Last year's exponential growth of Facebook and Twitter has made it quite evident that social media is an indispensable part of any integrated marketing strategy. Before developing a social media marketing plan, marketers need to apply some useful tactics to make social media work harder. Marketers should be able to accept the challenges of increasing their customer base and driving sales by the effective use of various social media platforms. Given below are 10 most important tactics to achieve these goals.

Provide information according to customer needs and requirement
As you set upon the task of engaging customers and social media participants, figure out what they are actually looking for. Social media platforms provide you with a broader audience, rather than a target audience. To cater to the needs of all this audience, the marketer needs to provide information rich content including product support, announcement of meetings, relevant news and how-to information among others. It is a good idea to function as a communication link between the audience and the relevant news.

Understand how and why the target market uses social media
One more important thing to notice and understand is why the members of your target market are using social media platforms. It is crucial to know your audience if you want your marketing efforts to have good results. People may use social media for many reasons. Some use these platforms to get information from trusted sources. Some people join these media platforms to expand their network of relationship. There are others who are looking to connect with people who have similar hobbies and interests.

Enable social media participants to pass on the content
Whether it is the social media sites, your own website or any other third party website, make the participants able to share the information they receive. You can use multiple content sharing tools to let participants easily pass on or share the information with others.

Promote consumer generated content
There are several community sites, bulletin boards and discussion forums. So, be ready to support as well promote consumer generated content including reviews, comments, discussions etc. Also check out vehicles like the Yahoo Answers, LinkedIn, TripAdvisor etc.

Listen to your consumers and recognize them
Remember, the participants on the social media platforms are not looking for automated responses. They are looking for human interaction, waiting to be listened to and acknowledged. So, pay good attention to what customers and consumers have to say, interact with them and recognize them.

Boost your employees to become social media participants
Trust employees and encourage them to build relationships beyond the traditional channels. Also provide them training on how to communicate effectively, engage participants and expand their social media contacts. The effort will also provide your company a real human face.

Use social media content with a view to building organic search optimization
To get the maximum benefits of the real time search results, provide content which is keyword optimized as well as links to different areas of your website.

Become a participant with a human voice
Have a personal story to communicate with other participants of the social media platforms. When it is about human interaction, you need to participate with a human voice.

Make your products part of the personal story
Yes, it is important is to have a human voice and a personal story. But what's more important is that readers can find your products. Make your purchase pages optimized and integrate the information of your product and services into the content that you deliver.

Understand the role of each of the social media content
There are several formats or forms of content that comprise the social media marketing. Use various content forms and understand what role each of them plays. Formats to be considered include blog posts, audio video, comments, reviews, tweets, photos, presentations etc.