start your own relevant conversations. Don’t just get in there and link to your content. It’s tacky and people will see through it. You can often provide your link in your profile anyway.

3. If you have built up enough credibility in a forum, you might be able to share a link of your own from time to time in a legitimate fashion, like for example, if you wrote an article on the topic being discussed that helps to answer a question that is being asked.

4. The more actively you engage in useful conversation, the more credibility you will gain, and you can come to be looked upon as an expert in your field.

Blogs

1. If you have a blog, keep up with the comments. Respond and stay involved in the conversations. If people disagree with you, which they often will, don’t make a big deal about it or try to prove them wrong. You might just be driving them away. Keep it constructive. Respectfully disagree and maybe elaborate on why you stand by your position, or if they change your mind, maybe tell them you hadn’t looked at things that way.

2. Take the time to participate in conversation on other relevant blogs. You can basically think of blog comments as mini forums. The same rules pretty much apply.

Photos

1. As I said, people like visuals, especially current users of sites like Flickr and Picasa. Update photo sites regularly. Again, this can help humanize your brand and even open you up to different audiences.

2. Participate in conversations in comments on and off of your own photos.

3. Promote your presence on these sites. On your own site/blog, maybe have some links pointing to these accounts.

The Right Person/People for the Job

1. You want to make sure you have the right person or people representing your brand in all of these communities. You don’t want someone that doesn’t really understand your company’s vision or position to be out there giving people the wrong impression.

2. Whoever is representing your brand should have a grasp on current news and strategies related to what your business provides. In other words, they should be knowledgeable. It wouldn’t hurt for the people involved to have a designated amount of time each day just reading news.

Finally, just keep everything up to date and current. Don’t let profiles go sour. Don’t let comments, questions, and messages sit there to rot. You’ve got to keep up with it all. So, with that in mind, don’t bite off more than you can chew in social media. Look at how much of this you actually want to do, and plan time and resources accordingly.

This is by no means all that can be done. There are plenty of other communities I didn’t mention, and probably a great deal more strategies that I didn’t touch upon. I think the things mentioned in this article should be a good start though.

The Issues as We See Them

The real issue is that professional real estate agents/ investors are being wrongly advised when it comes to creating and sharing content. Those things they are told might be relevant to their efforts – simply are not. Using information without taking a good look at the source of it will quite likely result in a real waste of your time and efforts. If you’re told that you should be tweeting, twittering, posting, and endlessly sharing, the advice you’re being given should be moderated by your good sense.

While other self-proclaimed experts may be leading you down a path, or giving you misplaced hope, the reality is that you probably will not be markedly successful in getting a social media campaign off the ground in a week or two. The best advice that you will get from anyone is to use your common sense and do yóur own thinking. There simply aren’t any quick fixes or instant gratification arenas for those who want to get social media campaigns working for their benefit.

Most important of all, social media campaigns require relevant and excellent content to achieve. You can learn those strategies that it will take to share them, but the reality is that first that content must be created. The creation as well as the sharing of solid content will take time and learned skills to master.

What Are Your Next Steps?

Three key components are going to be next in line for you to get any measure of success. Identification, Recognition, and Organization.

Identification – what is your role in getting solid, relevant content for your website or your customers? If you’re a creator, or a writer, or a curator, then you already know where you fit into the equation.

The Creator can identify the need of the audience and can help to address that need. The solutions offered may be video, media of other varieties, written content, or even brochures. It may be a complete mixture of every type of content, including a blog that goes along with social media postings.

A Curator for the content is someone who will sort through all of the internet content that is out there and find those things that may be applicable to their chosen or intended audience. This is quite literally a hunter-gatherer of the internet. Sharing links, offering tweets, getting articles and rewriting them, selecting what will be a good draw for your chosen audience and then creating something like that is what a curator/creator does.

The Challenges that You Will Face

Among the other challenges that you will face when you are furnishing content will be those of frequency and a balancing act. The content that you provide to your readers or viewers comes to them as a representation of you. Too much means that you are nothing more than a marketer, too little means that you don’t really care. This content doesn’t just come from your brand, it tells them a great deal about you.

You’re going to want to not only balance the frequency of the content, but also to be sure that you check it yourself prior to offering it on your website or other venue. Whether you elect to share that content in a feed, on a website, or on a single page, check it out first. Watch the videos and read the articles that you are offering as content to your audience.

