I’m not a huge fan of saying there are “rules” in using social media, but “guideline of thirds” sounds a bit silly. We encourage the Twitter rule of thirds because it’s easy to remember - we’re all about keepin’ it simple.

Here’s the thing: there are three important things you will want to do if you want to grow a community through Twitter. These three things are listed in the priority order but 3 (promote) should never be more than a third of your total tweets.

1) Talk to people.

Social is the most important word in “social media”. Be personable. Do a little networking. Jump in to conversations. Every one of these suggestions is the right way to use Twitter - even if it goes against the IRL (in real life) manners that are ingrained in you. Don’t let that stop you from getting the most you can out of using Twitter. You can have five different conversations going on at once if you want. You can answer right away or two days later. Conversation on Twitter is more flexible than conversation you’ll find in any other forum.

2) Share other people’s content.

You are one of millions and millions of really smart people using Twitter to share really smart content. I bet your audience will find value in things that aren’t written by you - the same way you find it valuable. So, why not share it? It can even be content from a competitor. Or, rather, someone else who has a similar business. We share valuable content from other consultants all the time.

3) Promote your own content.

You’re working hard to build great content that’s useful to others, so promoting it is the best way for you to help the right people find it. Don’t be shy about sharing your original content. You just don’t want that to be the only thing you do.

The Twitter rule of thirds will help you stay cognizant of how much you’re networking, sharing and promoting and that you’re using Twitter to its full potential - to build relationships.

What personal guidelines do you have for using Twitter?

Image via CrunchBase

Facebook is a great way to share information about your business in a place that many members of your

audience are visiting on a daily basis. With over 800 million users, half of those logging in daily, Facebook is a must for almost any business.

I have encountered many businesses who have a Facebook profile instead of a page for their business - some because they set them up before Facebook pages even came in to creation, some because they worry about linking their personal profile to the business page (this isn’t a concern, once your page is set up, nobody can see who the administrator is).

Here are 5 reasons why you should have a page instead of a profile for your business.

1. Facebook doesn’t want you to have a profile for your business

Having a profile for a business is against Facebook regulations. The chances of Facebook ever realizing you’re doing this isn’t particularly high BUT if they do, they could delete the account.

2. People don’t want you to know about them

People worry about their privacy. They don’t want people they don’t know seeing what they’re saying on Facebook; they don’t want to worry that their private information is being shared with others.

When you have a business set up as a profile instead of a page you are asking people to “friend” you. That means that you have access to their private information. That will immediately cut out a large number of people who simply don’t want to be friends with your business.

When people need to friend you they also can’t see any of your information until you have accepted them, which brings me to my next point.

3. Immediate access

There is no approval process for a page. Once someone likes you they have total access to your page. The less barriers the better.

4. Easy to promote on other sites

People won’t like your Facebook page if you don’t holler from the rooftops that you have one. Tell people at every opportunity - in your newsletter, links from twitter and especially on your web site and blog.

You can install a widget that goes on your site or blog that lets people like your page without ever leaving your site - the easier it is for someone to like your page the higher the chance they’ll do it. This makes it very easy for them and isn’t hard to install. (You can’t do this for a profile.)

5. Insights

It can be hard to measure the return on investment of social media sometimes, but there are certainly a lot of ways to see what’s going on on your page using Facebook Insights.

Insights lets you see how people are interacting with your page and figure out what content is getting a lot of engagement. It lets you see how many new people have liked you in a week, and where they’re coming from. It is a great tool to use to measure Facebook Page success and help you plan your future content.

Converting a profile to a page

If you have a Facebook profile for your account don’t worry, you can switch it to page. Unfortunately if you have a Facebook profile AND a Facebook page it’s not easy to merge the two.

Here is a good article from Mashable on how to convert your profile to a page.