Social Media Marketing is the most discussed marketing strategy within the marketing world. If you you don’t utilize it then you’re in deep trouble. You know this but most of the times it’s so complex and daunting, you have no idea where to begin. So maybe you just avoid it altogether. Or you went ahead and created a Facebook Page. But what now? You put up a post and just let the Facebook Page collect dust because you find out you don’t have a clue what to do next.
Let’s be honest, creating a thorough and effective Social Media Marketing strategy is not easy. But to be honest again, it’s absolutely necessary. Nowadays, about 80 percent of customers that participate in social media, do so because they feel it gives them voice in the marketplace to be heard regarding customer service issues.  At the same time, using social media can be a fun thing to do.
We have created the top 10 list of social media resources. You might not have the time or resources to involve yourself in all ten, but make sure you are involved in 3 or more of these. After choosing what social media platforms you are going to utilize, create a plan to integrate your sale and marketing strategies within them.

Blogs. Being involved in the blog world is a great way to get and stay on top within your industry. You start to become an influence on subject matters and you get to interact with the world as a whole. Getting started is simple. We recommend using Blogger (easiest) and Wordpress(easy to moderate). The hard part is the maintenance. You want to make calender reminders for yourself and make sure you are updating frequently until it is second nature. It only takes about twenty minutes minimum a day to make sure fresh content is being produced on your blog. Make sure to promote your blog from your site, company newsletter, or other various social media formats you use.
Facebook. Creating a Facebook Page is one of the easiest ways to interact with your consumers. You can use it to post your developed content or use it to have conversations or announce promotions or other events. You can also use Facebook’s ad platform to advertise to your targeted audience.
Twitter. Twitter uses short (140 characters) blurbs to communicate with your “followeres”. It’s a great way to announce when new articles or news is available.
LinkedIn.  LinkedIn’s greatest strength is a networking tool. But it’s Q&A section is a great place to answer some specific to industry questions where you can become an authority figure in certain areas and build awareness about you or your company.
Media Sharing If you have a little bit of technical skills, a great social media tool is using podcasts or video content to get your brand out there. You can use Youtube or Vimeo to post your video content and there are many places where you can create your own podcasts for free.
Industry sites. Most industries have industry specific social networking sites that are set up directly for your specific audience. Research to see what resources may be available for you in your specific industry.
Q&A Forums. People tend to love these Q&A forums such as Yahoo Answers. And they rank fairly high in search engine results. Try to find questions that you are knowledgeable in and answer them. Make sure to post a link to your website.
Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a behemoth in the social media game. A page on Wikipedia comes up very high. Try to use them as a tool for your marketing strategy. But you need to make sure your content is very educational in nature. If not, Wikipedia will just take it down.
RSS Feeds. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. Make sure your website has a RSS feed. It’s a great way for your consumers to be alerted whenever you have new content. It’s recommended that you subscribe to your competitions RSS feeds to see how much content is being pushed out by them and to see what is happening with them.
Bookmarking sites. This is the one area of social media that looks like its heading downhill. Sites like reddit.com or digg.com are just not being utiled like they used to. It’s a easy way to try to improve SEO rankings. It’s just not that efficient at it anymore. We recommend trying it out just so you are familiar with the concept and maybe it will make a comeback and you be positioned to reap the benefits.  

Three things to remember when executing your Social Media Marketing Strategy.

Tone. Do not sound like a commercial. Sound like a person. This is SOCIAL media. If you sound like a marketing robot you automatically lose.
Consistency You must be consistently pushing out fresh and new content. If you find yourself at a loss of what content to put out, check some of your active competitors social sites and see what type of things they are doing. We live in a 24 hour news cycle world. All that work you did on Monday to put a piece of new content out, is gone on Tuesday.
Promotion Make sure you are promoting your social media outlets on everything you do. On your Twitter Page tweet about your Facebook Page. On your LinkedIn profile have links to your Twitter Page. And on your email signature have links to all of them. Make sure your Social Media Marketing Startegy has promotion!!!