Training executives for promoting their business via social media outlets is becoming a huge focus for many companies. Social networking communities hold great potential for marketing, branding and building your company image. In fact, many companies are hiring employees expressly to manage their social networking media for them.

As this popularity grows and more and more people turn to social networking communities as a top vehicle for communication and information, it’s vital that businesses become involved in them and use the potential of the interaction within those networks. Part of that involves training your employees on how to promote themselves and your company through social media, and how to keep their communities in check while making sure to not blur the lines between business and personal networks.

Here are a few tips to get you started:

• Make sure that your employees are savvy in social networking. Introduce them to the top three networks and give them brief rundowns on how each works.
• Take care to warn them about mixing business with pleasure. For example, your customers shouldn’t be given access to your employees’ photos of their beer chugging adventure at Oktoberfest.
• Help your workers get their professional accounts started by providing examples of appropriate profiles.
• Give your employees samples of suitable status updates they can use on their accounts to promote your business.
• Create a series of Tweets for employees to send out with links to your website.

With 90 million users on LinkedIn, 175 million on Twitter, and over 500 million on Facebook, social networks are insanely popular and are becoming a top resource for businesses from every industry across the board. In the past few years, the widespread use of these communities has changed the face of business and people are including their LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter links in their email signatures, on their websites and even on their business cards.

By making sure your company and your employees are well versed in the social media game, you stay current in the online conversation and up-to-date in the ever expanding world of social media marketing.