Social Media is an important factor in a successful marketing campaign and can be managed within your budget. To maximize the effectiveness and efficiency of your social media marketing plans, let’s look at some tactics to start 2013 in the right direction.

1. Engage and take advantage of your social connections by creating a strategy that will encourage users to recommend your products or services. It is more likely that an end-user will respond to recommendations than a generic social media advertisement. When you encourage users to share information, their connections will give more merit to the repost and consider checking it out.

2. Explore all social media platforms when planning for your marketing campaign. Facebook is a giant marketing platform but it doesn’t do well in conversions. Research by Shop.org and The Partnering Group found that 70 percent of customers click through on a retail blog to the firms website. A high percentage also use YouTube to browse and search for products.

The research indicates that on average, 6.9 number of retailers followed a product or service on Facebook, while 8.5 on Twitter, and 9.3 on Pinterest.

The key is is to build a solid content or landing page that clearly presents your products or services. Then use Youtube, Facebook, and Twitter to distribute the content.

3. Ensure that your page is viewable through various means of communication. It is important for users to accurately and professionally see your products and services using a computer, mobile phone, tablet, or a game console.

A study from ROI Research found that 91% of users access media through computers, while 53% use their mobile phones. 21% use tablets and the remaining 14% use their game console. The television isn’t included as part of devices used for social media. It is recommended that access to both computers and mobile phones are part of your strategy.

4. Wharton professors Jonah Berger and Katherine L. Milkman in an article entitled, “What Makes Online Content Viral?” from the Journal of Marketing Research found that showing positive, emotional, or surprising, and useful information will increase the change of sharing.

5. Build trust with your customers. Develop useful content that end-users look for prior to making a purchase. If you can answer all their questions, you’ve successfully gained their trust.