A social marketing company does not have to take a lot of time to manage if the right steps are taken to minimize mistakes and automate tasks. The benefits of engaging in this new sales promotion revolution are unlike anything we've ever seen in history. Most anyone with an internet connection and a few ideas can startup a social marketing company and begin making money online - and the hardest task - building lists - is all but done for you. Here are the steps needed to begin this type of online business.

Step 1: Research Markets to Find Opportunities Research is and always will be the first step in beginning any type of venture. It is hard to get out there in the market and try to compete when completely ignorant of the competitive environment. For those who don't know where to start, it often isn't a bad idea to begin with a topic you know something about and think about ways others are making money in that industry. Then the idea is to turn your own knowledge and research into information you can use to inform and advise buyers.

Step 2: Penetrate the Market by Starting a Social Marketing Company The next thing to do once you have identified a target product or service is to create a personality for your promotions and open accounts on the major platforms such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter. All of these anonymous systems require no more than an email to begin, so grab an unused email address or create a new one (all freely available from any number of providers) and start those new accounts.

Step 3: Build Sites to Start Driving Leads and Sales Ultimately any successful social marketing company is going to have to have some websites of their own in place in order to capture the email addresses of subscribers and ultimately buyers! Unfortunately it really is not possible to run a truly successful campaign from free resources alone. Long term success comes from building lists of your own - and that requires sites and software to automate the process for you. The blessing of making the investment in the list building programs is that they also perform and automate much of the marketing process for you - so they're well worth the investment.

Step 4: Automating Tasks Once you have gotten your first campaign running you'll quickly realize that social web marketing automation is a must for future growth. Click here for shortcuts to automating your social marketing business.