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Social media has become one of the most important, yet most misunderstood brand promotion methods in the world. Brandishing social media properly can get your brand exposure that you could never have imagined. Follow these 10 basic steps to use the potential of social media fully.

1. Understanding Social Media

Social media platforms connect billions of users on a daily basis by providing users a platform on which to communicate and share ideas. Updates on personal information, pictures, videos, stories, and much more are all available on social media sites. Social media unites the world in ways that suit your business needs.

2. Finding the Right Media Source

Literally thousands of different social media sites are available, but you should concentrate on using only the most popular sources. Focusing on these sources gives you access to a busy, pre-built community that is always eager for new information. With over 1 billion users every week, Facebook and YouTube are still the most popular social media sites. Google+ is catching up with them, with over 500 million users, while Pinterest has over 50 million. LinkedIN has over 225 million users, while Wikipedia, the most popular online encyclopedia in the world, has over 2.25 million pages. Let those numbers sink in before moving to the next step.

3. Utilizing Each Source

Understanding the ups and downs or fluctuations of each media site can help you use them effectively. Facebook is excellent for creating events, company pages, networking, advertising, and keeping your customers updated on new information. However, Facebook is prone to “trolls,” people who will fill your page with nonsense for a laugh. Twitter is an even better way to update your customers constantly, but it is limited in its usefulness in creating events and other, more advanced uses.

Sites like Google+ and LinkedIN let you create company profiles, upload employee photos, create individual sites for each employee, schedule events, create unique groups for different aspects of your company, and even create awards and contests. However, these sites do not quite reach the same level of mass customers as Facebook or Twitter.

4. Managing Each Source

The most important part of producing content for social media is to use it regularly to create interesting content. You cannot just create simplistic posts about banal topics: customers see through that kind of half-interested, lax approach. Hire dedicated social media experts to manage each media site. Create a video team to upload fun, funny and informative videos to YouTube. Hire a Twitter expert to create a steady, but unobtrusive, flow of updates and new information.

5. Simplifying Your Approach

Managing these many sources of social media can be daunting for a company new to the process. It may take a crew of dozens of employees to manage everything. Avoid that kind of needless complexity by using a social media-linking program, such as EveryoneLinked, to create a simpler, easier to manage flow of information.

6. Understand EveryoneLinked

EveryoneLinked lets you connect popular sources of social media into one easy-to-understand platform that can be managed by one person. Update your Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIN and Google+ accounts from a single computer, and watch hype and excitement build around your brand in real time.

7. Pushing Your Content

You need to supply a regular source of information without being obtrusive. Media users that are bombarded by brand names will resent the brand for the overflow of information, but companies that do not update enough will find their brand leaving the minds of potential customers. It is all about balance, and the proper balance varies depending on your customer base and business type.

8. Interact with New Sources of Content

Simply chucking your content out at the social media world is not enough: you need to interact with the people on these sites. Creating a sense of a living, breathing person behind your content will create a friendlier, more personable company image. Interact with customers by posting to their content pages, sharing funny photos and interesting facts, and creating unique contests.

9. Build Lines of Communication

Interacting with your customers on media sites can create new lines of communication between other businesses, and it can help create a network of information that can benefit your business immensely. Customers who enjoy your media presence and your content will share it with other users, friends, or customers. These individuals or customers may end up following you, sharing your information, and potentially helping your brand name go “viral.”

10. Create New Sources of Information and Content for Your Followers

Now that your customers are sharing your work with others and spreading your name, create your own personalized website, and link it to your social media. Create sources of social media on your website, such as forums, to help spread your name throughout the Internet. Your Internet fame will only spread from there!