The perfect platform for businesses to market their products and services online. This media realm is based on building connections and relationships with people who resonate with you. Then it can be used to market your products and services in a conversational way like we use to in times past when everyone gathered together on the front porch on Sunday afternoon to talk about their week.

Business owners everywhere are ready to figure out what their next marketing action step is. Disappointed and feeling frustrated with ineffective pages of print that only worked in the past. They want answers and need them now. With some knowledge, you too can take your enterprise and compete with the “Big Boys” or anyone else online for that matter. This is one time where “Size Doesn’t Matter.”

Time marches on and you either get going and learn new things or you miss the golden opportunity to be recognized as a go-to or expert for you profession or industry.

Don’t worry you won’t be sitting around reading about other people’s exploits or what they are eating,drinking, or doing unless you choose to. There is so much more to social media. It seems like the entire world is trying to take the plunge. Some business are touching their toes in to the waters while other dive right in. Either way I think you will find these 5 Critical Steps eye opening as well as helpful to your success. So what are the steps?

• Step 1 – Your Target Market. This is the most important steps for any marketing plan. Many business owners and entrepreneurs say anyone and everyone are their best customers. You need to be more specific. The more laser focused you become the quicker results arrive. Even if your company is well established, pinpoint who your ideal client is.
• Step 2 – Once you find that hungry crowd they will want what you have. What irritation itch or problem can you solve? What solutions do you have that they need? What pain or struggle is it that you can fix? Knowing this will guide you to the most effective way to providing answers to their burning questions.
• Step 3 – Content is important. You know your product or service best. In social marketing you have the opportunity to educate. Make people aware. Having said that you don’t just go online and push for a sale. Over the course of time people get to know you, trust you and of course choose to use you product or service.This is where you need to set aside your old ways of thinking. Friends and fans get to tell the world or anyone in their circle how great you and your company are. Word of mouth plays a vital role in your success. Social media takes it from a single handshake multiplies it many times over in an instant.
• Step 4 - Keywords can make the difference. Go to Google. Use the Keyword tool and look up the exact words that you need to use in your profile and content. It only takes a few minutes. Keep a list of these handy. If you still don’t find you have the time you can always hire an expert to do it for you.
• Step 5 - Join several social media sites Facebook, Twitter, Linked In. This is touching your toes to the water. Complete your profile, add your picture. Make sure your photo is acceptable in the business arena. Save the one of you drinking a beer for later.

This is just the beginning of what it takes to be connected to your local neighborhood and beyond. In no time you will be in the homes, offices and cell phones of your community. I’ll look forward to seeing you there.

Since Facebook has a high page rank in Google, Facebook pages rank easily and if you have a fan page with this social networking site, you have greater advantages and your fan page will be seen easily on the net. Doing optimization efforts on your fan page will even be more ideal and bring you more chances of getting the top spot on Google.

Optimizing your fan page can be done by doing any or all of the following. For sure there may be other methods, but the following can be of help:

• Do a keyword research for the keywords you have to use in your fan page. It is a known fact that keywords are important and this can be key factor in your ranking objectives with the search engines.

• Customize your URL with the keywords you have chosen and this will give your effort an enormous effect. The relevance of these keywords will even have more optimization effect.

• Keep your Facebook fan page constantly updated since the search engines reward pages that are fresh. Constantly updating your page means reinforcing your optimization strategies more.

• Build links to your fan page and include keywords in these links. This strategy will help your page rank even higher in the search engines.

Since you are on Facebook, and this site being for social activities only, don’t use your Facebook page for marketing objectives or to promote your product. Create a separate page or business update page for this purpose.

And since you are on Facebook for your online business, there are marketing guides that you can use to make your marketing efforts more effective. What is important is to have your business page updated frequently to make it more interesting and also to get you the top spots in Google.

• Update your page with pictures of your new products or services. Pictures of your working team and other interesting photos will be of help.

• Post videos of your team at work or anything about your products. New product pictures and videos can make viewers interested.

• Have an interaction with your fans and encourage them to post pictures of their experiences when they are using your products. This effort can boost your rankings in the search engines.

• The use of videos to respond to your fan inquiries will be great for your efforts. This will have a great effect on your fans and encourage them further to interact with you.

The above marketing guidelines, when implemented efficiently, can help you achieve greater chances of ranking high in the search engines. And the most important thing is to actively build links to your site and also constantly provide updates to make your site always refreshed, and good as always in the eyes of Google.