Recently I’ve received a number of emails promoting software designed to make posting to Pinterest easier.

Using social media can be effective and since it is usually free it can be incredibly tempting. But I’ve never found it as easy as some sales pages would have you believe. If you get it wrong you can discover vast amounts of your time have disappeared into Facebook, Twitter and the others.

So before you start Tweeting, blog posting, uploading videos to YouTube and placing pictures on Pinterest give it some thought.

The first thing to realise is that each social media site has it’s own preferred audience. While many people will visit a number of sites there is usually one that is prefered by certain demographics. If you want to avoid wasting the effort you put into social media marketing you need to pick the specific sites that cater best for your specific market.

Like any form of marketing you have to communicate with your target audience in a way they will appreciate and understand.

It’s also a good time to remember how the 80/20 rule works in business and marketing. You’ll probably be getting 80% of your results from just 20% of the social media sites, so it doesn’t make sense to immediately jump in to as many as you can.

Identify the two sites that are most likely to be visited by your potential customers. As so many people are using Facebook that’s likely to be one of them. The other could be LinkedIn if you are looking for business and professional contacts, Pinterest if you want to reach women (though it is shedding its ‘women only’ reputation), Tumblr if you want to interact with Generation Y, etc.

For a more specific breakdown of the demographics that use specific social media sites take a look at this article.