Poor advice, poorly written content, grainy videos that share information that is not relevant or aren’t well done, reflect badly on you. If you don’t create the content yourself, then at least take steps to vet it for quality and relevancy. Your end goal is to share content that you believe would be good for the customer or client. Offering them less than a helpful tip or good advice makes you look bad. Your primary purpose here is to expand your reputation, as well as to give them content that will help them. If you give bad advice, it’s far worse than no advice at all.

Frequency – No one wants an endless stream of things that say nothing at all. Lincoln once said it was better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak up and rémove all doubt. That’s good advice whether you are speaking or offering content. Selecting a great deal of content and striving to provide an endless stream that gives no real benefit isn’t going to be in your best interests. Choose your content carefully and release it in drips, rather than in floods.

Let your motivation be to release content that adds good quality advice to the lives of those who read it, not merely an endless stream of drivel. Tweeting, Facebooking, Digging, are all important aspects of getting your content out there, but make it good quality content that improves the outlook or the knowledge of your reader, not merely reminds them you are alive. The whole thing is about adding quality-to the reader’s life-as well as yóur own. Be a well-trusted source of advice, not an endless stream of drivel.

Social media has long been touted as the latest and greatest Internet marketing tool that will bring new people to any online business seeking new customers.

For most online marketers, the social media environment appears over-hyped and ineffective. Between Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, StumbleUpon, and Delicious, online marketers waste plenty of time trying to tap revenue from these social platforms.

Why Auto-Following Will Always Fail

John Reese is one of those people who has become famous for his marketing prowess, with a variety of product launches. Even with his genius for marketing online, John Reese failed to make the Twitter platform work for his business. In June of 2008, Reese realized that the auto-follow strategy of gaining Twitter followers was not working.

The auto-follow Twitter marketing strategy is doomed to failure. I actually lost a little bit of respect for John Reese because he had to learn the hard way that the Twitter auto-follow strategy would not work. A man with his genius should have known before he started that the technique was doomed to fail miserably.

It will fail because it works in the same manner as a safe list or traffic exchange system, where a bunch of people will gather together to send advertising to each other. The problem is that people only agree to join such systems so that they can send their advertising to others, not so that they can read a ton of advertising from other people.

People do not join safe lists because they want 10,000 people to send them advertising in their email. They only agree to let 10,000 people send them commercial e-mail, because they want to send their commercial e-mail to 10,000 people. Everybody involved is so caught up in the hope that someone will read their advertising and purchase what they are selling, without giving much concern or thought to the idea that even they are not reading the email that other people send to them.

In June of 2008, John Reese gave up on the auto-follow strategy for gaining Twitter followers. He un-followed everybody in a single day and started again from scratch.

Is Twitter Dead?

Nearly 2 years later, in March of 2010, John Reese declared in an e-mail to his mailing list that he had deleted his Twitter account. He cited the same reasons that he did 21 months previously — too much noise.

John Reese is not the only online guru to abandon the Twitter platform. Frank Kern, and a few of Reese’s other online associates, also bid Twitter farewell. Kern said that Twitter was a “time suck” that was eating into his productivity.

Please don’t get the idea that my reporting on the marketing gurus leaving Twitter like rats from a sinking ship is a signal to you that you should do the same.

In fact, I am not leaving Twitter and I see no reason that you should either.

By mentioning Reese and Kern leaving Twitter behind, I am only pointing out that some of the sharpest minds involved in online marketing have yet to understand the true art and science of social media marketing.

Both of these guys are smart. Few people will argue against that. But, both have failed to understand how to turn a profit from the Twitter social media platform.

Social Media Marketing Is Not Mass Marketing

If you were to ask me… these two guys, smart as they are, missed the most elemental foundation of social media marketing… say, after me, S–O–C–I–A–L… SOCIAL media marketing.

John Reese and Frank Kern are masters of mass marketing. Mass marketing does not work on social media websites.

Social media is described as such, because it invites individuals to socialize with one another. Those individuals who have mastered the social media platform are those who have understood how to create relationships, develop relationships, and maintain relationships. They have understood that social media websites are there to help you nurture social relationships with other people.

