So you’ve uploaded a snappy profile picture, crafted a swanky bio and officially launched your social presence on Twitter, Facebook and the works. You start to get a few fans and followers, but now what? You keep hearing that it’s important to engage in conversations, but where do you begin? Perhaps you’ve made a few attempts to connect, but without much success. Have no fear – with the small exception of spiders, absolutely hate them – here are a few quick and easy tips to move you toward a dialogue with your peeps.

1. Listen To What’s Being Said

Remember that if people are liking or following you it’s because you’re doing something right or creating something that they feel they can connect with. Do a little bit of reconnaissance work and check out what your audience is saying with your competitors. Look at the topics they’re discussing and pay attention to the language and words that they’re using. This can give you some good insight into what they want to discuss, as well as the tone and style that they’re more likely to respond to. Try to emulate a similar approach in your own interactions to get the ball moving and then tailor it to your own brand.

2. Be Open Minded

Depending on what your brand, product or service is all about some of your fans may share some extreme perspectives or questionable notions regarding it. Before you shy away or shut down the opportunity for a conversation, make an attempt to learn more from them. Great ideas can be found in unlikely places and some folks might have a tough time conveying their purpose in 140 characters or less. As challenging as it might seem try to be receptive and make an honest effort to interact with them.

3. Keep It Real

Be sincere and genuine when you take part in an online conversation. When someone has a gripe or a problem with your brand then it’s up to you to address it. Put your excuses in a box, lock them up and throw away the key. Instead, opt for an honest to goodness exchange that reflects your personality in a friendly way. Just remember that with online conversations you can’t see one another or hear one another and sometimes intention can get lost in translation. Consider what you want to say before you say it and think about how it will be interpreted on the receiving end too.

4. Show Some Gratitude

It’s unfortunate that negatives seem to garner more attention than positives in our society. So, when people tell you that they love your latest blog post or when they share an experience that your recent article reminded them about, use it as an opportunity to thank them. If you receive a thumbs up or get a pat on the back don’t hesitate to show your appreciation. Reciprocation is a super conversation starter.

5. Stay Positive

No one likes a Debbie-downer. People are more likely and more willing to connect with someone who is optimistic. All of us experience bad days and we’ve all had an occasional rough patch, but letting those low-points trickle into your conversation is a big no-no. Put on a smile, swallow your happy pill and give your online conversations a positive angle. In case you need reminding, don’t forget what happened between Nestle and Greenpeace when negativity consumed the online dialogue via Facebook.

When you break it down, having a conversation through social media, commenting or other online outlet, isn’t really that much different from engaging in a face-to-face chit-chat. Politeness, empathy and lightheartedness will not only help you begin a conversation, but they’ll also help you sustain them moving forward.

After you’ve had your website up and running for a bit, or once you’ve been blogging for awhile you’ll want to start thinking about your online ‘community’. Your community is an important, if not integral, component to the success of your online presence. By building a solid brand, creating great content and interacting with your audience, you’re working toward developing a passionate online following that will promote and support you with others.

Build It

Make your blog/site an original, meaning, try to take a fresh approach to the subject that you plan on covering. A great example of an outstanding and custom brand blog is Southwest’s Nuts About Southwest. Instead of spewing a mouthful of corporate hum-drum Southwest has assembled a blended blog that reflects the diversity of its audience and they’ve peppered it with fun and interactive content.

Another super example is the Sharpie blog. Beyond simple blog posts, the Sharpie blog has incorporated a bevy of images and videos that showcase their products in action with everyday folks and artists. The result is a visually entertaining blog that is both inspiring and entertaining.

Take a cue from Southwest and Sharpie and find a unique way to position your blog/site  that’s right for the audience that you want to capture.

Promote It

Make it easy to pass along and share what you’re creating. This means including social share buttons to increase viral opportunities. At a bare minimum, you should feature  Tweetmeme and Facebook Share buttons that can be used to attract others to become a part of your online community. People want to be able to send links and information in quick and simple ways. Integrating social share buttons is a near guarantee that they’ll be able to do so.

Ask For It

You have to ask people to visit, comment and share. It’s a very simple way to remind and ensure your audience that you want them to invite others to take a peek and converse about what you’ve created. Communities aren’t built overnight, but asking others who appreciate your perspective, style and message to find and include others is an ideal way increase growth. Like-minds attract like-minds and you’ll discover that asking people to spread the word about your community is as easy to say as it is to do.

