We have all heard that famous phrase “Rome wasn’t built in a day” and the same can be said for planning and implementing a successful social media marketing strategy.

As search engines evolve they are making it more and more difficult for websites to simply cheat their way to the top of the organic rankings, the same can be said for social media websites such as Twitter and Facebook; no longer do they want people spamming there way into other people’s thoughts.

It is for this reason that anybody involved at any level with online marketing should go down the ethical route. If you are a fan of spamming other people’s pages, mass adding Twitter users or constantly posting out content about your products and special offers how engaging is this to others? The simple answer is that it isn’t.

Building a solid foundation via any online channel is the right way to go, anybody can buy Facebook likes or Twitter followers, whilst purchasing back links for your website is simpler task than researching, approaching and gaining high authority partner links. This does not make it right and it will not give you long term stability.

Anybody taking this approach of cheating their way to what looks like success should ask themselves how many of their “followers” or “likes” actually bother to comment, like, re-tweet, reply or indeed visit your website. Again ask yourself if posting link after link about how good your business is to Twitter and Facebook really benefits your business, in summary it is a waste of your own time and will result in people either ignoring, reporting or un-following you.

When planning a social media marketing strategy why not think about who your target market is and how they are already engaging with your competitors online, think about ways to grab people’s attention so that they actually want to like, follow and interact with you.

A great approach is to introduce your business and pages through interaction with other relevant pages, obviously you do not want to tread on anyone’s toes but engaging with like minded pages in your area, sector and interest will also help produce a dedicated number of followers and raise brand awareness.

Running competition from time to time is a great way to get your company viral through forums, social media, pr and many other channels although it is wise to try and filter people who are interested from those who simply want a freebie.

Asking for potential customer feedback through surveys about product launches, new services and internal changes is a great way to see how people really want you to trade and should give you an indication of which customers will help to share, comment and again increase your brand awareness.

Keep your social media pages on the move, if you are seasonal why not update your timeline image, photos or avalon to reflect this. This is a great way to show your business is not static and is moving with the times.

When posting content keep it relevant to the business without always linking back to a product or service page within your site, there are hundreds of interesting, funny and informative stories for you to share about your industry with people to get them talking, laughing, sharing and engaging with your content.

These are simple ideas and suggestions to follow to ensure that you set some solid foundations that give you and your business the right sort of start needed to evolve your social media marketing into a highly successful part of an overall online marketing strategy.