Promoting with social media sites is a great way for small businesses to gain greater exposure on the internet and more customers. However, many small business owners are overwhelmed with the prospect of managing multiple Facebook,Twitter, LinkedIn, Yelp, YouTube, Meetup, and other various networking accounts.

You do not need to hire a full-time marketer to manage your accounts or join the Social Media Orlando Meetup group to get started. You do not even need to do a search engine query on "Social Media Orlando". The following tips can help get the most techno-phobic businessperson started with social media marketing.

Tip #1 Just Start

Sign up for a few social networking sites. It is easy to sign up and create a full profile. Be creative with your profile and have fun. Social media marketing is not difficult. Jumping into the game is the best way to start. It is easy to overanalyze the process to the point that it becomes overwhelming.

Tip #2 Keep Going

Keep your profile up-to-date and maintain an active presence on your accounts. Social media marketing is a long-term effort. You should dedicate at least a few minutes every day to posting updates, making friends, following other users, and engaging your readers and fans. Make social media marketing a daily habit.

Tip #3 Focus your Time and Energy

Once you have established your presence on a few choice networking sites, resist the temptation to join dozens of sites, post hundreds of updates a day, and continuously monitor how your updates are doing. These activities can easily eat up all your time and get you banned for spam. While social marketing takes some time, you should make your actions count. Only post updates that are informative and useful. Focus your energy on a few social sites. Check for responses to your posts only once or twice per day.

Tip #4 Add value

Give your followers and friends a reason to come back. Only post content others would find useful. It can be an interesting link, a helpful tip or a promotion. If your content is useful, your followers will come back to your profile and will share the content with others. On the other hand, an annoying stream of updates which say "read my blog" and "buy my products" will cost credibility, friends, followers and customers.

Tip #5 Give first

More people will follow you on Twitter, if you follow them first. If you write recommendations for others on LinkedIn, then they will be more likely to reciprocate. If you share interesting links written by others, more people will post your links. Giving and receiving is the basis for all social interactions, including those online.

Tip #6 Focus on content

The internet is about content. If you focus on creating quality content on your social networking sites, others will share it. Marketing tricks may help get a few links and a short-term boost in the search engines, but content is the key to long-term, online marketing success. Quality content will market itself, because others will automatically share it.

Tip #7 Interact with your followers

If the internet as a whole is about content, social media is about interaction and building community. Respond to your followers' and friends' comments. Those interactions will build trust over time. Your followers will see that you care enough to respond to them.