This is an interesting time in the evolution of social media. There's a real buzz about it among business people. They figure: Everyone's doing it. I'd better get into it so I don't get left behind ... But because they don't really understand how it works, and they're time poor anyway, they go and find a firm to do it all for them.

Now, often this would be a wise decision (as long as they choose a company that does a good job and doesn't overcharge them, of course). Well established, quite large businesses would benefit most, I think. There'd be so many aspects to monitor and manage, after all.

They'd likely have a social media presence already in the sense that people would be sharing updates about them (hopefully overwhelmingly positive, of course!). So, as well as creating and managing extended campaigns, contests and the like their social media managers would be engaged in reputation management on a daily basis. It would be impractical to do all that in house, surely.

But what if you were just a small outfit with a few employees, or even a sole trader? That's a very different situation.

Now, I know that a lot of people in this situation would be tempted to pay for someone to handle their social media presence for them because of the time commitment required. Many would also be tentative about doing it themselves because it's all new and mysterious to them. Best hand the task to someone who really knows what they're doing, they'd be thinking.

Well, in my opinion if you're in this boat you should do it yourself -- or at least give it a red hot go.

Why? Because the whole point of social media is to enable people to connect with each other quickly and efficiently and then communicate in a meaningful way. So why introduce a middleman? Isn't it better to just cut to the chase?

Take Twitter for example. In a lot of ways it's like virtual speed dating. Sure, you're not looking for romance on the site (well at least not in business, which is what I'm focusing on here!). But it's certainly a very rapid method of sussing out heaps of people quickly and then keeping in contact with the ones you like, right?

Now, to extend the analogy, what if you're a bloke called Bill who's looking for love. You think: everyone's into speed dating. Better get into it. But I find it all a bit daunting ...

So you decide to hire a speed dating manager -- some appealing, confident guy who basically impersonates you because you're too shy, or busy or whatever to attend the event in person. And he shows up and meets a whole bunch of women in rapid succession. He exchanges contact details with several of them.

Then when you want to go to the next step you call them a few days later. They say who's this? You say it's Bill, from the other night? They say, "Mmmkay ... You don't sound like him." Then you explain that he was your speed dating manager.

If they didn't all hang up at that point you'd be lucky. And if you did manage to keep any of them on the line you'd be starting from scratch again ...

See what I'm getting at?

If you want to do business with someone you are going to have to actually connect with him at some stage -- in person, online or on the phone. So why not get the ball rolling using Twitter, Facebook, or some other social network?

Sure, you might not feel comfortable with this approach for various reasons, or just be too flat out to give it the time and energy required for it to start getting results. But it's certainly worth a try don't you think?

You may know of a little sandwich bar in the heart of the CBD called Toastface Grillah. I'd never been there myself but I always remembered the name, which is one of the reasons I liked their Facebook page. It was distinctive and seemed vaguely familiar.

Turns out that the name was inspired by the hugely popular rap artist Ghostface Killah. I'm practically a codger now at fifty so I didn't know anything about this guy but I must have heard of him through the media at some stage. 

Anyway, just a few days ago there was a sequence of events that could be described as synchronicitous for all concerned. Ghostface himself was in Perth on tour. And he got to know about the sandwich shop named in his honour. So, with the help of a local app company called HipFlask the eatery held a daytime concert by the famed rapper. Needless to say it was a huge success and went gangbusters on social media. 

For anyone wanting to make a mark locally and online the little sandwich shop has some valuable, er, takeaways:

Firstly, having a unique, memorable and evocative brand name can really help with marketing. And if you can do something grand and audacious you'll reap huge rewards. (The event was reported internationally, as the above mentioned article attests.) 

Even approaching the big name entertainer with the idea must have been a tad intimidating -- not to mention pricey. I mean, this was a little sandwich shop hidden in a narrow lane in one of the world's most isolated cities! But then, that's what made it such a memorable story ... Clearly, thinking big, taking a risk and seizing an opportunity can really pay off.

It's interesting also that a locally based app company -- whose product is Perth-centric -- played a pivotal role. They must be doing alright for themselves to be able to cough up for this event. This was validation of Perth's growing reputation as a tech startup hub, as well as it being a nascent paradise for foodies, coffee-lovers, bar-hoppers and music fans.

If you have a business website you're crazy if you don't include a blog in it. There are so many advantages to doing so, including building your authority in your niche and giving the site a boost SEO-wise. 

And there's an indirect advantage related to social media. In a way blogging is a form of social media in itself, since you use your blog to share content and readers can engage with it in comments. Rather than just being a uni-directional method of online publishing, it's interactive, conversational. You also share other people's content in the body of blog posts, or by linking to them.

So if you get into blogging, add content regularly, link out to and quote other bloggers in your posts, as well as reply to your commenters, you'll already have a good idea of what social media is all about. So if and when you do get into using Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus etc for marketing you'll "hit the ground running" so to speak. 

Also, a regularly updated blog will supply you with something new to share on these networks. If you're a non-blogging business person you can still use your social networking accounts to get clicks to your website's various pages, of course. But if you've only got five or six of these to tweet over and over again that soon becomes boring for your and your followers.

If you're constantly sharing your own new, comprehensive and informative blog posts on the other hand, that makes your stream more interesting to read as well as create. You'll get lots of click-through traffic from these shares, and your authority will build much more quickly than if you were only sharing other people's articles and blog posts and your own occasional and necessarily brief insights in the form of tweets, Facebook updates and the like.   

I do a lot of walking around the city and suburbs of Perth and see numerous fascinating little corners of it that I never knew existed. It's not the oldest city in Australia, but it has a lot of history nonetheless. And it's not just the historical features of certain areas that are interesting. Those pertaining to culture and lifestyle are compelling as well.

There's growing pride and interest in these parts of Perth. It's no longer seen as a "big country town" that deserves the label "Dullsville". It has a new found reputation as a teeming artistic and cultural hub with a vibrant cafe and small bar scene. 

For this reason I've often thought that running guided tours of the city and surrounds could be a profitable venture. Of course bus tours have long been popular. But being logistically quite involved they would be comparatively costly to get up and running. The same could be said of other tours utilizing other modes of motorized transport. 

On the other hand a small, inexpensive themed walking tour would comparatively easy to get up and running. You'd have to have an interesting route to take, along with well rehearsed, fascinating patter, of course. But you're not paying for the use of various machines. 

There are a couple of outfits that offer tours of this kind. They seem to be focused on the CBD and surrounds. There may be little room for others, but considering how fast the city continues to grow I doubt that would be the case for long. 

And you needn't focus on the most built up areas. You could hold interesting walking tours wherever there are interesting locations. On the weekend, for example, I saw this sign for an "Artwalk" near the corner of High And Swanbourne streets.

The event's Facebook page has this description: 

Artwalk takes you on a leisurely journey to view some of Freo’s local artists in their home studios, from the Monument-al to the Bazaar.

This seems to have been a free event. But it was certainly a canny piece of marketing. The organizer knew of a bunch of talented people living in close proximity to each other, so he devised a guided walk that would have been interesting for art-lovers as well as good promotion for the artists involved.     

And it shows just how specific you can be with this kind of tour. If you've got some fascinating local knowledge about a certain part of Perth, you could hold a themed walk pretty much anywhere. So why not make a buck taking people on it?