This week's blog post is in response to a recent post by SocialGrower and University of Florida student Daniella Phillips on her blog, "Determining the best social media outlets for your business". Check out Daniella's website at DaniellaPhillips.com, and follow her on Twitter at @daniiiirenee.


I told a new SocialGrow social media marketing consulting client this week:

Your decision is NOT whether or not to use social media in your sales, marketing, public relations, customer service, product development, and human resources.

Your customers, competitors, shareholders, analysts, media, and employees have already made that decision for you.

The decisions you now need to make are HOW best to use social media to achieve your specific objectives, WHEN to begin using social media, and WHICH outside expert resources can best accelerate the business results you want to achieve from using social media.

As Daniella stated in her post, rather than making the social media newbie mistake of immediately jumping onto all of the major social networks, businesses should choose the combination of social networks which best supports their overall business strategy, reaches their target customers, and [what makes social media different from many other marketing tactics] is sustainable for the long-term. Selecting the right combination of social networks will maximize the return on your investment, and help you to better engage your growing audience of followers, friends, connections, subscribers, commenters, reviewers, and likers.

The four things you should consider when selecting the social networks for your business are:
1. Your marketing strategy
2. Your target customers
3. Your competitors
4. Your financial and subject matter expert resources

One of the questions I am asked most frequently is "I'm a B2B [or a B2C] company, what are the most effective social networks for my particular business?" To help answer this question, I created the following two grids (click on each grid to see the full-size version), showing my social network recommendations for both B2B and B2C companies. As every industry and company are different, there is no one single "correct" answer, and I look forward to your sharing your ideas and opinions in our comments section at the end of this post.











My boss Marsh likes to say that because social media is a meritocracy, it gives you the opportunity -- not found in any other form of media -- to effectively and genuinely demonstrate your company's thought leadership.

Adding social media will increase the effectiveness of your existing paid, owned, and earned media strategies, and give your business an incredibly viral and cost-effective new tool for sales, marketing, public relations, customer service, product development, and human resources. So when do YOU want to start?


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