10 Free Social Media Steps to quickly Start Your Business.

1. Google your business name and find out what comes up। Do you come up? Is it what you want to see? Does your business site come up or maybe a Yelp listing, or listing on some other site? Are those links correct, if not some of them allow you to “claim” your business so you can and correct the info, add pics and so forth. Are you satisfied with your placement or do you have work to do?
2. Set up a Google Profile for your personal name so people can find you and your business. Add all of your websites or links to it.
3. Add your company or “claim” your business on Google Places which puts you on Google Maps and adds your link to the top of a search page. YUou can describe your business, add reviews and add photos. Complete all of the profile to maximize your benefit and the data should match what you have on your website since Google knows.
4. Ask your friends/employees/clients to give you feedback on your current website. Get a free consultation on your current website from a web designer who builds content management websites. There are new technologies available ( WordPress for one) that make it easy to have a great site that you can maintain yourself and use as the hub of your Social Media activities.
5. Sign up for Google Alert on your business name or brand. What are people saying about you or your business?
6. Set up Social Media Sites. Definitely start with a personal Facebook, a Twitter and a LinkedIn account and go ahead and fill out your entire profile to include a real photo of yourself. On your personal Facebook page do not make it only about your business, these are your fiends and they want to hear about you. Then add a Facebook Fan Page for your business. Describe your business and regularly promote your products. Work it. Have posts on your website automatically post to Facebook and LinkedIn. Promote other things you come across, whether it be a great blog post or news item that your readers might be interested in. Recommend people you have worked with on Linked-In.
7. Get a Hoot Suite account to direct your status updates to Twitters or your Facebook Fan Page, ( multiple Twitter accounts and to Facebook Fan and Personal pages) and have full function of bity urls and pics on your tweets. This is a huge Time saver. It is command central for your Social Media.
8. Create an e-mail signature that contains your contact information including social media addresses, blogs, websites and logo. You can add this pre-formatted signature to each and every e-mail you send out. You can easily add a text signature but we have a great post on adding a photo to your Gmail signature.
9. Google Social Media and find a few people that you like what your hear। Subscribe to their blogs or follow them on Twitter. Ask people who you admire who they follow.
10. Go to the Gravitar ( globally recognized avatar) website and add your profile picture. This photo will appear whenever you leave a comment on a Gravitar enabled website. Use the same avatar everywhere, on all of your profiles. Better to use you then your business logo.