Hopefully, if you’re participating in social media marketing, you’re using more than just the tools everyone else is using. Sure, most social media marketing plans often start with the obvious contenders, such as Facebook and Twitter, mostly because the audiences there are so vast and diversified that you’re bound to find people interested in your product offerings. (Of course, you’ll still need to look once you’re there, do outreach, and perform whatever else it takes to build a loyal following.) However, you need to articulate to your client or marketing teams that social media is not just about participating on Twitter and Facebook. Some additional tasks might include niche social site promotion, blogger outreach, photo sharing, generating leads through business and consumer networks, contests, viral video, phone meetings that follow online correspondence, face to face meetings resulting from online networking, attending events and conferences, backchannel communications, and more.

If your client approaches you and says that he’s disappointed that the marketing initiatives only include Facebook and Twitter, it’s time to set up and manage expectations — and prove that you’re doing much more than just what’s viewable to the public — before it’s too late. The online world is vast and it is often your responsibility to cover as much ground as you can to be effective in your marketing efforts.