Why do I have to dedicate time I can't easily spare from my already overburdened day to social media? What will it get me?
There are two main reasons to use social media to network or promote your business: it is free or cheap, and everyone else is doing it. Used well, social media can facilitate networking and boost awareness of you and your business or brand among your target audience. But used carelessly, it can be a huge waste of time.
 
Online social media sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Merchant Circle, A Small World, Flickr, Digg, Delicious, Plaxo, Memotoo, Twitter, and others, have in common that they are all free, and they can eat up all of your time if you're not careful. You may wonder: why should you use them? You've been getting good business for years now, and hardly have any time for your family. In spite of this, more and more business professionals are using social media to start relationships, or to check up on new contacts and referrals to see whether they should do business with them or move on. This background checking is often done even before reaching out or meeting with you, or it may be done after an initial conversation.

Here's an example of how not to do it: let's say I am working with a prospect who has told me they did not need to work with me because they were getting everything they need from social media and the web. Checking them out, I see they've created profiles on a dozen different social media sites, and their profiles on all the sites were different — and I mean different. MySpace didn't match Facebook and LinkedIn didn't match any of the others. The prospect had created profiles everywhere just to claim their username, and that's not a very effective approach. it's a good bet that the results they think they are getting are short-term or not really there at all.
 
So how can you use social media most effectively, without it becoming a huge drain on your time and productivity? Before you get into social media, know why you’re there and what you plan to get out of it. This can be anything from a new client to a new house or best friend — or just a group of like-minded people to bounce ideas off. What are you looking for? Increased buzz over a product or service? Better brand or individual awareness? Blog or web site subscribers? Traffic to your site or profile? How are you going to measure these goals?
 
The main thing with social media like any other method of advertising, marketing or promotion is finding your target audience. You don’t want to join every web community, just like you don't need to go to every networking group meeting you can find. First you need to research the various sites and identify the ones that will give you the most of the target audience that you want to reach. You need to find out what "social media" sites your prospects, referrers, and connections are interacting with most, and are where you’d be most welcome. Pick and choose to find the sites most beneficial to you. Once you've done that, commit yourself and become part of that network. That means being a good "social media" member of the community and completely filling out your user profile so you can attract like-minded members as well as show people that you’re there to stay. It is a lot more difficult to sell a product or service to the wrong audience, so do your homework and save yourself some time.
 
Be consistent, but not cookie-cutter.
 
Another crucial thing to remember is that the information on your social media profiles and business website must match what you are saying in your talking points and elevator pitch. You need to make sure that your "social media" profile — let's call it your online personality — matches your literature, website and talking points. This is easy to do, and customizing your profile to be consistent with the rest of your world will help you gain trust points – add a photo of you (not your logo or an avatar), put your face out there, share your hobbies, tell and show people who you are. Join the groups that are relevant to your business and interests. Put yourself out there in order to benefit from real conversations down the road. (Remember to use common sense and be careful when you get to religious and political views since being too controversial can scare prospects or push away business.) Yes, social media is where your customers are, but you have to give them a reason to want to engage with you.
 
Another important point when posting or building your profiles is to use wording and strategy that is site-specific; don't just use the same "stuff" on every site. Facebook is not MySpace; Twitter is not Digg; Linkedin is not Plaxo — and they’re all different from Friendfeed. Every social networking site is different and you need to create a specific strategy for each one you decide to engage in — one that is customized to that site’s rules and code of conduct. Trying to run a one-size-fits-all approach will hinder your ability to use "social media" successfully, because it will look like you are trying to exploit the community instead of participate. Make sure when you do post, you have something to say. Realize that not everyone needs to be on Twitter and tweet constantly, you can just follow people at first.
 
Keep track of results.
 
Whatever you do please, please measure it somehow. If you’re not going to come up with ways to measure your social media efforts, don’t bother with it. (There are many ways to measure social media, which I'll discuss in a future post.) Whatever your metrics are, make sure you’ve identified them before you throw money into programs you’re not tracking. Otherwise you’re hunting in the dark, without any weapons, wasting valuable time and energy.
 
So why use social media, besides that "my competition is doing it"?
 
First, consider the potential reach. Now that the early adopters have already bunkered in, the numbers are starting to grow very quickly. Here are just a few:
 

• Facebook, the most popular of the social media sites, has nearly 350 million users worldwide. 
• Half of Facebook's active users log on and more than 35 million users update their status in any given day, and more than 3.5 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) are shared each week. 
• LinkedIn is like Facebook for professionals, and more than 50 million business professionals have signed up.
• Twitter—not even three years old—tracks thousands and thousands of message "tweets" every day. 

That spells significant opportunity—whether your customers and prospects live around the world or across the street, you can find a lot of them online. The second and biggest reason to use social media is that it's free. You can be a significant player online without laying out any cash, and in this economic environment cash matters more than ever. It does take time, of course, and in business time is money. But getting up to speed on social media is like learning to ride a bike; it's difficult and intimidating at first, but once you get the hang of it you can get where you want to go quickly—and even enjoy the ride.