Start your new year off right by completing this 10 minute exercise:

1. Write down the names of 3 people who helped you develop yourself or your business in 2011. Then, show your gratitude by sending them a thank you card, email or message on a social network.

2. Write down 3 ways you added professional value to others in 2011. Then, congratulate yourself out loud.

You may be thinking, What does this have to do with social media?
It has everything to do with the effective use of social media for business. Read on.

3. To build solid business relationships on the social web, it is essential to add professional value to others and show appreciation for those who add professional value to you. The final step in this exercise is to copy, write down or save the sentence above in your Personal Social Media Guidelines file. Don’t have one? Start one now.

Happy New Year!
And, if you haven’t registered for the January 4th, Noon CT premiere of The Daily Expansion Show-a free webinar, do it now: Register NOW!

Connections. Friends. Followers. Credibility. Visibility. Reach. Influence.

This is the language of Social Media.

A web site is no longer enough.  People want availability and interaction.  Decision makers are struggling to determine which communication channels to use, what to publish, how to engage and manage conversations and who in the organization is responsible.  To achieve success in the social spaces, companies need to expand daily. This requires:

1. A strategy tied to defined organizational objectives.
2. Systems to manage content, conversations and teams.
3. People who understand the language, culture and tools of the social web.

While the tools are new, we’re not.  From modems and Mosaic (circa 1993) to the social web of 2010,  Michelle Cullison, President of Daystar New Media, has been applying internet technology to meet the business objectives of  her clients.

Are you Ready to expand your business EVERY DAY? Start reading the blog, susbscribe to my enewsletter and contact me to book a free 20-minute phone consult.

Businesses are using YouTube for marketing, education, communications, product information, technical instruction and inspiration.

Follow these 5 steps to create your own Youtube Channel:

1. Decide on your Youtube Channel Name. This name will entered as the USERNAME in the account creation process.
2. Go to Youtube.com and click Create Account.
   Username becomes Channel name. For corporate branding, you will likely make the username your business or brand name.For personal branding, the username should be your first and last name.
3. Develop your profile.
   Enter your website,  company name, first and last name.  Fill your profile with details about the contents of your channel. Consider how people will search for content like yours and include those keywords in your profile. Always match your text content to your video content.
4. Develop Your channel .
   Customize your channel by entering a Channel Title, Description, keywords and colors.
5. Post your first video! You can use existing professional video, create one with a webcam or utilize a simple camera like the FLIP.

Grab your Youtube Channel now even if you aren’t ready to post video.  You don’t want to lose rights to your branded Youtube Channel URL.

HootSuite.com is a web-based service that is marketed as a Twitter Client. However, it is so much more!

With a free account, you can manage and post status updates with one-click on these social sites:

• Twitter Profiles
• Facebook Profiles and Pages
• LinkedIn Profiles
• MySpace and FourSquare Profiles
• WordPress.com sites and
• Ping.fm account (a multi-account management tool that accesses numerous networks.)

HootSuite, one of my favorite One-Click Social Media Management tools, can help you manage your social presence effectively so you can spend more time doing whatever YOU want to do!  Not only can you post in multiple places, you can also schedule posts.  Scheduling your posts allows you to manage your time more effectively.  You can set up the posts when it is convenient for you yet schedule them to go out at the most convenient time for your target audience.

HootSuite continues to add functionality that makes social media more manageable.
You can get a free account by signing up at HootSuite.com.

To learn more about social media management and productivity, check out the Social Media Management Seminars at Social Media School in New Orleans.

Intuitive, precision, dynamic search with less complicated queries-that’s what the new faceted search feature offers! You’ll find the new filters on the left of the people search page in LinkedIn. The filter fields available are unique to your search. Powerful! With faceted search, you may drill down by relationship (Connection Level) , Industry, Company, Group,  School and more.

Check out this product feature announcement from LinkedIn onYoutube.

1. Set goals, create a social media plan for your business and stick to it.  For example, if you want to reach a fan base of 500 on Facebook, determine to be only about that goal when you login to Facebook during business hours. If you aren’t strategic in your use of Facebook, it can easily become a time waster.

2. In your status updates on all networks, answer this question: What information does my business audience need from me today?

3.  Relate to people on the networks as if you are seeing them in person. Ask questions. Reply to comments or messages. Engage in conversation. Then, and only then will you see the value of social media.

4. Develop systems for growing your networks.  Example: Invite all the decision makers you are working with into your LinkedIn network. Invite contacts from informal networking events into your Facebook network. Or, determine to invite 10 people from your business association memberships into your personal network each month.  Having a system will ensure incremental growth of the right audience over time.

5. Don’t be afraid to experiment with new functionality. Social media tools are still evolving. Everyone is learning.  You’ll get the most from these tools when you get comfortable with them.  You don’t have to think about how to use the phone and email for business. Eventually, you’ll feel that way about social media.  Dive in the deep end and have fun with it.

Today, I was preparing to demonstrate how to set up http://www.Twitterfeed.com and realized my feed wasn’t functioning properly.

My blog URL (which works fine as an RSS feed in Facebook apps) wasn’t working for Twitterfeed. It seems a title tag was missing from the code of my new WordPress theme.  I utilized the tool Feed Validator http://feedvalidator.org/ to identify the problem.

A more common problem is finding the RSS feed URL.  With some applications, your standard URL will work as your RSS feed URL. If not, find your RSS feed URL like this:

• Open your blog in a browser as shown below.
• Left click the RSS feed icon as shown in image below.
• Select from the RSS feeds available.

There are different families of RSS feeds available. I have these two RSS options on my blog. Both work with twitterfeed.com.

http://www.michellecullison.com/feed/

http://www.michellecullison.com/feed/atom/

If you have a WordPress blog, you can also feed your blog posts into twitter using the wordpress plugin http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/twitter-poster/faq/.

Automation eases the pain of social media time drain.  Setting this up or hiring someone to do it, is well worth the investment.

Extending your blog to the active twitter sphere is a good business decision.

Contact me to hire my team to help you get started.

On Facebook, you can become a fan of a business page. However, you may want to bow out at a later date. Here’s how:

• Visit the business page.
• Scroll down to the bottom of the left hand column.
• You will see a link that says: Remove me from fans. See figure 1 below.

Figure 1-Screenshot from facebook fan page

To learn more about social media, sign up for social media bootcamp!

If you want to integrate your Twitter profile into your Facebook Profile, MySpace profile or other web space, visit this page offered by Twitter, http://twitter.com/widgets, select Facebook (or your choice) and follow the instructions.

Getting your social sites integrated with each other is one way to build your following in multiple locations so you will be ready to build relationships and build your business in 2009!