Keep reading to discover how.

Should Your Site Be Social-Enabled?

There’s no doubt that social media is a powerful marketing and communication tool for businesses and non-profits that have embraced it.

Yet, for most of us, our websites are still where the rubber meets the road. It’s where you turn visitors into leads and prospects into customers. It’s where you build your lists and sell your goods.

Can you inject some of the “humanness” of social media into your website without compromising its ability to sell? Can you use social media to drive traffic to your website for conversion without alienating your community?

More and more businesses are showing us that this is an achievable and worthwhile goal; that the two together can foster improved communication, build brand loyalty and create a better, more responsive, more profitable company.

Here are nine examples of how you can integrate your social media activity into your website for maximum results.

#1: Add social media buttons to your home page

A few years ago, the idea of sending people to another site from your home page after you had worked so hard to get them there in the first place seemed boneheaded. However, many companies now see the long-term benefits of gaining a follower, fan or subscriber on a social media platform, even weighed against the short-term risk of sending them away from the website.

Businesses commonly link to their social media profiles, even from their home pages.

By getting someone to follow you on Twitter, become LinkedIn with you or subscribe to your YouTube channel, you have the opportunity to keep the lines of communication open long after they’ve left your website.

Unsolicited Advice: If you’re concerned about losing that prospect, consider having the site open in a new tab or window, keeping your own website available for later viewing.

Also, make sure you have a social media profile that will engage your audience. You can borrow ideas from these 10 top Facebook pages, read up on how to optimize your LinkedIn profile and put into practice Darren Rowse’s tips for improving your Twitter profile.

#2: Connect your blog with your website

The line between blog and website has never been blurrier, with many businesses choosing to build their entire site on platforms that were traditionally meant for blogging, such as WordPress.

Whether your blog shares a domain with your website or not, you can improve the interactivity of your website by teasing your blog posts from your home page.

For example, Harold Night, an improv show out of Boston, uses the Posterous platform to blog, and has successfully integrated the blog into their website, both in the navigation and by pulling the recent posts as links onto their home page.

Harold Night connects its Posterous blog with its website.

Unsolicited Advice: Although services like Posterous and Tumblr are great and their prices can’t be beat, I prefer to have my blog under a domain I control. That way you can move from one platform to another without hurting your search engine visibility, and you’re more insulated against a third-party blogging platform going out of business.

#3: Embed videos on your website

There are few things as engaging as a well put-together video. Imagine adding a how-to or explanatory video to your product or services pages… How much more compelling would they be? How much could you increase your conversion rates by showing examples of other customers finding success by using your products?

Embed a video on your website to bring your offerings to life.

#4: Make your website shareable

Retweet buttons and Facebook Like buttons aren’t just for blogs. You can add them to any page of your website to get visitors to share the content more easily with their networks.

#5: Add your presentations to your website

If you market your business through public speaking, you can maximize your results by putting your presentations on your site.

The best way to do this is to set up a free account at SlideShare (think YouTube for PowerPoint). Once you’ve uploaded your slides, SlideShare will allow you to embed that presentation back into your website or blog. This creates an interactive experience for visitors who can now click through your slides.

Maximize the reach of your presentations by embedding SlideShare into your site.

#6: Socially bookmark new content

As you add new articles or archive your email newsletters to your site, make sure that you add them to appropriate social bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon, Reddit and Delicious. These popular sites can drive huge amounts of traffic to your website in a short period of time.

Unsolicited Advice: It’s always best when someone else bookmarks your content, so it might make sense to have a small “bookmarking club” with friends where you promote each other’s work. This “seeding” will often encourage others to bookmark your content.

#7: Add a Facebook Like box to your website

It's easy to like I Love to Gossip with a Like box on their page.

We’re all influenced by other people, a concept often referred to as “social proof.” When we see our friends or people we respect liking, supporting or promoting something, we’re more open to liking it ourselves.

