On today’s menu: Be Who You Are.

Having a social web presence allows for a dual-level of advertising. And in this post, we’re only focusing on setting up and choosing the right place for you. Getting a proper “ePersona” (as I like to call it) is the first step, and needs to be done before any real advertising can begin.

First thing’s first – Social Networking was designed for people, individuals, to interact with each other in new, compelling ways. You can find your old classmates, follow bands, share news stories, have video streams, share photos, heck even share your screengrabs. The rub here is that these technologies were designed for people, not really businesses. Does that mean we should ignore these as venues to broadcast and advertise – Not at all. ORANGEHAT is out there. It does however make us, as companies, take a step back and think about ourselves and our brand. The two questions we should think about are: Who are we targeting? How do you want to communicate to your audience?

Who are we targeting?
The main thing to figure out is if you’re targeting business, people or both. Then it’s the decision on how you want your audience to perceive you through these new medias. Finally, it’s choosing the right sites, and finding your “butter zone” of content maintenance and tone.

For business, being apart of LinkedIn is a no brainer. You’re probably on there already, but if you’re not, go over there and join (after you finish reading this of course). It’s a great place to work business-to-business networking, and a must-have for any person and company.

Onto people. MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter are the big guns in this arena, and you need to decide if your company has a need for these sites (ie: do you need YouTube for video), and then setup your accounts accordingly. A younger demographic will probably lean towards MySpace, while a more mature audience will hang reside over at Facebook. Then there’s Twitter, which is an entirely different beast, and should be used if possible, but within reason (more below). And this is just scratching the surface of all the various media you sign up! But these are the one’s I think most people are focused on right now.

Of course there’s intermingling, so you will get some member overlap no matter what, and that’s not a bad thing. Helps intertwine you ePersonas together along with your company. In the word’s of Martha Stewart “That’s a good thing.”

How do you want to communicate?
Here’s my biggest pet peeve with business and social networking: A company pretending to be a person. If your business is not in any sort of entertainment field, or if your brand marketing would work in this fasion, then you shouldn’t be doing this. Unless you can find some sort of rationalization to act as a person online, you shouldn’t. You’re a business, so be that. Make social networking work for you, not change who you are just to accommodate this new technology. Be Who/What You Are. Period.

Where’s a good place to start? Facebook is a fan of ours, and what I like about it is there are Pages and Groups. Our basic perception of these are: Pages are for companies that want to talk like people. Groups are for companies that talk like companies. Similarly, MySpace Pages are just like Facebook Pages. The level of commitment to social media also plays into this decision. A page on Facebook/MySpace offers a ton of extra features and is more like a full personal profile. That means you’ll have to populate and maintain more content, more often to stay engaging. Groups are not as complex, and an easier way to get your name out there, with not as much heavy lifting. With a proper amount of time dedicated to social networking, and proper tone in your entries, you can make a Page appear more like a business and that’s great. But it’s a fine line. You don’t want to post just for the sake of posting, and then waste your time, and bore your audience and any potential new users. That’s why I prefer Groups. It’s not as much to worry about, because it’s not nearly as robust. Less is more.

The above is for nothing if you plan on marketing yourself more as a person on these sites. And if that’s the case, you should be doing something similar in the rest of your marketing as well. Remember, your tactics shouldn’t change your business model just because you’re online.

Twitter. Twitter is a great way to get short little “tweets” of what your business is up to. @replies are also a great way to help bring other business (or people) into the communication too. Very handy for company’s that just can’t dedicate the time to constantly blog. Short and simple tweets can be more effective and engaging to your followers than a blog.

Final Thoughts.
On all of these sites, tone is key. If you’re portraying yourself as a business, you should post and tweet like a business. Don’t let the more casual and fast-paced Twitter cause you to change your tone and how your business sounds. And don’t feel compelled to have to post something, if it’s not worthy of mentioning.

Picking your audience, and then following your company’s brand should make social networking a easy and fun way to extend your business into virtual world. Your business’ brand is more important than any social networking site. If it doesn’t fit – it doesn’t fit. If your business doesn’t fit any social site, then you may have to rethink your business identity and strategy. Marketing through social networking is part of advertising’s future, so adjustments now will help your future.

ORANGEHAT’s Strategy.
Currently, we’re on Facebook, Twitter and Flickr. We’ve setup Facebook as a Group, since we don’t have much to really discuss, nor a very large user-base on the site. It’s a great starting point for us. Twitter we keep to short, generic bits of information: “Out to meetings.” “Deep in logo development.” Enough to show that we’re busy, but not enough to make it look like we’re Tweeting and not working. Flickr is a place where we plan to share our upcoming webapps, along with photography and possible fun stuff like desktop wallpapers.

Additioanlly, I have a personal LinkedIn account, and we plan to expand to a Company Page there in the near future.

Next Time: Working or NETworking?