Social Media – 3 Free Tools to Grow Your Business- Part 2

As I promised last week, here are more comments about Alan Brusky's presentation. Alan is the Founder and Creative Director of Fireleaf Design and an excellent speaker on social media and more. Please follow him on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and on Flickr because you can learn more from this dude who is also a brilliant photographer!
How do I use SM? I am using social media as a student, freelance multimedia journalist, and educator to join professional groups, network, get involved with local organizations and projects, and more. I do believe that all platforms of social media have a different purpose and audience. For instance, I am using Twitter to do research (using keywords) and find experts in a field. I tweet about my work and I also interact with other professionals. I post my own content (and make it more specific by including hastags and links, I ask my audience to retweet it and give me feedback on my content), I try to follow people who interact with my tweets, retweet other people’s content if I find the information is relevant in my field, post polls, and organize contests. I promote professionals, workshops, and businesses so that I can get mentioned in their tweets too. I also focus on branding, I promote my freelance business by posting my work on Facebook and on Flickr. But I do not pay for advertising and I do not post “buy one, get one free” deals.I like Twitter because it is instantaneous and I can reach a lot of people fast.
I am using LinkedIn for networking purposes and I am using Facebook to post my pictures and interact with friends and clients. Since most of my work is media, Facebook is an ideal platform for visual content. My purpose is to get people go to my website, look at my work and then spread the word and recommend me as a journalist or photographer to their audience.
I do believe content is king both in traditional and social media. Multimedia is the essential tool to attract an audience. Telling compelling stories using the cross channel media approach keeps the audience growing and coming back.