With a definite objective or just to follow the bandwagon, every individual, SMBs, large corporation and big daddy today is on social media. Discussions on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and other social media platform have a definite space today at least amongst the marketing department across the industries

Some companies and brands are doing it successfully, some have made their presence but failed to capitalize it and some are still confused how to go about it? The larger percentage of marketers fall under the third category, who either doubts the strength of this much talked about marketing channel or have no clue how to go about it?

My advice to all who are still sitting on the bank, confused on how to sail across this marketing stream is ‘BE CLEAR OF YOUR OBJECTIVE’.

Though there can be hundreds of objectives for your social media presence, I am restricting my post to two broader categories, i.e. Branding and Advertising as I feel the rest all objectives can be classified under these two broader terms.

Though these two terms are interrelated yet the differences lies in the fact that the impact of Advertising can be seen in short term and can be measured in terms of ROI precisely, while branding has long term impact and may or may not be immediately measured. Branding gives an image and sustainability to your brand increasing its perceived value while advertising gives spikes to your sales.

Before launching yourself on Social Media, make sure what you or your management wants to achieve with the social media presence. Spike in sales or increasing the perceived value of your brand. Spike in sales can be easily measured but to measure the perceived value, you need to monitor the buzz, how and what people are talking about your brand. Is your brand now started finding a positive place in blog posts, tweets, discussions and forums? If yes then, you are going the right way.