Why anchor your efforts in social media with a blog.

Now that we know what social media is and why it is important let’s move on to some best practices. While we are all out on the web posting updates on Twitter, reviews of restaurants and such on Foursquare, pictures and articles on Facebook, it can quickly become over whelming (or a waste of your efforts) if you do not have a place to anchor it all, like a blog.

To have a conversation in person you have two or more people (two or more identities) engaging one another. The same is true for conversations on-line; to create an on-line identity you need to designate a space to where that identity lives. A blog or some other similar space holder is essential to the creation of your identity or on-line persona.

If you are a business it is important to maintain a business persona along with a personal voice. A blog or even a Facebook Fan page can act as a place holder for a company’s on-line persona. Having one or a few people in the company acting as the company’s on-line voice can be a great way to promote and communicate with your customer base, find partnerships, and grow brand awareness through viral marketing.

Once you have a persona, an online voice, taking the next step in pushing content, creating community and having conversations will be a natural next step.