Are you using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or any of the other hot social networking sites? Do you want to get more out of them or use them more effectively? Do you want to know what the opportunities are? Do you want to be sure you're using them safely and not taking any risks?

Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn will allow you to network and develop opportunities to boost your business; provide channels to communicate with employees and recruit new employees; and will enable you to track and position your brand as a progressive business.

Leading UK firms are thinking about their social media strategy at every level, and are pushing to be more innovative all the time. In terms of a brand becoming more relevant you can’t get more relevant than being at the heart of the conversation. Many of the biggest global brand names are already using social media to boost their business. Facebook have reported that 83 of the top 100 ad spenders in the US, including Nike, Coca-Cola and Starbucks, have signed agreements to use the site.

Small businesses can also benefit. More than half of new customers for a typical small business come through word of mouth, and social media is the digital manifestation of that. It can represent the entire marketing effort for many sole-traders, retailers, or small to medium business enterprises.

It can act as a multiplier too, giving you a far greater return for a modest outlay, such as the T-Mobile ad that was shown once on tv but viewed 17 million times online.

This MeetUp Group will teach you all you need to know about exploiting social media and provide you with the tools you need to be a social networking success.

We will schedule courses on the following topics:

*) Social Media Bootcamp - cover all the basics in one brief introduction
*) How To Make Twitter Work For You
*) Facebook For Business
*) LinkedIn: A Resource For Professionals
*) Social media for Webmasters - integrating it on your web sites
*) Search engine optimisation - how social media can boost your rankings

You will then be better equipped to respond to these excuses for not starting a social media programme:

1) Our competitors don’t have a Facebook page.
2) Let's wait until our competitors do it.
3) Our customers aren’t online.
4) Our customers don’t care about social media.
5) Let's stick with our newsletter we've been doing for 15 years.
6) Social media is a fad, it will pass.
7) Social media is for kids.
8) We don’t have time.
9) It’s too much effort. We can put our time toward more important things.
10) It doesn’t make any sense.
11) "Twitter" even sounds stupid.
12) It only makes sense if you're a PR firm.
13) There's too much noise.
14) We'll just get a lot of negative criticism.
15) We'll only attract a lot of complainers.
16) Our product has its flaws and social media would just show us up.
17) We need to control our message very closely and if we participate we will lose control.
18) How do we use Social Media to communicate with our customers who aren’t using Social Media?
19) We shouldn't be doing anything groundbreaking. Let’s stick to what we know, print advertising and press releases.
20) It won’t generate revenue.

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