In one word: Very.

According to Justin Levy, Senior Social Communications Manager at Citrix Online,
“A recent DDB Facebook Fan survey found the number one reason people become fans of a brand is because the brand directly invited them through their email program or on the website, or they saw an ad on Facebook.”
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You can safely assume that Social Media is coming of age in a business application when it attracts the attention of some of the world’s largest corporate players.

Computer giant Dell has launched its own dedicated ‘Social Media Listening Command Centre’. Dell opened the command centre at its Texas head office last month, in order to track, monitor and respond to consumer conversation on applications including Twitter and Facebook.
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For some time now we have been living on a digital planet, governed by a social media ruler; where politics is discussed ad nauseum via twitter, friends are made and lost on Facebook, and the Lily Allen’s of the world are discovered via MySpace.  It is only natural then, that marketers should follow suit, with Forbes.com compiling a list of the “Best-Ever Social Media Campaigns”.

All these campaigns offered an element of intrigue and many a call to action, encourage online surfers to get involved.  Ikea created a Facebook page showcasing their showroom, where fans were encouraged to ‘tag’ items displayed in order to win them, promoting brand awareness and customer interaction. Burger King promoted their restaurant with a man in a chicken suit who would perform any commands viewers typed in, resulting in 5million hits in the first five days alone.

The viral campaign for the film ‘The Blair Witch Project’ was surprisingly the most effective, with tantalising websites provoking questions of “Is it really real?” amongst other canny web posts of fake newspaper clippings and police reports, resulting in huge box office success, raking in $29million during its first week of release and roughly $249 million to date worldwide.

The list proves how a clever idea and the use of the web can promote your product in a new and triumphant fashion.

As suggested by Elizabeth Arritt, Director of Marketing for the National Board of Teaching Standards (US), although the social media platforms that are appropriate for your business will vary depending on your industry, relying on just one won’t get the results!

Here are a few tips on how to select the appropriate activity for your business’ integrated social media strategy:

* Make sure you are where your target market is, to maximise the impact and effectiveness of your message.

* Try to avoid a baptism of fire. It is best to first observe and understand each social media platform so that you can establish the etiquette or unwritten rules, before you participate.

* Make it easier for yourself – there are now many ‘apps’ out there that can assist you in linking your social media accounts – if you update one, the others are automatically updated. However, it is important to remember not to get caught up in ‘blasting’ out the same updates, across all the mediums, all of the time.

* Make sure that your target markets know where to find you. To achieve this you can link to your business’ social media profiles on a new page on the company’s website or to its existing ‘contact’ page, on email signatures, in your corporate or eNewsletter and on your blog. You could also mention your Facebook account on your Twitter profile and vice versa.

The CME Group has successfully created an online community through its Twitter account, attracting nearly 800,000 followers.

So how did they do it?
According to Andy Sernovitz there are three top tips from CME Group’s Director of Corporate Communications Allan Schoenberg.

* Don’t be so self centred – It is best to limit tweets about your business to 30%, using the other 70% for industry information and interaction.

* One of the keys to the CME group’s success was being where its customers are. It knew that their customers were active users which made it worthwhile investing in.

* As well as sharing links to interesting content, CME group has become actively involved in conversation, engaging with its followers and conducting weekly live interviews with influential leaders in the marketplace.