Social Media Marketing (SMM) is a type of internet marketing that uses social media networks to achieve marketing communication. Using these networks one can achieve a number of goals in marketing and is now a widely used option by people for marketing their products and services. Social media sites are very popular among people and it is this popularity that has to be capitalized in order to promote the products and services. Some of the goals that you can achieve using these networks are

· Creating a brand identity

· Building positive brand association

· Generate website traffic

· Increase the awareness of the brand

· Convert traffic into business

· Reach out to key audiences

It is very important to have a social media marketing plan before you set out on your social media marketing campaign and the plan has to be in tune with the goals that you want to achieve with the marketing campaign. If you don’t have a plan you will not be able to focus on the marketing goals and may end up with no gains out of the campaign. Ensure that the marketing plan you have drafted for the marketing campaign is one that suits the needs of the networking sites and that of the products or services. Each of the media platforms works in a unique way and therefore there is a need to have individual plans for the social platforms so that you get the most out of the campaign.

There are various aspects to a social media marketing campaign and each of them is important and can influence the result of your campaign. Let us look at some marketing tips that will help you in your marketing campaign.

· Plan the campaign properly and research on the content ideas and the keywords that will help you to reach out to the target audience.

· Content that is posted in the social sites is very important and therefore ensure that valuable information is provided that will interest your target audience.

· When marketing in the various media sites ensure that the core identity of the business is maintained and that sufficient brand building is done to promote the brand image.

· Blogging is considered to be a great social marketing tool and therefore it pays to have one in which you can hold contests, events and also publicize your social media efforts.

· Using the right links is very important and though you will be using links to your website in most of the posts but you can always add links to other articles that provides valuable information to the readers too. When links to outside sources are added, it will help build trust and reliability and you may even end up getting some links in return.

· Always keep an eye on your competitors as it always will help you gauge what they are up to and also help you to pick up on some keywords and other insights. If there is a strategy that is used by your competitors that seems to be working, take that, make it better and then use it yourself.

· Analyze the performance of the campaign from time to time using data and statistics and make necessary changes to the campaign if and when necessary

This guide will offer substantial suggestions for developing a practical approach to measure your social media marketing return on investment (ROI).

You begin by posting to Facebook and Twitter to interact with your fans and followers. You think your actions are OK, but are not sure how to determine the impact of your efforts and the ROI.

Counting how many Twitter followers and Facebook fans you have is a way to jump in and start measuring your ROI. A slightly more advanced method is to measure Facebook likes and Twitter retweets. A better approach to ROI measurement that is goal-based will help you understand the “how” behind the “why” of the marketing initiatives you implement.

Many internet marketers will focus on acquiring contacts first, strengthening their brand, then how to create more sales. Any return on investment in social media marketing should be tied in with the goal of your social media messages and your presence online.

Survey Results

A typical purchasing process starts with becoming aware of a brand, then showing enough interest to become a contact, and finally, deciding to make a purchase.

Step One – Strengthen Your Brand

The total of all social interactions regarding your product drives your brands’ success. You need other people talking about you and your products with their networks so these interactions do not just involve your efforts alone.

Attention

Attention revolves around the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. Potential customers have to be engaged with your brand. It is not sufficient to just have a large group of social media followers.

Reach

When you engage in social media, how many people can you reach to interact with? Your reach will grow as people want to hear more if you offer content that interests people and gets noticed. Marketers claim it is analogous to your brand reach which will be equal to your email marketing list size.

Every piece of your content posted should be so good your fans and followers will want to share it with their friends which is known as viral marketing. More people see your content when they do this.

Engagement

What your audience is saying about your brand is known as brand engagement. Engagement includes both content engagement and brand engagement.

Content

One way to measure content engagement is by measuring social media shares (i.e., likes or retweets) which shows how engaged your audience is with your content. If your content clicks with your audience you can better understand the level of your content engagement. In an example, were your visitors connected with your content well enough to share it with their group of friends?

Step Two – Acquire Contacts

Understanding your list of social media followers is critical. Measuring the growth in brand reach is a common way to accomplish this. It is likewise important you understand how all of your actions may affect the reach of your brand. A table or line graph are common tools to help you measure this.

Your actions have an impact on the resulting count of your Twitter followers.

Your latest product release and asking people for product feedback probably increased your Twitter follower count after sharing content about the product. Ideally, the type of content you publish and the subject matter resonated with visitors enough to push them past their inertia point so they will click the Twitter follow button.

It is not just how you say it and what you say on Twitter and Facebook that assists growing your following. The key is to analyze your overall social media actions and then tie them to the goal you are intending to achieve.

One example is, both your email and website contain valuable content; by including social sharing toolbars to both of them, it can increase the number of touch points available for visiting followers and fans.

Step Three – Generate Sales

How do you transform your visitors and contacts into revenue once you have an audience built from your hard work? The usual marketer desires to drive quantifiable results so their time investment is justified, but they remain difficult to measure entirely.

There are some things you can do to measure if your efforts are delivering results.

• Surveys – Survey your customers is one way to measure if your social media efforts had any impact on them. Ask which of your efforts added to their purchasing process.

• Social Media-Specific Offers – A second idea is to create a special offer or specific landing pages to promote via just your social media marketing. Using these pages you can track actions and traffic as these pages are specifically aimed to your social media efforts.

• Google Analytics – One can create social media-specific campaigns and tag those links and campaigns if you use Google Analytics, which is a free download for you. This can analyze how many visitors came from a social media source to visit a particular landing page.

• Different Links – To determine your traffic sources more accurately, employ different links in your social media for tracking information. As an example, use a different link for your Facebook post than the one you use for a Twitter tweet to determine which media source your traffic came from.

Other solutions can include engaging browser cookies to track the source from where a purchaser clicked a link and from which social media posting. If you want other methods to track your results you can research more solutions in a Google search.

Step Four – Gain Community Participants

If you’ve done all the above steps adequately, you should see your social media presence growing each week. Some revenues may be showing up now from your actions. How does one boost it up to the next level then?

In the world of social media, there is a neat trick called viral marketing which is having your friends, followers and contacts pass information or tweets about you and your products along to their friends’ social pages. This acts to distribute notice of your brand for you.

Conclusion

Your goals in social media marketing are tied to the purchasing process, which involves acquiring contacts first, then promoting your brand, eventually creating sales, and gaining brand followers. Whichever goal you have, to evaluate your social marketing efforts’ ROI, it’s important to use a goal-based approach. One will not know whether their social media campaign is working for them until they completely understand their final objective.