Social Media Resolutions To Turbo Charge Your Business

Social media has become a force that can't be ignored by the business world, and the best way to take full advantage of its power is to do the same thing you do for your business - formulate a plan of action, and follow it.

Here are our recommendations for taking social media action. :

1. Don't just formulate a plan; act on it

Don't just formulate a plan; take actiondaily. Type up a social media action plan with daily and monthly goals. Be prepare to revise it as the year goes on, based on what works and what doesn't. Decide which sites you will use and how many times a day you will update those sites.

2. Stay in touch

Be available. Be approachable and helpful and appreciative; people will keep coming back for more. Answer your messages, and your comments on your wall on Facebook, and @replies on twitter, and any other communication that you get that's from real people.

3. Set goals for social media.

Success is accidental. Set your social media goals. Are you trying to increase the number of visitors to your site? Use an analytics program so you can see how much traffic you are getting and where it's coming from. If you are putting equal effort into Facebook and Twitter, but 90 percent of your traffic comes from Twitter, then you will want to spend more time on Twitter. And vice versa. Are you trying to increase signups to a newsletter? Are you trying to sell more of your product? Make sure that you can track the results of your efforts.

4. Stay fresh and up to date

Stay up to date on what's happening in the industry. Yes, Twitter is a giant right now - but it went live in August 2006 and didn't pick up steam for about a year after that. This super powerful, super influential site didn't exist several years ago - and the next Twitter could be right around the corner. So keep your eye out for emerging social media sites. Some sites where you can do that are:

• www.mashable.com
• www.socialmediatoday.com
• www.socialnetdaily.com

5. Don't spread your social media efforts too thin

That's why you should continually test and refine to see which sites are really working for you. You need to spend time on your business, as well. It can be tempting to join dozens of social media sites - after all, every social media site represents potential exposure for your business, right? Wrong - unless you can dedicate the time to updating dozens of social media sites and answering messages on those sites EVERY DAY - or dedicate the money to pay someone else to do so. You will find that some sites give you better return on your time investment than others. Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, and Youtube are among the sites with the best reputations for effective social media marketing.

About Author: Margaret Ross