The prediction for 2010 is that more businesses will embrace social media marketing in one way or another.  As a marketer myself, I see businesses who are not really ready to embrace social media simply because they are more keen on quick results.  Social media are not quick fixes to every marketing challenges, in fact they are the short, medium and long term solutions that require strategy, planning and proper execution.

Here’s a list of activities that every marketer (including myself) should take extra attention of when crafting a social media marketing campaign:-

Objective of Social Media Marketing Campaign
Social media cannot deliver results like online advertisements, so it has to be made clearly understood that social media marketing has got different objectives.  Amongst them are increasing fan base, a personalized engagement with users/fans, additional tool to deliver messages and more.

Deliverable
What the campaign can deliver, in what intensity and timeframe needs to be spelt out carefully and cannot be over-promised.  The bosses expect deliverable with every of their investment (with our without monetary investment) and its important to use some statistics & mathematics before commiting to a deliverables.  This is especially if your deliverables are leads generated or total sales generated.  Be honest and truthful, there is no point over promising if you already know its impossible or if you are completely not sure of the results.

Monitoring the Results/Deliverable

Any marketer knows that every campaign needs to have ROIs, so make sure that you are fully aware of how your campaign is performing.  Some of the items you want to monitor include total clicks on the links you posted, total retweets, total followers/fans and others.

Consistent Plan to Increase Followers/Fans

I always believe that I need to increase followers/fans because this equals reaching deeper and further into the already established base.  So, there must be a consistent & persistent plan to increase the total followers and fans.  While it is ideal to churn out huge figures to impress the bosses, it is also important to be very level-headed when it comes to commiting such figures.

Daily Monitoring

Its ideal to have tools to monitor the social media for keywords and your business name.  Not only will you be able to do damage control if anything negative is being said about your business, but at the same time you can also know what is being said about your competitors or about the industry in general.