Your social media efforts may seem fine, but you can likely get much better returns from your social media marketing campaign with a bit of a planning. Spend plenty of time planning AND doing! In other words, go through this checklist when you begin your social media marketing campaign

 

You should try to refine your blog as you go, but the first  step is creating one. Choose a software platform such as Typepad, Wordpress, or Blogger. Choose a domain name and begin rolling. Gradually add more and refine. Just start it. Add something useful every day, and soon you'll get better.

 

The best way to get traffic to your website or blog is to comment in forums and on other blogs. While most of the URLs on blog comments have no-follow tags attached, people can still reach your URL by clicking on it. The no-follow tag means that you won't get lots of backlinks rankings on the search engines, but you can still get lots of traffic from people who will read your comments, find it useful, and want to learn more about you.

Answer Questions

You can answer questions for people on LinkedIn, Google answers, or Yahoo answers. There's both a wrong and right way to approach this technique as far as social media is concerned. When you want to answer questions for promoting your site, you can intersperse citing your site as a source while citing others. However, too much self-promotion can lower your credibility and ranking. Some websites may actually ban you or shut your account if you indulge in too much self-promotion. Vary your sources and you can still voice good services or products.

 

YouTube gets millions of visitors every day and it's a bigger factor than ever in searching before. With tagging people can upload videos and can tag them for searches, just like tagging any blog post. Videos for YouTube don't have to be too professional or fancy. You can shoot your videos using a small digital camera without any professional lighting. Many celebrities have their personal YouTube channels featuring videos shot on web cams. It takes minutes to sign up for a YouTube account and get going.

 

Many professionals use photo sharing websites such as Flickr to upload and organize all their photos. You can easily tag your photos for search purposes. You can also install widgets on your website that will allow you to import all your photos from your account to your site, Twitter feed, blog, or other networking websites.

 

Join groups and participate in forums to kick start your social media marketing campaign. You can find many popular forums in your industry. Join them, and create your profiles and start reading and responding to the comments of others. Gradually, you'll learn the vibe of the group you've joined.  You'll gain confidence promoting your service or business.

 

You can also create your accounts on social media websites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and start connecting with people who share interests. Upload content that can be helpful to others, and include your URL in each of your posts.

Follow this easy checklist and your social media marketing campaign will be launching off the ground today.

 

Jeremiah Planter writes all about communications. His recent work is on the Top 10 Best Online Masters in Marketing Degree Programs.