Guest commentary by Caron Golden

Caron Golden is a freelance writer with clients in the homebuilding industry. She is passionate about social media training and helping businesses implement social media strategies. She can be reached at caron@goldenwriting.com, as well as on Facebook and Linkedin. You can follow her on Twitter @carondg.

There’s nothing mind-blowingly brilliant about this, but if you are investing the time and funds to launch and maintain a social media communications platform, I hope you’re not forgetting one crucial element:

Asking your potential buyers and brokers for their social networking contact information.

All of the contact forms you present to potential customers–whether in person at the sales office or online–should allow them to tell you if they’re on Facebook and Twitter, and what their account name is. The forms should also enable customers to confirm that they would be agreeable to your company making these connections with them.

Trust me, even with a list with people’s names and email addresses, chances are you will never find them by doing a search on Twitter and, depending on how unusual their names are, you might not be able to identify them on Facebook. Plus, it’s just ridiculously time consuming to do that kind of search.

It should go without saying that, in turn, your Twitter and Facebook information (and Linkedin, if appropriate) should be included in every communication you have with customers and brokers, from your website, emails, and blog (you do operate a frequently updated blog, don’t you?) to any collateral material you’ve printed, as well as stationery and business cards. If your salespeople have their own business-related social media accounts, those should be part of all of their communications, including email signatures and business cards.

I know this all sounds ridiculously obvious, but it has been endlessly surprising to me to find this pretty big detail not automatically integrated into social media programs. And, if you’re making an effort to establish social networking for your business, you should have someone-many someones-to connect with.