Social Media is Amazing, but How Do I Use It?

By Benjamin Tateoka

Social media is amazing, but navigating through all the different social media web sites can be very difficult.  I was lucky to get my foot in the social media door when it first came out.  In high school I dabbled on Myspace.com and later on during my freshman year of college, I created my facebook.com profile.  Since then, the creator of facebook.com, Mark Zuckerburg has become a billionaire and almost every day a new social media site emerges.  Social media is amazing, but how do you use it effectively?

I found three articles, recently posted on twitter, giving advice to social media beginners.  I felt that these people were experts in using social media, because they got me to read their material just by using the many facets of social media.

Edward Marlon gave four tips for beginners on Weblogbetter.com.

1. Try and offer live events on Facbook; ie. chat sessions, seminars, and webinars. 
2. Start small; just because there are hundreds of social media sites, don’t create profiles on all of them.  Thoroughly maintain a few with well placed, up-to-date profiles. 
3. Don’t annoy any of your followers enough said.
4.   Research what your customers are saying; know what your customers are saying and act accordingly.

Social media helps costumers look up information about organizations, but can also provide organizations free information about the consumer. Companies can look at what people are saying about their organization and monitor tweets, status updates, etc.  This is a great function, and it can also be used to check up on their employee and prospective employees.

An article by Kevin Allen in PRDaily.com reported that a Reppler survey conducted a study on 300 hiring professionals and concluded that 91 percent of companies use social networking sites to screen prospective employees.  In the same study, 70 percent of the hiring managers surveyed said that they have rejected a candidate because of what they saw about them on a social networking site.

So if you are a perspective employee reading this blog, make a note to yourself to delete those party pictures.  Your social media presence can affect your job search.

Another list for you newcomers to social media comes from Robert M. Caruso from Bundlepost.wordpress.com

1)      Don’t Pitch (too much) - Provide your followers, or those who “like” your page, with valuable or interesting information.  Slip in just a few posts about you and your business and you will get far better results!

2)      Don’t Ask – If your relationship with a person is only because you are “friends” online, don’t ask them to retweet or post something on facebook, unless you have done the work to build a relationship.  Don’t send invites to people you haven’t engages with for a long time.

3)      DO Help Others – Whenever possible, help your fans and followers with what they do. Look for opportunities to share things they write that your audience would find valuable.

4)      Build Relationships – Learn about your fans and followers through engaging in conversations. Ask about them and what they do. Don’t be afraid to be silly and joke around. Do the things you do in real life that build connections and closeness.

Hopefully you will avoid social media disaster and build better relationships with your online audience.  Take it from the experts, social media is amazing, and if you do it right, you will reap the benefits.