The jury is still out for many people about the benefits of using social media and whilst others’ recognise the value of it, they still struggle to integrate it within the business and use it for marketing and connectivity to customers.

The fact is that social media is here to stay and as your competitors get more connected every day you can’t afford to miss out on the phenomena that is social media. Penny Power, one of our EBA Millionaire Mentors (see Penny presents for us again on 25th September) is an evangelist on this topic and founded her business in this medium. She is founder of Ecademy as many of you will know.

If you are using social media, are you using it for networking or broadcasting? Did you realise there is a difference? It’s vital that you get clear on what your social media strategy is, for best effects. We suggest your strategy should be blend of networking and broadcasting. Yet as with everything you do within your business, don’t approach this half-hearted. There are now many businesses that advise solely on social media strategies so if you are in doubt about what this can do for your business, come and hear Penny speak for us in a few weeks time.

People love to twitter these days. Twitter is a high speed micro blogging social media tool and is therefore perfect for sharing your successes, advice, forthcoming events at high speed. For sure, if you have zero presence in social media right now you will be missing out on the untold opportunities and connections there are for you and it starts with getting connected. Yes, you may have to invest in some setting up ‘housekeeping’ time but once it’s done it’s done. It seems the mindset of social media users is to voluntarily share, share, share. You’ll be surprised how willing people are to recommend you and what you offer to their followers.

On Twitter you can connect to us via @entrepreneursba, @Bev_James, @PennyPower and @jamescaan.