When does your business have too many social media accounts? Dell Computers, at last browse, had at least a dozen accounts. Whole Foods – whose CEO has been recently stirring up controversy with his very vocal opposition to Obama’s healthcare ideas (to the point of inspiring a social-media-led boycott) – has about 150 Twitter accounts. Is that going overboard?

Well in the case of Whole Foods, they lay out their list of Twitter accounts fairly clearly. There are at present only 5 accounts maximum that might be of interest to anyone interested in the supermarket. The other accounts all provide either “metro area” or specific store news streams from several states. So the average Whole Foods Twitter follower is unlikely to follow more than 6-7 of the accounts.

Now despite Whole Foods’ current controversy, you can learn something from their social media strategy. For example, go where your customers are [via Mashable]. That is, don’t feel that you have to create accounts on every social media site. Focus on some of the more popular sites – especially the ones you feel your customers are using – depending on what you want to achieve.

What’s the best way to use Social Media (e.g., Twitter, Facebook, etc.) for your business or organization’s website? American Express’ small business Open Forum has some “secrets”: 1. Be agenda free. 2. Make it personal. 3. Go outside your comfort zone. 4. Manage more with less. 5. Commit to the long haul. To summarize, don’t over-promote your brand or organization. Do try to relate to your “followers” and friends on a personal level – think about what they need, not just how to tell them about your brand, business or organization. Remember that social media marketing is a long-term effort and that you may not get results immediately.

See Open Forum for more info.

Want to display your Twitter tweets or stream on your business website or blog? You have many options to do so. But what if you want to customize the appearance or filter only certain tweet topics?

If you’re not afraid of a little bit of coding, ThinkVitamin has an easy tutorial on how to use the Twitter API’s libraries of code, particularly in PHP. The code there is fairly simple and could be implemented into a WordPress installation — even turned into a plugin.

For example, you could create a custom Twitter badge on your business’ website or blog that shows tweets from your stream (by you and those you follow) that mention your business name or brand.

See ThinkVitamin for more details.

If you own a small business that you promote with a website and/or blog, you might also be using social media sites such as Twitter or Facebook to build your online presence as well as your network. If you are using Facebook for your business, they usually recommend you create a Group or “fan” Page instead of a personal profile. However, one strategy that might be more effective for network building is to first create a profile for yourself, then create either a group or a fan page, possibly both.

Why? Well if you have a personal profile and want to build your network, one way is to create a Note that reveals something about yourself, and then tag some Facebook friends. The idea is to get them to repeat the process by revealing themselves in their own copy of the note (on their personal Facebook profile) and in turn tag some of their friends. If your initial note is interesting enough, it could spread around and result in additional friend requests for you personally. The more people that are in your personal Facebook network, the more people there are who will likely see your Group or Fan Page’s status updates on your Wall (and their stream). If you apply this strategy regularly, it can boost members to your Group or Page.

Nick O’Neill at All Facebook describes a process for creating such notes for Facebook, and how this applies to a small business’ web presence. Just keep in mind that if you push your business facet on your personal Facebook profile notes, it could backfire. There’s a balance of personal and brand aspects that may take time to achieve.

If you publish a blog for your small business’ website, you probably know that’s not enough to achieve “presence” online. What you need is build up your online visibility with the judicious use of social media.

To that end, a guest article at Problogger by Mark Hayward talks about how he created a social media footprint for his business. In his case, his strategy included the use of Flickr’s image sharing service, YouTube, suitable forums, Twitter, Facebook and HARO (Help a Reoprter).

Hayward’s has a companion article to his Problogger piece at his own personal website, which in turn points to a couple of other articles of his, including 25 Ways to Create Your Social Media Footprint Today and 20 Must-Read Beginner Twitter Tips for Small Business Owners (over at TwiTip).

So social networking site Facebook couldn’t buy Twitter, but they recently bought Friendfeed. Now, they’re allowing Facebook Page updates (not profiles though) to be sent Twitter using their own Twitter application. This ideal for businesses that have a Facebook Page and a Twitter account and want to synchronize the two. (From Facebook personal profiles, you can install a Twitter app to send tweets to both Twitter and Facebook simultaneously. This is sort of Facebook’s equivalent for Page profiles.)

You can read more about how Facebook’s Twitter app works at Mashable, All Facebook and the Facebook blog.

Just found some very fascinating statistics about Twitter from a report by Sysomos [via Influential Marketing Blog]. Some of the numbers are not suprising to me, some are. For example, it’s pretty much a law of nature that behavioral/ usage patterns for natural and man-made phenomenon follow an exponetial curve. So the stat that a very small number of Twitter users make up the bulk of activity isn’t such a surprise.

What is a surprise is how few followers the majority of people have (see graph below). Of course, that might explain why Twitter supposedly has such a high bounce of rate people who signup, try it for awhile, then abandon it.

I initially tried Twitter for a few months starting early 2007 and gave up on it shortly afterwards, However, between then and early 2008, I had researched Twitter’s effective uses more thoroughly. People were finding it valuable, and I needed to understand how. In late 2008, I really got into Twitter and have since built up my following. Twitter’s follow limit rules are a bit of a roadblock, but building a truly valuable network does take time.

Here are some tips to follow to learn to use Twitter effectively.

1. Take your time to understand how other people are using Twitter.
2. Decide how you will use Twitter for yourself or your business or organization.
3. Sketch out a Twitter strategy.
4. Determine the daily and weekly tasks necessary for your tasks to be effective.
5. Write up a schedule.

Now get to it!

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is, in a nutshell, a collection of techniques that improve your website or blog’s chances of ranking highly in search engines for specific search terms. It’s not a dark art, despite what some people would have you believe, but it does take having a multi-faceted strategy and adjusting it as necessary. If you’re a business owner trying to build your business or brand online, you might not have the time to do your own SEO. However, SEO’s are costly. If you are planning to hire an SEO, check out DailySEOblog’s list of 9 questions you should ask yourself beforehand.

Here are the questions. Read the DailySEOblog article for the detailed answer:

1. Does your site have a target audience?
2. Would people search for your product/ service/ brand online?
3. Do you have the budget?
4. Do you have the resources?
5. Can you do it yourself?
6. Do you need a redesign?
7. Will your users/ readers accept change?
8. Can you develop new content?
9. Do you expect quick results?

This is a good starting point, though there are other questions you can ask, which I’ll try to cover in the future here at UnpluggedMarketing.