I’ve worked with lots of clients, both those who are new to social media and those who have been using it for some time. The one thing that is common to all is a misunderstanding of the real purpose of using social media as a marketing tool.

Why should you use social media? It’s simple; defined by one word: Connections.

Social media accounts allow you to make connections with people who might be become customers. If you make your posts interesting, your followers/friends are bound to want to know more about you and your company. If all you do is try to sell them on your products or services, you are wasting your time.

I see the worst offenders on Twitter. Many corporate clients see it as a numbers game. Increase your followers to thousands and you’ve won the battle, right? Wrong.

The problem with having thousands of followers, and following thousands yourself, is that there is simply too many tweets to read, let alone follow up on. So instead of simply posting links to a buy page, reach out and make some connections. Find someone who has posted on an interesting topic and respond/retweet. Ask a question. Offer a freebie.

With Facebook, you have more options for making connections. You can get some real discussions going. Ask questions and use the responses to more narrowly define your target market or determine the Call to Action in your advertising pieces.

LinkedIn is a great forum for starting discussions, too. Form your own group around a topic associated with your particular industry.

However, the real key to making social media work for you is responding after you’ve reached out. And this takes time. If you don’t have the time yourself, you must appoint someone on your staff to check all your social media accounts daily and draft an appropriate response to messages and posts. If a follower/friend directly contacts you and they receive no response, you can bet they won’t do it again. And that means you’ve just lost a connection. Back to square one.

I’m currently writing an auto responder email series on how to use social media to become an industry icon. If you are interested in using these series as a free giveaway on your site, just contact me.

Now go out there and CONNECT!