Adding a Facebook Like box to your site adds accelerant to the idea of social proof. Visitors can quickly see how many people have liked your business on Facebook, get a sense of your level of commitment to social media (by the posts you’ve added to your wall), and may even spy some of their friends and connections through the Like box.

Further, you make it easy for your site visitors to like your business without having to leave your site.

For more on Facebook and social proof, be sure to check out Are You Using Social Media as Social Proof?

#8: Feed your website

Websites tend not to get updated as often as they should be… something that has probably been exacerbated by the rise of blogging and social media.

If the framework of your website is fairly static, you can still keep it fresh by adding feeds from your blog, Facebook, Twitter and just about every social media platform that generates an RSS feed.

Unsolicited Advice: Not all of your feeds may be website-appropriate. Your tweets about American Idol, your love of bacon or thoughts on Sarah Palin may not be appropriate for first-time visitors to your website who are just looking for a reliable plumber or a trustworthy veterinarian (or whatever you may happen to be).

#9: Use QR codes to drive traffic

QR codes like this one can drive traffic to your website.

QR codes are two-dimensional bar codes that can be scanned by smartphones with cameras. Once scanned, they can redirect people to a website (among other tricks). Check out QR Code Marketing for Small Business and How QR Codes Can Grow Your Business.

Whether you post QR codes on one of your social media profiles or in the real world (i.e., direct mail, a business card or poster) you can use them to drive people to your website.

Unsolicited Advice: To maximize the impact of a QR code, consider sending people to a special landing page or a mobile version of your site, rather than just the home page. This will improve your conversion rates and help build your lists.

Now let’s hear about your ideas. This is by no means an exhaustive list. Let us know how you’ve integrated your social media activity into your website. Feel free to include links so we can see how you’ve done it. Leave your comments and suggestions in the box below.

But first, it’s easy to pigeonhole WWE as fringe cable channel with a small group of die-hard fans, but you likely don’t know all the facts…

WWE.com outperformed ABC.com, CBS.com, NBC.com, NASCAR.com, PerezHilton.com, NHL.com and UFC.com. More people attended Wrestlemania XXVI than the Super Bowl, held in the same stadium.

“WWE” ranked #3 for most searches on Yahoo! in 2009, behind only Michael Jackson and Twilight. (As I write this, WWE is the top-trending search term on Yahoo!) And WWE.com has more than 14 million average monthly unique visitors worldwide.

More significantly, WWE’s own social networking site has 610,000 registered users who participate in forums, comment on blogs, and consume the millions of photos and videos that WWE updates continuously.

Therein lies the conundrum for WWE’s web production team. When you already have millions of fans engaging with you, do you really need to add Facebook and Twitter?

For WWE, the answer was yes.

“If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em,” said Mark Keys, VP of web production, digital media. “People were engaging on those sites and communicating about our products anyway, so we might as well embrace them and bring them into the fold.”

But even WWE, accustomed to its enthusiastic fandom, didn’t expect the welcome it received.

The Party’s at WWE – and Only at WWE

It’s not that WWE hasn’t embraced social networking. The brand actually came fairly early to the social media party – but held the party at its own house.

Two years ago, WWE launched its WWE Universe site, a hub for fans to interact directly with more than 200 performers – called superstars and divas in WWE lingo. The site features wrestler profiles, along with forums, photos, videos, chat and blogs. You can even “friend” other fans and performers Facebook-style.

Many of the wrestlers and commentators blog about recent or upcoming matches. And just like in the business world, blogging helps each WWE performer build his or her brand – or in this case personality – with the fans. In turn, the more engaged fans are with the performer’s story, the more likely they are to tune in.

Fans from all over the world post words of encouragement to superstars and divas, or debate who’s going to come out on top in the next Smackdown.

Superstar Randy Orton

They can peruse videos of the most recent events and more than 3.3 million photos, or even create their own “smash-up.” You pick the videos and the theme music to make your own two-minute video montage.

