Each weekend, I saddle up on my mountain bike and ride 24 miles round-trip to Trader Joe’s. I’m sure I look silly in my bike shorts and giant backpack, but what can I say?—I live far away, don’t have a car, and love the store.

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Even though e-mail is one of the oldest ways of connecting with others over the Internet, some companies are still asking, “How do we make sure that our e-mails get read?” That question’s really not too surprising, though, since e-mail has evolved to include spam filters and consumers have gotten great at tuning out advertising (and nothing says advertising more than a direct e-mail with a title that reads, “FREE SHIPPING”). Give ‘em a clever subject line time and again, on the other hand, and your chance of getting people to open your e-mails goes up dramatically. Here’s how.

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The difference between the words “cheap” and “affordable” is much like the perceptual difference between the prices ninety-nine cents and a dollar: it’s a shift that can mean the world to the people marketing a product, while remaining a minor distinction to the people searching for that product. This, in essence is why SEO is so important—because marketers and consumers often consult different frames of reference in searching for the same thing.

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The answer is “yes,” and “no.” It often depends on how you make the dollars you have work their hardest for every piece of virtual space that they occupy.

So what’s a key strategic element for companies new to Web 2.0? One of your main concerns should be to develop a good web presence. As long as you know your business and your audience, setting up the following accounts shouldn’t be too hard. Interacting, however, is more challenging. Whether you’re already on social media or about to get into it, here’s how to get the most attention on two of the most popular social media sites.

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Sometime within the past 15 years, consumers developed x-ray vision. It’s just that instead of gaining the ability to see through walls, consumers gained the ability to see through logos. This, like so many other things, is an instance in which both the Internet and social media have been caught red-handed, although consumers eventually would probably have realized en masse that a logo doesn’t solely constitute a brand. A brand, according to label mastermind Andrew Sabatier, is “the overall experience of a particular identity.”

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While there are many ways to gain new Facebook fans, I would like to talk about how to lose them.

I lost a fan today.  I am currently building a music project as a hobby. As the popularity of Myspace continues to die, I am forced to find a new social networking outlets to spread the word about my music. Luckily, Facebook offers a near perfect solution. With a Facebook fan page, I am able to suggest all my friends, and they're able to suggest their friends. I can update all my followers whenever I want to, and they can interact back with me.

Everything was going well until I got carried away. I would send out multiple updates a day assuming that everyone was as enthusiastic about my page as I was. As I began to lose followers and friends, I realized that I needed to back it off a bit.

So how does this apply to your business? Well, if your business has a Facebook page (as it should), there is a fine line between informing your audience and annoying your audience. Just like any type of marketing, over saturation is a negative. People aren’t checking Facebook to see what’s going on with your business.   You are, however, lucky enough to have them follow you and receive your updates. If you over do it, your fans will start dropping like flies.

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The question that my clients have been asking me recently is what should my company be doing on Facebook and Twitter?  My first response is not to rush into anything, don’t be swept into the hype that says you have to be tweeting every 20 minutes or your falling behind. This does not mean that there no value in social networking for business. I believe that social networking outreach needs to make sense within a company’s overall marketing strategy, and does not become a directionless monologue with no one listening.

Setting Business Objectives

The first question that needs to be asked is what are you trying to accomplish? Companies need to have a set of specific goals for any communication. Lets take for example a business-to-business company that already invests in going to a series of trade-shows around the country. This company has been going to this same series of events for a number years and has a decent idea as to how many useful contacts they have seen in the past at these shows. This is a great place to employ a goals oriented social networking strategy.  
Setting Social Networking Goals and Benchmarks
The first thing that would help our hypothetical company would be to set reasonable goals to benchmark against, like a 5-10% increase in qualified booth traffic at these meetings. Notice we are not trying to say an increase in the total number of conversations, but an increase in the quality of the conversations at the show, making the limited time available at the show more productive. Finally we would set up a simple system to track the overall quality of interactions at the show. Now that you have a well defined objective with a specific measurement the task becomes focusing on your specific audience.

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Social networking sites have become a great way for businesses to increase their reach and online presence. With the growing popularity of Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, many companies are discovering ways to use these sites as a tool to reach a technology-friendly, and growing market.

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