With apologies to Soylent Green and the no doubt countless bloggers who have already used that as a title, let’s talk about social media as a marketing tool. We’re certainly not the first to do that either—in fact it’s probably one of the hotter topics in the blogosphere at the moment.

Social Media Is a Great Marketing Tool

You’ll have no trouble finding people to support that position. But here’s the thing about social media: it only works if you’re real. In other words, social media works because it’s a network of people who can engage with each other and build relationships. Those relationships range from genuine friendship to “I want to get a special deal from you.” But whatever the nature of the relationships, they work because there are real people behind them.

Some People Just Don’t Get It

We’ll focus on Twitter here, because it’s the more applicable of the two major social networks for this discussion. Facebook’s brand pages make the notion of being “real” somewhat tenuous, although the same principles of connection and engagement apply. But with Twitter, being real is critical to marketing yourself or your company.

Success with Twitter obviously depends on having followers, and the more, the better. But some people seem to think that a large number of followers is the be-all and end-all of Twitter. We won’t name names, but if you are a Twitter user yourself, you will know several of these accounts. They have tens of thousands of followers, but they never actually seem to engage with any of them. There may be real people behind these accounts, but if so, it’s impossible to tell.

Now, if you’re one of these Tweeters, and you represent, say, an SEO company—well, you may be tweeting links to interesting articles about SEO. And I may click on them and read them. But after a while, I’m going to see that that is all that you do. I’m not going to have any relationship with you at all. And, when it comes time for me to seek SEO services, I am not going to be contacting you—even if you do have 70,000 followers. Because you’re not real.

Some People Really Get It

Then there are the people that are absolutely 100% genuine. Their tweets sing with personality. Even if you’ve never met these people, you begin to feel like you know them just by reading their tweets. A great example: @LisaBarone

Lisa Barone tweets about everything—her outstanding blog posts for Outspoken Media , her boyfriend, her dad, her new car, going to a Yankees game, and just about anything else you could think of. What comes through is her passion for her work, her humor, her willingness to laugh at herself (and at others), and above all, her realness. Because Lisa is a major player in the internet marketing industry, she happens to have a lot of followers—just over 19,000.  Now that’s a lot more than most people, but a lot less than some of those accounts that don’t get it.

The fact is, even if Lisa only had 100 followers, she’d be on the short list of companies to consider if you were looking for internet marketing services. Because she gets it. She’s real. And by being real, she’s using Twitter effectively to market herself and her company.

And that’s what social media is all about. Be real, engage with people, and make connections. There’s never been anything like social media to allow us to do this on such a massive scale. And if you’re not taking advantage of it by actually putting yourself out there, then you’re not actually marketing.

SonicSEO.com is a 13-year old Internet marketing company. Originally founded as AllLaw.com, Inc. by Arvind Raichur and Becky Raichur in 1998, the company began by offering Internet marketing services to lawyers and law firms around the nation. With huge success, the company expanded their services to help all businesses with customized Internet marketing solutions in 2008. In 2010, the company sold two of its properties to Internet Brands (NASDAQ: INET) and underwent a corporate name change to SonicSEO.com, Inc. Today, with over 20 employees, SonicSEO.com is proud to offer online marketing services to businesses across the US.