Fans can create their own “smash-ups” on www.wweuniverse.com.

One of the site’s most popular features, live chat, runs during live TV and pay-per-view events, with performers joining in from the arena and WWE hall-of-famers as hosts. On average, each fan stays active in live chat for an impressive 45 to 50 minutes each session.

Going Where the Fans Are

As social networking has become more and more popular, the question of whether to join was increasingly pressing. Keys and his team didn’t see a clear business case for jumping in.

“To be completely honest, two years ago we didn’t care about social networking because we didn’t have to,” Keys said. “Our audience was so engaged on our site that they consumed whatever we put up there. Why would I send my audience over to other brands? I don’t need their engagement because I have such a rabid fan base.”

The turning point? They realized that fans were talking about WWE on Facebook and Twitter – with or without them.

Moreover, WWE had a huge problem with imposters pretending to be superstars and divas, on Twitter in particular, pushing the network to establish an official voice.

However, WWE wanted to do it right. Three months ago, they quietly created corporate Facebook and Twitter accounts – without promoting them – as a test of sorts.

“We’re not rushing into anything,” Keys said. “We want them [fans] to have the best and highest-class experience they can have with the same robust quality experience of our TV and the website.”

Within two months, 500,000 Facebook users had hit the “Like” button to become fans on WWE’s Facebook page and more than 93,000 were following the brand on Twitter.

They also set up Twitter accounts for many of their top performers. Within just two hours of his first tweet, superstar John Cena had amassed 5,000 Twitter followers, with the number growing to 30,000 in his first week.

Now, WWE has more than 50 official and performer accounts and 90 official and star pages on Facebook.

In a couple of months, without any promotion, WWE has 106,000+ Twitter followers on its main account, and millions more through other official WWE accounts.

Protecting the WWE Brand

WWE is upfront about being a scripted TV show. In the arena and out, performers follow a set storyline. WWE superstars and divas can choose what to post on Twitter but mostly stick to their WWE storylines, with some reality peppered in.

When some of the stars got ash-trapped in Ireland, with flights halted because of the volcano, they tweeted about the predicament.

“We even created a funky map feature that followed stars from ferries to trains to buses, and then we produced a TV feature,” Keys said.

To maintain brand consistency across social networks, WWE created a “W” logo to distinguish Twitter and Facebook from imposters.

Though initially under the marketing team at WWE, the digital content division now manages social networks, realizing that it’s largely about online content.

About five staff members devote part of their time to the WWE Universe site, Facebook and Twitter. The team tweets about 10 to 15 times every day, posting news and links back to videos, photos and other content to encourage fans to come back to WWE Universe.

They schedule tweets and follow inbound social networking hits with HootSuite and use Omniture for more advanced web analytics. While WWE could outsource comment moderation to a number of professional companies, it has so far chosen to keep its hand in oversight and responses.

Opening the Two-Way Street

WWE has not yet started actively promoting its Facebook and Twitter accounts on the WWE Universe site. So far, the only evidence is a Twitter feed on its website that streams all WWE and performer tweets.

Yet growing traffic coming from Facebook and Twitter gives WWE confidence in this new direction.

In the coming months, it will put its “foot on the gas” and begin telling its community of users about Twitter and Facebook. Icons for both sites will encourage fans on the WWE Universe site to share any of that content with their friends and contacts – opening the whole world of WWE content for fans to post.

By having mainstream and its own social networks, WWE expects to increase traffic and content sharing going both directions exponentially.

“If you go to superstar pages, we have very close to three million total fans on branded pages,” said Corey Clayton, online community leader at WWE. “It’s a vast network to reach out to and we’ll easily triple that in two weeks.”

As the brand goes full-force with social networking outside of its own site, WWE aims to evolve less-frequent website visitors to more active users. In doing so, they indirectly hope to increase pay-per-view sales, website page views and product sales.

