Social media marketing is a must for practically every business in this day and age. This corner of the Internet has boomed into society and is here to stay. Still, you need not get caught up in spending hours a day fretting over what exactly to do. Just keep reading into the following paragraphs for some basic fundamentals and nifty ideas to make social media marketing work for you.

You might see tweets quoted in the press that are stuffed with hashtags. This is actually not the best idea if you are looking for click-throughs. A recent study actually determined that tweets with hashtags in them scored five percent fewer click-throughs than tweets that were free of hashtags.

If you have images that are original to you or your business that you pin and share through social media, make sure that you have a watermark in them. The watermark should identify your business and website. Thay way, when the images spread through the Internet, anyone viewing them can know where it came from so you have credit for the image.

Do not neglect LinkedIn. While Facebook and Twitter seem to be the power players in getting relationships with regular citizens, LinkedIn is the professional corner. You can create, establish, maintain and nurture business relationships through your LinkedIn profile. Even consider doing some search engine optimization for your profile.

Use videos more often. Pinterest is a social media platform growing popularity, especially among women. You can embed videos from YouTube into Pinterest and get viewers to repin them for you. If you can nudge your count high enough, you might just get one or two videos into a viral state. Make sure that your video includes your website name.

Regardless of what kind of business you do, consider an old fashioned marketing technique of grocery stores. Fill a jar full of candy and take a picture of it. Have people guess how many pieces of candy are in it. Whoever is closest to the right number gets the jar as a prize! It might have nothing to do with your products or services, but you will get a customer’s loyalty and everyone has sweet fun.

Keep in mind always that the tools social media are just that: tools. Your compelling content and messaging are what drive readership and revenue.

Read all the comments that people post to your social media content. You might often find references to your competitors and their personal experiences with them. Reading raw Facebook posts can really give you an indication of what your niche is like, where you are going right, and where you can capitalize on where others are going wrong.

Share your blog entries every time that you post them. Get updates on at least Facebook and Twitter to alert readers about the content. At the very least, you get some backlinks.

With the ideas presented in this article, you can put just a token effort into your social media marketing and see results. And, you can do all this without bursting your brain or your wallet.