Today I’m going to start a series of posts to talk about how to develop your own social media marketing strategy. That is a long-winded (and admittedly long-tail!) way of saying we’re going to discuss how to best optimize your campaign to get traffic from social media, brand your name or your company’s to reach any other goals you may have in mind, such as sales, backlinks and more.

To start with let’s talk about the preliminary steps you should take yourself through to get a clear idea of just where you want to end up. I know, it’s much more fun to go and tinker and twitter all day with all the various Web 2.0 goodies out there, but if you’d like to stand above your competitors this is a crucial step.

When we start social marketing services for a new client, we give them a worksheet to fill out detailing exactly what they’d like to see from their campaign. We do this as much for them as for us: it not only helps everyone focus on the same goals, but sometimes forces the client to really think about these things. Many times it will expose a weak spot in the campaign before it even starts, such as poor keyword choices, unrealistic expectations, or poor market research. Better to fix these things going into your social marketing campaign, otherwise it’s a great deal of work for nothing!

You need to spend some time thinking clearly about what goals you have for your social marketing, and makes some choices. If you’re running this yourself, you need to be ruthless about things like time management, and the number of sites and services you actually take on. You only have so many hours in a day, and to be truly effective you really need to focus. If you have a staff or are going to outsource this, there are still vital questions to ask, such as the specific choices of how you brand yourself, how you’ll implement this and how you’d like it done.

The point is that even though social media is now accessible and convenient for any of us now, that doesn’t mean it will be effective as a tool for you if you just barge in, announce yourself and expect hordes of hungry visitors to descend upon you. Doesn’t work that way. A good analogy would be to those of us who used this kind of appproach with PayPerClick advertising. (My hand is raised; I’m guilty!) You put up an unfocused Adwords campaign with zillions of poorly chosen (but highly-trafficked!) keywords and are dismayed to find you’ve racked up a hefty bill at the end of the month! Social media marketing is really no different. Unfocused efforts here will also lead to wasted, time, money and opportunity.

In some ways, the stakes are even greater, particularly since many times we are attempting to brand our own names. Get this wrong and you’ll pay dearly! A reputation is a terrible thing to waste!

Next time I’ll talk about how to choose among the many thousands of Web 2.0 properties out there to best advance your cause.

~Keith 

In a venture more many-headed than the legendary Hydra, having a social marketing strategy is not only a good idea, it is a virtual necessity!

You can spend literally weeks and months floundering around, spending a great deal of time on many different networks without really accomplishing any of what you initially set out to do. Or did you really set out to do anything? Hmmmm?

First things first. Decide going in what you’d like to accomplish with all your socializing. Decide to focus on just a few elements to get started: for instance if you have a business focus, perhaps you’re active on LinkedIn, Konnects or Ryze, along with utilizing Twitter, Pownce, Tumblr or others depending on your niche and which ones seem to make the most sense to you.

The key here is to make a consistent, useful contribution, wherever you choose to light. Obviously if you have a staff or outsourcers this can become easier. Just remember, posting once a month will not go far in making you the authority figure in your market, or even result in many connections at all!