Many people (and companies) today believe that they have a very firm grasp of Social Media Marketing. They will tell you about how many followers they have on twitter, how many friends they have on facebook, in a bid to sound impressive. Its really not.

What many of them will not be able to tell you is how Social Media Marketing has helped them achieve their goals, what those goals are, and what figures they can use to support it. They will not be able to tell you how many visitors they converted from their twitter account to their website in the last 6 months, and how much of that traffic resulted in sales or advertising revenue.

What most don’t realize is that Social Media Marketing and Social Networking is about more than being an “Attention Whore”. Though many would have us believe that is what it has been reduced to. A very basic understanding of traditional marketing can’t be taken for granted. The random post to your twitter account or blog simply isn’t going to cut it! Its why many people believe that Social Media Marketing is a scam despite the fact it elected President Obama. When it is done correctly and approached in a way to track results, what Social Media Marketing can accomplish is mind boggling!

Social Media Marketing: Goal Setting

Before you can develop a strategy you need to clearly define some goals that you want to accomplish through Social Media Marketing, most of the common goals of SMM are as follows:

• Build Brand Awareness
• Establish Creditability and Authority
• Link Building Campaign
• Inform and Educate a Community or Audience
• Monitor Your Brand’s Reputation/Identity
• Improving Customer Service
• Learning More About Your Customers and Target Market

Social Media Marketing: Strategy

Once you’ve clearly defined your goals you can properly begin the task of developing an effective strategy for you Social Media Marketing Campaign. When doing this I strongly suggest that you consider your audience before deciding on what tactics and platforms you want to you use.

Example 1: Tactic- Viral Video Marketing. Platforms: Youtube, Vimeo, Flickr, Facebook, Twitter. Audience: Ages 16-30. Media: Music Video.

When you look at this it makes perfect sense. If you are handling the marketing for an up and coming musician, your audience is obviously the MTV generation. Launching a viral video campaign using the websites mentioned is putting your media where your audience is likely to be, and where it can be easily shared, discussed, tracked, and redistributed. It would make sense to include Linkedin, in your strategy because of the nature of your audience and media. Many people waste energy by trying to use ineffective platforms that will not reach the proper audience, try to put some thought into this.

Always consider the following and do your research when developing your strategy:

• Identify your audience and where they are online.
• Understand the needs and desires of your audience.
• Set timelines for achieving your goals.
• Determine ways to track your progress, such as Google Analytics.

Once you’ve done your homework you can get into actually implementing your Social Media Marketing Strategy!

Building relationships is the key.
Don’t just jump onto a social network and start marketing yourself, its the perfect way to damage your online reputation. Take the time get know people and contribute to the online community in a positive way. Establish a tone and a position from which to start discussions and identify individuals whom you can help and who will be helpful to you.

Schedule your task, and stay focused.
Just posting randomly to your blog, twitter account or online forum won’t cut it. You have to set a schedule and stick with it, and be consistent. Being sporadic or taking extended breaks will cause you following to diminish, where as being reliable will grow your following and your reputation. People will come to rely on the information, resources or entertainment you provide. In the case of a blog, try writing several article while keeping them as drafts so that if you don’t finish an article in time or are too busy you have something in reserve to post. You can also schedule tweetdeck to make timely post to your twitter and facebook accounts. In the case of Youtube you can set videos to private and move them to being public at another time.

Monitoring your progress.
Social Media Marketing is not a quick fix, and you can’t expect overnight results. Additionally you need to monitor your progress and determine what is working and what is not, evaluate and re-evaluate your strengths and weaknesses and spread out your attention accordingly. Using tools like Google Alerts, and Google Analytics is a good place to start.

Conclusions.
Through planning, research and a general understand of basic marketing, and learning how to properly use Social Media platforms like twitter, you can effectively leverage Social Media to help you achieve your goals. If you jump into this without thinking about it, you are simply setting yourself up for failure.

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Roberto Blake

Roberto Blake is a Professional Graphics Designer and Photographer, living in Fayetteville NC, has work been working with Photoshop® for over 8 years now, and Flash® for the past 5 years.

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