Most of you are already familiar with how social networks operate, how they allow you to keep track with old friends and even make new ones. Chances are you have a Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed or RiverRegionOnline profile already created to "stay in the loop."

Networking online can also prove to be a great tool in promoting your personal brand, your business brand, or events with virtually little cost and high value. As these networks (including RiverRegionOnline) contine to evolve, marketers have already begun to create strengthen their customer's brand experience through interaction and relationship-building on a personal level. Events in particualar are nothing more than large social gatherings that allow people to exchange ideas and connect. Utlizing an social network just helps to bring that experience online and make it more accessible to a wider audience. Though promoting on social networks alone won't make an effective campaign (at least not yet), it will raise your online profile and increase lead generation opportunities.

Here's a great 3-step way to get started today by Ed Lemire, Executive Vice President at Acteva:

If you've already used Facebook or LinkedIn for personal use, you're off to a good start. If not, don't worry -- just set aside some time to determine how best to take that first step into the social media landscape. Here's a three step approach:

1.   Investigate. With so many social media sites out there, you may want to do some investigative work to find out where your best customers are. Keep an eye out for social networking events and Webinars. Major conferences dedicated to social networking happen throughout the year. Find those best suited to your needs.

2.   Join. Once you're comfortable, dive in and register. But it may not be best to make sales a pitch for your event right from the start. Find a site that fits. For example, events on Facebook offer a great opportunity to build awareness. As users indicate they're attending an event, the news spreads exponentially across their network, even showing up in each user's news feed. This serves as a passive but personal recommendation of the event.

Flickr and YouTube can also build event awareness. You can put cameras and camera-phones in the audience to good use to document the ins and outs of a show. This can enhance the show experience for attendees and can create interest in others to make the trip the next time around. You can even create your own YouTube channel that features all of the videos and speaker sessions from your event.

3.   Get Involved. Invite current clients and colleagues to join in -- let them know you're out there, what you do and, eventually, let them know about your exciting events coming up.

I just wanted to share this excellent article on measuring social media. Since it is still a fairly new media, its interesting to see how advertisers are coming up with new ways to define their success, often putting the bulk of the power in the consumers hands. Read on for a quick excerpt and for the full article visit MediaPost Publications.

Five Ways To Measure Social Media 
by Jim Sterne, Friday, August 28, 2009, 11:45 AM 

 Ahhhhh -- social media. Addictive. Fun. Downright social!   But how valuable is it? How do you tell?

There are dozens of reckoning tools online to tally up any and all countable social media elements. Most of them are interesting and some actually useful. Rather than drill down into specifics, let's take a bird's-eye view of the types of measurements that might prove useful to the marketing professional.

We're looking to answer these questions:

1. Did they get the chance? Put up a billboard on the highway and so many thousand commuters have an "opportunity to see" your message -- unless they were texting, applying makeup, tuning the radio, disciplining their kids or, heaven forbid, watching traffic. Put an ad on TV and so many million viewers have an "opportunity to see" your message. Unless they were fast-forwarding, texting, applying makeup, tuning the radio, disciplining their kids or, most likely, answering nature's call. Or the phone.

Send out a message online, and some unknown number of people will have the opportunity to see it if -- they have already subscribed, befriended or followed you or know somebody who did. And the glory of social networking is that they might only have known somebody who knew somebody who knew somebody .. who did.

So there's your first metric: the base number of people who are in a position to get a message from you directly. Your RRS readers, newsletter subscribers, Web site visitors -- throw them all into the stew. These are the ones to whom you are directly connected.