Social media marketing is going to be a critical strategy for businesses to learn to take up. Many traditional style stores find it incredibly counter-intuitive to ‘become friends’ with their customers, to share thoughts and opinions, or to remain anything but completely corporate and professional. However, in a world where everything is available to everybody, it is personality that will draw your customers to you, and set you apart in your niche. But before you start using social media to  boost your web marketing repertoire, there are some things you should do …

SEO

Create a strategy before you jump into the swarm

1. Should you start social media marketing?

Do your clients use social media? Will they think its repulsive that you’ve started? Ask some questions of your existing customers if you can to try to gauge response. Also, see if any companies competing with you use social media, and what sort of response they have from people – do they have many Facebook fans or much Twitter interaction?

2. Consider the costs

Setting up most social media profiles is free. However, the time taken to administer them, to create content to submit to Digg, to contact people that send you questions through these media, all costs money. Be prepared to have dedicated web-based customer service staff if you push social media hard.

3. Set a personality and tone for your social media experience

Try to make it as close to your company’s real culture as possible, and set some boundaries regarding what gets posted or talked about. Will innocent sexual innuendo be okay … in fact what sorts of content in general will be okay and what will not?

4. Create a skills-based team dedicated to the social media marketing

Choose someone that is personable but professional, and also understands the legal and media implications of their public statements.

5. Set up a tracking system

You’ll need to know how all this effort is translating into profits for your company – decide on a method for tracking this before you start.