A shockingly common misconception of social media is that merely creating profiles and establishing any presence then allows you to permanently cross social media off your list of things to do. This people, is NOT the case. Social media is like a plant. It needs to be watered and cared for in order to grow. If you neglect it, well, you’ll have some dead potted something taking up space in your life; and no one thrives when corpses hang around the house.

That morbid analogy aside, the beauty of social media is that with time, consistency and encouragement, success is sure to follow. People love to associate and side with their favorite brands online and since your target market is on Facebook anyway, you need to be where they are. That being said, the flip side is that people love to rant and I think that scares a lot of companies. The bottom line though, is that they’re going to rant whether you know it or not; so shouldn’t you take an active stance to improve your company’s reputation, rather than a passive one?

Talk to your audience and engage with them often. Ask them what they want to hear about and give it to them. Provide your customers with a blend of self promotion, or updates about what you have going on at your company, personal interaction and finally, relevant information that they might want to hear about/find interesting. Also, make sure to give your company a voice. If you don’t know what it is, find it. Talk to your founder, owner, CEO or corporate and create a personality that will most appeal to your target. Remember, you’re there because they are so find out what they’re looking for and provide it. Loyalty and growth will surely follow.

By Nicole Fletcher

I joined Twitter a while back expecting miracles. This of course was well before I jumped head first into my social media marketing career, but regardless, that’s where most people start. I found my friends through the search feature and followed them. They followed me back. I tweeted…then I stopped. Period, paragraph. My twitter account was left dusty and alone for many moons.

Fast forward to about a year ago when it became evident to me how important  personal branding is to someone like me and someone like anyone, if you want my personal opinion. I brushed the metaphorical cyber dust off my twitter account and began my journey to figure out this strange social network they call the ‘micro blogger’. I had started a regular sized blog a while back but was unhappy with myself and with it for a number of reasons. I switched it over to Tumblr to start anew and set it up to auto post to both my facebook wall and twitter account. I’ll tell you, the facebook integration was a big step for me as I hate to inundate my non social media savvy friends with news about the latest trending twitter topics, Google acquisitions and all the other ‘nerdy’ things I post about – but I did it anyway and so should you – everyone needs to learn.

Then I hit the big blogs out there to learn some more about my mission. I scoured the web for tips and tricks of the trade. Everything seemed obvious. Follow people who are in yours or a related industry. Retweet posts you find interesting or insightful. Communicate with people who are already talking about what you’re thinking about. Like I said, obvious. Then I realized that despite my lackluster reaction, I hadn’t really done any of these things before. I felt strange tweeting at people I didn’t know out of the blue and I think that’s a big problem people encounter. It’s like walking up to a stranger in a bar…but much less intimidating – so do it. Tweeters LOVE to be tweeted at – it’ll be the easiest friend you ever made.

Moving on, I started following people in social media, SEO, graphic design, marketing, etc and following people they follow and so on and so forth. Gradually people started to follow me back, sending me direct messages thanking me for the follow. I thought I should do the same and so I did and so should you. Social Media is all about forming relationships so take the time to form them. You won’t be sorry. In addition to growing my, as they say, personal brand, with followers in the  triple digits (big deal, I know), I found I was learning more than I ever expected. News articles were more readily accessible than ever before and in real time. Before I knew it, I was the one telling my friends about events that had literally just taken place because someone I follow was there tweeting about it. I now know about the latest developments in tech, social media and weather, not to mention coupons, deals and social events in San Diego and beyond as soon as they happen… and I like that.

I won’t lie to you and say that if you go onto twitter once a week or even once a day you’ll blow up your followers in no time. It doesn’t work like that. It can honestly be a full time job – ask any solid blogger who posts original content on a daily basis. I’m not there yet but I’m working on it. In the mean time, start out slow. Follow people and things you like whether they’re related to your work, hobbies or life. Thank tweeters for following you but be sincere – people hate spammers. Take the time to engage your audience or your prospective audience – they’ll write back I promise. That’s not to say that Lady Gaga is going to tweet at you tomorrow…but one day a big fish will and I can speak from personal experience, it’s like winning the lottery. In the mean time, learn from this tool – read articles you never would have come across, comment, retweet, post original content and immerse yourself and your business into the twitverse….it’s how I got my job after all..but that’s another blog post.

