While the idea of Social Media has become a fairly mainstream concept in the startup, internet and technology realm, it seems as though it is finally making an entrance in other industries. In other words, the value of leveraging various online tools such as social networking, social bookmarking, blogging, and etc. are receiving the acknowledgment they deserve for the tremendous amount of influence it can potentially spawn.

The following video below demonstrates and explains how Social Media plays an integral role in marketing and driving business.

An important lesson to note about Social Media is keeping in mind and paying attention to how it is utilized to enhance marketing within the business scope. Many times, I’ve noticed that people place too much effort and weight on tactics. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not undermining the value of any tactical execution because it’s arguably a necessary component of any successful marketing attempt, but there’s more to maximizing Social Media tools than just posting a video onto YouTube, creating an email campaign, writing a few blog entries and submitting a couple of articles to Digg. It’s vital to be aware that each Social Media tool has its own unique personality, environment and sense of community. What this means is that as a modern day marketer, you need to understand the culture of each Social Media micro-world to see how involvement with it will ultimately affect your business marketing goals. You want to know why partaking in some type of Social Media will move you closer to your goal, so that you have the knowledge to do other things to help achieve the aim.

I view Social Media as if it were a watch. It has many moving parts, with gears of different shapes and sizes but each that have their own purpose to tell time. Some gears work more than others, but if one gear breaks, big or small, the entire time-telling breaks as well. In Social Media management, you’re going to find that some tools have a greater value to your operation (which is a-OK) and the beauty of this is to find a balance in all of it. The objective is to effectively listen to and monitor your target audience and cater to what they want and looking for. You need to formulate a Social Media campaign that makes sense to your audience and the people you want to reach out too. Translation: Each Social Media campaign will be unique for every company.

I can’t tell you which Social Media tools are great and worthy, because frankly they’re all good in their own right (and new ones are sprouting daily). But I will share with you that an effective Social Media campaign will be one that fosters a pleasant user experience that provides all the stuff (information, links, videos, online gadgets, advice, podcasts, blogs, people and etc) that they’re looking for and might be interested in all readily and easily available.

Social Media management isn’t about managing your audience, but managing the tools to fit what your audience needs and wants.

Now that we live in a highly sophisticated world of saavy internet users, it’s faux pas for companies and organizations to not incorporate modern marketing strategies along with their traditional marketing methods.