As social media marketing gets more and more popular, business owners all over are jumping on board and signing up for everything on site. Now social media is a great tool to market your business but one thing gets missed that most business owners don't get with it.

It takes time and consistency to work for you.

Pretty much every marketing venue out there is the same but social media marketing is more so than anything else I have ever seen. Let me tell you about an example of this. I have a lot of followers on Twitter. From time to time I like to go in and clean up my list. One of the first things I do is look for people that haven't posted for a while. I just wiped out over 100 people that haven't posted anything in over 6 months. YES, 6 months!

Many of these people started their accounts for business, and they were really good for a month or so and then gave up on it. They stopped posting and say that Twitter isn't a good marketing tool. Now I hear this about just about every type of marketing I see people trying from postcards to networking, to newspapers, to online marketing. Too many business people think that they can just try it for a bit and if it doesn't work, drop it and move to the next shiny object.

If you want any type of marketing to work, you have to give it time to work. People aren't going to buy from you right away. They don't know anything about you. They need to get to know you first and get to trust you. Especially, with Social Media. It’s a harder place to get people to just buy. It's exactly what the name implies "Social" media. That means that you have to be social and build a relationship with your followers. And one of the most important things is that consistency will help you build that relationship.

With all the tools out there to cross-promote your social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc., there isn't any reason you can't keep up with it. I spend about 15 minutes a day and most of that is actually on direct communication with other people. By the way, that 15 minutes is for ALL of my social media sites, not just one.

You need to keep up with it. If you can spend 5 minutes to post something that you can share with your followers, it will build each and every day. You will build a better relationship with those people and the byproduct of that... more sales. Here are a couple of things that you can post that will help build that relationship with others.

Share tips, tricks and ideas

If you have a way to help do something faster, share it with others. They will appreciate it.

Retweet or repost another people's stuff

This one will get some great Social Media love going on and they will be more likely to help promote you as well.

Be consistent.

Don't slack off. Ideally, you will post once a day, but at least post once a week. Keep connected with other people. Reply to their comments, ask questions, answer other people's questions. But post often. You can't expect to be good for a week and then let it go to nothing. People will think you dropped off the Earth and stop following you. They will give up on you because they expected you to be part of the conversation and you let them down.

Which leads to the last one...

Be part of the conversation.

Don't just post your own stuff. Talk to people, share with them. Offer advice and help them out. Comment on what they have going on as well.

By just following these few steps a few minutes a day you will build up a large following of loyal fans that want to know what you have going on and share out your message with their followers. But, be consistent. Don't let your work go to waste. It's going to take a bit longer but you will have a much stronger following and people will be much more likely to want to hear what you have to say.

If you need some help or advice from the professionals goes to DRICKI.