Using Social Media to Boost your Business or Advance your Career

Being socially savvy online can help every professional or entrepreneur. James Andrews, a managing partner of the Atlanta-based social media communications company Everywhere, blogs and tweets as the "Key Influencer" while helping companies develop social media strategies. Here are his tips for creating your own:

1. Understand the goal: People question the value of social media because it's hard to monetize. That's missing the point. "Do you have an ROI for your telephone? Can you monetize that?" Andrew asks. "It's a tool. The return would be picked up in search, gaining brand recognition, and being able to talk to your consumers. And you don't have to wait on traditional media to validate you, nor do you have to buy it".

2. Have a plan: You should have realistic expectations of what you want to accomplish, and make sure that your strategy is sustainable. "People get what I call social media fatigue. They get really excited, they dive in, they add tons of people on Twitter, tons of people on Facebook, and then it becomes overwhelming," Andrews adds.

3. Listen first: Social media gives you an unmatched opportunity to hear what your customers, colleagues, and competition are saying. "The brands that are doing it well are the ones that are deploying listening tools first and foremost. And the best marketers are the ones that actually listen first," according to Andrews.

4. Watch your tone: "One of the mistakes businesses make is that they look at social media as a place to replicate advertising. You don't want to transfer your marketing language over to your Facebook fan page," Andrews says. Ask yourself: How do I sound? What's my persona? Do I sound like a human, or do I sound like a press release?

5. Be consistent: Building a faithful following won't happen if you don't dedicate the time to talk to your audience regularly. "You want to make sure that you have the internal resources to be consistent. That doesn't mean you must post 12 times a day," Andrews says, "but you want to be engaging."

BE NICE, SMILE & LET THE OTHER PERSON GO FIRST :)