Social media marketing is one of the newest and most effective ways of finding new customers and building relationships. Social media is booming, so act now and put yourself out there. This article discusses some of the smart actions you can take to use social media to advance ahead of your competition.

Freebies are a fun way to engage your customers through social media! Giving away free products is a great way to get followers to your profile. Choose what freebie you want, then visit one of the many social media profiles that offer this freebie and provide a link for your customers to follow.

Build up the audience in your Facebook account by sending the link to your email subscribers. You've probably got a mailing list if you've been doing online marketing for some time. Provide your subscribers with links to your social media pages. You will simplify the process of keeping in touch with customers who follow your Facebook page.

Look at other popular social media pages related to your field. Notice what these successful business people are doing on their pages. What kind of updates do they share? What format do they use for their page? Use the pages that are most popular to figure out ways to make your page better and stand out from the rest.

You can place your Facebook review page on your website or your Facebook profile. This tool allows visitors to write a review and share it with everyone. You will have the ability to edit and remove reviews as needed. Holding a contest with a prize is a good way to encourage folks to write reviews.

Having contests that offer attractive rewards on the social media sites, like Facebook and Twitter, effectively generates positive publicity back to your business. Such announcements are often spread very quickly on such media outlets. Make your contest creative, fun, and relative to your services and products. Try tapping into your customer's creativity by suggesting that they help you create a logo or identity mark.

Look for ways to get your followers to share your information with other potential customers you haven't reached yet. Be funny in your content and do not be too technical. Although your target audience may understand technical terms, your followers may not share the information with their friends if they think the information is too difficult to understand.

Keep an eye on your competitors' activities. Find them on various social networks so you can analyze their techniques. You may choose to do some similar things for the same market or you could come up with a strategy that no one else has to reach a new audience.

Check out your competition to see how they adapt to different social media tools. Observe their techniques and learn from their mistakes and successful campaigns. Use what you discover to make your company more successful.

Engage online users by including buttons that link to your Facebook, Twitter and other profiles. You can also provide the option to subscribe to your RSS feed. These steps should be taken on your blog, website and emails. These links should be placed on all your social media profiles, as well, to spur users to follow you on those sites as well.

The best way to contact your customers on a social networking site is directly. The customer does not want to speak to a large company. It's all about trust here. People on social sites are there to be social. Give them a real person to speak to, and trust grows tremendously.

If you'd really like the customers to go crazy about your products as opposed to the competition's, make sure that you're offering some great deals and exclusive specials. When people see deals or promotions on Facebook they will want to spread the word about what your site has to offer.

Provide incentives to your customers in your social media marketing, but do not be too forward. Customers never want to feel that they are being coerced into a purchase. Share quality content related to your industry and talk about your new products or share coupon codes once a week. When customers find things themselves, they'll feel in total control and not as if you pushed them into a decision.

Run contests on Facebook. Consumers love to feel like they have an opportunity to get something for free. Contests pull people in and keep them interested in what you have to offer. You can also use contests to build a buzz around your newest items.

Social media marketing is similar to traditional methods, but the fact that few companies are actively involved in it, can give you the edge. Learn how to use social media properly and get more sales. Don't let your competitors be the ones to get all the money from using social media.