Do you understand how to manage your social media marketing program? Most companies and entrepreneurs simply “show up” establishing a Twitter account, Facebook page, or blog without a plan. The idea that being there takes precedence over strategically leveraging each social network.

By understanding how to manage your social media marketing, your efforts will  evolve from a casual, random, unmeasured effort to a strategic, analytical and consistently refined program. By not planning your social media marketing and without ongoing monthly management, your marketing efforts will fail with very poor to ineffective results

8 Tasks For Managing Your Social Media Marketing

1. Content Strategy: you must develop a message content strategy that supports your business goals
2. Contact Strategy: you must develop a contact strategy and schedule
3. Delivery: you should deliver messages according to schedule
4. Analyzation: you should analyze the results of your messages
5. Adjustments: you should refine your strategy and schedule based on results
6. Recognize People: you must acknowledge new connections on the various social networks
7. Conversations: you must engage with connections on the social networks
8. Search: you must research opportunities to reach out to new individuals that align with your product by utilizing the internal search engines within each social network you are marketing within

What If You Can Not Do This?

If you or your company does not have the time, manpower, or expertise to manage an ongoing social media marketing program, you should consider hiring a consulting firm to take on this vital function. Inner Architect manages the Facebook page(s) and Twitter account(s) for major companies, like Whitehall Lane winery, in order to provide the following benefits:

• Lead Generation
• Prospecting
• Sales
• Research
• Broadcasting
• Announcements
• Customer Relationship Management
• Customer Service
• Reputation Management
• SEO

Ship Naming Wiki

If you have adopted a social media plan are you on the right track? How do you know if you are taking the right steps? In order to understand the position you are in today, it is important to answer five questions.

5 Questions About Your Social Media Plan

• Have you adopted the right tools to effectively leverage social media as a marketing channel?
• Are you participating in the social networks that best reach your target audience?
• Do you know what to say in your messages?
• Do you have an effective contact strategy?
• Can you measure your efforts?

5 Components of Social Media Diagnostic

• Social media overview: Analytical review of your social media presence
• Profile analysis: Reports how well your profile is strategically positioned to maximize and attract opportunities
• Diagnostic overview: Review to insure all your social media sites include your links, links are interconnected, and all your sites are pointing links to and from one another
• Marketing analysis: Insuring that you understand how to send your blog article links, leave links in comment sections of blogs, and how to move your value message forward in a strategically targeted method
• Traffic analysis: Insure your sites are open to traffic, check availability of widgets and their usage, and analyze your networking efforts within each social media site

Results

If your company can not answer any or a majority of these questions then it is time for a social media marketing diagnostic. Before you begin investing time-money-manpower-effort into this vital strategy get more information on how to get started.

You are utilizing Twitter, you have a few followers and you want to increase your audience. Your strategy is to provide solid content: messaging that is value 70% of the time and about “you” the rest. You refuse to consider acquiring followers  via “gain twitter follower” schemes that litter the Twitter landscape like so many wrecked cars in a junk yard.

The next step? Twitter “link baiting.” Simply use keywords in your tweets to attract the followers you want to attract.

Keyword Your Tweets: Keyword “Link Bait”

• Keyword List: create a keyword list that will attract the types of followers you want following you
• Keyword Tweets: tweet messages with one or multiple keywords buried within the message
• Location Tweets: if you are looking for geographic location followers try tweeting with a city, town, neighborhood, or regional name
• Describe: be creative when compiling your keyword list- include words that your prospective followers use to describe their business, needs, products, or services
• Search: once you have a follower who you identified came from a “keyword link bait” tweet, perform a Twitter search looking for other prospective followers

Multilevel Marketers, affiliate marketers, spamming business owners, scam artists, hard sell sales people, and a myriad of other “dark forces” are lurking on Twitter with the idea of selling you something no matter how you feel about being sold.

In order to avoid, and avoiding this at all costs strikes to the very heart of your credibility, the perception of being one of these “dark forces” avoid the following mistakes when establishing your Twitter presence.

5 Tips To Avoiding Being Perceived As A Spammer On Twitter

• Follow to Follower Ratio: Do not begin your account on Twitter by following hundreds of people-companies or you will be perceived as a MLM, affiliate marketing spammer. This condition is called “Being upside down”
• Follow Recipricols: Begin by following companies or people who almost automatically will follow you in return. Ex- GuyKawasaki usually follows everyone, Pat Kitano, or me deansguide
• Build Slowly: Monitor your “ratios” for the first 100- try to keep it at a 1-1 ratio of followers to those you follow
• Sales Messaging: Do not simply run tweets filled with sales pitches for you or your services. This is the fastest way to lose an audience
• Messaging Content: Just like on a blog, concentrate on tweeting about your region, city, town, community, neighborhood, politics, schools, events, restaurants, construction and any hyper local news that will make you the go-to source for your area

Part 3 in our series on mobile Web marketing strategies

As we have learned from Jon Cooper CMO of PhindMe Mobile, a mobile Web strategy is one of the most important marketing trends of 2010. Once you have launched your mobile Web strategy, the next step is to formulate your promotional marketing campaigns using your new technology.

4  Steps To Creating Mobile Web Marketing Campaigns

1. Opt-In Database: begin building your list of cell phone numbers by “providing your target audience with multiple opportunities to register to be on your text messaging list.” Place signs in your brick n mortar stores, on your website or blog, and in advertisements that inform your audience of your mobile Web presence
2. Incentive to Join: create an incentive for your audience to join your opt-in list. Exclusive information, deals, discounts, or events can be part of the incentives to join or sign-up
3. Exclusive Offers Alert: create exclusive offers for your text message list members. These offers could include “secret events”, previews, or sales. Then alert your members to be on the lookout for upcoming events
4. Word of Mouth: motivate your list members to forward your exclusive offer links to their friends in order to prospect for new list members and viral market your mobile website