The mass marketer is focused on himself, above and beyond all other people. The social marketer is focused on building relationships with the people with whom they would like to do business.

If you understand how to attract people and maintain personal relationships with those people, then you may master social media marketing in a way that John Reese and Frank Kern were unable to do.

Stumbling In The Dark

The first step to mastering social media marketing is to learn how to attract people. Auto-follow will not ever work towards that end. In order to attract people who want to follow you, you must inspire them to want to follow you.

It is funny when I watch the people who are trying to market themselves on Twitter.

Some of those people will send out an endless supply of quotes, trying to convince you of their value, because they have said something clever through the words of another person.

Others will send out sales message after sales message hoping to attract your business.

Still others will try to win your support by focusing on key words. They want to treat Twitter as if it were search engine driving traffic to their website.

Some Twitter users will make certain to include a link with every tweet. The smarter of the lot will only link to information. The more shallow of the group will only link to sales pages.

And finally, there are those who are probably smarter than all of us put together. They are the ones who provide a mix of content. Sometimes, they will give us a link to information. Sometimes, they will link us to the sales page. At other times, they will share quotes and news headlines. And in all cases, they will socialize with their followers, asking about things important to their followers and sharing their personal lives with those who ask.

The Lesson To Take From This Article

Social media marketing works best, when the marketer who is attempting to use it, remembers that first and foremost it is a platform to socialize with other people.

Why do people follow YOU on Twitter?

They follow you, because there is something about you and what you say that appeals to them at a very human level.

If you want to win in the Social Media element, be human and don’t be afraid to socialize with your friends and acquaintances.

The hype around social media just keeps getting louder. Every week a new campaign and a new platform is released. So why has social media gone mainstream?

Online networks, including social ones, evolve and take on a life of their own. In the real world, for multi-celled organisms to exist a number of cells must work together to make something bigger. When individual cellular components work together multi-celled organisms evolve and these can evolve into complex life forms over time. A branch of these complex life-forms evolved and eventually became humans. Human civilization has in turn evolved to where we are now because we have mastered the art of continually grouping together into teams, tribes, cities, and nation states to create something that is bigger than the sum of its parts.

Networking and collaboration is fundamental to what it means to be human. In our bodies are atoms working together to create cells and cells working together to create our organs. In our brains neurons work together to create our thoughts, feelings and language. In your company people are working together – to create something bigger and more exciting than the sum of its parts. We can take this thinking and look at the development of the personal computer and see a very similar pattern emerging.

Before anyone had a computer or a smart phone, everything was a social event. Meetings were face-to-face, or over the phone at least, and communication in general was human to human based. In the last 30 years things have changed. Initially, the personal computer made everything a private and secluded affair. Games, for example, could be played without the help of another human and work could happen sitting in front of a screen. The advent of the early Internet showed how powerful many computers networked together could be, but from a personal perspective ‘computing’ was an insular activity.

The first social networks, forums and blogs worked with a huge number of anonymous users. While this was a step forward in person-to-person networking, the anonymity allowed people to behave in ways that they wouldn’t ever dream of in real life. This left many of these networks to be the domain of the very early adopters and special interest groups. The ‘rules’ that govern effective social networks were yet to be developed.

What has happened recently, particularly with Facebook, is that it has become far easier to transport your real identity around the web. This means that increasingly people are joining new social networks with their ‘real identity’: their real name; their place of work; and other details that define them as a person in a movement – sometimes referred to as the ‘Open Web.’ Naturally this makes people think more carefully about what they say and how they behave on social networks – because they ‘own’ their comments the common rules of society come into play. When a person’s reputation is attached to what they say it makes them think carefully about what that comment might mean to others.

Of course people can still misbehave in social networks, like they can in real world networks, but the networks are now being governed by majority rule so this behavior is quickly dealt with. This makes cooperation and collaboration much easier and because of this the barriers to entry are dropping at an astronomical rate. Companies can now start to feel more secure in setting up their own networks knowing that majority of users will join to get value out of the information that is provided and quickly deal with other users who lessen the overall value of that network.

So when thinking about why social media has become so widely adopted and pondering about where it is going avoid getting distracted by the leaps in technology. These are important, of course, but it is the behavior of the network and the developments of new social norms that are really driving the progress. Every individual in this massive network is doing what he or she is pre-programmed to do – communicate, collaborate, and continue the march of our civilization’s evolution.

