Right now social media is a huge buzz word in business. Large businesses are running sophisticated campaigns to increase brand awareness and create an army of loyal fans that help spread the word across their network. Small businesses have either started a social media campaign or know they need to. There is considerable upside to social media for businesses of all sizes. You need to make the most of your social network.

Close the Loop

Each social network has its own advantages. For companies that sell to other businesses, LinkedIn is a great opportunity to prospect for leads. Twitter is great for finding real-time conversations taking place around your service, establishing yourself as a thought leader, and rapidly growing your network of relevant prospects. Facebook offers greater flexibility to craft a custom social media campaign through custom tabs using fbml, Facebook applications, and provides a great platform for contests and giveaways.

Since each network has its own unique advantages you will want to point contacts from each network to the others. For example, we already established Twitter as being a great way to expand your network quickly. The downside is Twitter profiles are only 160 characters. That isn’t a lot of space to find out useful information that can be used to establish a relationship or be used to prospect offline. The solution, ask your Twitter followers to connect on LinkedIn or Facebook. The more places you connect with potential prospects the more frequently they will be exposed to your brand and the greater the amount of information you are able to gather to advance the sale.