Social-Media Best Practices: 12 Tips for Making the Best of Any Social Site, Part 2

[Editor's note: This is part 2 of a two-part series on social-media best practices. View part 1 here.]

Create meaningful relationships
Now that you’re building a nice-sized following and engaging with the right crowd, you should focus on building relationships that are useful to others. Sticking with the disaster-relief example, if you were engaged in helping those affected by a natural disaster in New Zealand, then you could help others by providing them up-to-the-minute news, pointing them to resources that would allow them to help or participate in the relief efforts, and creating conversations with others that help draw attention to the cause. By being a resource to your community and helping others, you quickly build a great reputation online.