What has always been the most effective way to generate new business? Referrals from existing customers to their friends and families.

Creating raving fans who sing your praises to others is both least expensive and most productive form of advertising. A lot of people tune out traditional method of advertising. Only 1 1 in 6 television commercials actually generate a positive return on investment. Nobody under 70 uses Yellow Pages for anything. But over 80% of consumers will make a purchasing decision based on the input of family and friends.

Social media marketing supplies the electronic platform for referral marketing to exist. Over 800 million users worldwide use Facebook. The common Facebook user has 130 friends and is linked to over 80 Pages, Groups, and Events. Over 1 billion tweets venture out every week. YouTube has over 100 million views each day. The potential for your message to be spread by raving fans is more frequent today through social media marketing than any other time in the history of business. Can your organization afford not to participate in this marketing revolution?

If you’re like me, you learn from making mistakes. However, if you can study from the mistakes of others, you then will achieve success quicker. So why not learn from the mistakes of others? Here are a few common mistakes new marketers make when attempting to create and implement a social media plan:

I’ll figure it out when i go- the biggest time waster is going right into a social media marketing campaign without the plan. Take time to get educated on social networking sites. Not all sites are designed for businesses. Also, once you learn a site, learn all the benefits of the website. Correcting mistakes is very time consuming and will lead to many business owners abandoning their plan and walking from the strategy. Instead, learn the basics of setting up these site, understand the different options, and spend time engaging instead of fixing problems. You can find good online educational programs on the market that can teach business owners on how best to create and implement a social media marketing plan.

Let’s add 100 sites in one day- it’s tempting to go out and create a Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Digg, Delicious, YouTube, and Foursquare account all at one time. But the problem with this strategy is that should you grow too fast, you will not be able to match all the benefits of each site. The very best approach would be to create one site, like Facebook, learn the details and properly implement. Create your Fan page, join groups, take part in events, and engage with others. If you set up 12 at once, you will not be as active as well as your lack of participation could defeat your overall goal. It’s better to have one or two 2 completely utilized social media sites than 100 poorly designed and ignored platforms.

Profiles don’t matter- users of social media won’t engage with individuals who don’t possess complete profiles. Given Personal Growth of Twitter, Facebook, and Google+, lots of people will see you before they find your website. If they find your website and you have a pic of one’s logo, no pic, or very little personal information, then they will most likely ignore you. Your profile can be your first impression, so be creative, be thorough, but most of all, be personable.

Here’s the pitch- here’s the largest stumbling block for most beginning marketers. After they have an audience, they feel compelled to broadcast their message to the masses. This kind of media is really a huge mistake and you’ll be ignored if you try this on social media. Traditional a proven way marketing practices are a dying breed and trying to imitate these ineffective methods on a new medium will yield the same failed results. Rather than selling your product, educate the masses and establish yourself as an expert in the field where you are practicing. For instance, if you are an agent, instead of promoting yourself as well as your site, educate homeowners on what they can do to sell a house themselves. The truth is, only a small percentage of people will act on do-it-yourself content. By providing valuable information, you will become an expert about them. Then, when the reader is preparing to sell her or his house, they will most likely ask for your services.

Same method of communication- not everyone receives information through exactly the same medium. Some people like to read, others like video, plus some people will be attracted to pictures on your site. The main element is to mix up how you post. If you simply put out a blog every day, your followers can be blind to your communication method. Change it up a little. When you have a blog 1 day, then put up a simple video another. Post and tag people in pictures later in the week. The more variety in your posts, the more interaction you will achieve.

Peaks and valleys- be consistent in your social media marketing activity. This doesn’t imply that you must make posts multiple times every day. But if your goal is to make 30 Facebook posts monthly, you’ll find it’s easier to have 1 post each day than 3 days with 10 posts.

Take action all yourself- did you ever have multiple email accounts? I used to truly have a hotmail, yahoo, and gmail account that I’d use to communicate with people. Having to log into multiple accounts every day to check the emails became annoying, frustrating, and ineffective. The fact is, it became to time consuming to do this and I hardly ever used my email. However, once I learned to load all of my email accounts into Outlook, I could efficiently check and make use of the benefits of email. The same applies to social media. If you have to log into and log from 5 different social media marketing sites each day, it will become tiresome and your degree of engagements on these sites will dwindle. Therefore, utilizing tools that may allow you to log into your entire social media accounts for interactions may be the easiest way to make sure that you consistently implement your social media marketing plan. Again, there are a few good all-in-one social media dashboards that will allow you to streamline your accounts and social media efforts.
In summary, if you are a small business owner seeking to create a social media marketing plan for your business, then you absolutely should learn how to utilize the technology and find tools to assist you in the daily utilization. If you don’t know how to build a house and you don’t possess a hammer, that house isn’t going to get built. By firmly taking the steps listed above on this page, it will be possible to quickly and effectively create & implement your personal profitable social media marketing plan.