YNOT – There is more to social marketing than developing strategies for Twitter, Facebook and other networks. Regardless the popularity of the tools you plan to use, no strategy can work unless it’s based on at least a modicum of knowledge about the market you intend to approach.

Before developing a strategy for any marketing plan, you must understand the customers you which to reach. If you’re planning to employ social media, you need to understand potential customers’ social behaviors.

Customers are adopting new ways to communicate with each other, and companies must change in order to reach them. In the social marketing sphere, direct business-to-consumer messages aren’t entirely irrelevant, but they’re losing ground to consumer-to-consumer communications all the time. Too many self-proclaimed “social media consultants” pitch a solution based on which tool is the most popular without sufficient consideration about how consumers communicate via those tools. Sometimes a less-popular medium is more appropriate for your message.

This can’t be repeated often enough: Before embarking on a social marketing campaign, make sure you understand your potential customers’ behavior.

Here are four things to consider as you research before preparing your marketing plan:
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