Twitter
Which businesses should use it? Every Business (Yes, yours!).
Post frequency: Multiple posts per day.
Service: Twitter is a micro-blogging social media service that will enable your business to send and receive short text messages on a public forum. Twitter is great for keeping your target market up to date with the latest news of your business. Twitter allows your
business to view what others are saying about your company by examining your “mentions”, a key advantage for improving customer relationships. Through the function of “following”, your business can build a group that is constantly updated on anything you “tweet”.
Tip: Speak out to individual customers. Your Twitter following will have similar needs and concerns; by responding to them individually you effectively address the masses. Furthermore, specifically communicating to a customer tells all your customers that you’re a two-way communicator. This is very important for building trust.
Facebook 
Which businesses should use it? Every Business.
Post frequency: Daily.
Service: Facebook is a social networking service where users build profiles, add friends, join common-interest groups, rsvp to events and see notifications of those they are friends with. You can build a following and update them with the news and events of your business. It also serves as a great platform to express your creativity by building a unique profile containing your contact information and basic history.
Tip: Facebook is a great forum to showcase your ability to post value-adding material. Don’t spam your following by constantly posting sales-related material. If you post material that engages your target consumer, they will likely share it amongst their friends.
YouTube 
Which businesses should use it? Business that wish to share clean and short video content. YouTube video content is useful for business ads and visually sharing interviews, tour/demo film and tips for product and service use.
Post frequency: Weekly to monthly.
Service: YouTube is a video-sharing website where users can upload, view and share videos. Users are able to view and create video clips, TV clips, and music videos, and amateur content such as video blogging, short videos, and educational videos
Tip: Get creative! In order to attract and gain a following your videos must be original and entertaining.
Instagram 
Which businesses should use it? Lifestyle businesses in the field of photography, art, architecture, interior design, fashion, fitness, automotive, cooking, retail and pop culture.
Post frequency: Daily
Service: Instagram is a photo and short-video sharing service where users apply different filters to their images or videos, and post them to their followers or other social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Flickr.
Tip: Use the hashtag function! Similar to Twitter, through a hashtag category other users will find your photos without actually following your company. This is a great way to build your following but remember #too #many #hashtags #can #be #annoying.
LinkedIn 
Which businesses should use it? Businesses looking to generate an expanded professional network as well as organizations conducting B2B marketing.
Post frequency: A few times a week.
Service: LinkedIn is a business-oriented social networking service. LinkedIn offers the ability for businesses to generate a following of subscribers who wish to stay updated and connected with the organization. Additionally, LinkedIn offers a platform for users to display their professional profile where you can observe 2nd and 3rd degree connections and build your professional network online.
Tip: LinkedIn serves more than a marketing function. Organizations should examine desirable job candidates they wish to recruit.
Google+ 
Which business should use it? Business on other social networking sites and those companies who want to improve their organic search ranking on Google through using the suite of Google products.
Post frequency: Daily.
Service: Google+ is a cutting-edge social networking site where organizations have a profile page, build a following and use circle-centric interaction techniques with users that are connected to the organization. The key advantage to Google+ is that it integrates all of Google’s other services. Businesses earn credibility through likes and shares thus boosting its search engine ranking position as well as adding credibility in Google AdWords campaigns. Additionally, businesses are able to link their Google+ pages to the Google map that will appear following a search of your company through creating a Google Places account. Get an account here:
http://www.google.ca/business/placesforbusiness/
Tip: Google+ followers can be more engaged than users of other social networking services. It is crucial to offer great content to continually engage your network.
Pinterest 
Which businesses should use it? Lifestyle brands in the field of photography, art, interior design, fashion, fitness, cooking, retail, pop culture and anything do-it-yourself. Additionally, any business targeting a female demographic.
Post Frequency: Multiple times daily.
Service: Pinterest is a visual discovery tool where users observe and “pin” photos on different “boards” related to their interests. Upon clicking the photo, users can read more on the photo or be linked directly to the website the photo is from. Each photo pinned is displayed on a user’s public profile.
Tip: Be conscious of the keywords your target consumers will be searching in order for them to appear following these user search queries.
- Stewart Moffatt