1.)    Stop counting fans and followers. It’s not the quantity of followers you have, it is the quality of followers that really matter when using social media for business.  Stop obsessing about the number of followers you have and instead focus on really developing a strong community around your brand.

2.)    Set and follow goals. You should have set goals as soon as you signed up for your Twitter and other social media accounts.  In fact you should have had goals before you even signed up for your first social network account. Having goals will allow you to use social media effectively because you have a guide.

3.)    Fix your business because social media won’t fix your business for you. If anything, social media will help magnify the flaws of your business. Social media can be used by people to spread  not just the positive aspects of your business but the negative as well.

4.)    Commit to the whole thing. Using social media for business requires time and commitment.  Make sure you really commit to updating your social media accounts.  Some individuals and companies start a Twitter account and then abandon it without full understanding how it can really help them.  You might encounter some problems or troubles as you go along but just keep going. There is no perfect social network and you just have to keep working on what you started to get the best results.

5.)    Check out the competition. Social media will provide you with opportunities to learn more about your competitors as well as your industry.

I just read today that a recent national BizLaunch survey found that more than 49% of small business owners have invested up to 101 hours in social media marketing during the past 12 months.

Even high-traffic social media sites, such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and MySpace, aren’t a surefire way to attract potential customers, according to Canadian marketing guru and author Andrew Ballenthin.

More than 90% of business owners aren’t using social media to its full potential for personal branding, Ballenthin’s studies have found.

Follow us on twitter to stay tuned for upcoming courses that we will be creating to help small business owners maximise traffic from Social Media sites.

The fact that Twitter (Twitter reviews)’s search is now often faster and more relevant than any other search engine out there is not a secret anymore. It is, however, a very limited search engine: it merely indexes a bunch of tweets. In its current state, it’s great for tracking conversations, but it will never be a competitor to Google (Google reviews). Read more…