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Last week 4 companies contacted me about writing/setting up blogs, FaceBook, and Twitter. This topic is hot, and it’s definitely hit mainstream. Here’s my take on everything you need to know about social media.

Be cool

First off,  a few things to keep in mind.

Social media is cheap, but it demands a lot of time to do it right. Have a plan, approach it with discipline, and be sure the time you spend is worthwhile. Some of your efforts will never get you anywhere. Know who you’re trying to reach, and be sure to entertain and enlighten them or they’ll stop following you.

Twitter’s not so big with the up-and-coming generation, the Millennials.

I happen to know a bit about this, because for the past tow years I’ve been working with a client who is all about marketing to Millennials.  Early last year we co-authored a white paper on social media, which involved interviewing people in their late teens and early twenties–some of them hadn’t even heard of Twitter yet, many of them didn’t like it for some very specific reasons.

Twitter, I think, has the most potential with very close communities. The businesses that use it successfully are the ones with super-eager customers–they want to know the location of a lunchwagon, they’re eager to hear the latest news or research, the company CEO has celebrity status or the product is inherently interesting.

In other words, if your business is full of frequent news that your clients sincerely want to know about, you should Twitter. But if you’re just going to Tweet about what you had for lunch, you won’t get much business from your efforts.

Marketing your face on FaceBook

FaceBook seems to be the best keep-in-touch option for social media. The only people who see your FaceBook are the ones you choose who also choose you. The biggest challenge with FaceBook is that there’s not really a way to separate clients and prospects from friends and family. Here’s what I suggest.

First, get a fan page for your business. This will let you truly devote the page to business, but the downside is a lack of easy visibility. Unless you’re selling something cool that people like to talk about, your fan page won’t get a lot of traffic on its own. But you can fix that.

Post lots of good, interesting, valuable content and then cross promote it via Twitter, blogs, and your regular FaceBook page.

The second strategy is more “soft” but it’s a lot of fun, and ultimately more productive. Use FaceBook and all your other social media to promote yourself, and build your brand. As prospects get to know your personality, they’ll be more inclined to do business with you. As friends and family get to know your business, they’ll be better sources of referrals.

Business becomes pleasure, and pleasure becomes business

This “personal branding” is probably the best part of social media. Whatever business you’re in now, you won’t be doing it for the rest of your life.  But once you’ve build a strong network of friends, family, fellow skydivers and homeschoolers–your network goes with you.

One of the best resources on this is the book Crush It! by Gary Vaynerchuck.

You’re not just a salesman/consultant/CPA/coach. You’re a multidimensional person with many talents and passions, and so are all your prospective clients. Social media lets you put all of your personality into your marketing.

Use social media to make friends, build relationships, find markets and invest time in future clients–maybe the distant future. Today’s posts are like a bond that matures in 10 years (well, maybe not that long). You never know who might be listening, who might be useful.

I was about to give up on this.

For the last few weeks I’ve been toying with the idea of writing an e-book on bike rides around Los Angeles and selling it on my bike blog.

But when I went out on my favorite local ride, thinking about this more and more, I decided that most of the people I could reach probably already knew the routes better than me.

Then a spandex-covered, gloved and helmeted, racing-fit biker in a yellow jersey pulled up next to me on a pricey carbon frame decked out with halogen lights and a GPS odometer and clock.

We talked shop for a while. He was from the neighborhood, and was out on an after-work ride. From his outfit and his talk I knew this was the ideal customer, and I assumed by his garb that he already had a lot more knowledge and expertise than me.

But when I told him I was doing the “Mission Triangle” that roughly goes from my home in Silverlake to the San Gabriel Mission, across to San Fernando and back home, he asked a lot of questions about the route. He wanted to know the distances involved, the difficulty of the ride, and so on.

Clearly I had something to teach him.

You’re smarter than you think you are. If you spend time and effort studying (or better yet, doing) just about anything at all, you’re going to acquire knowledge that others don’t have.

In the information age, your most valuable resource is–well, information. You can set yourself up as an expert by posting a good blog, publishing a newsletter, giving out (or selling) ebooks, or best of all, writing a book.

In our information-heavy age, people are used to finding what they need, and almost nobody falls for the cheesy commercials that drew money from our grandparents’ wallets. You have to build trust and authority, and the best way to do this is by sharing your knowledge.

All you have to do is get over your terminal modesty and remember that you do have knowledge worth sharing.

I can say that for the past two years at least, all the really good clients I’ve acquired came to me because of the copywriting tips and marketing ideas I’ve shared in my newsletter and on my blog.

In those rare times when business has gotten a little slow, I’ve always just responded by giving away ideas for free, telling people what I was doing to get more work and urging them to do the same, sharing stories, posting more tips… and always the work has come back.

There was a time when I told myself, “My clients are successful business people. I don’t need to share this with them. Surely they already know.”

I though about that as I huffed and puffed alongside my fellow roadie, whose far superior rig (and probably better conditioning) made me struggle to keep up.

“Where are you headed now?” he asked.

I told him the street name, and he shook his head. “Never heard of it.”

The next left turn, there it was. I turned away down the street a local biker had never heard of. As I said goodbye, he asked me, “You ever thought of writing a guidebook?”

You know more than you think you do.