Facebook <–> LinkedIn <–> Twitter <–>Blog <–> Youtube.

These social media marketing tools are great because they provide the ability to reach out directly to your target audience. One of your key challenges is to get followers (i.e., friends on Facebook, contacts on LinkedIn, followers on Twitter etc.).

The question becomes: how do I get followers?

Here are a couple of ideas:

1. Twitter: follow people that have a tendency to follow others. Then when you tweet something that could be valuable to your “followers’ followers”, they may retweet to their followers. And if the followers like your tweet, they may follow you.

2. Twitter: find people to follow on sites like www.twellow.com.

3. Facebook: create a Facebook page for your organization. Use Twitter to refer your followers to your Facebook page.

4. LinkedIn and Youtube: Use Twitter to refer your followers to your LinkedIn and Youtube accounts.

5. Blogs: Promote your blog on all of the above-mentioned applications.

The great advantages that social media marketing provide are the 3 R’s:

- REACHing your target audience

- RELATIONSHIP-building with your audience

- REAL-TIME updates

The key is to build your audience.

- Online collaboration (e.g., web conferencing)

- Blogs (e.g., WordPress.com)

- Social networks (e.g., Facebook)

- Microblogs (e.g., Twitter)

- Online video (e.g., Youtube)

Digital sales tools help companies reduce costs and expedite revenue generation.