You’re staring at your Facebook page, wondering what to post.  You’ve got 140 characters in Twitter and nothing to say. Your WordPress dashboard hasn’t been touched in 2 months because you don’t have anything interesting to write about. You know this “social media” thing is supposed to be so amazing, but you don’t understand how or why – and you’re not seeing the results.

Sound familiar?

Relax - you shouldn’t have to work so hard.  Social media is not your only magic bullet.  In fact, it’s not a bullet at all.  Social media is an integral part of the way we communicate; of everyday marketing’s fabric.  To make it work for you, you need to sit back, listen and learn.  Incorporate it into your daily marketing life.  But don’t put all of your eggs in one basket.

Traditional marketing tactics such as advertising, referrals, and public relations are still very important, but social media tactics need to be considered at the strategic level of your marketing decision-making process.

Here are the five concepts I share with clients to help them plan their social media strategies.

1. Integrate

Don’t treat social media as separate from your overall marketing strategy.  Feature links to your Facebook page or Google map in ads, on your website, email signature, business cards and as a standard block of text in your regular eblasts.  Make sure your blog subscribers are offered the ability to subscribe to your email list or become a fan on Facebook.   Ask your patrons to write online reviews for you on your Google or Yelp profile.  Integrate your social media into all of your other communication touch-points and build your tribe.

2.  Amplify

This is where social media shines.  Put up a blog post, and tease it on Facebook and Twitter (automatically using simple plugins, even!).  Upload the photos to Flickr and link them back to the blog.  Post mentions of your business in the media or reviews from other websites.  Then, make sure the tools are in place for your fans and friends to share.  Retweet, repost, share and share alike.   Make sure these simple share links are in every blog post, on every eblast, every media release.   Enable others to amplify your message, even after you’ve spread the word.

3.  Repurpose

No blog post, no article, no social media action should be considered a one-off.  This doesn’t mean you should repeat yourself 20 times on every medium, but think about each piece of content you create and how it can be repurposed for other media.  For instance, you’ve got an event scheduled next week.  You add your Facebook event and invite your friends, then use your Facebook page to help publicize it throughout the upcoming days.  You send out an eBlast, encouraging folks to RSVP on your Facebook event page.  You tweet about it, blog about it.  That’s a lot of content and the event hasn’t even happened!  During the event, you take video and photos, and post those to Flickr and YouTube, again sharing them on Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn.  If it was a presentation, post the slides on SlideShare.  Write a recap on your blog.  Squeeze everything you can out of that one event – and you’re looking a months of content.

4.  Sell something.

Notice this isn’t #1.  Surprised?  Believe it or not, social media doesn’t exist so that you can sell more products or get more clients.  It’s meant to be a social platform to help enable communication.  It’s built for users, and not for business owners.  That means we first need to become a part of the social media community before we start selling.  It’s ok to put an offer out there now and then, but you should think of your social media posts as more of a headline to your ad than the ad itself.  Encourage people to visit your website for more information or to come in to your place of business.  Make it compelling.  And don’t overdo it.

5.  Listen and learn.

Experiencing that 140-character paralysis?  Stop trying to put something out there, and instead, spend your time soaking it in.  Browse industry blogs and subscribe to them in your feed reader.  Comment on interesting posts.  Set up custom Twitter searches for your industry buzzwords and competitors and your own brand.  Fan as many of your industry leaders and competitors as you can on Facebook.  Then, sit back and watch.  Listen.  Learn.  Follow the stream to see what they’re doing well and what’s not working.  Take notes.  Get familiar with the environment before you start trying to hard to put yourself out there.   You’ll have amassed more business knowledge and perspective on how to approach your social media than you could ever imagine.

Social media is not a magic bullet.  It’s not the be-all-end-all for small businesses.  It’s not a sales platform.

Stop thinking about it that way.

What social media is about is the community. It’s about how much you actually care to be a part of that community. About how much you connect with them and nurture them. It’s about how much that ties in to your larger, long term business strategy. It’s about innovation and sharing and empowerment and knowledge and spreading those things as far as the world can reach.

Change your expectations, the way you think about it, and you’ll find it much more enjoyable and effective.