If you’ve been playing around with social media on a personal basis, you may wonder what all the buzz is about using them for business-building purposes. Take Twitter, for instance. With its character limitation per tweet, how can this possibly work to improve your business? Some business owners say nothing, others report great results. The only way you can find out is by trying it yourself.

There are hundreds of social media sites, in addition to blogging sites, that you can explore for your business. You’ll want to start with just a couple so that you don’t burn out early because this will only work if you post often and post valuable content. The idea behind it is to establish you and your business as expert and trustworthy. An important part of social media posting is the instant feedback that you can get from your readers. If they don’t like something or don’t agree with what you are saying, they’ll let you know. And if their comments have merit, you can use this information to improve your offerings. It works like market research.

What you ultimately want to get to is feedback that is enthusiastic and recommends you and your business. That’s when you have used social media to best advantage.

So, where do you start? Wikipedia does a good job of categorizing the various sites. Check it out at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media. Depending on what your business is, some sites will work better for you than others. Sharing photos or videos is a great way to get messages across.

Working with social media can take up an inordinate amount of an entrepreneur’s time. If your time is used more effectively in other areas of your business, retaining a freelance blogger is a good way to go. Just search for “freelance blogger” and you’ll have lots to choose from. A few of the freelance job boards work on a bidding system, which makes it very competitive for providers and keeps the cost low.   

Making informed decisions on what is and what is not a good use of your time, is all part of what you need to learn as an entrepreneur. Obviously, if you have clients to take care of, that should always be your first priority. But if you are at loose ends, using social media is a great marketing tool.