Social Media Sites are becoming a highly effective way for marketers to promote themselves and their businesses for free.

Unfortunately, most marketers don't utilize these powerful platforms effectively. They vacillate between feeling completely overwhelmed and feeling that the sites are a huge waste of time.

Social Media marketing is one of my favorite forms of marketing. But, there are some basic principles to keep in mind in order to make your marketing more effective and efficient. Here are five important tips that will enhance your social media marketing experiences:

1) Create a Landing Page. A landing page is a one-page website that offers prospects a personalized introduction to you and your business before they see your official business site. Landing pages are crucial to business success. They allow prospects to connect with you on a more personal level, they quickly highlight the benefits of doing business with you and they offer something of value to your prospect in exchange for their name and email address.

As you may have heard before, the fortune is in the list. Savvy business owners understand that they must generate a list of prospective clients and customers and continue to market to them on a regular basis.

2) Set Up a Complete Profile. If you want your marketing efforts to work, make sure that your profiles are complete. If prospects land on your profile page and it doesn't have a picture and contains sparse information, they aren't likely to feel any connection with you. You should provide as much information about yourself as possible (including a profile picture). Remember, people want to get to know you, so give them what they are looking for!

3) Participate, Don't Push. As you begin to market within the social media sites, always keep in mind the 80/20 rule. You should spend 80 percent of your time sharing, answering questions and interacting with others and only 20 percent of your time promoting your business. If you stick to this rule, you will be seen as a true participant as opposed to a pushy sales-person.

4) Be Consistent. Social media marketing is all about consistency. You must log into each of your sites every day (Monday through Saturday). It is extremely important that prospective clients see you on a regular basis. Exposure is the key to gaining your client's trust and eventual business. So, get on those sites and interact every single day!

5) Create a Daily Schedule. If you don't have a schedule and stick to it, you will quickly get sucked into the "social media black hole." Determine how much time you have to devote to your social media marketing and stick to it! If you only have 60-minutes/day, then only utilize 3-5 social networking sites and generate a strong presence on them. I like to use a timer (honestly!) to keep myself on track. I set my timer and when it beeps, I am off to the next site!

Social media marketing is extremely effective as long as you understand how to tap into its power. If you implement these five tips into your marketing efforts, you should quickly begin to see some great results for you and your business.

Jessica Swanson, “The Shoestring Marketer,” has helped entrepreneurs, all over the world, explode their businesses using cutting-edge, proven and completely free marketing strategies. To download your FREE Marketing Kit, which has helped thousands of entrepreneurs, just like you, learn the exact techniques for marketing their businesses for NO-COST, visit: Shoestring Marketing Kit