Become Socially Acceptable —Sherburne

Assuming that this column has encouraged you to dip your toes into the social media pool, where do you start? At a minimum, set up Twitter and LinkedIn accounts. LinkedIn is more business-focused, and you can actually link the two.

If you want to "tweet" something or send a message by Twitter, by having your accounts linked, it automatically pops up on LinkedIn as a status as well, so it saves you time and gets the message to a broader audience. You can go a step further and download TweetDeck, a free application that allows you to monitor Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn activities from one nicely integrated interface. You can link the three as well, and choose where your messages will go. You can also track "mentions" of you or your company to see what others are saying.