An infographic prepared by VerticalMeasures perfectly captures the four pillars of successful social media marketing management for businesses. Incorporating social media marketing can be a difficult task for some small businesses, but it provide enormous potential for brands that want to leverage the viral power of sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

The Foundation of Social Media

1. Customer Service

Twitter and Facebook have been social media sites users have utilized to lodge complaints for quite a while now. Despite the pain this causes businesses, it provides timely resolution and responses for clients, and allows brands to personally connect with users on a regular basis. When preparing customer service guidelines for your social media networks, keep the following expected response rates in mind:

• 80% of Twitter users expect a response within a day
• 50% of Facebook users expect a response within a day.

2. Product Ratings and Reviews

If your next product launch proves to be as disastrous as the latest Sim City saga, you can expect negative reviews to become widely shared on social networks. In this day and age, all types of businesses can be affected by both negative and positive reviews online. In fact, 80% of consumers will research products online every week. As a result, credible bloggers reviewing products or technology experts publishing video reviews on YouTube will have a significant influence on the public perception of a product. Brands can use this to their advantage and create marketing videos highlighting the benefits of their products. Key insight: the shorter the video, the more likely it is to be viewed.

3. Brand Awareness

Businesses with little-to-no brand awareness will need to rely on both search engine optimization and social media marketing campaign generate more exposure. In fact, four of the largest social networks prove their worth in various ways:

• Google+: In 30% of brand related search results, branded Google+ pages and content were visible, exhibiting it’s power as a content marketing tool.
• Facebook: 80% of social media marketing users enjoy connecting with their favourite brands on Facebook rather than on other social media sites.
• Pinterest: The number of unique visitors to the site has increased by over 2700% since May 2011.
• Twitter: 69% of new follows occur as a result of suggestions and referrals from friends.

4. Lead Generation

Evidently, unique and captivating social marketing campaign are futile unless positive returns are generated. In terms of lead generation and sales, Twitter has proven rather effective: 34% of marketers surveyed mentioned that they used the aforementioned site to bring in new prospects. LinkedIn and Facebook also prove their worth for new business opportunities, both for the community building tools available to company pages, and the display advertising and promoted products that can be leveraged on both sites.

Final Note

As long as it is relevant to your vertical, fully embracing the benefits and opportunities present through social marketing can help grow your business online. Even mobile apps such as Instagram and Foursquare prove advantageous, with the former being a photo-sharing giant, and the latter providing new opportunities for local businesses to push foot traffic. An effective social media plan of action will allow your company to reap the rewards of online advertising and build a community to which you can re-market for years.

Social Media Infographic by Vertical Measures