Because of its conversational nature, some companies see social media as a channel that doesn’t really apply to them. Or that’s just a fad. Careful.  Brands that take social media lightly may actually cause themselves major brand damage. What follows are five strategic tips to help your brand succeed in an area where it’s all too easy to fail.

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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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Believe it or not, all media is social. The Dark Knight’s success is measured in dollars, Thomas Paine’s Common Sense pamphlets inspired colonists to gather, and Ayatollah Khomeini smuggled cassettes into Iran in the ‘60s to set the stage for the Iranian Revolution. Yet there’s still a crescendo in recent years of people barking about how online social media is revolutionizing the you-name-it industry. These people are both right and wrong: the Internet changed everything, but it also didn’t make traditional advertising entirely obsolete, as Super Bowl ads are more expensive than ever. What the Internet actually did was give people social media that allows them to simultaneously be alone and part of a community. Today, people are interested in forming connections more than they’re interested in transmitting information. And connections—perhaps more than anything—are based on trust.

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I have begun my quest to know social networking inside and out.  I want to figure out how to take advantage of this marketing gold mine.  I see a lot of expert suggestions online, and, through some research, I have discovered some useful insights into what companies should be doing on these sites.  I would like to share some of what I have learned:

Facebook:  This seems to be the big daddy.  Practically everyone you know is on it, and they have given information that makes targeting them a piece of cake.  They have divided themselves into groups based on their

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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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