Friday Favorites: Social Media Edition

This week’s collection of outstandingly helpful/witty/otherwise awesome blog posts focus on Social Media.

There’s a fine line between using Social Media as a useful free tool, and using it as a colossal waste of time. Here’s how to focus your efforts so that you can spend the majority of time doing what you do best: running your business.

• “Twitter: The Modern Day Complaint Department” by Mark Hayes of Shopify

Sure, you’ve got a Contact Us tab on your website (right?), if a disgruntled customer skips that and jumps right for Twitter, you need to know about it. This article shows us (1) how to know when someone’s talking about you—even if they haven’t used your @handle—and (2) what to do about it. (Spoiler alert: it isn’t “ignore it until it goes away.”)

• “5 Ways to Make Pinterest the Newest Asset To Your Company” by Erin Nelson of Small Biz Bee

Pinterest, that virtual pinboard of visual bookmarks, is all the buzz in the marketing world of late; business owners want to know how they can leverage the explosive popularity Pinterest has accumulated to their own advantage. Ms. Nelson explains.

• “Strategies for Entrepreneurs to Avoid the Social Media Time Suck” by G+decoded

This is a great little article filled with tips to keep us focused on the task at hand. Remember, your greatest asset is your time—don’t waste it with useless social media brain-drains. It’s a trap! Bonus: at the bottom of the post is a collection of tools that can help your G+ experience be a productive one.

• “These 7 Simple Tweaks Will Get You More Blog Retweets” by Stanford of Pushing Social

If your blog isn’t being retweeted, it turns out there’s a simple way to fix that: ask for it. Stanford gives us an overview of how to set up your blog, structure your posts, and follow up with tweets efficiently and effectively.

• “15 Ways to Use Facebook Pages for Business” by Matt Hamilton of Social Media Today

You’ve got a profile, and you’ve uploaded your contact information—now what? Mr. Hamilton sheds light on several areas of your business that Facebook might be able to help you with, some that you may not have thought of!

Have you found any other great resources that illuminate how social media can help your business? Share them here!