By Nicole Fletcher

It truly baffles me how even today, at the end of 2010, people are still completely blind to the wonderful world of social media and the endless list of possibilities this exciting new industry brings. I get that people ‘don’t have time to tweet‘, ‘don’t care what their sister’s friend ate for breakfast’ or simply ‘think this whole thing is just a fad’ – but everyone is on Facebook and everyone is inundated by the web daily. Why then are people so against learning about and taking advantage of all this new age of tech wonder has to offer?

I’m not one for conformity, after all, my personal blog is called Deviate From the Norm…but it seems clear to me that, unlike palazzo pants and bedazzled denim, Social Media is here to stay and some people just can’t, or won’t, accept that. People talk about the social verse like it’s some uncool food item in the nerdy kids’ lunchbox; like it’s something tacky or lame that the popular kids will soon force into extinction. I’m here to tell you, as Jacob Tyler’s new Social Media Director, it’s not. It’s here to stay and if you aren’t on it, well frankly, we’ll take off full speed into the future without you.

This new age of marketing that we are all so fortunate to be witnessing first hand, is just starting to bloom and grow. Social Media has totally redefined marketing, as your clients and customers can now take an active stance toward…or against your brand. With the billboards and television commercials of yesteryear, businesses never heard a peep from their clientele, who essentially hold the fate of their brand in their hands. Now, corporations, small businesses and public figures alike get to hear, see and feel it all. The truth might hurt…but better to hear it loud and clear in bold black and white, than not at all.

If you’re a business small or large you MUST know that you are not above this. You MUST take advantage of the marketing tools available to you for if you don’t, your competition surely will and probably already has. Most people don’t understand Twitter and I get that. I guarantee though, if you spend some time educating yourself, you’ll learn that thousands if not millions of people are already talking about exactly what you do for a living, or think about, or eat, or believe and those people should be on your radar as prospective clients and friends. The simple lesson is this: you must develop a presence for yourself..or hire someone to handle your social media for you. Most of the most modern marketing tools are available to you at no cost but your time, effort and passion. One of the most basic marketing fundamentals centers around ‘being your brand’ so if you’re not willing to give it some love, how can you possibly expect to succeed? If I haven’t convinced you on the vitality of this rapidly growing industry, here are some stats to gnaw on.

-500 million people are on Facebook
-Human beings spend 700 billion minutes on Facebook per month
-30+ billion pieces of content are shared on Facebook each month
-24 of the 25 largest newspapers are experiencing declines in circulations- shock gasp
-There are over 200 million blogs
-More than 600 million searches take place on Twitter each month
-Lady Gaga has 7.2+ million followers on Twitter to date.

Get the point? Social Media is here to stay, so learn about it before we’re so far down the futuristic highway that there’s no hope of catching up.

As online marketing terms and phrases go, “synergy” is probably one of the most overused. In fact, those of us in the industry hear it so much that sometimes tends to lose its meaning.

Despite that fact, however, it really is the best word to describe what usually happens when social network marketing starts to work. It’s never easy to pinpoint any one tactic or moment; rather, you suddenly find that clusters of new clients and colleagues start coming at you from all angles. What seems to be a useless exercise just a few weeks or months ago suddenly starts yielding monstrous results. You reach a “tipping point” where all of your efforts start to pay off.

How long it takes to reach this point depends largely on you, your business, and what kind of time and effort you put into social network marketing. The easiest way to speed things up, though, is by using all of your tools in concert. In other words, never rely only on Facebook to generate leads, or Twitter to get your message out – instead, be sure that each profile is linked to the others, with a consistent message coming through every blog post, social update, or video you put out into the virtual world.

Additionally, don’t just limit your efforts to what’s online, or even considered “social media.” There’s no reason your print ads can’t mention your Facebook fan page; likewise, Twitter can be a great avenue for broadcasting the sale you’ll be having at your physical retail location in a couple of weeks. Naturally, as we’ve mentioned all along, you’ll want to keep these outright promotions relatively rare when working on social networking sites, but that doesn’t mean you have to abandon them altogether.

Just as you would want the sales and marketing divisions of your company working closely together, so too should your social networking profiles be building on top of each other in your other online and off-line promotional efforts. Take a step back once in a while and check whether all the parts of your marketing advertising are moving in the same direction; synergy might get talked about too much, but that’s only because it’s so beautiful when it happens.