“If we engage someone on Twitter who is a lapsed fan or bring new people into the product, then we’ve done our job well,” Keys said. “We’re now following the philosophy of going where the audience lives instead of getting them over to our house.”

How about you? Are you a WWE fan? Are you meeting your best fans in the social networks where they hang out? How do you ensure you stick to your brand story in all of your social media activities?

Are you a blogger? Using WordPress?  This article contains a number of powerful plugins that will take your blog to the next level.

Blogging and Social Media?

Where does blogging fit into your social media mix? Many people I encounter still haven’t taken the time to start a blog for their business.  I’ve heard many different reasons for not having a business blog—from not having enough time to insecurity about writing style.

Blogging should be one of the cores of your business. It should be right in the middle of your social media mix—the bulls-eye, the main target.

It’s important to note that your blog is the hub into which all of your social media networks feed for optimal exposure. Some people feel overwhelmed by the notion of starting and maintaining a blog, so below I discuss 11 essential WordPress plugins to get your blog off to a racing start.

Before I share this list, I want to demystify the #1 procrastination of those who haven’t started their business blog: I am NOT a writer!

Yes, it’s important to check your grammar and spelling; however, blogging is about sharing your knowledge. You have specific knowledge in your particular niche that your customers need to know. If you feel insecure about your writing style, be sure to keep your eyes on the top bloggers in your industry. As you read other blogs, learn from their style and don’t be afraid to have your own voice.

Now, on to 11 WordPress plugins that will get your blog off to a great start:

#1: SEO Friendly Images

SEO Friendly Images is a WordPress optimization plugin which automatically updates all images with proper ALT and TITLE attributes. This plugin improves traffic from search results.  Images are great for your blog and it is so easy to shorten the actual name of the image file as you upload it. I have had 60% more traffic to my blog just by naming my image files with keywords.

#2: Platinum SEO Pack

Platinum SEO plugin is the ultimate WordPress SEO solution.  Platinum SEO plugin offers all the features of All in One SEO plugin plus more. Here are a few key features:

• Optimized Post and Page Titles for search engines
• Generates all SEO-relevant META tags automatically
• Helps you avoid duplicate content

#3: Google XML Sitemaps

Google XML Sitemaps plugin will generate a special XML sitemap which will help search engines like Google, Yahoo!, Bing and Ask.com to better index your blog. Additionally, it notifies all major search engines every time you create a post with new content.

#4: Akismet

Akismet is a collaborative effort to make comment and trackback spam a non-issue and restore innocence to blogging, so you never have to worry about spam again.

#5: Contact Form

Contact Form is a great choice if you value simplicity and flexibility. It provides a form on your website as an easy way for your readers to contact you. It allows you to customize the form and mail settings. You can manage multiple contact forms as well.

#6: TweetMeme Retweet Button

TweetMeme Retweet Button is for website and blog publishers who want to encourage their audience to share their content on Twitter. The button shows a live count of the number of times your web page or blog post has been tweeted.

#7: Yet Another Related Post

Yet Another Related Post gives you a list of posts and/or pages related to the current entry based on a unique algorithm for display on your blog and RSS feeds, introducing the reader to other relevant content on your site.

#8: Sexy Bookmarks

Sexy Bookmarks, though the name may be a little “edgy” for some, has proven time and time again to be an extremely useful and successful tool in getting your readers to actually submit your articles to numerous social bookmarking sites.

#9: CommentLuv

CommentLuv is a plugin that gives something back to your community straight away by including a titled link for readers’ last blog post or tweet on the end of their comment. It’s a great way to encourage comments on your blog.

#10: Broken Link Checker

Broken Link Checker checks your posts for broken links and missing images and notifies you on the dashboard if any are found. Obviously you don’t want your readers to be annoyed by clicking a link that leads nowhere.