The future of the Social Web will see openness and ownership of communication adopted on a much greater scale as the tools to do so become more wide spread and easier to adopt. The potential economic benefits of social media will force this to happen. Companies can and will want access to increasingly granular data about their ‘stakeholders’ – employees, supporters, and consumers. Knowing what individuals are saying, how they are behaving and who is influencing them is critical and valuable information.

With Facebook’s release of its new developer tools in April this year, there has been an even bigger push towards the Open Web – something that many market analysts are predicting will make the eventual float of Facebook bigger than that of Google’s IPO. The rules governing online social networks are beginning to mature. Unsurprisingly, they closely reflect those that exist in offline world.

One of the great things about the work I do is that I have a bird’s eye view of what’s working and what’s not when it comes to social media. Every so often I like to give sort of a “state of the union” on Facebook and Twitter best practices, because as I am sure you know, social media is constantly growing, changing and evolving.

As you’ll see, some of the strategies I am recommending are tried and true-they have been working since day one and will probably continue to for the considerable future.

However, there may be a few here that you’ve never considered-or may even be surprised by. But they are what I see as being the biggest keys to success and results for business owners on the two hottest social networks on the planet: Facebook and Twitter.

1. Find your peeps.

What this means is that you want to become part of the community you are looking to serve. The first step of course is to be clear on whom it is you want to serve and what problem you are solving for them. Once you know that, the goal is to go where they are hanging out.

There are specific tools you can use to easily find and interact with your target market. Two of my favorites for Twitter are wefollow.com and search.twitter.com.

2. Concentrate on conversing and building relationships, instead of broadcasting and selling.

One of the most common yet biggest mistakes that people make when they are first introduced to social media is to focus on pushing their product or service in a spammy way. That approach fails miserably in social media because most people are there to build relationships and interact.

There’s nothing wrong with letting others know what’s going on with you or your business sometimes–just be sure to intersperse your tweets or Facebook updates with some two-way conversation.

3. Use a Facebook personal profile AND a Facebook business page TOGETHER.

This might be a little “controversial” – and don’t get me wrong, your business SHOULD have a Page — but when you have a personal profile, you are able to interact with other people much more easily.

As a business Page, a Page can’t go comment on another person’s Wall or profile or in their Group or on THEIR Page AS that Page. You are really contained inside the space of your own Page. This might be something to consider because a lot of the magic of Facebook and the relationship-building and rapport-building comes from that ability to interact.

4. Cross-post and cross promote.

Once you’ve decided to make social media a part of your marketing strategy, you don’t want to keep it to yourself.

There are lots of ways to spread the word, for example: you’ll want to advertise your social presence on your blog, add links to your email signature and use one social media platform to post to another.

5. Use a social media dashboard like Hootsuite and other productivity tools to accomplish more in less time.

Hootsuite.com is my hands-down favorite, free social media tool, and the reason why is because it does so many different things. For example, you can use it to update many social networks at once, including Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn; you can use it to pre-schedule tweets and status updates and more.

6. Get them on the list.

In most cases, people aren’t going to buy from you right off of sites like Facebook and Twitter. You need to shift your thinking from “how can I get this person to buy from me or hire me now?” to “how can I bring this person into my community and strengthen the relationship with them on an ongoing basis?”

One of the best ways to do this is to offer people a way to provide their email address via your blog or website so that you have permission to keep in touch and build an ongoing relationship with them.

7. Measure and track your social media results.

Measuring the ROI of social media isn’t exactly cut and dry. I am often asked how you can tell whether the time you’ve spent on social media activities is really making a difference.

Some of the best metrics? Blog comments, blog subscribers, newsletter subscribers, social media profile engagement, number of friends and followers and website traffic to name a few.

No matter who your target market is, you can be sure that at least some segment of them is using social media. The important thing is to understand that social media is a great way to get in front of that target audience.

And remember, you may not be able to equate your interactions to dollars now, but what you are doing is planting seeds which can have big payoffs later on.

Most of the strategies I’ve mentioned here aren’t really “strategies” unless you keep applying them over time-so stick with it to reap those results you’ve been searching for.