Facebook & Twitter can enhance your brand.
The impact social media websites have had on personal and business interaction is exploding. In March and April of 2010, business traffic to Facebook exceed that on Google for the first time, as reported by Experian Hitwise and Network Box. Websites such as LinkedIn, Merchant Circle, Twitter, and YouTube MUST be part of any business's online marketing plan.
These social media sites are an extension of your current website presence. Getting online with these social media websites builds traffic to your websites, and increases popularity of your brand online. The search engines "see" this, and therefore increase your rankings within their algorithms.
Social media marketing is a daily process, often involving personal interaction between customers postings and the social media manager. A popular tactic today is to get something to go "viral" on the social media networks. This is viral marketing where a single post is then posted millions of times by others, generating either attention, brand recognition, or potentially tons of revenue. The donations for Haiti after the earthquake, and the SNL-Betty White are both examples of a viral post. The Haiti posts generated millions of dollars in relief, and the popularity of the Betty White episode enabled NBC to increase their pricing on advertising for that show, knowing for sure that millions of viewers would be watching, recording, and then reposting the actual eposide on sites such as YouTube.
Your social media plan is best discussed along with a website development plan. However, it's not too late and building a basic social media profile can take as short as a week to accomplish.