#11: WordPress Mobile Edition

WordPress Mobile Edition is a plugin that shows an interface designed for visitors who come to your site on a mobile device. Mobile browsers are automatically detected and the list of mobile browsers can be customized on the settings page. More and more people are accessing the Internet via their mobile devices, so you should make sure your blog is mobile-ready.

Other Plug Ins

There are thousands upon thousands of different WordPress plugins, but keep in mind that depending on your theme, certain plugins may not work well with other plugins. It is highly recommended to install plugins one at a time to make sure there are no issues with the presentation of your blog design.

For example, the Disqus Commenting System is another great plugin, but it conflicted with my blog design and didn’t work properly. After adjusting some programming code, this plugin is now working properly on my blog. I love this threaded commenting system that allows me to interact with my readers in a more seamless manner.

For further reading, Top 10 Easy Steps to Start a Business Blog is another great resource here on Social Media Examiner to get you started in the right direction for your business blog. It is vital to know your ideal reader, your core message and your business objectives, among many other things shared in this article.

This is just the start for your WordPress blog. Keep in mind that providing excellent content is the most important factor in the success of your blog.

Which WordPress plugins are you using to help to build community, optimize search engine results and increase viral potential? Let us know in the comments.

Interesting research shows just how influential Facebook has become in our daily lives. Combined with several critical adjustments to how Facebook publishes “news” and intersects with other sites, the state of Facebook is mind-blowing. And that’s a big deal for your business.

Here are 11 vital reasons your business needs to be involved with Facebook:

1. 350 Million Global Users and Counting

Facebook announced recently that they had passed 350 million members, making Facebook the third-largest country in the world, if it was a country. (Perhaps that’s their end-game, joining the UN and raising an army?)

2. 100 Million U.S. Users

Sure, Facebook is strong around the world (Canada has the highest penetration rate), but nearly 1/3 of all Facebookers are here in the U.S. You may have heard of a TV show called American Idol. On a good night, it averages 20 million viewers. Facebook has 100 million American members. Hmmm.

3. Average Facebook User Spends 55 Minutes Per Day

Nearly 1 hour per day, per user. That’s a lot of Facebook time. How can your company grab a bit of consumer attention? This data is based on Facebook’s own published stats, covered by Inside Facebook.

4. Nearly 80,000 Sites Using Facebook Connect

Connect is the Facebook initiative that has the greatest long-range impact. By integrating Facebook closely, sites are making our personal social graphs truly portable. Instead of having to go to Facebook and other sites to visit our friends, they travel with us online (and in our pockets via mobile devices), always there to provide advice or commentary. Even Yahoo! and MySpace are rolling out deep Facebook integrations.

This of course makes Facebook the central hub of not just social media, but the web as well (which is why Google is scrambling to catch up after their competing Google Connect fell flat).

5. Facebook Fan Box Becoming Pervasive

Perhaps the least powerful, but most prevalent, flavor of Facebook Connect is Facebook Fan Box, a simple tool for enabling your website visitors, YouTube video watchers, or email newsletter recipients to become a fan of your brand—without even having to go to Facebook.

6. Average Facebook User Has 130 Friends

Will Facebook users continue to add more friends at a rapid pace? It depends upon how they view their Facebook connections. 130 friends almost bumps up against Dunbar’s Number of 150—the theoretical maximum number of actual friend relationships you can sustain, according to British scientist Robin Dunbar.

If Facebook continues to revolve around relationships that you actually possess in three dimensions—people you “actually” know—then the addition of bunches of new friends may slow considerably. But, if Facebook makes the leap to tie people together more casually (like Twitter), average friend counts could rise dramatically.

7. Average Facebook User “Fans” 2 Pages per Month

If you think tons of your customers should become fans of your company’s Facebook page, you might want to recalibrate your expectations. The average Facebook user “fans” only 2 new pages per month. That’s not a lot, considering how many brands, causes, and organizations we come into contact with on a regular basis.

If you’re going to make growth of your Facebook fan base a key part of your social media strategy, you must create a clear rationale for why consumers should participate with you.

