Doesn't every web marketer worth his salt wants it? I too wanted it and I got it (thx God). Here is the outline of that plan (tested on many a successful campaigns). Tell me the merits and demerits of it and add to it.

• Find out the target audience
• Locate this target audience in various social media platforms
• Get connected to this target audience on these platforms and get the relationship going
• Establish your credibility through interactions where you add value to your contacts without indulging into marketing
• Once the credibility is established and relationships are mature enough you can actually start the marketing (keep it subtle, in your face marketing just doesn’t work on social media)
• This is an ongoing process

Am going to discuss the same with Dave Evans, the renowned social media marketing guru, during his hands-on workshop in Delhi on June 22. Will post the details after the workshop

Cheers

First, this post belings in the promotion and marketing area of the internet marketing forum. But since you posted here, let me provide some input.

The outline looks good but it is a generic one that can be applied to almost any product or service that is being marketed on the web. It is the next steps in the plan that are where you will have to really roll up your sleeves. For example, if your steps were numbered 1 through 5, step 1a would be once you identify your target market you have to define which of the social media marketing options are they using. Not everyone twitters, not everyone uses facebook, etc.

I am working with a client right now that the best four options for them are blogging, a linkedin presence, having their experts on staff working the forums like this one to answer questions and establish themselves as experts, and finally a YouTube presence where they can post video of training sessions and speaking events by their execs. But it would be a total waste of time for them to be on Facebook or to micro-blog. Your company or client may only really get a benefit from one or two social media channels.

I totally agree with MktgRob. Just because there is a plethora of social media avenues available does not mean that businesses have to embrace and use every single one. You have to determine which tactic will help bring the most targeted visitors to your site.

I have been asked to speak to a group of real estate agents at a private networking event to give them an overview of social media marketing and its value to their efforts. The person who asked me to speak is hung up on me giving lessons on how to setup a linkedin presence or on how to use Twitter to increase visibility. I told this person that before you can start talking about the different social media components you need to explain how the right mix can provide a large number of benefits at a relatively cost. This is the main message that needs to be understand before laying out the social media marketing plan for any entity.

As mentioned, the concept of social bookmarking and media advertising elements are not going to be prescriptions for just any type of business because if that was the case, all websites would completely forget about the search engines rankings and depend on the traffic coming their way from web portals.

I was at a breakfast panel discussion on Thursday which focused on social media marketing for corporations. What stood out was the four companies represented came from a cross section of industries and had been around anywhere from 10 years to 80 years. They all engage in social media marketing but each said they saw their best results from totally different sources than the others. One was closing business deals based on tweets, another was finding his best opportunities on Linkedin, another had 90% of his staff blogging and the fourth (DuPont) was finding its best results from YouTube. Interestingly, one of the panelists said that he had been at an event where a rep from Google said they research done by Google showed that the number two most used search tool for businesses looking for products and services was YouTube.