Chances are if you’re a small business you’re engaged with social media. According to the University of Maryland’s Smith School of Business, technology adoption rates among small businesses in the U.S. have doubled in the past year from 12% to 24%.

Nearly one in five small business owners are integrating social media into their business processes — Facebook and LinkedIn being among the most popular. In fact, 45% of surveyed respondents believe that their social media initiatives will pay off financially in 12 months or less. Yet, only just 16% are using Twitter as a customer service channel.

Research also indicates that small business owners are turning to social media to help them generate new customer leads, a primary motivating factor for engaging in these new customer service channels.

As more small businesses become more familiar and confident with social media, time will tell if they start to adopt new behaviors. Social media not only has a broad reach, it has the potential to create discussions and tell stories around a brand that can bring it into the forefront of the consumer mind.

However, how companies go about engaging in those discussions will prove interesting. Those willing to shed their skin and embrace the medium’s transparency will be in a better position to open up and tell their story.

Are you a small business engaged with social media? Tell us how you’re creating discussions about your brand online.

With so many social media platforms from which to choose and trends to track of, it's no wonder many of us are scratching our heads. From Twitter to Facebook to LinkedIn and beyond, how do you know which is the right fit for your marketing and branding strategies?

Above all, it's about engaging users. Knowing what questions to ask yourself before picking a platform and implementing a strategy will help you decide how to best engage your users. Sisarina answers three of the most common questions we get asked.

If you had to pick one social networking platform to focus your marketing strategy on, which would you choose and why?

First question, why are you limiting yourself to just one? If it’s a question of time and effort, there are a number of ways to manage most of them more effectively and successfully. However, you need to figure out your priorities and the needs of your users/audience.

If you were to pick just one social media platform, you first need to define what you want to communicate and why it’s important.  Then you should determine the behaviors of who you want to attract and who you currently attract with your brand.

At Sisarina we have a blog, Twitter feeds, a LinkedIn group and a Facebook Fan page, among others. We use each of them differently, tracking their impact and evolving our strategies as needed. Each of them tells us more about our users and how they interact with our brand and services.

How do I get more Twitter followers?

By engaging with others.

Chances are good that if you begin following others, they will start following you in return.  However, Twitter is not about quantity, it’s about cultivating user engagement. Sure, if you have a million followers, your message may theoretically reach more people, but you can’t possibly engage with every single one.

Start conversations by asking questions, posting thoughtful comments and informative links. And use hash tags (#) to keyword your posts.

By taking the time to engage with a few users, you’ll not only be able to make meaningful connections, you’ll start to develop your brand in a more appropriate way.

How do I know if my social media efforts are working?

Social media is not an exact science. We have yet to determine how many followers equal a sale, and I doubt we ever will.

Before you start tweeting or updating your Facebook Fan page, you need to ask yourself what you will consider to be a successful return on investment.

As you start out, that investment will be your time and effort spent engaging with users. What is that time worth to you? Sisarina can’t answer that for you. Is it a certain number of new visitors a month? Or a number of new Twitter followers or fans? Maybe it’s the number of individuals that Retweet a message or comment on your blog?

Social media is about being social. And being social is about interacting with others. If others are not interacting with your site, you need to revisit your strategy. Maybe you need to spend more time, or refine the content that you are sharing. If you set meaningful benchmarks from the beginning, you’ll be able to gauge your progress and evolve your strategies as necessary

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