You also might consider a robust, organized approach for promoting your Facebook fan page.  (This case study from Souplantation/Sweet Tomatoes has some good advice.)

8. Only 4% of Pages Have 10,000 or More Fans

If your Facebook fan page is a bit of a ghost town, you’re not alone. A fantastic study by Sysomos of 600,000 Facebook fan pages shows that only 4% of pages have 10,000 or more fans—and only .76% have 100,000 or more.

That’s why it is so critical to focus your Facebook strategy on activating the fans you have, not just collecting fans like baseball cards.

9. Wall Posts Don’t Impact Popularity

The Sysomos study also found very little correlation between how frequently the Facebook page admin posted to the Wall and total number of fans. However—and this is important—there is a strong correlation between amount of other content (notes, links, photos, videos) and number of fans.

Thus, if you want to grow your Facebook fan base, it is imperative that you move beyond simple Wall posts and add photos, videos, links and other content.

10. Customized News Feed

Facebook’s recent move to an algorithm-driven news feed means that just because someone is your fan does not mean he will see your Wall posts or status updates (true for both individuals and brands). Instead, the default news feed is now comprised of content that Facebook thinks you’ll like, based on your interactions with content from that author in the past, and interactions by your friends with that content.

This puts a tremendous premium on posting engaging content that will get comments and likes and shares. If you’re not paying attention to your content engagement scores within your Facebook analytics, start doing so now, and testing content types to see what works best for your brand.

11. Real-time Search Changes the Game

Facebook is now making most content available publicly, unless you tell them not to via your privacy settings. Twitter opened their data stream to anyone (not just big developers). Google and Bing are incorporating this data into search results, in real time.

This has tremendous implications for search engine optimization and reputation management, because a negative status update about your brand might now show up on the first page of Google search results for your company name (at least temporarily). The shakeout is still happening, but someone in your company needs to be on top of real-time search. Today.

Facebook may not be the ideal environment for every social media initiative, but its huge size forces you to at least consider participating—regardless of what type of business you run.

It’s not just fast-food chains like Souplantation that are promoting their businesses on Facebook. Everyone from the ultra-small business to the Fortune 500 corporation are placing bets on Facebook.

However, some brands are putting an awful lot of eggs in the Facebook basket, which is perhaps justifiable based on the facts above. However, I’m not so keen on building the centerpiece of a social media strategy on what amounts to rented land. What say you?

Is your business taking advantage of Facebook? How important is it to your social media efforts? What advice do you have for creating content and managing Facebook fan pages? Please comment below.

Here are 7 steps to help you overcome the time dilemma.

1. Set One Specific Social Media Objective

One of the reasons why people waste time on social media is because their objectives are:

• Not clearly linked to their business strategy
• Inappropriate for the environment of social media

Don’t be surprised if you find you need to participate in social media for a little while before you find the right way to use it for your business objectives.  Take the time to observe your audience and learn how to connect with them on social media.

Read the Social Media Marketing Report to understand how other marketers are using social media.

Return on time investment: Before you see any return on your time investment in social media, you need know what your business can get out of it.

Don’t jump into social media with both feet and no business objective. Develop your social media presence with one clearly defined business objective in mind.

2. Find the Right Social Media Strategy for Your Business

This is what Mari Smith, the Pied Piper of Facebook, says: “The main reason people fail in social media is lack of a strategy. There’s so much confusing and conflicting advice out there, it’s easy to get lost in the social media jungle. By having a clear objective, developing a strategy to accomplish that objective, and measuring milestones along the way, you’re bound to have better results.”

• What can you say on social media that would interest your audience?
• How should you say it?
• Where should you say it?

Many businesses choose to use a blog as their central social media hub.  A pivotal role is played by what Authority Blogger Chris Garrett calls Flagship Content. The truth is that your social media strategy needs to be tailored to the particular message you want to convey to your audience.

