In the last year all any of us have heard about is Twitter, Facebook, Blogs or some other type of social media platform.

Social media marketing is starting to mature.

In the past businesses have failed to achieve an ROI because they failed to plan or have a strategy. If we create a Facebook account, Twitter account or for that matter any type of social media account with no objective or plan, then how will we know rather we achieved what we set out to do?

This means that we need to research our target audience, as well as figure out a plan of action and decide which social media sites can best help us achieve that plan. As our social media strategies mature, they will become more effective. And the neat thing about social media marketing is that it’s pretty easy to get ahead of our competition. The reason for this is that by nature people prefer doing things the easy way and with social media marketing, in most cases the more difficult it is, the better the results.

Let me give you an Example.

A very good tactic is building relationships with bloggers, yet very few people do this, while lots of people use article marketing, even though it is not nearly as effective.

My objective is to get my target audience to engage and participate, as well as to convert those followers and fans into paying customers.

Because we are able to track and measure our social media marketing strategies we have learned that social media marketing is not as effective when it’s a standalone strategy. We’ve also learned that companies that are still in the learning stages of social media marketing are less likely to spend money on social media marketing.

So…basically I need to investigate and see what motivates my audience and then determine how I can help my audience, get out of my efforts, that which motivates them. Once this is done I can determine what will spell success for that platform and start measuring to see if I am able to meet what I predetermined would spell out success.

Step 1 is to profile my target audience. I need to know and understand what platforms they use and how they are using those platforms. At the same time I am doing this I need to study my competitors to see how they are using social media marketing and rather or not they have been successful with it, up until this point.

Step 2 is to set my goals. And I will make this a lot easier by making sure that I am measuring targeted objectives and not things like brand awareness.

Step 3 is about taking action. Now that I’ve set my goals I need to make a plan that will allow me to meet those goals. This is where I specify what social marketing tactics I will be implementing and the timetables, campaigns and best practices, roles and responsibilities, policies and procedures, and budgets I will require. This is also where I will define my social marketing architecture – the pathways for connecting target audiences and conversations through content hubs, landing pages and conversion points.

Step 4 is where I determine what social media platforms I will be using. Here I will be looking at the platform and what I feel like the lifespan of that social platform is. This is when I will identify and select the social platforms that can help me obtain my overall goal. Will I use Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn all or something totally different to connect with my target audience?

The problem is that I need to know and understand what it is I want to measure, so let me layout a couple things I need to be looking at.

Things to Measure;

• Sales and Conversions

• Search Engine Rankings & Positions

• Engagement with Bloggers, Journalists, Twitterers, and others.

• Leads Generated

• Network size

• brand or product being talked about

• Website Traffic

• Improve Brand or Product Reputation

• Public Relations

• Customer Support Quality

• Customer Support Costs

What tools are available for measuring these things?

I can use;

• J.D. Power & Assoc.
• Yahoo! Alerts
• Bing Search
• Google Blog Search
• Yahoo! Search
• Twitter Search
• Google Alerts
• Google Search
• Google Analytics

One problem people have is that they put their website in the middle of their social media marketing strategies and look at how much traffic is being driven to that website, as the only measurable part of their social media marketing efforts.

Social platforms I want to use;

1. Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.

2. Microblogging Twitter, Jaiku, etc.

3. Content sharing YouTube, Flickr, SlideShare, etc.

4. Blogging

5. SEO

6. Advertising on blogs, social networks or other social media sites

7. Forums

8. Social Bookmarking

A good tactic would be participating in groups that are already populated with my target audience and not just build a Facebook fan page and wait.

Now it’s time to take a look at some of the things I want to use along with social media marketing.

• Website
• SEO
• Press Releases
• Online Ads
• Paid Search

Now when I start marketing on these sites one thing I want to keep in mind is that most people use social sites in the late afternoons, so my message is more affective, the more people that see it.

When using social media marketing, the one thing that I need to keep in mind is that I am only getting my message out to a small percent of the people who are actually following me.

Think about it…have you ever set and read all the twits you get in a day?

I normally read a couple at the top, but that’s it. If I am making a post myself I might skim a couple just to see what going on but their lucky if I read more than about 3. Most people do the same thing. So if you are getting your message out to 1% of the people that are following you, then you are doing well.

The only way to combat this is to spread out our efforts.

Other words, instead of just being on LinkedIn, I’ll be on Facebook. And instead of only being on YouTube I’ll be on Flickr, Slideshare, Photobucket, GoogleKnol, Squidoo, Vimeo, Hubpages, Work and Scribd. I’ll spread out the time of day when I post and I’ll increase the number of tools I use to spread my message. And for social bookmarking I have Delicious, Digg, StumbleUpon, Yahoo! Buzz, Technorati, Reddit, Kaboodle, Sphinn, and Mixx.

For me it is not about sending traffic to my site but rather generating leads.

