Dosh Dosh ran a series on the Fundamentals of Social Media Marketing late in 2007, and I believe that it is worth taking another look at it in light of the changes that the Social Media marketspace has undergone since then.

Sites like Twitter and Facebook have millions more users since then, and there are uncounted new applications and uses for these remarkable tools. The original article, Social Media Marketing Campaigns: How to Set Goals and Define Your Target Market, contained a wealth of information and I would like to explore each point in a little more detail:

Social media marketing goals will often involve different overall strategies and social media channels. It is possible to market with the aim of achieving all the following benefits; they do complement each other and some results naturally arise when other goals are achieved (e.g. better brand awareness eventually brings links).

Let’s take a look at some of the goals you can strive towards:

1. Increased Brand Awareness. Content can be created and spread through social media to improve public perception of your brand by evoking specific qualities which make it distinct from others. For new websites or businesses, this pervasive visibility generates brand familiarity. Social media channels can rapidly generate word of mouth and buzz for most brands.

2. Reputation Management. The goal here is to positively influence the way a potential and existing customer/audience perceives your brand. Work of this nature is less push-orientated and may involve the creation of social media profiles and wikis that rank well on search engines for your brand name.

This also includes monitoring public forums and feedback channels to track and address what is said about your site. Some view this as social media optimization, although I would classify it as pull-marketing.

3. Improved Search Engine Rankings. When considered within a larger SEO and link building framework, content can be creatively developed and promoted for the purpose of obtaining links from the members of the social news websites.

This means you should primarily target social sites with the highest potential to give you links, instead of smaller-sized communities which only offer interested traffic. While important, your site’s profile need not be entirely relevant to the social media website in question; content can be created specifically to appeal to different audiences.

4. Increased Relevant Visitor Traffic. If you are only interested in getting interested visitors or users for your website, you should invest more time on social communities which have a high topical relevance.

The social site’s topical focus should be inline with what your site covers/offers. For example, instead of promoting your internet marketing articles through wide platform like Digg, try pushing it on more appropriate communities like Sphinn, because it will get you people who are more likely to follow your site.

5. Improve Sales for a Product or Service. To effectively increase your product sales, you should release your offer through an influencer who is respected in the community or work through a sponsorship model (contests etc.). Hard selling a social media audience through an overtly commercial profile is not advisable because it will come across as marketing spam.

One solution is to segment the market and focus on being the number one solution for specific user problems. Naturally, you should mostly target communities which are highly relevant to your niche focus because this increases the likelihood for traffic to convert.

Having distinctive goals allows you to embark on mini-campaigns which target specific communities to fulfill individual goals. For instance, you can run a link building campaign through Digg while simultaneously building brand awareness by leveraging social video communities like Youtube or Daily Motion.

The next few posts in the Business Development channel will focus on these goals and how to set up your own program for achieving them. You can subscribe to these posts by RSS or via e-mail.

Read all of the posts in this series here – series one – social media goals and tactics.