Marketing using social media means offering help

Marketing using social media means more than talking about your own products and why they're so good. It means offering help, too.

While there's not an exact formula I feel that on Twitter about 1/3 of the posts should be about others like re-tweets, 1/3 helpful info/quotes/etc, and 1/3 on your company and benefits to customers.

An excellent article on Social Media Today notes why companies fail at using social media and the number one reason is they like to talk about themselves.

Use social media as a way to listen to customers or engage them in topics that are of benefit to them.

For related reading, here is a post I wrote on Twitter and a list of ways to use it effectively in marketing and business: Marketing Tips for Twitter