Getting Started With Social Media

3 Easy Steps to Get Started with Social Media Marketing:

1. Create a Profile Page or persona, like Jack Box on MySpace that is fun and interactive. Get your network and friends to dedicate a minute or two a day to help get things going, update their own Facebook status' mentioning your brand, Twitter about the page or something new they posted, include a link in your email newsletters to increase traffic and membership.
2. Search Twitter for your industry and/or topics that relate to your art or business and start to follow a few other industry experts. Your own list of followers will quickly grow. As it grows, keep twittering about industry news, press you received, or even that you've just completed your latest email newsletter (this is a little list building tip). Add links in every tweet to drive them to your site, group, blog, or opt-in form.
3. Measure your success. After all, if you can't measure it, why are you doing it?
   Use tools such as:
   
   
   • Facebook Lexicon to see the frequency of your topic's being mentioned.
   • TweetDeck to review all the Twitter feeds and break them down into manageable views.
   • Andiamo Systems (our choice at VerticalResponse) to manage all of your social media activity. (We track not only our own online "buzz" but our competitors' to compare.)

Obviously there is a lot more you can do with social networking. But I wanted to make your first steps into Social Media easy and fun. Remember social media networking is just another way to keep you top of mind with your fans and network. You are bringing your message to a highly targeted audience online and making it easy for your fans and customers to find you online.