One of the biggest reasons that more companies don’t enter or start doing social media marketing is that they either don’t have or don’t want to spend the money on someone full time doing their social media marketing, because they are uncertain as to rather they will get a ROI.

When people are in the process of making a purchase, what part of social media influences them the most through that purchasing process?

Blogs are great for education and getting them through the front door but once they get through the door blogs effectiveness begins to drop. While discussion forums and boards grow in importance, as a potential clients get closer to making a purchase.

Marketing With Linkedin.

LinkedIn is the 16th most visited website on the internet. They have over 100 million users and the average income of someone that uses LinkedIn is over $100,000 a year.

LinkedIn has a lot of potential.

LinkedIn is about meeting people, building a relationship with them and introducing them to your business. The only way to do this is to accept every invitation you get.

The game plan is to meet people, build a relationship and drive traffic from LinkedIn to your website.

You want to build credibility, and be known as an expert in your filed.

You need to look at things like;

• Companies;

• More;

• Profile;

You want to show up #1 when someone types in your main keyword in the LinkedIn search engine.

The alone makes you

Look like an expert, the top guys will want to connect with you, have credibility as well as some authority. And in turn you can sale for more and get better jobs.

It’s all about keyword stuffing.

But let’s not  look spammy.

You don’t want to make your profile look like a spammer nor do you want to go against LinkedIn’s policy.

#1: Your Headline:
You want your headline to be your main keyword.

#2: Your Current Work Experience:
For your work experience you can put any customers you have done work for.

#3: Your Past:
Every customer you’ve ever had is a past work experience.

#4: Summary:
Write something about yourself and try and use the keywords you want to rank for.

#5: Specialties:
This is pretty much just a list of what you do.

You want to go to your URL and click edit next to it, change it to either your main keyword or the website name.

Find the people you’ve done business with in the past that are on LinkedIn and (if the experience was good) send them a recommendation. Don’t ask for one in return but the hope is, they will return the favor. If you have employees you can approach them and ask if they mind giving you a recommendation, since you do business together daily. Recommendations are free and when you write a recommendation for someone, that recommendation shows up in their profile and you get a link from their profile back to yours, in turn sending you traffic.

When someone lands on your profile the first thing they see is your summary. So make it good. And make sure you change the link that says My Website & My Company to your keywords.

You want the profile set up so it looks nice at a glance.

• You want to start with a paragraph about who you are.

• Then you want to tell who you will be helping.

• And then how you will help them.

Each topic is going to have its own header and under each header will be about a paragraph or so of content. At the end of this you want a call to action, something simple like; I currently do social media marketing for SMM.com.co. Our job is helping people make money with LinkedIn and other social media sites. To learn more, go to SMM.com.co.

Here, let me give you a better idea.

I am also in the Web Design and Social Media Marketing Business

I am the founder of Geeks on Steroids and my main job is figuring out new and better ways to market the company. I am also the founder of SMM which is a social media marketing firm. To learn more about me go to janethd.com or just drop me an email at janethd @ janethd. com, or give me a call at 1800-518-7056.

Your last sentence should be something like that.

Just keep in mind that this is a resume that we don’t want to look like a resume.

Enough of All This, Let’s Start Marketing

This stuff is easy to do, like adding connections. Just click on your Contacts tab in the menu or the add connections button in the top right hand corner of the page. Then you will notice that there is another menu under the top menu, just click people you may know there and start adding connections. And of course you can enter your email account information and it will contact all your current friends, family, clients and co-workers for you.

From the drop down list you can pick from :

• Colleagues
• Classmates
• People you may know
• People you work with
• People you went to school with

Now, keep in mind that the larger the network the more powerful it becomes and the more opportunities it’s able to produce. So…if you are looking for opportunities in the way of jobs, leads or work then you want to grow your network. The other cool thing is that you can export your connection list. You can export all your connections into a list and have them on your computer.

And keep in mind that the people you connect with can see your updates, tweets, messages, status, answer to questions, comments and… everything else from your RSS feeds to your articles. Everything you’re doing, people are seeing, so the more you do, the better it gets.

LinkedIn gives you a lot of power that gets you more exposure, more traffic, more leads, more sales, more authority, and everything else you want.

You can also start your own groups

You want to join some of the best and most influential groups that you can. By joining groups, you get access to their members. But you want to take it a step further and create your own group as well.

The thing about owning your own group is that you can email them

Did you know;

On LinkedIn you can send an announcement out once every 7 days, to your members. This means you can send out really good information, once every 7 days to get to know and build a relationship with your members. You can also create a sub-group inside your group, to break the group into smaller groups that focus on one industry.

Other words, you could have a main group called “social media marketing” and then have a group inside that group, that only talked about LinkedIn and another one that only talked about YouTube. You could then get the content for your groups by setting up RSS feeds and pulling the content from some of the best blogs and social media marketing sites online.

But it’s best to have at least 500 or more connection before you start your group, so when you launch your group you can send invitations to the people already connected with you.

Something short and to the point.

