This post is for all the businesses out there that have heard of “Social Media” but have no understanding of what it is, how to use it and most importantly how much it is going to cost.

I have just come back from a few days in Auckland presenting to business owners the results of our 12 month project using social media as a business marketing channel and networking “tool”.

As Craig Harrell of Rainmaker Marketing says, “A rubber-banded stack of business cards is not a sales strategy.” We have transferred the impulse to gather stacks of business cards from local networking events, to gathering stacks of “followers” on the internet.

A while back Levi’s sent out hand selected people in their signature jeans across Australia and New Zealand while clues were released through twitter as to their whereabouts …

Before you actually start to engage in using Social Media some serious consideration should be made to who within your organisation or company has the mandate to manage the portfolio.

Few would claim last year was an easy one for business. Taking an optimistic point of view, it has forced us to look long and hard at our business models and come up with ways to improve on the bottom line.