Getting Confused On All These Social Media Sites?

Here is a question I received yesterday that I felt would make a good social marketing post (because I have been asked numerous times before).
I get confused on the social media sites like, Facebook, Twitter, even Skidoo etc. Should I be setting up a profile under my name to follow me specifically or setting up something that tells people to follow my website?
Here are my thoughts:  My answer depends on the specific network, as well as what you are trying to accomplish, but let me first touch on the specific networks you mentioned in this question.
Twitter
Twitter
Twitter: If you are trying to gain more business, and use Twitter as a platform to attract more customers and get more of the word out then you need to set up a more formal business account.  For example; If my name were John Doe and I had a business called ISellWidgets.com I would set my Twitter account up to be:  Twitter.com/ISellWidgets (or something similar depending on availability) and NOT Twitter.com/JohnDoe.  This way you could do a better job at attracting the right kind of followers, and get the word out to the correct industry.  Reason being – Lets just say you are into fishing, and that is fine, but that would do much better on a personal type account, where you can find, talk and connect with other people who love fishing, but do you see how that would do your business no good?  The business account would be better left to connect with same industry minded people.  Now you can also set up a personal Twitter account if you want to use it for those kind of reasons mentioned above, but hopefully this does a better job showing you the line between the two style of accounts.
Facebook
Facebook
Facebook: Create a personal page so you can have access to all that Facebook, but once you have a personal page set up, you can also create a FAN page for your business.  Use the personal page for your personal matters, but the fan page to get the word out about your business matters.  If you don’t want to create a Facebook page to connect with people you may not even like from back in the day, that’s fine – just use the FAN page/business portion of it to connect with potential customers.
Squidoo
Squidoo
Squidoo: Wow, do I even touch this one with a 10 ft. pole, or make a joke after all the attention it’s got this week? Ha Ha –  My thoughts are to create a page for your brand/company on Squidoo, but don’t pay Seth 400$ a month for it.  I mean, Squidoo is free (as far as I’ve ever used it), and if you even have any (even) small ability as an SEO or Internet marketer, you can get the page you create to rank pretty easily for your brand. I think there are other networks out there that you can use as personal accounts that would also serve your purpose as a business owner, but you have to get in and really understand what that specific network is about, and how to best use it.  If your main goal is to drum up business, and that is THE ONLY REASON you are using social networks, then the answer is simple – always create it for your business.  Create the domain/ID name/profile/brand whatever centered around your business.  I think this is what you are really asking with this question because it does not seem like you are the person that is wanting to set up these accounts to keep in contact with friends or find a long lost love?  Am I right?

5 thoughts on “Getting Confused On All These Social Media Sites?

  1. Andy Bailey says:

    getting a new twitter account to help promote my offline business is something I have wanted to do for a while, my own personal account can’t really be used for it because a) it would make my normal followers think I was spamming and b) who that uses commentluv would want to order a takeaway? lol

    I don’t think I could put the time in for using all the social media sites though, well, I could but then I’d have no time to run the actual business! 🙂
    .-= Andy Bailey´s last blog ..Twitter Field in all comment forms =-.

  2. Tim says:

    Thanks, I think you hit the nail on the head when you said “If your main goal is to drum up business, and that is THE ONLY REASON you are using social networks, then the answer is simple – always create it for your business.”

    So often the advice on this social media stuff seems to be only for people who are making a living telling others how to use social media if that makes any sense. If I was doing that I get why I would set it up so that people follow me because I’m basically selling my services and expertise. Thanks, this helps alot!

  3. Chrisile from Internet Marketing says:

    Ok, I might be a newbie when it comes to SEO. But here’s what I learned when blogging and doing social networking sites. If I have to market e.g. mybaby.com, then i’ll blog it as mybaby.blog.com. And when signing up in social networks, I actually use the username mybaby. 😀

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