Before you launch your campaign, you should already have system to assess your social media efforts. There are certain metrics that deserve special attention. You want to be able to see:

a) How many visitors were redirected to you via social media sites?
b) How many people or converting (clicking through your site and then buying a product or service)?
Essentially, you should be able to determine how many dollars you spent and track the amount of revenue/percentage of revenue generated from your social media campaign.

There are some awesome FREE tools to track where your traffic is coming from. Look into implementing some of these into your data-compiling:

a) Google Analytics and Google E-mail Alerts — it’s free and is easier to install onto your site than getting a cup of coffee from your local Starbucks.
b) Twitter tools like HootSuite & Seesmic can help you track direct messages, @replies, and mentions of your company’s website or products.
c) YouTube/Facebook internal data tracking.

#5/5. Don’t be Afraid to Mix it Up

If you’re not generating the desired leads and sales from your social media campaign after 4-6 months, you might need to take time to reevaluate where else you can be diversifying your efforts.

This can mean finding other places your target audience dwells online or looking into more powerful social media tools.

There isn’t one clear-cut strategy you can employ to positively impact your company’s bottom line. I encourage you to being patient, committed, and, most of all, flexible with your campaign. This is perhaps, the key to making sure it goes off without a hitch so to speak.

It takes some time to build a sizeable loyal customer following using Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc. It simply doesn’t happen overnight. You may want to keep this in mind especially if you are a company that needs to start selling your products right away. Of course, as a business owner, you need to decide if you can take small steps or not. Building relationship with the public via social media is all about developing trust, and that requires time.

#3/5. Time Management Matters

I know how it goes…you establish your social media presence and afterward you sit by your computer day and night, checking for new friend Requests and Twitter follower notifications. Warning: you’re setting yourself and your social media campaign for a quick burnout!

My best advice is to use your time wisely by doing other tasks that will help your site get noticed, like generating more content. These tasks will not only help percolate interests in cyberspace but help boost your rank on Google, Yahoo, and other search engines.

Think of it like this:

MORE CONTENT => INCREASE IN SEARCH RANKING ==> MORE ONLINE==>VISIBILITY ==> MORE TRAFFIC==>MORE SALES

My suggestion is to set your automatic notifications for your Smartphone and save yourself from constantly logging onto these social media networks.

- 32% of the companies plan to join Facebook, LinkedIn, or MySpace
- 39% plan on including customer ratings/reviews on their own sites
- 31% intend to insert links/ads in blogs/social media sites.

Knowing this, can you really afford to sit back and let your competitor’s take your potential customers?
Below are a few pointers to help ensure that your company’s social media campaign is primed to succeed from the get-go.

#1. “Be Prepared” – Have a Plan.
The Boy Scout motto is applicable in everything, this instance is no different.

However, being prepared is a step many companies just don’t give enough attention. Do your homework and make sure to familiarize yourself with the plethora of social media tools available first. Identify who your target audience is and locate where they hang out online. Doing this will keep you from blowing a fuse later, abandoning your social media campaign or, even worse, losing the trust of future customers. This step can also help you figure out what goals you may want to achieve through social media.

It’s hard to believe that last year around this time we discussing the effects of bad PR for Facebook and if the site had ‘jumped the shark,’ but those arguments now seem to more appropriately apply to other properties.

A year ago, we ranked the top 25 social networking sites by monthly visits, and I was curious to see how the positions would change if we re-ranked those same sites with the most recent figures.
Social Networks: Facebook Takes Over Top Spot, Twitter Climbs

Back in May, Pew reported online microblogging usage at about 6% of online Americans.

Twitter users skew young, with one in five online Americans in the 18-to-24 demo using Twitter. But Pew also said the median age of a Twitter user is 31, compared to 27 for MySpace, 26 for Facebook and 40 for LinkedIn.

Media and online video companies such as Hulu and Veoh regularly use Twitter to track consumer feedback and to interact with users.