Many people I work with are confused if their business is right for social media. When faced with the option of markeing via facebook, twitter, youtube, or any other “social” site, the first objection for most people is usually “Social Media doesn’t apply to my business”.

In response to that I created three quick questions to ask yourself before deciding whether or not social media should be part of your marketing strategy.

1. Do your customers use Social Media?

If you are a brand or business with customers in the 13-45 range, it is a definite yes. If your customers are 65+ the answer is likely not. If your customers aren’t on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Google+ or other social sites, then no amount of crafty marketing can help you. In other words, you can’t squeeze blood from a stone.

2. Does Your Business require Specialized knowledge?

People with specialized skills are always in demand. If you are a lawyer, you most certainly have specialized knowledge. Having a LinkedIn and perhaps Twitter account would be ideal for your business. On those sites you would be able to showcase some of your expertise in exchange for interested customers reading it and becoming potential leads. In that case, it is recommended to have a blog to send them to in order to capture those leads and post your expanded thoughts on a topic.

3. Do you have the time or resources to manage your Social Media presence?

Just because your customers are using social media doesn’t mean it is the only way to find customers. Before embarking on a social campaign you should evaluate whether you or someone in your company had the time, expertise, and resources to consistently manage your campaign.

Social media can be the most rewarding or the biggest time sink in marketing on the web. If you don’t have the time, perhaps evaluate paid advertising or SEO as other potential avenues to customers. You can also start small using one site in a limited way and letting customers know in advance what kind of interaction to expect on via social media.

Two ways to simplify your Social Media Presence

1. Use Ping.fm to multicast status updates

Ping.fm allows you to post updates to all your social profiles at once. This is a cool way to interact on your sites while not needing to log in to each.

2. Set up Social Alerts

Social alerts are similar to google alerts, but for social media sites. I personally use the Boxcar app for iPhone that monitors twitter for keywords including my name and company name as well any topics of interest for my business.

This will introduce you to many new people who are potential partners or customers in a passive way without needing to constantly be plugged in.

Before starting to build a presence, I recommend watching this quick video on Content Strategy