Twitter, Facebook, YouTube: Wherever you go, you’ll find people discussing their activities on these Web sites ad infinitum. Those social media tools, and others like them, have become a major part of people’s lives and are fast becoming the chief method of reaching and connecting with people. These tools are also viral in nature, which means that it is extremely easy to share information you like with other people using these sites. These are the main reasons why these tools are also becoming indispensable for marketers and business owners and why social media marketing is all over the place today.

Social media marketing simply means using social networking tools to market your business and build and establish its brand. Though social networking tools were initially used by people for personal networking and socializing, they are now increasingly being used for promotion as well. But there are a couple of things you should keep in mind before you take the plunge.

• The first and foremost thing you have to do is to ensure that you are willing to commit the time and energy to regularly update your blog, Twitter, Facebook or whatever other tool you are using. Creating an account on a social networking site and not updating it regularly is worse than not creating an account at all.

• Limit conversations about yourself. Though this might seem like a paradox considering that you want to promote your business, you have to remember that people have short attention spans that tend to get shorter if the content does not interest them. The best thing to do is to provide regular information about a specific topic or about the industry that your business is based in.

• Don’t get into it blindly just because others are doing it. Make sure you have a definite set of goals before you start. Plan every step and plan the various ways you can make the information on your various pages as interesting as possible.

• Contribute quality content. Posting information just because you have some does not work. Readers can sense when you actually mean something and when you are doing something just for the heck of it. To make it easier for you, choose a topic that interests you or that you are passionate about.

• Social networking tools are very informal in nature. So whatever you write does not have to be formal or stiff. In fact, it will help your business more if your posts and videos are laid-back and fun. This is your chance to show people that owning a business does not automatically equal being stuffy.

• Try to use as many social networking tools as possible. The more exposure your business gets, the better for you. So make use of blogs, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, podcasts and anything else you can think of. Just remember to update them regularly. If you don’t have the time to personally do it, you can hire someone to do it for you. Jut make sure that you hire someone who is extremely knowledgeable about them.

• Contribute to other people’s blogs. Make comments for their posts either offering some advice or tips on something they have written or just providing some new information.

• Once you have everything in place, extensively promote your YouTube videos, your blog posts or your podcasts on social bookmarking sites such as Technorati (for blog posts), Digg, or StumbleUpon.

You have to be very careful while using social networks because if your plans backfire, then the bad publicity you get will be greater than any good publicity you might have received if all had gone well. As mentioned above, social networking tools are viral in nature. You know the old saying, “bad news spreads faster than good news.” You can be sure that any fiasco by your business will reach thousands of people within minutes. For example, when KFC started their line of grilled chicken, they used online coupons to promote it. Each coupon allowed the holder to get two pieces of free grilled chicken, two sides and a biscuit over a two-day period. KFC made use of Oprah to promote the coupons but what could have been PR gold turned into a disaster. The offer made KFC the No. 1 topic on Twitter and it was talked about on blogs everywhere – but there was so much demand that the company was unable to hold up their side of the bargain. So the chain had to end the promotion and give the customers a rain check. Saying that the customers were unhappy would be an understatement! KFC could have avoided this if they had had more control over their promotion and a stronger PR team.

Having said that, utilizing only social networking tools to build your business and brand is also a bad idea. You should have an entire marketing campaign to publicize your business, which should include more traditional media such as T.V and newspaper ads, radio spots, newsletters and promotional giveaways. And sometimes social networking tools, or the entire concept of social media marketing, may be wrong for your business. For example, if your business caters to a niche audience that you know for sure are not avid users of these tools, then using these tools will not make much difference to your business. In such cases, you will be better off using more traditional approaches that you know would reach your audience. The key to social media marketing is to fully understand how it works and then to determine how to best make it work for you.

There’s a new set of rules for connecting your brand to your employees, caregivers, communities and patients. And it requires you to let go of what you think you know. Continuing to try to persuade audiences about the superiority of your organization through traditional campaigning (in the absence of other efforts), with the use of rational information and comparative data, is just not that important to those you’re trying to connect with.

The future of health care marketing is not about saying things to caregivers, communities and patients. It is about saying and doing things with them. It is about Attraction Marketing, compelling audiences to become socially involved with your brand, while letting you (the health care marketer) actually spread your commercial message more effectively.

