In yesterday’s blog, we revisited the topic of social media and the power it has to help business owners grow their companies. In Forbes magazine this month, Kym McNicolls wrote of the many techniques that entrepreneurs can employ to take advantage of social networking sites when rolling out their online marketing campaigns.

One suggestion provided by McNicolls is to find a social media manager. She admits that while running a business, managing a number of social network profiles can be a difficult task. Her recommendation is to sign up to Ping.fm and HootSuite which both allow you to manage all of your accounts on one site. For example, you make schedule messages so you don’t have to constantly update them on your own all day long.

Of course, posting updates on your sites is important. Even before you have any friends or followers, you want to give them a reason to keep checking out your page once they have access to it. In other words, make sure your pages have content for people to check out during their first visits.

McNicolls suggests that you provide valuable industry-related stories and information. You may also want to post some pictures of your business, or even better, people enjoying your business! YouTube is a great avenue for posting videos that include customer experiences or even demonstrations of your products and services.

Naturally, you will want to find and many friends and followers as possible. Again, keep in mind that you want to target a specific audience to market to. McNicolls reveals that on Twitter, for example, you can search key words about your industry to locate other users who may share an interest in your field.

Add some people and begin mentioning them in a post right way. You may also comment on their posts as well. This is how you begin building a network of followers who will hopefully do the same by posting replies to your tweets. It is a great way start engaging your followers and friends.

As McNicoll writes, “your first priority should be building that relationship with people, not pitching your service or product. Give them story ideas and leads that have nothing to do with your business.” So using social networking to actually socialize can actually be beneficial to your business!