Social Mention is a great tool to track your key words that you want to be notified about or your name to find out when you are being mentioned.  It's free too!

1.  Facebook is a great way to list your business by creating a Fan Page.  When businesses create their fan page, they begin connecting with their customers.  A great place to find other connections for businesses is facebook.com/smbusinessroom. 

2.  Twitter is a quick newsfeed that connects 140 characters or less of information about your company or yourself.  #HASHTAGs are important and many companies use them to tag their topic of interest.  I just recently created a new tag for the our affiliated magazine #heartbeatmag.  There are some really great hashtags out there and you can search for them at the top of twitter to find relevant customers.  One example is a company called #foodiechats and they use their hashtag every Monday for live tweet meetups. 

3.  Pinterest is becoming a very important tool to business owners using social media.  It's a place you can pin the pictures of interest to your virtual board.  We have a board for Businesses we Love and companies websites get pinned to that board.

4.  LinkedIn is a favorite for business owners that want to provide a professional appearance.  It also provides a perfect resource for connecting with other business owners.

5.  Instagram is a useful tool for those who want to join a world of photographers, some are professional but most are amateur.  Instagram is a way for businesses to share visually what their company is all about.  You can use #hashtags to categorize your picture, like #pottery, #art, #heartbeatmag, #media, etc.

6.  Youtube sets the bar for sharing a message virtually.  Once your company is live on camera, it allows your customer to begin to trust in you.  Quick videos can be made with animoto or other apps on iPhones and edited during the upload process to Youtube.

7.  Google+ is a resource for newsfeeds and connecting all areas of Google together with their circle of friends.  They offer Google hangouts where you can have an online video chat session with clients or business owners on a topic of interest.

8.  Etsy, I believe is a great resource for business owners that have handmade items.  You can create circles of people that you want to follow and add favorites to connect further with new clients.  

All in all, Social Media is here to stay and a big part of the life of your business.  

by Nicole Flothe