You may have read my previous blog post on social media. If you are considering establishing your business’ presence on social media, take a look at a few of these tips to get you started.

Define your goals. What is your purpose in joining social networks? A few of the common social media goals of business are to increase brand awareness, to provide customer support, to educate your audience, to increase sales or to protect your reputation. Decide what works for you. Clearly define your business’ goals before joining multiple networks.

Find your customers. Once you have your goals established it’s easy to just jump on the bandwagon with many social networks. But first, determine where your customers and prospects are. Which social networks are they participating in? Twitter allows you to use hashtags and keywords to help locate your prospects through its Advanced Search tool.

A few months ago, you may have seen our post on social media at ShareFile, but I wanted to share a few tips with you around social media for your business:

Start slow. If you haven’t established your business’ presence within social media, it may be a good idea to start with the platform that you (or whoever will be managing your efforts) are most comfortable with. If you are most comfortable with Facebook (and maybe not so certain about Twitter or Google+ at the time), start your business profile on Facebook. Once you are able to grow your fan base and develop a plan, then expand to other social networks as you see fit.

According to Facebook stats, there are more than 750 million active users- wow! People are spending over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook. The average user is connected to 80 community pages, groups and events. Facebook is consuming people’s time. Let’s face it; Facebook is a reoccurring daily activity for a lot of people. Wake up, drink coffee, check Facebook, go to work, check Facebook, take a mid-afternoon break… check Facebook, and of course, you’ve gotta check Facebook at the end of the day for the latest postings.

Does your business have a Facebook page? If you aren’t currently using Facebook for your business, you’re missing out on a large chunk of the pie. There are more than 70 translations available on Facebook and about 70% of Facebook users are outside the United States- talk about global reach! Think about how many pages you are personally a ‘fan’ of on Facebook. Although you might not return to those pages very often, you do get updates on your newsfeed when new postings or status updates are posted from those pages. Bingo. Businesses should take advantage of this opportunity to connect with, engage and educate fans.

We are pleased to announce we have recently launched our affiliate program http://www.sharefile.com/affiliates/. We chose Google Affiliate Network (GAN) because of their comprehensive tracking capabilities and huge network of quality affiliates. Google Affiliate Network is a free program that makes it easy for website publishers to connect with quality advertisers and get rewarded for driving conversions.

Starting an affiliate program was initially brought up by some of our customers. Customers love our service and wanted to share our product with other companies by adding a link on their site or blog. With over 2.7 million users and our business growing everyday, we are very happy to offer this new program.

It is very easy to sign up through GAN and apply for our program. All terms and conditions are explained within the Google interface as well. Once approved, we have several text links and banners to choose from. If you need a certain size banner not found in the GAN interface, we can create one for you as well.

According to a published report from comScore, one in three U.S. mobile phones is a smartphone. Have you joined the smartphone world? I held out as long as I could (refusing to join the rest of the world and enjoying my less than 24/7 presence from social networking sites) but broke down and got an Android operating device a few months ago. Since that day, I have not been without my smartphone. I’m never Twitterless and I’m constantly checking the latest news headlines and Facebook updates. I’m addicted. Apparently the rest of the world is too– 76.8 million Americans out of 234 million American mobile users have smartphones.

Social Media Examiner, an overwhelming 93% of survey participants indicated that they are currently using social media to market their business. Of the participants, small business owners were more likely to indicate that social media is a key tool in their business. Top social media tools like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are an integral part of the marketing process in today’s businesses.

>Managing several social media accounts is time consuming and at times, hard to maintain with other daily tasks. There are several solutions available that allow you to tweet without even being in front of your computer. Tools like Hootsuite and Tweetdeck (which was recently acquired by Twitter for $40 million), are probably the best known tools used to schedule tweets. You can easily save drafts and schedule tweets from an easy-to-use Web-based dashboard.

It’s always appealing to see an industry leader value responsible growth over a quick sale, and that’s why we’ve noticed Google’s Chromebook marketing strategy. With Chromebook, Google seeks to progress computer use to an entirely web based experience. T here is no local software or file storage, as applications and files are instead hosted by Google and available when the user starts the laptop and signs in to their account. While it’s an interesting concept, Google recognizes that a completely web based system won’t be for everyone. CNET.com recently quoted Google’s vice president of Chrome, Sudar Pichai, about his idea for initial Chromebook users:

“Our goal, our main criterion, is I want really high user satisfaction amongst consumers, businesses, and schools, independent of our quantity. I want people who pick up and buy one to be very happy with their purchase Part of the reason it’s not in physical retail is our goal is not to push a lot of these. We want people to know what they’re buying. Online gives a check. In the physical world you might accidentally walk out with a Chromebook. I don’t want that to happen.”

Some of this strategy is based on Chromebook’s unique ability to evolve. If Chromebook is able to carve a niche in the market, it may be able to attract customers in the future who aren’t currently ready for a completely web based system, or who may be better able to utilize the Chrome OS based service once that it has had time to more fully develop. This should be a rapid process. While software updates must be downloaded and installed on other computers, because Chromebook uses only web based software, updates can be rolled out automatically, so new upgrades and features can be made available as soon as a user signs in.

Connect with us on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn for the latest news! Social media helps us share new product releases and feature updates to you as soon as possible.

Following our accounts can help you get the newest features to integrate ShareFile with your office workflow, and also to keep up with any new versions for the latest upgrades and bug fixes available. You can also follow our blog to stay up-to-date on the latest industry news, updates in file transfer, and expert advice from ShareFile executives and employees.

We update our customers with current happenings in the office and tradeshows where we can be found. The blog is a great place to post comments or questions regarding a specific topic. So if you haven’t already, connect with us and make sure you don’t miss any exciting news here at ShareFile!