What is Social Media Marketing?

Social Media Marketing or SMM is a form of internet marketing having one goal and it is to achieve branding and marketing communications with the help of social media networks. Social Media is a shorter top level term that describes the space overall, and covers the activities around social interaction, content, videos, images and audio exposure.

Many people using the internet for their business sometimes forget the key pieces for success. They lack planning and no specific target goal or objective. All they do is execute, execute and execute without even tracking the results of their hardships.

Social Media Marketing Top Goals to Achieve:

• Website Traffic
• Website Impressions
• Sales Tracking and Conversion
• Bounce Rate, Page Views, Ad Exposure
• Popularity of brand online
• Business development and a broader customer reach

How can you create and convert all this activity with social media?

The secret in converting sales with the use of social media will depend on how you interact with other members. Providing useful information or content to get links and reputation is also the key to reach the key players in the industry. You can also setup your own blog to explain your side further and share the link to blog directories and other bloggers. Blogs are search engine friendly, meaning it can be easily crawled by spiders or bots achieving descent search engine rankings.

List of social media sites where you can start your campaign:

1. Facebook

2. Twitter

3. Youtube

4. Del.icio.us

5. LinkedIn

6. Stubleupon

7. Flickr

8. Reddit

9. Digg

10. Technorati

11. Friendfeed

12. Newsvine

Now a new social media platform is being developed where you can get free SEO training and Social Media Marketing System for you and your business. They made the site specially for networkers and simplified for small business starters.

Who are your audience?
This should be the very first thing before you set your social media marketing campaign online. Before you do risk management, and wait for any result, make sure to know if you are hitting the right spot. Know your audience before knowing what they want. Know where they are and how they react to product offers such as yours then begin introducing yourself not your product. Remember there is an unwritten rule in social media marketing, build relationship first before selling.

How long will you last?
With social media marketing at mind there is no doubt you will have traffic quickly than ever. It is important that you know when your business online can last. Will you leave them hanging if you reach your goal? Will you be able to continue doing business even at times of trouble?
You have to make sure that the length of your campaign will greatly affect your brand online if you stopped the process so suddenly. It is better to not do social media marketing if you do not have a long term plan for your customers.

How powerful are your products/services?
Let’s say that you already have the perfect plan at hand, the right market to spread the word and a new product to be introduced. Next question is will your products or services stands to the test? Are you confident enough about the effectiveness of your products? If not, I suggest you back it up first then set sail if the boat is strong enough.
If you introduce your product to the market, you know that most of them have the idea on what to expect. What makes your product different from what they already knew is a plus. Be ready to be under scrutiny especially if you have weak and same old product with a new name. Negative feedback will ruin your so-called perfect plan so be wise before spreading the words to the market.

How is your time management?
Time is a very important factor for business, big or small you have to know the time allocated for each target sites. How you manage your time will reflect on the results of your social media marketing campaign.

I wrote an article about how important it is to have time management in social media marketing . And I hope it can be helpful for your campaign planning as well.

Examples goals to look forward to doing social media marketing:

• Reduce the cost while achieving the same target
• Understand what the customers really want
• Better exposure of products and services online
• Increase your reputation to online communities
• Generate leads and increase of sales