Companies use social media marketing effectively.

Social Media?is EVERYWHERE these days. The critical questions about?social media?are:

Is your company using it – and are they using social media effectively??

Here's all you need to know: you and your company need to be a part of it, and they need to put in the time and energy to ensure that they are doing it "right."?

It generates exposure for you and your company. The more people who know about you, the more chances you have to make revenue.

It's no longer a question of "if" your business will have a presence on social media but "when" and "how."

However, while many small business owners may be actively participating on social media networks, if someone asks them "why" or "how" they are using it to bring in new customers, many do not even have a clue.

Today, companies must create conversations with customers and deliver valuable content when their prospects need it, a lot of which now takes place on their social media websites.?

As a result, marketers can no longer push products on people.?

Instead, they have to put themselves on the same playing field as their prospects by creating a dialogue with their audience to earn a prospect's trust.

Social media is an excellent tool for sales prospecting. Using social media networks like Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook allows you to expose your business to thousands of other possible connections through the friends and followers of the person you engage with – all by just engaging with one potential customer.?

This could range from hundreds to thousands of people. But once again, you need to use your social media effectively – using those "tools" professionally, appropriately, and in a targeted manner.

Free social networking applications can be used to stay on top of what others are saying about your company, for market research, and keeping an eye on what your competitors are doing.

However, many companies still have difficulty understanding how their social media platform will generate more ROI.

The bottom line is that it's been proven that social media works.

Though not easily seen on the surface, there are ways to determine your social media campaign's effectiveness. Unfortunately, it would be best if you did some math to figure it out.

Social media marketing often provides instant feedback and measurable results, so businesses can see which marketing strategies are working for them and which are not.

1: You need to calculate the ROI of your social media efforts.

- If you're going to calculate the ROI of your social media campaign, you're going to have to know math. Social media is not just about bragging about how many Twitter followers you have. There's a lot more to it, and the time will have to be allocated, but the valuable information you come away with will be worth it.

The future of social media is about math, metrics, and monetization.

Start by always remembering that social media's most critical value proposition and monetization opportunity is to reach prospects and customers where they are and how they want to be contacted.

The problem is that most companies aren't adequately measuring the value of their social media campaigns. As a result, about half of the customers we surveyed couldn't report whether their campaigns were working.

If you're one of the people who isn't measuring your social media campaigns on an ROI basis, you're setting yourself up for failure.

In keeping with the context of the sales funnel, the key areas to evaluate and measure brand awareness falls into three categories: social media exposure, influence, and engagement.

2: You need to measure your social media exposure - How many people could you have reached with your message?

Social media is about creating repeat customers, not acquiring first-time customers.

Consequently, your ROI analysis needs to focus on social media's ability to turn customers into fans. Therefore, potential social media ROI calculations include:

• You are measuring revenue generated from customers you have engaged with on social media.

• The longevity of the value. This measures the frequency of sales and totals before and after your social media program. You need to set a baseline before initiating your campaign so that you have something to measure it against. Take note of how many customers left you, and then note how much that number went down after using social media.

• Operations. How much have your inbound customer service calls gone down since you started social media?

3: You need to measure "engagement," or how many people did something with your message or information?

This measurement is critical because it shows how many people felt enough "value" that it resulted in their engaging in some action.

4: Measuring the Influence that you are having online. In other words, you want to examine whether the engagement metrics above are positive, neutral, or negative in sentiment. For example, what are people feeling left with after engaging with your social media?

The last part of the lead generation funnel is no longer about brand awareness.?

But rather, it's where the ROI-driven action comes into play.

Brand awareness in your funnel comprises all of the above: awareness, influence, and engagement, and it is in YOUR UNDERSTANDING OF EACH OF YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS THAT WILL LET YOU INTERPRET YOUR WEB PRESENCE AND IMPACT.

Build a social media Dashboard. All the above information means nothing if you do not "come away from it" with meaningful information.?

The information here lets you know how much information is gathered from social media and that it's not just about putting random info out there. There is a science to it, and though it may take a little time to get used to and understand it, THE VALUE IN SOCIAL MEDIA IS THERE, and every business should be putting together a strategy for getting on board. Help is also available, so if you need that "support," just let us know on our coaching page at?

Get involved?the right way, and jump on the social media bandwagon. Because once jumping on, you'll quickly forget – just like when you have kids – what your life was like BEFORE social media.