If you’re trying to get your brand some social media exposure for the first time take it slow. Establish a presence on Facebook and Twitter to start with, or maybe Twitter and LinkedIn. You can decide which networks are going to be best for your brand, but the important thing is not to get carried away.

There are too many people who never met a social network they didn’t like — don’t be one of them.

Focusing good quality attention on one or two networks can usually yield better results than spending 3 or 4 minutes on 5 or 6 networks.

Personally, I don’t think you can go wrong focusing on the mighty 3 — Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. However, you may find that you get better results using something else.

Whatever networks you decide to use you should focus on those and don’t allow yourself to be distracted by the new flavor of the week.

Jessica, over at Online Marketing Blog has a great piece about earning money with social media. She looks at how to develop content specifically for social media networks. She lists some great ideas she picked up from PubCon 2008.

As Jessica points out, you have to be sure you’re always operating within the rules of the particular social network you’re looking to get traffic from. One thing you don’t wanna do is get labeled a spammer and then get banned.

(pic via Manish Pandey)