From 6 degrees to SnapChat, social has gone from using technology to connect people to enabling full expression of one's being.

What social has done is enabled and amplified our natural tendencies, as social animals, to connect, to network, to promote others and ourselves, to lurk, to emote, and everything in between. Look at the election...

Perhaps what it does best from a marketing perspective is enables you to discover, connect with, and mobilize your biggest fans - your advocates.

But let's focus this a little more so on you. Your executive presence and how social can enable - or disable - it.

We've got to start with strategy. What is your end goal? Why do you have a LinkedIn profile? Why are you on Facebook? What are you going to do with those profiles? How will that effect your career? Your life?

It's all too easy to set up a social presence and too hard to make it maintainable and successful. A big part of this conundrum is not knowing where your audience is and maybe not even knowing who they are. This is critical to understand in terms of meeting your end goal and in using social media effectively.

Another conundrum! If you don't know - ask. I almost always have new clients survey their audiences to see what social nets they use and prefer.

To establish yourself you need to decide how much of you is going to be out there. It can be different for different social networks, but define it first. And whatever you do, be authentic. If you're not, you'll be found out and it will lead take you down far faster than you can build yourself up.

To establish your presence you need content. So along with your end goal, your audience, and the social nets you use to reach that audience, what will your message be and what content will support that on a consistent basis?

Just because you build it, it doesn't mean they will come. You've got to be consistent and consistently good with your content. This will attract your audience to you and keep them coming back. It will also keep you in front of your audience so when they want what you have, they know right where to go.

So in the end it is all about having a strategy, knowing your audience, connecting with your audience in the channels they use, determining your message, sharing content to support your message, and doing it consistently well and on a consistent basis. Any questions?