Tonight while attending an Elgin Chamber Business After Hours, I met a guy I hadn't know previously. After exchanging hand shakes and introducing myself as being part of a social media marketing company in Elgin, the guy recognized the company name and immediately goes "oh you're the one that tweets"!.

Immediately two important marketing goals were accomplished. A positive impression was made on a potential partner, and there was an opening to communicate more about what I do and how social media can help a business grow. Even better was the fact that I received confirmation that my efforts to share our insight and expertise hadn't just fallen on deaf ears and had instead been received and remembered.

In all honesty, I am not a hardcore twitter guy and I don't tweet 20 times a day. However,  I know how to use it and I use it effectively for myself and our clients. Part of this success is that I have goals in mind whenever I tweet or share something on Facebook.

Many businesses think that to be effective they need to be a big business, a consumer business targetting kids, or need to be on twitter 24-7 sharing stupid pieces of personal information.

In fact, even sharing useful information that people can find value from can be valuable - and that's what we try to do.

For us, that includes blog posts such as this where we share real world examples of how social media can impact business. It also includes things like photos that we post on our facebook page from events we attend and interesting things we come across Overall, our communication strategy is designed to produce content think our friends and clients can find benefit from. While every business is unique and every industry has unique communication needs, virtually every business can benefit from building relationships through tools like twitter, Facebook, and a company blog.