Get Involved With It

An online community can’t grow on its own. You need to take an active role in fostering relationships with your members. Encourage contributions through commenting and be prepared to seek out potentially interested people to invite to the community. This doesn’t mean that you need to launch a spam campaign or make a commitment to stalk anyone into joining. Be yourself, be authentic and tell people that you’d love for them become a part of what you’re putting together.

Repeat It

Whether your online community has 50 followers or 15,000, you need to continually work at adding new members. A stagnant community is also a flailing community. By continually adding new members you’re increasing the chances that better dialogues will form, more interesting questions will be asked and novel ideas will be exchanged. These actions in themselves make your community more attractive to others, which will increase your subscriber base. The goal isn’t to have a blog or site with the largest quantity of followers. It should be to have the best quality of content and relationships with the people who are supporting what you’re creating.

There are many other tips that can be used to build a strong online community. What are some that you’ve used to enhance your own blog or site? Fill us in.

One of the nice things about social media is that because so many people and brands are using it, the rest of us can glean successful tips and surefire tactics from the masses to make our own experiences and implementation strategies that much better. This list of best practices isn’t comprehensive, but it does build a launch point of basics that are easy to follow and simple to use.

1. Crowdsourcing

Use your social media presence to reach out to customers, users and clients to ask them what they like most or least about your brand, product or service. It’s an excellent way to learn how to improve a feature or scale back a push. Let’s face it, perception is reality and knowing what your audience wants is just about as close to the truth as you can get.

2. Overcome Your Fears

For most brands and businesses, one of the most frightening aspects of social media is that they have to give up control. This means that by making themselves available through social media they’re subject to kind comments and scathing criticism. There’s no denying the fact that your brand is at the mercy of your audience. Set your sensitivity aside, check your ego at the door and make an attempt to understand and learn from any negative feedback that you might encounter.

3. Give Prompt Responses

One thing we know for certain is that social media moves very quickly. Being able to send out a thank you, reply to a question or provide details in a blog comment all need to be attended to as they happen. Make a concerted effort to converse with your fans and followers as soon as possible. If you’re finding that your time is limited, consider delegating and expanding social media responsibility in a team format. A social media team is great for keeping the social media momentum going and it’s helpful in getting a fresh perspective to a new situation.

4. Be True To You

It’s hard not to get caught up in the excitement of social media success. But as thrilling as it might be to build a following of thousands, don’t lose sight of what your brand stands for or what your business is about. Authentic relationships are built on a foundation of genuineness. Keep it real when it comes to interacting with your audience and don’t lose sight of why you began your social media campaign to begin with. People are perceptive and they can smell insincerity from a mile away.

5. Keep A Consistent Identity

Format your brand name and stick with it. Take the name MindSprout for example. It’s used across all of our social media sites as MindSprout so that it’s easily identified and found. I haven’t used variations like msprout on some sites or mindspt55 on others, which can potentially cause confusion and even dilute the brand. Use a service like Knowem.com to stake your brand name claim on all the social media sites that you’ll have a presence on. Additionally, use the same avatar, logo or imagery to create brand cohesiveness across your social platforms.

6. Track Metrics

This is by far one of the most important best practices to follow. Keep track of your social media efforts and measure how successful each one has been. If you’re not seeing the results that you want it’s time to rethink your strategy. A new approach is much better than continuing down a path to nowhere. Use your analytics, link shorteners and sentiment trackers to monitor and learn about what’s working and what’s not.

There are plenty of other best practices that can be used, but hopefully this will give you a good starting point. Just remember to be patient, don’t lose focus and choose your social media channels carefully.

What are some of your personal best practices that you would add to this list? Share with us.

If you have any doubts about whether or not social media is simply just a flash in the pan or the future of internet marketing then continue reading. Now, if you’ve already made your mind up about social media don’t abandon ship. You might discover that there’s more than meets the eye.

Meets Human Needs

People crave interaction and connection with other people. This is a main reason why social media has become so popular over the last decade. Via social media, brands can create opportunities to share and recognize loyal followers with special rewards and incentives. These actions make customers feel special and it shows them that they’re appreciated by the brand.

So how does this translate into showing that social media is effective? Well, unique recognition and preferred treatment was observed by Hitwise in 2009 during Black Friday holiday shopping festivities. This study revealed that 4.3% of Facebook users and 2.3% of Twitter users made an online visit to a major retailer after they visited their social media site.

