What has always been the simplest way to generate home based business? Referrals from existing customers with their friends and families.

Creating raving fans who sing your praises to others is both least expensive and most productive form of advertising. Most people tune out traditional method of advertising. Only 1 1 in 6 television commercials actually generate a positive return on investment. No one under 70 uses Yellow Pages for anything. But over 80% of consumers will 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 connected to over 80 Pages, Groups, and Events. Over 1 billion tweets go out each week. YouTube has over 100 million views per day. The prospect of your message to be spread by raving fans is more prevalent today through social media than any other 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 learn from the mistakes of others, you then will achieve success quicker. Why not study from the mistakes of others? Here are several 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 largest time waster is going into a social media marketing campaign without any plan. Take the time to get educated on social networking sites. Not all sites were created for businesses. Also, once you learn a site, learn all the benefits of the site. Correcting mistakes is very frustrating and will result in many business owners abandoning their plan and walking away from the strategy. Instead, learn the basics of establishing these site, understand the various options, and spend your time engaging rather than fixing problems. There are good online educational programs out there that are designed to teach business owners on how best to create and implement a social media plan.

Let’s add 100 sites in one day- it’s tempting to venture out and create a Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Digg, Delicious, YouTube, and Foursquare account all at one time. But the problem with this strategy is that if you grow too fast, you won’t be able to match all the great things about each site. The very best approach is to create one site, like Facebook, learn the facts and properly implement. Create your Fan page, join groups, participate in events, and build relationships others. If you start up 12 at once, you won’t be as active as well as your insufficient participation could defeat your overall goal. It’s better 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 marketing won’t engage with individuals who don’t possess complete profiles. Given the popularity of Twitter, Facebook, and Google+, lots of people will see you before they find your site. If they find your website and you also have a pic of one’s logo, no pic, or hardly any personal information, then they will most likely ignore you. Your profile can be your first impression, so be creative, be thorough, but most of all, be personable.

Here’s the pitch- here’s the biggest stumbling block for some beginning marketers. After they have an audience, they feel compelled to broadcast their message to the masses. This type of media is a huge mistake and you will be ignored if you try this on social media. Traditional a proven way marketing practices are a dying breed and attempting to imitate these ineffective methods on a fresh medium will yield the same failed results. Instead of selling your product, educate the masses and establish yourself being an expert in the field where you are practicing. For example, if you are an agent, instead of promoting yourself and your site, educate homeowners on which they can do to sell a house themselves. The truth is, only a small percentage of individuals will act on do-it-yourself content. By giving valuable information, you will become an expert about them. Then, when the reader is preparing to sell their house, they will most likely ask for your services.

Same method of communication- not everyone receives information through exactly the same medium. Some people like to read, others like video, and some people will be attracted to pictures on your site. The key is to mix up how you post. If you to put it simply out a blog each day, your followers can be blind to your communication method. Change it out up a little. When you have a blog one day, then put up a simple video another. Post and tag people in pictures later in the week. The more variety in your posts, the more interaction you’ll achieve.

Peaks and valleys- be consistent in your social media marketing activity. This doesn’t imply that you have to make posts multiple times every day. But if your goal would be to make 30 Facebook posts per month, you’ll find it’s better to have 1 post each 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 on the emails became annoying, frustrating, and ineffective. Luxury Travel Guides is, it became to time consuming to get this done and I seldom used my email. However, once I learned to load most of my email accounts into Outlook, I was able to efficiently check and make use of the benefits of email. The same applies to social media. If you have to log into and log from 5 different social media marketing sites each day, it’ll become tiresome and your degree of engagements on these sites will dwindle. Therefore, utilizing tools that will allow you to log into your entire social media makes up about 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 marketing dashboards that will allow you to streamline your accounts and social media efforts.
In summary, if you are a small business owner looking to create a social media marketing plan for your business, you then absolutely should educate yourself on how to utilize the technology and find tools to work with 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 taking the steps listed above on this page, it is possible to quickly and effectively create & implement your personal profitable social media plan.