Return on time investment: When you include a clear objective in the social media strategy most appropriate for your business, it boosts your overall marketing strategy.

Don’t waste time using other people’s social media tactics. Find a social media strategy that connects your business to your audience.

3. Make Your Presence Social

Once you have defined your social media strategy, the process does not end there.  It will only work if your presence is truly social and, as Rebecca Leaman says, you need to also “focus on being good online neighbors.”

A good resource to find out how to connect with your audience is Groundswell. And for ideas in creating the valuable content your business needs on social media, Jay Baer gives 7 steps to get your message right.

Return on time investment: The right message aligned with your business objective in a social media marketing strategy can save your business time spent elsewhere on sales and marketing. 

Don’t waste time sending inappropriate messages. Find the right message for your business and, above all, be social.

4. Stay Focused on Your Business Strategy

Social media can be a particularly dangerous time waster because:

• It is a social environment.
• Businesses need to create a social presence and it can be hard to find the balance between business and social.

Don’t fall into traps when adapting your marketing to social media. As Chris Brogan says, the question of friending and reputation “is difficult in the face-to-face world, but it’s even harder online.”

Return on time investment: Social media marketing creates stronger relationships with the people in your market.  You can use it to build trust and loyalty with more people and in less time than with most other marketing tactics.

Don’t waste time by getting sidetracked. Adapt social media to work for your business.

5. Adopt Social Media One Step at a Time

Amber Naslund says trying to be everywhere on social media is a big time waster. Social media is made up of numerous different places where people hang out, and these places all have different environments.  You cannot try to be everywhere all at once and know how to act and what to say.  You need to take things slowly:

• Research to find out where your business should be present.
• Observe and learn what to say.
• Listen and learn how to adapt to each different site.

Be sure to add your own social touch to all of your social media communication. Have a look at Chris Brogan’s social media task suggestions.  Look at them closely and you will see how these tasks add extra value to his marketing strategy as a whole.

Return on time investment: When you choose your actions wisely and add some social juice to them, they can give you back much more than you put in.

Don’t try to jump into all social media platforms at once. Find the social media sites that work best for your business.

6. Get Extra Mileage Out of Your Social Media Marketing

Many businesses look at what the social media “stars” are doing and think they would never have the time to do the same thing.  Here is the scoop: You need to get into social media before you can fully understand how your time spent can multiply in value.

Once you get your basic social media presence up and running, something very interesting happens.  You begin to see little things to do to get a much wider presence on social media.

Return on time investment: The good news is that you can get extra mileage out of your daily social media actions as soon as you begin.  One of the very first things you need to do when you begin marketing using social media is to set up professional listening activities.  The time you spend on this aspect alone usually adds much more value to your overall sales and marketing activities than you can imagine.

Don’t waste opportunities for more visibility and buzz. Adopt the social attitude.

7. Avoid Social Media’s Fatal Attraction: The Shiny Bells and Whistles

The truth is that there is a lot of movement in the social media arena.  New social media tools, applications and platforms hit the news every week.  And you just do not know who the key players will be this time next year.  It’s natural for businesses to hesitate in investing time in such a climate.

Return on time investment:  The key is to focus on developing social skills and to integrate these into your marketing strategy.  This is how you can spend your time wisely and be well-prepared as:

• Marketing becomes social
• Media habits change

Don’t focus on the social media tools. Focus on developing the social skills you need for your business to create a strong social presence.

Use Social Media to Add Extra Value to Your Current Marketing Strategy

Social media helps businesses to create stronger relationships with their clients; for instance, by creating trust agents.  This trust factor can be so powerful it removes the question of time investment.

Social media marketing can save your business time when it is included within your overall marketing plan.  When you add the ability to build trust, social media becomes a powerful marketing tactic not to be ignored.

These are just some examples of how to integrate social media into an overall marketing strategy to save businesses time.  What other tips do you have? Please share them in the comment section below.