Besides its benefit for higher search rankings, social media marketing has numerous other intangible benefits. Bottom line, Social Media Marketing must be incorporated into your online marketing strategy if you want to grow your presence online.

However, for social media to be effective, a few of the required ingredients are:

1. Leadership
   
2. Passion
   
3. Content

Good leadership could mean expertise and/or credibility. Or it could mean mediocrity and pure foolishness. Whatever it is, if it actually generates a following or discussion, it could find a sweet spot within social media marketing.

You’ve also got to have passion. There are a million blogs out there, but its pretty easy to spot the ones that have passion. Passion, in whatever form it comes, is certainly an ingredient for social media marketing to be a success. Passion also generates a following.

Another ingredient for successful social media marketing is content. Do you have something worth talking about? Do people care about it? A good example is AT & T’s launch of its Facebook Fan Page. C’mon now! Is this company really suited for a ‘fan following?’ This Facebook Fan Page is an example of a social media marketing tactic the company has tried. If customers think AT & T’s customer service sucked before, is a fan base really going to help? Probably not.

These are just a few ingredients necessary for you to be successful in social media. Would anyone else care to divulge a few more?