If you are running a business and wish to stay competitive in today’s cutthroat business world, then you do not have the option of staying oblivious to social media networks any longer. In 2010 itself, Facebook got more visitors than Google, and it has become quite clear that search engines will likely soon be a secondary medium for directing traffic to your business website. More and more major brands are getting into social media marketing than ever before. And the trend is likely to gain momentum at a rapid rate as time progresses. Thus, if you wish to remain competitive but have been ignoring social media until now, then it is high time you revised your digital marketing strategy.

However, in order to reap the benefits of digital marketing, you do need to prepare yourself beforehand and go about the task in a properly organized manner. Otherwise, your efforts are more than likely to fail. Here are 3 pointers to help you out:

1. Formulate a plan before you start: Make it a point not to create an account on Twitter in a hurry and start posting links by the dozens, just because your competitor is doing it. Chalk out a plan with your marketing team beforehand and stick to it. Concentrate on promoting your brands through three main channels, namely, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Apart from ensuring huge exposure for your digital marketing campaign, these channels can help you to increase the size of your customer base.

2. Identify target audience and approach them: One of the biggest mistakes that entrepreneurs make is to add just about anyone they find on Twitter to their networks. Unless you have a product or service that has been tailored to appeal to the masses, this is a very bad idea. Identify the age group and the type of individuals who are most likely to be interested to your services/ products, and approach only them on the social media networks. That way, you will have a bunch of people on your network who are likely to become customers/ clients in near future.

3. Do not get impatient in early stages: In the initial stages, you should not expect much response from your audience. That’s okay. Social media channels have the potential to boost your profits to a great extent, but they do take their own sweet time to start working. In the initial stages, increasing the size of your audience should be the only concern on your mind. Once you have a sizeable group going through your tweets and updates, your brand will naturally gain popularity. Don’t worry too much if your profits do not start soaring overnight. After all, the management at Dell did not sell USD 6.5 million worth of PCs and accessories through Twitter just like that. Months of hard work and formulation of a stable digital marketing strategy preceded that.