Social media is still growing rapidly, with Facebook having over 200 million US users representing 71% of the US online audience. While Facebook and Twitter are most popular, other platforms like Myspace still have niche audiences. Maintaining a presence on multiple social media sites requires dedicating time to post consistently within each platform's norms, such as once daily on Facebook or a few times daily on Twitter. Tools like Hootsuite allow scheduling posts in advance to save time while still maintaining an active presence. The amount of content shared grows by about 30% each year, highlighting that social media continues to be a important way for online conversations and sharing information.

1. Hottest Trend In Social Media

2. It is 2011, the social media crazy has settle down a bit. We are all on Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, etc.

3. What do you do? How are you going to track your social media? Image by Andreas Blixt

4. How much time do you have to devote to it? Are there short cuts that can be taken to free up your time?

5. Those are all really good questions. Let’s look at them one by one. Image by IronBricks

6. Are you even on the correct media to begin with? With the age from 18 to 75 and with people using over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook, there are 206.2 million US internet users on Facebook. That means 71.2% of the US web audience is on Facebook. Image by MehfuzHossain

7. Twitter is wonderful to be on if you need a local, national, or international combinations of clientele or if you have a website or blog based business. If you’re only looking for local customers don’t wait your time. Image by Stevegarfield

8. Myspace is still the “Artsy” place to be. If you cater to a young demographic from 16 to 30 this is the place to be.

9. When someone says social media, most people think Facebook or Twitter but there are so many more platforms.

10. How do you maintain it?Each platform is different.

11. Twitter allows you to tweet three or four times a day without losing your audience, where Facebook Fan pages have a general rule of one posting a day. Image by LisaGault14

12. Image by Robert Scoble …Myspace is up to two times a day as a rule.

13. Image by Papilly So do we need to post this often?

14. YES! The traffic your social media sites bring to your business can be quite substantial. Every time you update your social media sites you get a search engine optimization to all sites linked to the site you updated. So keeping up your social media is the best and cheapest way to achieve this task. Image by George Pollard

15. Is there a short cut? Image by karbon69

16. Hootsuite, SocialOOmph, etc all allow you to schedule posts to the most popular social media sites for up to a year in advance. Image by Jakeludington

17. Platforms like Facebook need a live presents 70% of the time. People want to know you are there checking your page and posting live or you may lose fans and traffic. However, platforms like twitter are less finicky about scheduled posts. Image by Alykat

18. Still think social media IS JUST A TREND? Image by rdenubila

19. Each year more people engage in conversation online, via social sites and Social tools – at a rate of about 30% per year. Image by Little PC Angels

20. THE NEW CONVERSASION: IS TAKING PLACE ON SOCIAL SITES.“by it’s own numbers, 5B pieces of content are shared on Facebook each week.” Image by netzcobold

21. Remember keeping track of everything is very important to your social media success. Image by zaraki.kenpachi