Don't try everything at once

biggest mistake new social media marketers make is trying to play catch-up by creating accounts on every social media site they've ever heard or read about. This is a surefire way to rapid burnout. The amount of time it would take to maintain all those accounts would suck any and all time away from running your business. Plus, by trying to juggle profiles and build networks on too many sites at once, you'd do an ineffective job of marketing.

Start slowly. Maybe even start by surveying your current customers to see which social media site most of them use. Once you dip your toe in and get a feel for how a particular site functions, how its users behave and the kind of content/conversations they respond to, you'll have a better idea of how that site fits with your message. And once you know that, you'll know if that is a site to keep and nurture or one to scrap. You can ramp up from there.

If you run a political blog or website, for instance, you may find that Reddit members respond to your content better than Digg members. Or, if you're a photographer, you may think it's a no-brainer to open a Flickr account, only to find that you can get more inquiries from users of Google's Picasa.

Then there's Twitter. What can I say about Twitter? Okay, I'm not going to lie... I hate Twitter. The minutia of Twitter drives me crazy. But that might be because I haven't figured out a good use for it. Dell certainly did. They managed to turn Twitter into a million-dollar sales channel for their computers by using it to alert users of new sales and discounts.

But that's the beauty of social media. There is no right or wrong way to use it. It's like every other marketing channel. You have to test to find out what works best for your business.

Larry Potter
http://budurl.com/nn8h
www.ATicketToWealth.com