Honestly, for any social media marketing campaign to work... or to be able to measure how well it is or is not working you need to have set up the following:

1. Web Analytics - which is nothing more than a way to monitor what's going on on the web.
2. Analyze visitor patterns - who is visiting and from where
3. Analyze keywords - what keywords are getting you effective visitors as opposed to visitors that are not interested or no visitors
4. Create backlinking stategy - I could write a whole hub about backlinking but it's more than just linking to comments and other urls... it still seems to be instrumental in getting a good page rank.
5. Data Collection - collecting information from visitors for "opt-in" announcements and such.
   
   and finally
   
6. Content - Your Content will be successful if it falls in any of the four following categories: Funny, Controversial, Helpful, Unique/Amazing

This is where your blog comes in. If you are hosting your own blog, you can virtually cover all of these steps with the tools available in your blog.

Recently I figured out how to turn my website URL into a Wordpress Blog. I use GoDaddy as my hosting provider and have a linux package. Turns out, it's as easy as just going into the "applications" view and selecting Blog ->wordpress ->the url -> setup. Once the blog is setup, you have all of the free Wordpress templates and plugins available to you... and at your finger tips... (happy sigh from the geek inside me)

Anyway, that means there are SEO plugins, Web Analytic plugins, ... I mean, you can pretty much go down the check list looking for ways to monitor and track everything you will need to have a successful web.

See http://matthijssenonline.com and http://mombloggermoney.com as examples of the wordpress blog. (Please keep in mind, these are blogs created from a regular linux hosting package... NOT the "blog package" offered by GoDaddy)

Now where was I .... Oh yes, Social Marketing.

Having the blog and having all of the tools setup to measure and track your success is very very important.

PLUS, the blog will allow you to create continuous content... some more successful then others --sort of like Hubpages... :0)

Now we are ready for the SOCIAL MARKETING!!!!! BWAAAAA HAAAAA HAAAAA

First... let me just introduce THE LIST (yes, this fortunate page will experience the added google search boost from my little backlink)

The definitive list of social media: http://traffikd.com/social-media-websites/

I could cheat and say: Ok, that's it. that's all i got... but that wouldn't be true. The key to marketing on social media... is the word SOCIAL.

Stop reading... Think about "Social". Think about what it means to you.

Here are some of my suggestions:

Drinking at a bar with friends
Talking on the phone
Sitting on the deck in the summer cooking hotdogs
Roller skating (HA HA... I know, I just threw that in... I am a child of the 80's)
Sending email (excluding any that have FW: FW: FW: in the subject line)

My point is, that very very rarely in any of these social atmospheres do you hear anyone start talking like a commercial. When you are with friends... you are funny, you are engaging, you are entertaining... THAT is social media.

To engage in marketing over the social media venue... You Must Be Social. You must behave like friends of your target market, a friend with good ideas, a friend that's funny, a friend that is willing to take the time to explain things.

Having said that... it's possible your target market are literally rocket scientists... and so your humor may be something like.... How many astronauts does it take to plug in a light bulb..... None, because the space shuttle has solar panels - Hardy Har Har.

Do you see what I'm getting at?

It's called Social media for a reason. If you want people to read, comment and engage... you need to be real. You need to be a real person not a tedious commercial poster.

The other thing I want to point out... is since you are tracking your incoming contacts... make sure you are specifically setting out to determine which one is working best for you... on a monthly basis. Social media changes fast... and you can lose an opportunity before you even knew you had one.

In the beginning twitter was great! Now, it's filled with commercial posters and it's tiresome and hard to navigate for real content.  The challenge today with twitter is not getting buried in teh long string of commercials. 

I heard Facebook may be on it's way out... but the the larger text available allows for a paragraph of intro text that can be linked to the blog.  The trick to facebook is getting "friended". 

Linked in...  is a social network for business contacts and ..... well, if you like going to chamber of commerce events... then it's a great app.

In closing (I'm sure your glad I've come to the end) The effectiveness of your social media marketing really boils down to your ability to track and manage the effectiveness. I can't stress that enough.

You need to track which social media niche is driving your traffic.  Which blog entries people are interested in seeing and commenting on... which ones they are interested in seeing... but few having left comments. 

Believe it or not, I use my HubPages as an indicator of popular topics.  My most popular article is a request I answered about gambling in Vegas for a non-gambler. HA HA HA I never in a million years would have guessed.  But the visitor log doesn't lie!

Have a great day, let me know how I'm doing.