Social media is not only great for boosting your client list; it helps you to interact with your existing clientele. One mistake that many people make is not taking the time out to perfect their user experience. If you want to engage existing clients and find new clients along the way, there are three important things you need to accomplish in order to improve your social media efforts.

Respond. Respond. Respond. This can’t be stressed enough. Those who achieve success with social media marketing accomplish their bottom-line because they focus on establishing strong client relationships. This not only includes responding to questions regarding your products or services. You also have to respond to client complaints. You will want to respond as professionally and quickly as possible. One of the worst things you can do is avoid responding to an unhappy client.

Center your content around client issues. One way to perfect your clients’ experience with your company is to write content about your most common complaints. When certain issues arise, clients can link to this information. For example, let’s say that during the holiday season your shipments are normally 2 days delayed. You can create content explaining why product shipments are delayed during holidays. You can even offer suggestions on how to avoid the problem by suggesting that people their orders a few weeks before the holiday. Notice how Google posts common troubleshooting issues in blog format? This is a great way of informing your clients about certain issues that are going on within your company.

Time to face the music! After responding to client issues and complaints, make sure you resolve them as quickly as possible. Its great responding to your customers’ needs on Twitter, however, you have to resolve their problems once you’re offline. Otherwise, this will ruin your online reputation.

When you respond to your clients’ needs through social media and take action, this adds value to your company. You’re showing the world that you actually care about your clients’ needs.

In the history of Google products, the more boring the product = wider adaption rates and the better the product will be. Google is number one in the market for boring products. Look at the heart of Google, search advertising! It’s algorithms and character counts do not provide great material for a Cannes award submission movie. The only social activity Google has encountered success with is YouTube; most of what is good about YouTube (video democratization through video production and sharing) was already there when Google acquired it. Google has done well with the “boring” aspects of the site making it scale and increasing revenue streams.

Here are a few ways Google has tried introducing social media with “Exciting” and “Boring” entries:

Exciting

Orkut: Google launched it’s own social networking site in 2004, about 14 days before Facebook launched. We obviously know the winner of this initial fight.

Dodgeball: Developed by former Google employee who recently left the company to create similar but much improved site, Foursquare. Dodgeball shut down in 2009.

Jaiku: An early rival to Twitter when there were still many players in the micro-blogging space, but now ranks about 428,000th in U.S. sites.

Lively: Opened this virtual world by saying, “Well this sucks for Second Life.” Guess which one is still around? HINT: Not Lively.

Wave: The developer preview video for this site received over 9 million views, but I do no know anyone that knows how to use it or mainly why they should. The open-ended nature of Wave leaves users wondering what to do with this technology.

Buzz: I am not so sure this worked at all considering it is during work hours that I would use this and mainly to family and co-workers.

Boring

Docs: I talk about Google Docs in almost every blog, because it is such a great feature of Google. Although it started with a pretty dull premise of storing documents online “in the cloud,” and then allowing users to collaborate, this power of collaboration for such a straightforward purpose is what made Docs gain users easily.

Moderator: Anyone can create their own version of Digg where others can contribute and vote on submissions. In May, it became a feature on YouTube which will most likely increase its user base.

Android Photo Sharing: The Iphone still does not have a feature allowing you to share a photo to social sites from anywhere containing a picture.

Google can understand and apply the mechanics of social media, but still the odds aren’t great for Google in the social networking domain. But look at what Google already has and how their magic has been in the more “boring” collaboration and communication tools such as Docs, Talk, Voice, and Gmail. Also they run a successful web browser, a mobile operating system, and is increasingly incorporating more social media content into it’s search engines.

If you hear of Google doing something incredibly “boring,” perk up because it could change the way you communicate, share content, and consumer media.

Whether you own an Internet based business, small mom & pop or a Fortune 500 with several employees, Google Apps can help keep you organized throughout the course of the day. Google Apps is low cost and perfect if you’re on a budget. Below are a few secure online applications to use by Google.

Google Calendar Agenda

You can easily schedule appointments, manage and share online calendars. Integrate your calendar into Gmail and also stay up-to-date with mobile access. Calendars can be published externally from Google, shared with permission controls, and can send meeting invites and manage the RSVPs.

Google Docs Documents

Web-based documents, spreadsheets, drawings and presentations that allow users to simultaneously edit the same file for real-time collaboration. If you forget your computer as I often do, no worries for docs is securely powered by the web with anytime, anywhere access to your work. Easily upload and share files that are backed-up online and offer permission controls that can be changed at any time.

Google Groups

With this app you can share content easily, search archives and manage groups without burdening the IT department. Share docs, calendars, sites, shared folders and videos with a group and control the access of the group and individuals. Reply on behalf of the group even as it can be used as a central point for receiving and responding to communications.

Google Sites

Create dynamic web pages to centralize documents, spreadsheets, videos and slideshows to help keep teams organized. This is an easy way to keep team members up-to-date with a project workspace and a secure intranet.

Google Video

This application provides secure hosted video sharing to make internal training videos and announcements more engaging, effective, secure and private.

Google Wave

Real-time collaboration is at it’s ultimate in Wave with everyone’s typing showing up instantly, and letting new participants in a wave get up to speed instantly with organized discussions and a playback feature to see how the wave evolved. Anyone in the wave can edit or reply to any section, comment, or start new comments to keep the content relevant and in the right order. Wave supports gadgets and users can build their own gadgets for custom functionality.

Why are more and more entrepreneurs and companies using Google Apps? For one, it is convenient and affordable. You can test drive Google apps for free with a free trial offer.

So, you had a total of 1000 Facebook friends last month and now you're down to 950. What could have possibly happened to all those ‘potential clients’? The following are a few reasons why people will dump you as a friend on Facebook or any social media site.

You over- do it with self-promotion. It is a major turn-off when all a person does is promote their business on a social media site. It’s like attending your high school class reunion and all a person talks about is his or her new product line. Enough is enough! Although it makes good marketing since to promote your products and services through social media, you have to also support and review what other people are doing -- even if it isn't business related. This shows that you value other people's friendship and it's not all about you.

You argue and offend people. It's okay to voice your opinion about the recent oil spill. However, when you become so angry that you begin to offend people, this will tick them off and prompt them to end their relationship with you.

You present yourself unprofessionally. Even though it is suggested to post a little personal info about your life experiences once and awhile, don't overdo it. Posting messages about how much you hate your ex-boyfriend or girlfriend is very unprofessional and a major turn-off to potential clients.

Your status is always in-active. If you want people to get to know you, you have to be an active participant of social media. Even if you change your status and post a few comments once a week, you’re showing people that you are an interesting person. The more interesting messages you post, the more people will respond to you on Facebook.

It seems as though everyone is engaging in social networking whether it’s for personal or for business use. Can social media really help give your business a boost, increase your online presence or is it just a fad? Social media is here for the long-hall. Here are a few important things to remember about social media for business.

1. Develop a solid plan and stick with it. Better yet, find someone who is well versed in social networking to help you. Some business owners hire social media virtual assistants to help manage their social media campaigns.

2. Find your market. You have to know where to find your clients whether its newlyweds, singles, professionals or even students. You can search for potential clients based on their location, age and other preferences.

3. Just do it today! Many Fortune 500 companies are using social media to communicate with customers and their individual markets. You will notice that all the huge corporations use excellent content when marketing their businesses. Make sure you use great content with social networking with your clients.

4. Blog it! Consider establishing a blog and blog about your company. You can blog about your company's special events, your products and services or anything that will interest your readers.

One of the major reasons why so many companies are using social networking is because it is extremely cost effective way to connect to your market. Let TracSoft know if this is a service you want help or consultation.