About author: Rob Moore is a writer for Page One Power , an SEO company based in Boise, Idaho. Ever the technology enthusiast, he loves blogging, gaming and keeping up with the latest gadgets.

It’s almost mind boggling how important it is to have a social media footprint for any product. It provides a unique opportunity to communicate with your customers, fans and critics. It brings a human touch to your brand, whether it is a small blog or a massive corporation. But getting started in this area of the internet can be intimidating, especially if your brand is relatively small. Here are a few tips to help make things a little less scary.

 1. Be a real person

This is an easy one, right? You’d be surprised how many people just starting out on Twitter or Facebook get mistaken for bots, spammers or throwaway accounts simply because they don’t have a profile picture. Adding a picture of yourself is one of the most important things you can do with your newly created social media account. It’s going to be the first thing that people look at when they view your page and it’s a great way to show off some of your interests. A picture is worth a thousand words, after all, and that’s quite a bit more than Twitter’s character limit on a bio page.

Along those same lines it’s important to make sure that the posts you make on your new account are quality content that do not beg for retweets, follows, likes or anything along those lines will only get you ignored. Rather mindlessly spamming, talk about things that you are interested in.

2. Be a part of a community

This step dovetails really nicely with the first one. Following and conversing with people who are in the same industry as you is a great way to get your brand name out there. It is really easy to find things to talk about when both parties are passionate about what they do. Following people on any kind of social media will encourage them to look at your profile especially if there is a picture of a real person attached to it.

Besides having similar interests to you, you should also make sure that the users you are following are active in the social media community. Make sure they have a profile picture. Make sure they’ve tweeted or posted something recently.

Hashtags can also be a very effective way of getting more visibility for your brand as long as they are used in moderation. Limiting your posts to one or two hashtags at the most is a good rule of thumb in order to not turn people off. Make sure that you keep your hashtags short as well. They become almost unreadable if you’re trying to use an entire sentence with no spaces.

3. Be patient

Growing your community through social media isn’t going to happen overnight. It’s going to take some time and patience on your part. Set reasonable goals regarding gains that you’re looking for and keep reaching out to people online. Each follower you get is one more than you had, it’s important to keep your spirits up no matter how fast your community is growing.

What do you think?

Have you found any techniques for growing your brand that weren’t mentioned here? Planning on using some of my techniques? Let me know how they work for you. I’ll be happy to answer any questions you have for me regarding this subject. I wish you all the best of luck when it comes to growing your community.