Six lessons from five companies that use social media

Very useful article from Surajit Agarwal on how to ride the social media network to ones advantage. Based on the experiences of five companies which have have more than a million facebook fans and twitter followers and have been on social media platforms for less than a year (on average). Except for one, they neither have a budget nor staff for social media marketing activities. But they acknowledge that social media marketing is the "backbone of their marketing efforts."  These are the lessons from the five companies that have understood social media and have used it to grow their business:

• Listen
• Integrate
• Engage
• Use discussion boards
• Inform not just advertise
• Social Media Marketing is really free 

Full article here.