What has always been the most effective way to generate new business? Referrals from existing customers to their friends and families.

Creating raving fans who sing your praises to others is both the least expensive and most productive form of advertising. A lot of people tune out traditional means of advertising. Only 1 1 in 6 television commercials actually generate a confident return on investment. No one under 70 uses Yellow Pages for anything. But over 80% of consumers can make a purchasing decision in line with the input of friends and family.

Social media marketing provides the electronic platform for word of mouth marketing to exist. Over 800 million users worldwide use Facebook. The average Facebook user has 130 friends and is linked to over 80 Pages, Groups, and Events. Over 1 billion tweets venture out each week. YouTube has over 100 million views each day. The potential for your message to be spread by raving fans is more prevalent today through social media marketing than any other amount of time in the annals of business. Can your company afford not to take part in this marketing revolution?

If you are like me, you study from making mistakes. However, when you can study from the mistakes of others, you then will achieve success quicker. So why not learn from the mistakes of others? Here are a few common mistakes new marketers make when trying to create and implement a social media marketing plan:

I’ll figure it out as I go- the biggest time waster is going into a social media marketing campaign without the plan. Take the time to get educated on social media sites. Not all sites were created for businesses. Also, once you learn a site, learn all of the benefits of the site. Correcting mistakes is very frustrating and will result in many companies abandoning their plan and walking from the strategy. Instead, learn the fundamentals of establishing these site, understand the different options, and spend your time engaging rather than fixing problems. There are good online educational programs out there that can teach business owners on how to create and implement a social media plan.

Let’s add 100 sites in one day- it’s tempting to venture out and develop a Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Digg, Delicious, YouTube, and Foursquare account all at one time. But the problem with this particular strategy is that if you grow too fast, you won’t be able to keep up with all the great things about each site. The best approach would be to create one site, like Facebook, learn the details and properly implement. Create your Fan page, join groups, participate in events, and engage with others. If you start up 12 at once, you will not be as active and your insufficient participation could defeat your current goal. It’s easier to have one or two 2 completely utilized social media sites than 100 poorly designed and ignored platforms.

Profiles don’t matter- users of social media won’t engage with people who don’t have complete profiles. Given the popularity of Twitter, Facebook, and Google+, lots of people will find you before they find your site. If they find your website and you have a pic of one’s logo, no pic, or very little personal information, then they will most likely ignore you. Your profile is your first impression, so be creative, be thorough, but most importantly, be personable.

Here’s the pitch- here’s the largest stumbling block for most beginning marketers. After they have an audience, they feel compelled to broadcast their message to the masses. This sort of media is really a huge mistake and you will be ignored if you try this on social media. Traditional one way marketing practices certainly are a dying breed and trying to imitate these ineffective methods on a new medium will yield the same failed results. Rather than selling your product, educate the masses and establish yourself being an expert in the field where you are practicing. For instance, if you are an agent, instead of promoting yourself as well as your site, educate homeowners on which they can do to sell a house themselves. In reality, only a small percentage of individuals will act on do-it-yourself content. By providing valuable information, you’ll become an expert about them. Then, when the reader is preparing to sell his / her house, they will most likely ask for your services.

Same approach to communication- not everyone receives information through exactly the same medium. Social Media Marketing agency like to read, others like video, and some people will be drawn to pictures on your site. The key is to mix up the way you post. If you simply put out a blog each day, your followers will become blind to your communication method. Change it out up a little. Assuming you have a blog 1 day, then put up a straightforward video another. Post and tag people in pictures later in the week. The more variety in your posts, the more interaction you will achieve.

Peaks and valleys- be consistent in your social media marketing activity. This doesn’t mean that you have to make posts multiple times each day. But if your goal would be to make 30 Facebook posts per month, you’ll find it’s better to have 1 post per day than 3 days with 10 posts.

Do it all yourself- did you ever have multiple email accounts? I used to truly have a hotmail, yahoo, and gmail account that I’d use to talk to people. Needing to log into multiple accounts each day to check the emails became annoying, frustrating, and ineffective. The truth is, it became to frustrating to get this done and I seldom used my email. However, once I learned to load all of my email accounts into Outlook, I was able to efficiently check and make use of the benefits of email. Exactly the same applies to social media. When you have to log into and log off of 5 different social media sites each day, it will become tiresome and your degree of engagements on these sites will dwindle. Therefore, utilizing tools that may enable you to log into your entire social media accounts for interactions may be the easiest way to make sure that you consistently implement your social media plan. Again, there are some good all-in-one social media dashboards that will enable you to streamline your accounts and social networking efforts.
In summary, if you’re a small business owner looking to create a social media plan for your business, then you absolutely should educate yourself on how to utilize the technology and find tools to assist you in the daily utilization. Unless you know how to build a house and you don’t possess a hammer, that house isn’t likely to get built. By firmly taking the steps listed above in this posting, you will be able to quickly and effectively create & implement your own profitable social media marketing plan.