• Target your audience: Derek Capo, 30, chief executive of Next Step China LLC, a Miami-based firm that helps arrange opportunities to study, volunteer and work in China, says he spends 10 to 20 hours a month on LinkedIn, finding and messaging potential customers. Mr. Capo posts messages to 50 LinkedIn groups he thinks may be interested in his companys servicessuch as teaching and language groupscustomizing the message for each audience. He also sends personal messages to students majoring in Mandarin or who mention in their profile a desire to go abroad. He says he typically gets responses from five to 10 potential customers each week.

The social-media tools available to small-business owners are proliferating as st as the information that flows through them. But when it comes to using social media to reach customersor potential customersmany business owners struggle to figure out what works and what doesnt.

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• Dont be too promotional. It may seem counterintuitive, but overtly promotional content, such as sweepstakes, special offers and contests, should be only 10% of what your companys ns and followers see, says Mr. Chaney. About 70% of what you share should be useful information that you bring to the audience, he says, such as compelling conversation, links to articles, blogs and infographics that support your companys message. The remaining 20% should be other peoples social-media content, such posts and pictures your ns put on your Facebook page or re-tweets of people you follow on Twitter.

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• Show your personality. People relate to people more than they relate to brands,new york escort says Paul Chaney, an Internet marketing consultant in Layette, La., who suggests using social media to share videos or photos of a companys founders and staff.

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Wade Foster, 26, co-founder of tech startup Zapier.com, in Mountain View, Calif., says he has gotten a positive response from hosting video chats on Google + Hangouts, which allows a user to interact with as many as nine other people in front of an audience. Sometimes the chats include talk about Zapier, which helps business owners sync data between Web apps. Other times they are about his life or news events. People arent used to engaging with the owner of a company on a regular basis, he says. We usually get five to 10 people on screen in the course of an hour. They remember that experience and tell others.

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The U.S. economy shrank for the first time in more than three years in the fourth quarter, underscoring the halting nature of the recovery. But the strength of consumer spending and business investment suggested that the economy will grow, albeit slowly, this year.

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• It isnt all about sales. Social media can be a low-cost way for a small firm to staff up quickly. Hastings Water Works, a Brecksville, Ohio, pool-maintenance and lifeguard-staffing firm, uses Twitter and Facebook to find and hire summer employees. We used to put ads in the and fliers in the high school, Social Media but now we can tweet, Heres a great summer job and link to the application page, says David Hastings, who founded the firm in 1992. New hired employees often keep the buzz going by touting their new jobs on their own social-media profiles.

The seemingly random killing of a 15-year-old girl who performed last week as a majorette at President Barack Obamas second inauguration is crystallizing anger over this citys high murder rate.

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