“I’d love for you to join the SMM.com.co Network. I just created it to hopefully help us all connect better. You know…interact, share ideas, practices, tips, strategies, talk about the best deals and things like that.”

Now…When Someone Joins Your Group They Promote It For You!!

That’s right, every time someone joins a group the groups logo appears in your profile, so this means every time someone joins your group, your logo will appear in their profile.

And then from here you can go to asking and answering questions. The idea is to answer about 5 questions every day and turn those answers into blog post.

And don’t forget to create a company page. If any of your employees sign up and use their company email address the company logo will appear in their profile page.

Just Getting Started?

Anyone that knows me or has spent any time around me knows that I am not a big fan of affiliate marketing. I want to control of my sales funnel and the only way to have that is to have total control over the product that I am selling.
The niche you go into is the single most important part of the process. If you pick the wrong niche, you’ll have to work twice as hard to make a quarter of the money.

All niches are not profitable. And no matter what niche you decide to go into you are going to have to do some research on that niche. Among other things you have to make sure that there are enough buyers in that niche to support you.

You want a niche where people are already spending money. You also want to pick a niche where people are looking for or have a need for a product or a solution.

Here’s what you are looking for

• The product needs to have high search engine searches being done daily.

• The people searching need to have money and be looking to buy the product.

• And best of all, there needs to be little to no competition.

The first question is rather this should be a physical product, information product, software or service?

• With a physical product you can build a review site, target “buying” keywords and link from your review site straight into your shopping cart.

• With an information product it might be a little more difficult to make a sale vs. the physical product.

• With a service you get to keep all the money, you don’t have to invest, make, store or ship the product.

So…now you need a market that gets millions of searches a month and is extremely competitive. This could be something like weight loss, weddings, computers, cars, marketing, design and the list goes on and on.

Once you figure out what market you want to go into, You’ll look for a niche within that market.

Let’s say you went into marketing. You would then have to decide on online marketing, offline marketing, advertising, internet marketing, email marketing and so on. As you can see even some niches can be competitive and that’s the reason why you’ll take it a step further and go for a niche within the niche. Other words, you will go with internet marketing and then pick from SEO , Social Media Marketing, Video Marketing, Email Marketing, PPC Marketing and the list goes on and on. Since I am going to be using a little bit of everything, I think I will go with social media marketing.

You can use sites like  http://www.cbtrends.com/, http://www.trendhunter.com/, http://www.magazines.com/, Amazon.com and take a look at their bestselling books, http://pulse.ebay.com, and Google’s Wonder Wheel to get ideas on different niches you can go into.

The world as we know it is changing.

Your advertising no long works, at least not like it used to. At one time we could advertise on TV or put an ad in the newspaper but now we have Facebook, YouTube, TiVo, DVR and online news all trying to compete for our attention.

Our conversations no longer happen in front of friends and family they now take place in front of millions of people. Words that would disappear in seconds are now archived for years.

What does this mean for the small business owner?

It means you no longer have to outspend the big companies, you can outsmart them with a viral video. You no longer have to spend thousands on a focus group, you only have to look online and see what your target group is talking about. You can put your fingertips on your targeted marketing groups pulse with Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.

You no longer have to create all your content and marketing, you only need to get a group of fans that love your product and they will help in creating and getting the word out about your product.

Facebook as more than 250 million users and more than 346 million people read blogs. Over 184 million people have started their own blog and Twitter has more than 14 million registered users. YouTube gets over 100 million views per month.

Your consumers are connected, are you?

Wednesday

I want you to read the articles I’ve given you aloud and correct and grammatical errors as well as any misspelled words. And rewrite any clunky sounding sentences.

For the rest of the week I want you to submit four articles per day to each of our websites and hubs that we created on Monday.

This is Squidoo, WordPress, Wetpaint, 43things and Gather.

Don’t worry about pinging them, but I do want you to bookmark them. I want all the articles to have links coming to them, but I don’t want any sites to link to all the articles with the exception of Simpy and Blinklist.

I want you to do this for the rest of the week, next week I want you to continue to do this, but also start befriending people on the social sites.

Comment on their articles, and try and make friends with them while at the same time continuing to add articles and links to our sites.

Read what is being talked about and respond accordingly, but do not spend all day leaving one or two comments.

Comments are one of the most read sections, so a cleaver comment with a link back to our site or one of our properties, could mean a ton of traffic if done correctly.

Every month I want you to repeat the whole process but for a different topic.

The first sites we created where for social media marketing. Other words, we used social media marketing for my user name, URL and anywhere else I could get it, when setting up the accounts.

We are targeting social media marketing terms and watching our stats to get an idea of what terms people are using.

But I also need to know what terms people are using when looking for Twitter marketing, YouTube marketing and the list goes on and on.

So I need a second set of accounts set up for Twitter marketing related keywords and a third for YouTube, LinkedIn and on and on.

And I don’t want to forget about any of these sites, so at least once a week we need to post something on all our sites.