Last month we concluded that adding social media to your marketing plan might actually be good for your business. After all, many of your customers are already there and more are joining every day, so why not use that avenue to directly connect with them. If you are ready to jump in, let’s take a closer look at two of the most popular (albeit sometimes confusing) social media tools for business - blogs and Twitter. Each has its own unique features, but they can actually work together in helping your company achieve its marketing goals.

With blogs, finally your opinion counts
Blogs, short for “Web logs,” are essentially online journals that others can read and comment on. The benefit of a blog lies in its ability to make you the publisher, which means you can write about whatever you think is important to cover. And as an added benefit, you can receive feedback from your customers and business partners on the posts you write. Because of the two-way conversation taking place, blogs allow a company to speak—and more importantly listen—directly to their target markets, thus representing a potentially invaluable marketing tool.

However, before getting started with a blog some basic workflow questions need to be addressed, such as: Who will write the blog and how often? What will they write about?  Will the blog be hosted using free blogging software, such as Wordpress (http://www.wordpress.com) or Blogger (http://www.blogger.com), or will the Web team develop the blog? When considering what to write, it helps to remember that, as with all good marketing materials, content is king. Blog content that is interesting, useful—and sprinkled with a bit of opinion—is more likely to be read and shared.

It is important to note that as you begin posting entries, your company will need to think about ways to market the blog. You might post a link to the blog on your Web site, or announce the blog to the world via your monthly newsletter. You can also engage in blogger relations, which involves finding other blogs covering subjects important to your industry and reading and commenting on those blog entries, then inviting those bloggers to also visit your blog. And of course, you can “tweet” about your blog which brings us to our next social media tool: Twitter.

What in the world is Twitter?
If you’re like me, you likely visited Twitter, looked at the site, and found yourself asking, “What in the world is this and how will it help my company?” The answer may be found in a 2009 study done by consulting firm Social Media Today, which reported that 35% of businesses on Twitter use the site as a place to share business information, knowledge, and experiences important to their industries. Twitter is actually a micro blogging site. To use a metaphor, if you think of a blog as an 8 ˝ by 11” sheet of paper on which to share your thoughts, Twitter is the equivalent of a Post-It Note.

The site allows you to share short messages, up to 140 characters in length, about what you’re reading, events you might host or go to, helpful white papers or e-books you find on the Web, or any other knowledge resources offering insight into your industry. In this way, Twitter can be a useful business information sharing tool. If your company’s business goal is to be a thought leader and a source for innovation in your industry, then Twitter becomes an important means in helping you achieve that goal. It does take a bit of effort to learn the Twitter vocabulary (known as “Twicabulary”), but once done, it is rather easy to become a proficient “tweeter.”

Next month we’ll take a closer look at LinkedIn and Facebook Fan Pages, two premier social networking sites available on the Web and how they work into the mix. Until then, happy tweeting.

Patricia Kilgore is president of Sterling Kilgore, a PR and Marketing Strategy firm that helps companies large and small become famous. She can be reached at pkilgore@sterlingkilgore.com.