Since its inception a few short years ago, the social media revolution has engendered an era of myth and superstition that mankind hasn’t experienced since medieval times.

The myth of social media as an all-powerful sales catalyst is instilled every ‘Business of Blogging’ article that details the incredible value of participating in social networks, and the unprecedented power of blogs to win customers, and how well written articles rapidly expand new markets. But very few authors describe how to create this marketing miracle, and that’s because few people know what’s most important, or understand how the search for experts drives the internet.

Good online marketing should amplify an essential truth, and make each client’s website more attractive to society by increasing its ‘social relevance’. This in turn raises its page rank and increases its appearance in search engine result pages for popular keywords. The power of story will naturally compel participation and increase usability. Good social media marketing should always answer the most obvious question, ‘why should I care about this website?’.

These five most common social media marketing mistakes are products of ignorance:

1) The campaign doesn’t target keywords

There has long been a debate on how to measure the return on investment of social media campaigns, but the best metric appears to be the quality and value of the conversations themselves. Although difficult to quantify, such media does significantly increase findability and brand adoption. But every good conversation should have specific keywords as anchor text, over links to client web pages. This activity builds relevance and links the client business website to those search words.  Because search engine result pages are by far the largest and best source of traffic on the internet, social marketers should do everything in their power to make their clients relevant here first.

Marketing campaigns that don’t target keywords are like flour mills without a mill stone. Sorry to get medieval, but marketing plans without keyword strategies waste a lot of otherwise useful creative energy. That’s because making and shaping conversations on a dozen different platforms is hard work, and if nobody responds to any of your compelling articles, blogs, or discussion forum threads, then all you have are those incoming links back to your client’s website – so make that anchor text count by targeting the best keywords for your client’s business.

2) Content Distribution is all General Replication

Anyone can write a good article, or buy original content from freelance writers. There are dozens of places like Elance.com, and Buzzle.com and even Craigslist that make it easy to find and employ freelance talent. The challenge is to exploit the content to its maximum potential – get the most eyeballs and clicks to achieve 100% marketing potential. Depending on the quality of the article, and the subject, sometimes that does indeed mean publishing the piece anywhere and everywhere user generated content is accepted. Article licensing and replication websites like GoArticles, Amazines and IdeaMarketers will accept almost anything and reward authors with incoming links.

But good social marketers know when they have great content, and they know that means turning their backs on article replication websites in favour of publishing the content only once, on a highly respected, heavily trafficked online magazine or web portal. If its really good stuff then publish it on a new page in the client’s website, and encourage others to link to it as an information resource - this builds traffic and reputation.

Exclusive relationships with respected ‘gatekeepers’ are perhaps the most significant difference between veterans and rookie social marketers. Knowing the editors of popular websites, ezines, or anywhere else people go to find rare and privileged information can prove invaluable in making marquee media, those rare and special pieces that define a successful campaign.

3) Not using the tools to connect with other people

Rookie social marketers selfishly push their own agenda and ignore other members and moderator requests to complete their profile pages. They monopolize all web tools available to broadcast their own message, exclusively.

Member profile pages are the most obvious spot to list qualifications and get creative. Genuine new members with passion for the subject will relish the opportunity to wax poetic about their interesting lives and indirectly show how they would make valuable additions to the community. Rookie social marketers ignore their profiles and consider that component of a social networking site to be a waste of time. They’re wrong.

What these pups don’t realize is that most of these websites have been around for years and the core members actually enjoy policing their community from ‘perceived threats’ like trespassing storytellers with obvious agendas. The smaller the community, the less likely an unrelated brand message will be well received. In fact, their loud and selfish behaviour can actually diminish their client’s value. Rookie marketers are usually so busy planting their messages that they don’t even bother to return to their discussions to check for participation.

Most social networking websites are community based organisms where people register as members for special privileges. In each and every case it’s the exchange of ideas that makes these places online attractions. People join these sites to find rare and valuable information on the topics they most care about, from experts they trust because of personal interaction. Nearly every site makes it possible to connect with other people, and that’s why it’s called social media. Not connecting with other people online is just like not talking to other people at real life social gatherings – it makes everyone uncomfortable.

4) Creating and measuring short term solutions

Good ad firms recognize that social media is a ‘long tail’ marketing mechanism where conversations that were started years earlier can resurface with new implications at anytime. Social marketers that link to temporary pages on client websites, or spark conversations about upcoming promotions or events without anchoring to a fixed and permanent web destination are simply planning to fail – they’re busy, making a giant waste of time.

Harvesting only short term analytics is also a recipe for failure. This media is made by the people for the people and that takes time. A good social media marketing campaign should be measured in months, not weeks.

5) Not using the media to create an expert

Most importantly, society prizes experience and the ability to communicate valuable information. Having both knowledge and ability transforms some web content producers into respected authorities. Experts are recognized through their own popular blogs where readers always find lots of comments after every post, and their busy community website profile pages where their faces and biographies have been scrutinized by thousands of people, and by huge Twitter followings. Hiring an expert to promote your brand, and then sharing his or her online reputation and resources is a great way to make good media fast, but finding, funding and shaping your own expert is the very best way to validate your client’s social relevance.

The search for experts drives the internet; three out of every ten computers is browsing some form of contextual search engine at this very moment, and one more is searching videos on YouTube.com. Experts are the source of trusted information on the web simply because they are more accountable. People can see them and email them and leave them nasty comments if their wisdom fails.

Good social marketers will collaborate to publish articles and blogs and spark conversations on discussion forums under a single expert avatar; a real person, to be sure, albeit with superhuman social marketing skills. This is the guy or girl who will be on Oprah someday, that rare and special person with an interesting message that brings relevance (and traffic) to your client’s website.

Good social media marketing amplifies a website’s natural social relevance

Smojoe creates cost effective social media by using the incredible power of story to bend a website’s offerings into other niches to make it more relevant in more places to more people.

Compelling stories and idea hooks planted in articles, blogs and discussion forums attract a click-through market, while smart keyword strategies ensure more search traffic. Sophisticated social marketers follow their natural passion for client subjects and bend brand messages to make them most attractive to the existing membership. And finally, the very best social marketers have the experience to spot, bait, build and promote niche content experts, the most precious currency of the information age.

Smojoe creates experts for every campaign, but specializes in showing small to medium size business how to ‘make a bus and drive it’ to build and maintain their own social relevance.

There are so many colourful venues to explore besides Facebook and Twitter, but everything possible hinges on finding keywords that answer the most daunting question, ‘why should I care about this website?’