Top Ten Things That You Must Do in Social Media

Social media has become a very effective method of online marketing. If utilized appropriately it can yield tremendous benefits to any type of business online. Social media is simply defined as a collection of websites which allows users to connect and converse with others. From a business perspective, it allows brand owners to use different tools to communicate with potential customers.

Social media numbers speaks volume in terms of its importance and according to some estimates Facebook has more than four hundred users in 2010.

However, it is very important to define the right tool for you and your business when implementing a social media strategy. Not every social media tool is suitable for every business, and what is good for an ecommerce site, could be not effective for a content company for example.

However, to insure the effectiveness of social sites and its optimum use in terms of increasing traffic and strengthening the brand, few things have to be followed:

1. Identify exactly which social media tool suits well your business. You cannot be effectively active in all the social media platforms.

2. Identify your target audience, their demographic and geographic as well as economic distribution. Are you targeting teenagers or young affluent class? Are you targeting North American audience or people in Latin America?

3. Spend time understanding the media platform you intend to use for your business, see how it has been used by other businesses and your competitors.

4. Devise a full and clear plan with targets that aim to include social sites as part of your marketing plan.

5. Allocate adequate time and investment to execute the plan because social media in its nature requires following up, updating, and communication has to be constant otherwise your message will lose its power.

6. You must realize that dealing with the social sites is a journey and thus you must be ready to carry out a self analysis of where you are, where you want to go and how you want to get there. With social sites you must keep improving as you move on.

7. Once you have identified your target market, it is vital to have an understanding of exactly what they want. Find a way of how to engage them and get their attention. You must be able to convert the interested people from being your followers to being clients.

8. Add some of the social network links to the site. The website of your business should include all your social media links. Think of this as different ways where people can reach you. The most appropriate position would be the right top corner of the screen. You can make an inclusion of both Face Book and Twitter and YouTube and RSS on the link.

9. Keep track of the progress made through Social Media in terms of web traffic and convergence. Fine tune your tactics and presence, you must keep improving your tactics with each passing day. Remember success is a slow process and does not come overnight.

10. Setup your profile in different Social media platforms, and make sure your brand is well presented, communicate with your existing clients and your future potential partners. Monitor what others are saying about your brand and respond smartly. Inform your community on changes in products, pricing and new offers and always avoid hard sale.