Be Consistent with Your Social Media Identity :

Now that you’re ready to enter the world of social media, it’s important for you to spend some time carefully thinking about your social media identity before you create a Twitter account, launch a Facebook fan page, and begin to market your business through social media channels.

The first thing you will want to do is decide whether you should market your business as your business, as yourself, or as both. Each of the three options has benefits, but it is ultimately up to you to decide which will work best for your particular situation.

Once you have selected your route, you should create accounts on social media sites and setup a profile that reflects your choice. For instance, a Twitter account for your business should focus exclusively on business activities—and not your personal life.

Tactic #2: Create a Coherent Social Media Message

This tip closely relates to tip 1: once you have your social media site profiles setup, you’ll want to start finding followers; and then using those followers to collect information and market products.

As you go through this process, it is important to maintain a coherent message.

For this reason, it might make sense to spend some time planning a general “theme” for your social media profiles. For instance, is their purpose to alert people to sales and to tell them about contests you are holding? Or is the purpose to discuss the general industry in which your business falls; and mention your new products casually?

There’s not necessarily a best approach to take here, but it is important that you pick one and stick with it. Creating an incoherent message and confuse and drive away potential customers who are following you.

Tactic #3: Create a Twitter Profile

Once you have setup your Twitter.com account, it is critical that you spend some time to personalize your profile. Most businesses who do not do this will be perceived as spammers when they ask Twitter users to follow them.

When it comes to setting up a personalized profile on Twitter, there’s not much to do. All you have to do is select a pre-existing background (or create a customized one), select your avatar thumbnail photo, and then fill in some short “bio” and “about me” information.

As far as your avatar goes, it is probably a good idea to use the logo for your business; and it may also be a good idea to create a custom background that also includes your logo.

Finally, remember to add the URL of your business; and to create a bio section that briefly explains 1) what your business does; and 2) what the purpose of this Twitter profile is (i.e. to give away free stuff, to hold contests, or to provide free information).

Read all 77 Social Media Tactics in this April 2010 ebook :

Social Media Tactics and Traffic

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