Cost-Effective Marketing

Social media isn’t free, but it is significantly cheaper than traditional advertising methods, which doesn’t include feedback from people regarding their personal experiences. Maybe this is why print media has been suffering over the past few years. Newspaper revenue has fallen 26% during the past year bringing the totoal loss since 2006 to 41%. Then there’s the magazine industry which saw 367 U.S. periodicals close up shop and cease all printing. Not nearly as bad as the more than 500 publications that called it day in 2008.

The mistrust of traditional advertising has turned consumers into skeptics. Fortunately, the Internet makes it easy to read-up and review just about anything and everything before making a commitment to purchase, subscribe or otherwise. Online advertising is certainly more affordable and it allows for more targeted reach. Couple that with a brand’s social media  presence and people can research what others are saying about a brand very quickly, plus they can ask them directly for additional information.

Builds Brand Loyalty

Based on 2009 data reported from comScore and GroupM search, social media plays an important role in paid and organic search. Click Through Rates (CTR) increased by 50% when consumers are exposed to a brand’s social media profile. Additionally, when a consumer has been presented with a brand’s social media campaign the study discovered that they’re 2.4 times more likely to click on organic links to the brand’s site.

Using this research you can see how social media directly contributes to building brand recognition and loyalty. Knowing that social media can have a positive effect on the bottom line is one more reason for businesses to integrate a social media campaign into their marketing efforts.

It’s Live

The thing about social media is that it’s happening in real time. If you have a customer service complaint or a problem with a product you can jump on any brand’s social media site and request some help. This makes it easy for businesses to deliver prompt customer care and immediately address the needs of its audience.

On the other hand, if someone chooses to broadcast their negative experience with a particular product or company it can become a nightmare, or an overnight viral video like Comcast couch guy. In 2006, a blogger needed to replace a modem at his residence. He got in touch with Comcast who sent out a technician and who the had to phone the home office for additional assistance. After being on hold for more than an hour the tech fell asleep. The blogger captured everything on video and kindly uploaded it to YouTube where it has received more than 1,542,000 views.

Social media can be used effectively to build brand awareness, as well as by people to share brand positives and negatives. The point is that no matter how you slice it social media isn’t a passing fad. It is becoming a standard communication platform that has dramatically changed the way that brands and consumers interact with one another.

Not surprisingly, many businesses have a tough time understanding exactly how social media fits into their overall marketing plan. Social media marketing seems like more of a catchy phrase that consists of nothing more than tweets and posts. In actuality, marketing with social media is much more than that. No, it won’t transform your business into an overnight success, but it can be used as an extremely effective tool when you incorporate a solid plan and strategy behind it.

At a minimum, your social media marketing plan should include a blend of public relations and marketing tactics, as well as evoke flexibility, patience and commitment for the individual or team who will be executing it. Previously, we’ve shared what social media can and can’t do for businesses and it’s important to make sure that you have realistic expectations and a well-developed understanding of what social media is and what it requires before you begin planning.

Pick Your Marketing Objectives

Here’s the broken record part of this post – you have to begin with the end in mind. You’ll hear this from just about anyone who’s ever had a hand in developing marketing plan. Decide what your objectives are and why you’re putting a social media plan together. What are the things that you want to achieve? Are your objectives sustainable and realistic? Put your thoughts together and dedicate some time to creating this cornerstone of your strategy.

Know Your People

You need to know who you’re trying to connect with and where they’re at. It’s also helpful to understand what level of social media interaction they currently have. For example, if you’re selling vitamins to seniors then tweeting about them all day isn’t your best bet. Find out what your audience likes and dislikes and get involved with them.

Get Engaged

Social media is anything but passive. It’s about a two-way conversation and that means you need to plan on being involved and contributing to the dialogue. Your social media plan should include how time will be allocated to develop relationships and communicate with your audience.

Stretch Your Creative Muscle

Once you’ve nailed down some of the basics for your social media plan you’ll want to customize your strategy. Brand it and make it your own, after all social media isn’t based on tweets alone. Get inspired by taking a look at how other businesses have leveraged their social media presence.

Measure and Evaluate

You need to figure out what success means to you and how your social media plan will measure it. Choose which key metrics are most important to you in measuring your ROI and set-up methods to gather data on a regular basis.

At the end of the day, a social media marketing plan can be effectively used to build brand awareness, brand loyalty, build word of mouth marketing and convert customers into brand ambassadors. Put some thought and creativity into you plan that goes beyond tweeting and posting and you’ll be on your way to enhancing a relationship between you and your audience.

Were these suggestions helpful? What are some other key points to consider when beginning a social media marketing plan? Share with us.