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As with everything else in business, successful social media marketing entails building a strategy. Aligned with your core business principles such a platform should provide information on monthly, seasonal and annual occurrences that affect your business and, as such, affect your customers. Planning such a strategy will help to drive traffic to your Web site and your blog but it’s important to remember some key points in order to get the most out of it:

• Develop a planned strategy: three- six or 12-month. Know what blog topics you’ll be posting on what dates. By doing this you’re letting your subscribers know when to expect your next blog post and they’ll anticipate it on the same date every time. If your postings are all over the map – different times, different days every month or every other month – you might not get the feedback you want. You might not get any feedback.
• Don’t be aimless. In other words, don’t rattle on about the weather if you really want to discuss information on what your business offers consumers during a particular season. Likewise, don’t rant on a particular issue that’s bothering you. People drawn to your blog site don’t want your opinion; they want information on a solution.
• Entertain. While the name of the game is to supply information, at the same time, have some fun with it. Even the driest of subject matters can be presented in a format that’s enjoyable to read.
• Learn the art of creating the perfect subject line. If you’re introducing a new blog topic via mass email, make the subject line intriguing enough so that people will want to click through. Use action words and present tense to give a sense of urgency.
• Be engaged on social media network sites. Use Twitter and Facebook not just as a place to dump information on your business. Interact with people; share information and be interested in what they’re telling you. That sort of give and take helps to build a network and a following.

Social media marketing is, indeed, a multi-level strategy to engage, to capture interest and to build continuing relationships. Doing it correctly can make you and your business stand out in the crowd.

The Social Media website Facebook has done in nine short months what it took television 13 years to do – build a network of 50 million users.  Social Media sites like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn and others also account for 11 percent of all worldwide Internet usage. That is 11 percent of what the entire world is doing online and with the multitude of activities one could be participating in online, those are serious statistics!

The results of Social Media Marketing differ drastically from the results of traditional marketing efforts like television or direct mail for two main reasons:

Consumers today are not the same consumers of yesterday.  Today, consumer are watching television, updating their Facebook, texting on their cell and eating dinner, simultaneously.  Until something strikes their curiosity, they have the ability to not fully focus on any one particular task.

Consumers today have built infiltration systems and are less likely to respond to one particular advertisement.  Advertisements are on billboards, web pages, products, text messages, commercials, blogs, and social media sites.  With so much information surrounding each consumer it is only reasonable for the human brain to cope by filtering all this information. Statistics show that consumers are more likely to trust a friend’s opinion or advice over that of an advertisement. This goes to show you that consumers are more interested in what their friends have to say and social networking is one of the places they interact with friends. Therefore, if their friends are commenting on a companies page or product on social media sites, their friends will see and  are more likely to respond.

So where does this leave Social Media Marketing?  It leaves social media sites to do what it does best, socialize.  By having hands on contact with consumers companies are not only letting them into their world, but they are also in theirs.  Consumers are laying their cards on the table and all you have to do is play.  Think outside the box when it comes to social media, think beyond banner advertisements and mass emails but open yourself up to the concept of the opportunity to capture the attention of the world by opening the lines of communication.