For the majority of businesses they do not have the power of a famous name to propel traffic to their website and they have therefore to leverage other tactics to build popularity. All businesses have to build relationships in order to build sales revenue; the same is true when it comes to managing your brand’s social media presence, it is a key part of relationship building, yet it is not in the sole domain of the sales force. The value of your brand having an independent presence on certain social networks cannot be understated; yet in order to drive the right value it is often important to build a partnership with an Internet publicity firm, such as P3 Social Media, which the author Peter Giblett works with, in order to maximise your presence.

Which social media tools to use is a vital question and will largely depend on the industry your business is in. Twitter, Google Plus, Facebook etc do take different approaches and it is not necessarily that a global presence on all networks is right for your industry.

Managing your brand’s social media presence takes ongoing effort. It is not like creating an advertising campaign, where once launched you can expect to reap the rewards of extra sales. Leveraging the power of Social Media takes a persistent and consistent presence. Social media tools can be a constant source of customer service enquiries, those ‘how to’ questions which need to be answered to the customer’s satisfaction yet it can also be used to discover how customers wish to see your product be developed. Customers are always prepared to critique and offer suggestions, which may benefit product development teams. An holistic approach should be taken in respect of your corporate social media presence.

Monitoring is important! Responses do not have to be made the split second after an another person’s post is published, but they do need to be timely and reasoned.

The first element here is about setting up a monitoring or listening station. How you do this can be as simple as a keyword search in Twitter or it can employ more complex monitoring software. Your Internet publicity partner should be able to guide you to cost effectively monitoring the buzz about your brand or product and advise on how to respond in each circumstance.

The right response is crucial in all circumstances. Generally people do not want is smooth marketing talk. If they have a problem then it is better to have a product specialist respond with information on how to make the product work again; this is about being seen as providing the solution. Most responses can be made by the right expert within the business responding, yet knowing how busy people are it is often best to have someone independent monitor interactions and ensure that the right person responds in a timely fashion.

Much of this interaction is about being involved in an on-going conversation that is happening on-line. It is developing in all sorts of directions, only very few of which any corporation need concern themselves with. It is important to be focused and targeted in all communications. Ultimately each brand needs to exude its personality to the outside world through its social networking interactions.

• Friends
• Family
• College/university alumni
• Work colleagues
• People in my work field
• Interesting people I meet on-line, or perhaps
• Anyone who is interested

Of course there are those who have quite extensive networks of friends and family. But who you connect with will depend on what you want out of your social network connections. Yes, it is true that you have to think about what you want out of each the on-line relationships! Each of these categories can be important to parts of your life and you have to decide how you will be leveraging each network.

To some people the friendship aspect is most important to others it is business relationships that are important. We each probably need a little of both if truth be told, but it is important not to mix how you use each network as that may give inconsistent results to you. To guide you here are brief thoughts on each of the major networks:

Facebook – Most often used for personal relationships, yet it is possible to make business connections as well. Best to have separate accounts for personal and business.

LinkedIn – Primarily used for business relationships and building business connections.

Google + – New! Used for both social and business connections. Probably slightly more business focused, but time will tell.

Windows Live – used for both social and business connections.

Twitter – A general messaging service. Good for making announcements; news; business; personal or friend messaging.

YouTube – Primarily for posting videos, but remember it has many business uses, including training videos.

This is a simple list of the most popular networks that exist today, yet the truth is that there is plenty of space for more social media sites and you may already be a member of many others – for your social club.

This article is entitled “Why be an Open Networker?” and with good reason. Who do you network with? Is it just the people that you know, or have known in the past? No! You will use social networks to build your set of connections in order to help you achieve specific goals e.g. finding that next job. This is an important reason for being on a social site, and there are plenty of others.

The truth is that is we live within the circle of people that we already know and limit who we connect with then life ends up being very limiting. You go to a meeting and get introduced to someone new to the group chances are you will exchange business cards. Is there any reason why Sunny Halani cannot help you with something you need to complete your next project? If you need professional printing then the answer is likely to be “Yes”, but is that the limit of how he could assist you? Probably not. If you are facing a problem in a project that you are working on then could you give him a call and ask him if he knows of someone local who could assist resolving that specific issue. That is the power of networking.