A Manifesto For Change

Based on the new laws of Attraction, here are twelve guiding principles for creating a connecting versus campaigning organization. I refer to these principles as an Attraction Manifesto because of what the term implies – passion, game-changing, an appropriately public (social) declaration of your intentions and how you’ll set out to achieve them. And because it’s a manifesto, it asks others (employees, caregivers, patients, communities) to join together to make it a reality. Clearly, you’ll put your own spin on this doctrine to make it actionable for your organization and your audiences.

1. Coherence – our brand idea will serve as the nucleus for all of our actions and communications.

2. Authenticity – our social media conversations should be similar to our daily interactions with friends, colleagues and family, in that they are open and honest, informal and in a personal voice.

3. Transparency – we’ll represent ourselves as people rather than an organization, because people connect with people, not organizations. We’ll also be honest about who we are, as trust is a huge barometer of engagement.

4. Collaborative – we’ll embrace the fact that true conversations are two-way, question and answer, give and take; where all participants strive for mutual respect and gain.

5. Customized – we’ll create specific interest content and communities (because the web allows us to do this) by collecting, categorizing, listening and responding.

6. Facilitating – we’ll allow conversations to go on around us without trying to control them, empowering people to connect through our brand, with content as the enabler.

7. Contagious – we’ll create “life-impacting” content and conversations that generate word-of-mouth and that people want to share with others.

8. Co-Creation – by working together, we all learn, grow and become stronger.

9. Evangelists – as feasible, we’ll create passionate and active advocates who will want to spread our message (for little expense).

10. Paced – we’ll start small, do what we can, when we can.

11. Context – we’ll recognize that social media is not a single solution in itself, but one element of an integrated marketing communications plan.

12. Bottom Line – we’ll leverage the tools available to measure our success both qualitatively and quantitatively.

What Are You Waiting For

Integral to the future of health care brand building will be shared, “real-time” interactions and conversations between providers, caregivers, patients and communities. You have the opportunity now to benefit your health care organization by involving and empowering these audiences in conversations by being where they are and making it easier for them to connect, get informed and take action. It’s not a matter of “if”, but “when.” So what are you waiting for?

Social media is a completely different layer that has been added to the web, hence the web 2.0. Social media is becoming mainstream and in a couple years we won’t even be able to imagine a time when we couldn’t interact with all the screens and mobile content surrounding us. It is indeed a misnomer, but to suggest that the platforms that enable conversations between people and between people and brands are not viable ad opportunities is ludicrous. Social media is all about sharing and connecting. It is the use of technology combined with social interaction to create or co-create value. Twitter is just one of these web 2.0 Twitter is a perfect platform for micro blogging. Allowing you to post comments with just a few words. Ping.Fm another great tool that allows you update your post to all of your social networks at once. Social Social media provides the tools for people to collaborate and get around barriers for communication, build trust. Social Media is a collection of online tools and sites that function on the premise that people are interested in talking to and engaging with other people. The fact is that social media tools differ significantly based on culture, Internet access and online behavior.

Community Community members respond quickly to request to test new tools. Community members provide reflections on their activity, which stimulates change within the group. If you use monitoring to discover a real community, perhaps one you didn’t know existed, then you’ve found a treasure trove of real opinions, reactions, reviews, etc. Social Media IS NOT SEO, but search engines DO look kindly upon blog posts/community comments/online noise. Conversation Conversations in these types of communities tend to be regulated by the needs of the community’s creator or sponsors, they are less transparent, and less valuable to the participants at hand. The ability to actually listen in on market conversations made possible by social media will drive a sea change in the market research industry, one that today’s early adopters are starting to understand. When you engage in conversations in social media it may seem overly labor-intensive compared to launching an ad campaign. These networked conversations are enabling powerful new forms of social organization and knowledge exchange to emerge. I can meet many real people and have real conversations, but it will go nowhere if we don’t connect. Relations Social media needs to be all about relationships. Which in business terms, translates to turning relationships into clients or resources. Most association executives and show producers have realized that relationship building is their greatest priority, few have tapped into the power of social media or adopted a practical plan to incorporate these solutions. Some companies will be hard pressed to understand that its more about relationships and intangible aspects of SM rather than the numbers. Social Media is not just another media. Social media is defined by the act of sharing content in and between social networks regardless of the content type….. For more information about Using Social Media to build your online business