More businesses are using social media websites like Twitter and Facebook to promote their brand, drive sales, bring people to their organization and to interact with their customers. While Part I of this series provided an overview of social media, Part II deals with the importance of developing a social media strategy. While a business can set up a Twitter account in five minutes, it’s vital to have a detailed plan is in place before launching a site.

Here are seven steps to take before launching a social media website.

1, SET SPECIFIC GOALS: Lay out exactly what you want to accomplish through your social media vehicle(s). Examples of goals include providing another avenue of communication with customers in order to increase retention and customer satisfaction, building trust for your brand name, and driving sales by informing targeted audiences about the latest company news and newest products and offerings.

2, IDENTIFY CONTENT CONTRIBUTORS: Establish a small team of employees who will be primarily responsible for maintaining and updating the social media website and responding to customers’ posts. It’s important to create a training program for your team as well.

3, ESTABLISH A CLEAR COMMUNICATION POLICY: Instruct your social media team on how you want them to communicate online with customers. For example, suggest to them to use less marketing speak and more of a business conversational tone. Remind them to keep interactions brief and that they are building relationships with customers in a special way, and that hitting the enter button to complete a response is like shaking a person’s hand in a face-to-face interaction.

About a week ago, over a nice Saturday night dinner out, one of my friends asked me, “What is all of this Facebook and Twitter stuff? I don’t get it.”  Needless to say, we didn’t stop talking about my answer to her question until dessert was done and our coffee cups were empty!

Facebook and Twitter are examples of social media websites. What are social media websites? They are websites where people can simply and cheaply reach out to develop and maintain relationships. Everyday conversations that used to happen at the street corner now happen online. Social media websites are booming in popularity because they offer the technological tools to help people keep in touch, and they offer businesses a more effective way to promote their brand, communicate with customers, drive new sales, and recruit elite employees. In fact, many businesses now have full-time employees who are completely devoted to managing and updating their company’s social media websites.

One of the most important things to remember about social media is that it’s a forum to engage in conversation, not to broadcast information. The Internet used to be a place where companies would merely post online brochures about what they do. Now, Internet users aren’t happy with merely absorbing information, they want to actively participate.