Omigod.  Heidi Shepard doesn’t use Twitter. Omigod. She doesn’t use Linked-In either. Or Facebook. Or MySpace. In fact, Heidi, a penny pincher and the owner of a jewelry shop, doesn’t use any of these social networking tools. Omigod. Omigod Heidi!  Omigod! Omigod! You’re not tweeting? You’re not poking? You’re not updating people on your status? How do you live? How can you cope? How does your business survive?

As we help CPA and IT professionals develop their social media plans and navigate the ground-breaking social communications mediums available, we encounter a lot of confusion about what the mediums are, who uses them and what businesses are doing with them.  I’ve been dreaming about a way to explain the various mediums and a table keeps appearing in my mind. In this article, I’m going to put that table on “paper” and see what we can learn by comparing the “Big Four” social mediums in use for business – LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Blogs, comparing several key factors about use.

Nancy Exten did two incredible things last week.She sat through an entire episode of Two and Half Men.  And she secured a $2 million working capital loan for her business. Pretty incredible isn’t it?  Having that kind of discipline and focus is what sets Nancy apart from other penny pinchers.  She really knows how to overcome any obstacle and accomplish even the most difficult of challenges.  Spend 22 minutes watching Charlie Sheen and you’ll know exactly what I mean.