Being an open networker simply means you are prepared to be more open with those you connect to. One thing to note is that most open networkers are actually looking for business connections rather than social ones. Without wanting to build your list of followers on Twitter you will see new people following you on a daily basis. They will have seen something of interest in one of your recent posts to make them want to follow you. It is safe to follow back. That said you should make sure that you do not put personal information like your address or phone number into any social profile.

Even being an open networker there are rules that you should follow. Invitations from users that are not in-line with your reason for being a member of the site, such as “Sexy Ladyz”, should be ignored. Many open networkers will not connect with any person that does not have even the shortest biography information and prefers that contacts have a photograph included in their bio. Ironically sites such as Triond also provide networking opportunities; it provides the opportunity to become a fan of other writers, once a fan then it is possible to communicate with fellow writers.

Communication is of-course one to the primary reasons to be involved in any sort of network. We look to assist others, by providing helpful content (not necessarily our own) and in return they will assist us in achieving our goals. Part of the art of networking is telling others how they can best assist us without advertising – this is an art-form that would take several articles in their own right so will not be expanded upon here. The open networker will make a large number of connections, yet how they manage each individual connection is important and that is what will achieve lasting success.

You will never know who may be able to assist you in achieving your goals so building relationships may get you closer to the next person who may be the connection you always needed to make. That is why it is important to build your network, irrespective of whether or not you are an open networker.

There are good and bad points about Social Media; it allows us to connect with people that we don’t know; this can allow us to develop connections that can assist in job search and business development; yet at the same time we open up a channel for junk messages. The vast majority of people have a genuine desire to connect and to assist each other achieve specific goals. This is the positive side of social networking.

Millions of messages are sent out each and every day. When this commentator finishes a new article then several messages are sent automatically on social media channels informing listeners of the presence of a new article that may interest them. Of course the writer hopes that his more than 8,000 connections will take the time to read each article published, indeed every writer wants to pen the next article that ‘goes viral’ . The key element here are those who may turn into customers in the forthcoming period. Yet adding articles is about building trust with each reader.

Multi-level marketing schemes are simply one corner of a pyramid of undesirables. There are literally thousands of scoundrels out to separate you from your money. In starting out in life I remember my grandfather offering the advice that “if something seems too good to be true, then it probably is too good to be true”. That does not stop people from acting. We have all seen it the advert stating ‘how I made $21,271 in just 9 days’. Something in our brain says “I deserve some of that”. Yet the truth of the matter is the majority are all schemes that are intended to separate the unsuspecting fool from their money.

Part of this are the spam-connectors. These are the people that are always in sales mode. The first messages are innocent enough, ‘Join me on x.bizbuilder.com’ (or whatever the name of the new social site is). One site leads to another, etc., etc. Then you get to the heart of the matter, the daily message which goes beyond hyping their product. Connect to enough people on Twitter and you will see this as a normal part of your daily activity, but you do have to learn to ignore these type of message to continue to live on the social web.

Sadly most of the Social Media spam is perpetuated by innocents, who simply pass on messages by other people because it sounds like it may be of interest (usually without looking at the associated web site).

This writer generally does not feel that blocking, flagging, or reporting users should be a part of the normal activity of any social media user. Yet there are times when certain users go one step too far. Having suffered hundreds of spam messages from one particular user, the writer took the unusual step of removing the contact from my list of connections on several networks. The next day, however, came in a request from that person to connect to them again. Several days later and many messages later it was evident that blocking that person was the only choice available. We are often too polite, but there are times when it is important to protect ourselves from unwanted intrusion.

It is true that Blogs and other social media tools have changed the publishing landscape, making it easier than ever to share information with the world. Users of social web services can send notes, include embedded links, etc. to their connections. Of course automatic systems will treat spam drivers equally to genuine posts and the crafty bit of SEO can boost the visibility of any site. It is not the social media platforms themselves, nor the capability of publicity products like TweetAdder, or SocialOomph that in themselves are the cause of spam, that will relate to the content and the attitude of the provider and how they leverage the service.

Spam will be with us way into the future, ultimately the only defence is our own common sense and how we manage our connections.