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If used correctly, social media marketing can give you a platform for brand awareness, exposure, networking, and a huge boost in traffic and sales. The problem is that most people don’t know how to properly use social media properties…

Social media marketing gives you an edge over larger competitors. Studies show that most companies are not yet embracing social media, which leaves a good space for the “little guy” to do big business in that space.

Follow these 10 simple tips to create your own strategy for Social Media Marketing success:

1. Map out your social media strategy

What do you most hope to achieve with your social media marketing plan? What response do you expect from your target market? Ideas to consider in your overall goal may include:

-Brand
-Networks
-Exposure
-Incoming links/SEO
-Building relationships/trust
-Customer Relations (think @comcastcares on Twitter)

2. Connect with your target market

Get a picture of your ideal customer or website visitor clearly in your mind. Who are they? What are they looking for? What do they most want and need? What do you think they expect from you through social media communications?

Consider what they experience from you in everything you do. They are the person you want to attract to your funnel, so you want to make a great impression, and also include a strong and specific call to action.

3. Offer consistent, quality content

The content you post on social media properties should be consistent as in regular updates and also consistent with your overall message or objective.

If you’re an MLM recruiter, for example, provide quality resources for recruits. If you own an e-commerce gardening site, offer gardening tips. Whatever your message, you want it to be consistent across the web.

This helps you achieve your brand goals and allows you to create the perception you want people to have of you or your company. Anyone following you online should be able to easily fill in the blank: (you/your company) is known by ___.

Being consistent with your messaging and branding also lends itself to your relevancy and theming goal when it comes to SEO or search engine optimization.

4. Focus on the content, not the marketing

Most people get this backwards. If you focus on high-quality, valuable content, that content will do the marketing for you.

You shouldn’t have to dig or bookmark your own content, but rather focus on writing content so good that your readers give you an unsolicited dig or stumble.

Your job is to write and provide easy access to social networking services where your readers can share your content with their friends and groups.

When people like what you have to say, they will share it, period. And when they share it, the search engines will take notice. Write high-quality content and updates, and let the rest happen naturally.

5. Watch out! Don’t over-optimize

Social Media Marketing can help you achieve top search engine rankings for specific keyword phrases. But be careful… because over-optimization exists.

Using the same anchor text everywhere your site links to (or requests a link to) leaves a ‘digital footprint’, raising a red flag that you may be trying to manipulate search results (or PageRank).

Avoid this by using natural variations in the anchor text for links pointing back to your main website. You need a certain number of “click here” or similar links to balance your optimization strategy.

6. Stop linking to your home page!

Social media is all about micro-topic conversations, so consider how you can introduce internal offers or pages from your website into these conversations.

This will keep your groups and followers engaged with the topic at hand and provide greater value to your readers.

These deep links, or links that point to internal pages of your site or blog, also help you gain authority in search engines. Other things being equal between two identical websites, the one with the most deep links will outperform the other. This also gives you more exposure in search engine results, as your inner pages will start ranking for specific relevant keyword phrases.

Tip: Your home page may not be the best link to share on your profile while interacting on social sites. Consider linking to your “about me” page instead for a nicer presentation of you and your site.

7. Provide a valuable resource

There’s a reason it’s called Social Media, and not Self-Promotional Media. Keep that in mind when considering your social media marketing plan.

If all you post are links and self-promotion requests, you will eventually become part of the “noise” and will ultimately be filtered by your target market. They may not unfollow or remove you, but they will start scanning your posts and tweets without even realizing it.

Avoid this by becoming a valuable resource in your niche. Share links to domains you don’t own. And I don’t mean your own Squidoo pages or Facebook profiles, I mean domains you have ZERO association with. Provide value to your groups by sharing relevant links and resources.

You mean you want me *gasp* to promote my competitors? Yes, and make friends with them too. Networking and networking are powerful!

8.Social networks

To truly achieve your social media marketing goals, you also need to do some social media. Forget the word “competitor.” Other publishers or webmasters in your niche will be your best friends in the social media landscape!

Locate each competitor at your level (or within a reasonable range) and create an “inner circle” of friends or business partners. These are people you can interview or be interviewed with, exchange links, joint ventures, etc. Stop seeing them as competition and start looking at how they can take advantage of each other’s position in the market!

Tip: Don’t ask for favors. And don’t brag about the favors you do. Just follow, comment, link or be “known” to select publishers in your niche. They’ll notice…and usually start to reciprocate. With a little time, the relationship will form naturally and be incredibly beneficial to both parties.

9.Generate report

Participate in discussions, respond to blog comments, ask for feedback (and then respond and act on it!). People want to know that you are a real person, and not just “a company”, or worse: a bot that spits out links and sucks money.

Don’t be afraid to have an opinion or express your thoughts on hot topics within your niche. Your unique voice in the marketplace will attract your ideal visitors and customers.

Social networks give you the opportunity to be likeable. An ecommerce site has its limits when it comes to establishing trust and building long-term relationships with customers, so use social media as an opportunity to make a real connection with your target market.

10. Link freely, and don’t apologize for it!

This is something of a combination of tips #3 and #7. One thing that really gives me the creeps is the 2 words “shameless plug”. Promise me you’ll never use that phrase!

People who follow you, subscribe to your updates, or friend you on social networking sites… want to hear your latest news and tips. If they don’t, they’ll quickly unfollow you, which is fine. This is not a numbers game or a vanity contest, this is a means to syndicate and socialize in a professional yet enjoyable way.

There is a right and a wrong way to link to resources and content on social networking sites. The wrong way is to say “read my blog post” or “visit my website”. The correct way is to share an interesting link (either yours or something of interest to your readers on another website) and open a discussion on that topic.

Have a clear goal, be a valuable resource, and use social media properties the way they were designed to. Anything else will get you filtered, unfollowed, banned or blacklisted… and ultimately a complete waste of time.

Done right, by following these 10 simple tips, social media marketing today can grow your business online faster than any other medium.