What has always been the most effective way to generate home based 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. Most people tune out traditional method of advertising. Only one 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 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 history of business. Can your company afford not to participate in this marketing revolution?

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

I’ll figure it out when i go- the biggest time waster is going right into a social media marketing campaign without any plan. Take time to get educated on social media sites. Not all sites are designed for businesses. Also, once you understand a site, learn all the benefits of the site. Correcting mistakes is very time consuming and will result in many business owners abandoning their plan and walking from the strategy. Instead, learn the basics of setting up these site, understand the different options, and spend time engaging instead of fixing problems. You can find good online educational programs out there that can teach business owners on how best to create and implement a social media marketing plan.

Let’s add 100 sites in a single day- it’s tempting to go 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 should you grow too fast, you will not be able to keep up with all the great things about each site. The 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 engage with others. If you set up 12 at once, you won’t be as active as well as your insufficient participation could defeat your overall 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 marketing won’t engage with people who don’t have complete profiles. Given the popularity of Twitter, Facebook, and Google+, many people will see you before they find your website. If they find your website and you also have a pic of your logo, no pic, or very little personal information, then they will likely ignore you. Your profile is your first impression, so be creative, be thorough, but most of all, 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 type of media is really 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 new medium will yield the same failed results. Instead of selling your product, educate the masses and establish yourself as an expert in the field in which 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 market a house themselves. In reality, only a small percentage of people will act on do-it-yourself content. By giving valuable information, you’ll become an expert on the subject. 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 the same medium. Some people like to read, others like video, and some people will be drawn to pictures on your site. The key is to mix up how you post. If you simply put out a blog every day, your followers can be blind to your communication method. Change it out up a little. If you have a blog one day, then put up a simple video the next. 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. Personal Growth doesn’t imply that you have to make posts multiple times each day. But if your goal is to make 30 Facebook posts per month, you’ll find it’s easier 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 have a hotmail, yahoo, and gmail account that I’d use to communicate with people. Having to log into multiple accounts every day to check the emails became annoying, time consuming, and ineffective. The fact is, it became to time consuming 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. The same applies to social media. When you have to log into and log off of 5 different social media sites each day, it’ll become tiresome and your level of engagements on these sites will dwindle. Therefore, utilizing tools that may allow you to log into all your social media makes up about interactions may be the best way to ensure that you consistently implement your social media plan. Again, there are some good all-in-one social media dashboards that will allow you to streamline your accounts and social networking efforts.
In summary, if you are a small business owner looking to create a social media plan for your business, you then absolutely should learn how to use the technology and find tools to assist you in the daily utilization. If you don’t know how to build a house and you don’t have a hammer, that house isn’t going to get built. By firmly taking the steps listed above on this page, it will be possible to quickly and effectively create & implement your personal profitable social media marketing plan.