While there is a lot for businesses to gain from social media, they’re also aware of the fact that a big blunder can have many negative effects. Fortunately, the proper marketing training can help minimize the likelihood of that type of unpleasant scenario ever arising. And when it comes to how to provide the right training, there are a few key points all businesses should keep in mind:

Don’t Reinvent the Wheel

There’s no reason for a business to try and start a training program from scratch. Instead, they can save huge amounts of time and resources by utilizing an existing social media marketing program. By partnering with a program provider, businesses can be confident that their employees are getting the best training. Additionally, taking this route means that a business doesn’t have to wait for their employees to start learning. Instead, training can begin immediately, which means the business will begin seeing the benefits of having a socially fluent team in the not too distant future.

Create a Clear Reference

Once employees complete their social media education, many will be involved with these networks on a daily basis. Since issues will inevitably arise, the best way to avoid hiccups is by having an easy way to reference policies already in place. By taking the time to create this type of documentation, businesses can fully support their employees while also ensuring that everything is handled in a manner that’s consistent with the company’s brand.

Avoid Micromanaging

Employees who have a social media degree and access to a reference guide have everything they need to help drive great results through social media. So while some companies may want to have layers of management and approval, allowing for more freedom and spontaneity will ensure that social marketing efforts aren’t stalled.

Review and Adjust

When it comes to successful social media usage, it’s important to not have a “set it and forget it” mentality. Instead, efforts should be evaluated on a regular basis. One of the big advantages of having all the members of a business involved is the amount of feedback that can be gathered during these reviews. When certain issues are identified based on analytics data, everyone can come together and intelligently brainstorm about how to improve.

If a company wants to ensure that they can stay ahead of the competition and thrive online, it’s hard to beat the return that the right investment in social media training can provide.

As social networking industry is booming small business owners are looking it as a low cost marketing platform. Small businesses are considering social media as a medium to sell or resale their products.There are three simple but effective ways by which small business owners can market their products in the social media.

1. Communicate with your Customers

Marketing is all about creating and maintaining new relationship and a relationship is all about maintaining communication. So from here we can understand that communication is the most important steps to success in social media marketing.

Social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn allows business owners to market their products. Other web tools like podcasting (BlogTalkRadio), event coordination (Meetup), photo sharing (photobucket, Flickr), wikis (Wikipedia, answers.com), video distribution (YouTube, Metacafe) allow small business owners to share information directly with their customers.

Contents in the form of blog post, video or audio, review or comparison, social network message or tweets help to share information and guide the customers in a less formal way.

This approach builds like and trust factor between the business owners and the customers. Features like targeted viewers allow business owners to market their product to customers based on their location, gender or interests. Facebook sports this feature.

Social media’s direct communication feature helps business owners to communicate to their target customers. Social networks has made it possible for the customers to give feedback about their experience regarding the products. This feedback helps the business owners to improve their product.

2. Collaboration boost customer-owner relationship

When small businesses communicate with their target customers, they feel powerful. When the target consumers feel powerful they buy from you, trust you and stay in touch with you. It is the consumers in this era (of media marketing) who make, break or shape purchase patterns.

Small businesses create communities or join already created communities to ignite the company-consumer collaboration. These communities bring their target customers nearer to them and in turn increase their percentage of sale. Social networks like Facebook, Twitter etc. serves this purpose.

Consumers trust social networks more than the companies itself as they rely on peers other than adverts. Social collaboration has become important to boost sales and popularity of a product.

3. Entertainment attracts less interest customers

Have you ever thought why social media serves as a marketing tool? No? I’ll tell you why. Social networks are fun and full of entertainment. Small businesses market their products by entertaining the consumers. People choose the place where they feel they are being listened to and enjoy themselves.

Social networking giant Facebook, serves as an entertaining market by featuring Facebook likes or fan pages. Amount of like shows a company’s popularity (not always). Other social media sites like Twitter attracts small businesses to market their product as they too have entertaining value.

Always remember to blend your product marketing with the social media tools. Try to post some relevant videos with some humorous title. Entertainment is an important mantra for social marketing.

Sites like Facebook and LinkedIn are becoming business owners interests as they are fast, entertaining, fun and not to mention very popular.

So what will be your company’s strategy when it comes to marketing on social media?