Become a social media powerhouse in one week (phase 4)

Phase 4 of 5
In this installment, we’ll be setting up the rest of your online social media presence. After you managed these sites for a while and your confidence grows, you’ll want to go through and add more customization to each. And if you want to get really sophisticated, you can design each in such a way as to use a similar color scheme, profile language and image of you so that they have a consistent theme throughout. You’ll also want to include links to the each of the other sites from every site so people can interact with you in different ways, or at least the way of their choosing. In a future blog post, we’ll get you set up with your YouTube account. Happy socializing!

4. Setting up Facebook and LinkedIn
4.1. Go to www.facebook.com
4.2. Complete the mini form right on the home page and then “Sign Up”
4.3. Give yourself at least two hours for the next step.
4.4. There are no specific instructions here, complete as much information about yourself as you can, then have fun uploading photos of yourself, searching for friends, and interacting with whatever you find here. Facebook has a very friendly user interface, so you can confidently interact and know what’s going on at all times.
4.6. Click the Applications tab in the bottom left corner
4.7. Click "Browse more Applications" at the bottom of the list
4.8. Search for the "Twitter" application and add it
4.9. Add in your Twitter login and password, and hit "Submit"
4.10. Now when you go to Twitter and update your status, it will update your status on Facebook as well.
4.11. When you’ve had enough of Facebook, go to www.linkedin.com
4.12. Complete the form on the right side of the page and click “Join Now”
4.13. Once in, you can spend about an hour building and tweaking your profile here. You’ll want a nice head shot of yourself, you can build your profile out very similar to your resume.
4.14. After you feel you have completed everything here, search for some coworkers by company name or people you know.
4.15. From your home page, click the “Applications” link
4.16. You can search for and add any number of widgets to your page, and the first ones I recommend are the Twitter application that will feed your tweets to your profile page and the BlogLink application that will do the same for your blog posts.

I know you don't think you do, but here's why you need to be on Twitter

Okay, I get it. You don't understand Twitter, you don't see value in it, AND you think it's a fad. But here is my case for why you should sign up today (and I'm not even getting a commission for this).

1. Satisfy your need for celebrity
You have two options, you can either read about pop culture icons in the pages of US Weekly, or you can get off the sidelines and talk to them directly! All your favorites are here, Kim Kardashian, Taylor Swift, Britney Spears, Suze Orman, Justin Timberlake, P Diddy, Oprah...the list is extensive. Twitter enables you to follow and be followed by these celebrities giving you direct access to what they're doing right now, or on what projects they're working. Sometimes you might even get a gem and watch Lindsay Lohan break up with her latest boy/girlfriend! AND, you can send them a message and have an actual conversation! Too cool.

2. Promote yourself and/or your small business
It's all about "me," isn't it? If you have a fledgling blog or business (particularly in the consulting, beauty, real estate or online marketing industries), or are responsible for promoting the business for which you work, Twitter can help you big time! Using related sites like TweetLater.com and MrTweet.net, you can automate the process of finding, attracting and starting relationships with the people you want to reach around the corner or around the world! Plus the search engine optimization you get from it and the direct links to your site can't be beat! If you have a Web site, blog or other social media presence like Facebook, you need to add Twitter to your promotional mix. I'll give you some more "how to" steps in a future blog post.

3. It's free and not a huge time-sucker
Unlike some other social media sites, you can get on Twitter, make a quick post (under 150 characters), check to see your number of followers or direct messages, and be back to whatever you were doing in a very reasonable amount of time. Now, if you have the time, you can spend hours searching for and following people (up to a maximum of 2,000 per day) to have a huge number of followers, but it's not necessary.

Here is information from LinkedIn regarding what business people think of which social media applications are important. Twitter seemed to have come up big here. See the results at http://polls.linkedin.com/poll-results/35931/uxtqg.