Its not a secret that Facebook and Twitter are great avenues for promotion of your website. Almost every major  search engine marketing expert can offer details on how to optimize  your Facebook fan page or use a Twitter coupon campaign. We however, have a different take after several discussion with clients. Take a deep breath before you buy into the hype. Not every business should be in the business of producing social media content. For example if your company blocks Facebook and Twitter, does it make sense? First of all your own employees will have no idea of your promotions online, and when faced with questions from customers, they will not be able to see them. You also have to look at the industry. If your company blocks Social Media, isn’t there a good chance your target audience will be in the same boat. In a surveys done last year there are estimates that as low as 54% to as high of 76% of users are blocked from Social Media sites such as Facebook and Twitter at work.

So what is the next step? The most important thing to do is establish in your mind the target  audience. This will allow you to decide how to move forward with your campaign or even if there should be one. Remember, though, Facebook and Twitter have now permeated fully onto a new range of smartphones,  you can still get to your audience even if they are blocked at work. The real questions then becomes will your audience care to find you outside of work time  or follow/interact with you outside the normal channels if you are not providing value. What do we mean by this? For example if you have a retail business, social media can be used for coupons or to alert people to specials or new products- like 10% off Nike Sneakers for Twitter users who buy online in the next 24 hours. If you are selling B2B (business to business) services or products, the application of social media might be a bit more difficult.

There is no shame in not having a Facebook or Twitter page. You might really not need one no matter how tempting it seems.  Nevertheless,  creating content and owning the page are two different things.  Our advice regardless if you decide to get involved in social media n or not is at the bare minimum to grab the Twitter and Facebook name for your company. You want to make sure it is not abused or used by your competitors.  Create a Facebook Business Page, but keep it simple and include information which will redirect people back to your main corporate site. Grab you twitter profile, and make sure you tell people in the summary this is the official Twitter profile (maybe consider getting it verified) and tell them to visit your website. The beauty of this strategy is it locks up your name and allows you the luxury to decide later if it is worth developing further. Nothing would be worse, then realizing later you need a Twitter account and someone already has the name taken.  What do you think? Are you on Twitter or Facebook for your company account? How do you use it to attract customers?