If you’re into any sort of social media marketing, then there’s no need to convince you to do one since marketers understand the average person will spend a time span worth more than 4 years viewing their cellphones, and half of that time is usually spent on social media. Well, all you need is to glance around a family dinner during Thanksgiving and you’ll see almost everyone hunkered down on their smartphones, all except the 6-month-old toddler and Mr. Smith, the 2-year-old family cat.

Surprisingly, even your own father who uses social media a lot will tell you that, thanks to social media, it’s now so easy to reconnect with Uncle Felix who’s doing scientific research in Africa, or speak to Aunt Marie who’s living in Canada. It’s also easy now to search for long-lost family members who’ve dropped below the radar for more than 20 years, and this includes all those long-lost stories of cousins, friends, and even lovers. Social media have also been great platforms for charitable movements, or awareness campaigns for certain health issues. Of course, ever since the idea came up, social media marketing has paved the way for better brand and product awareness over the internet so long as your company has a sound social media marketing plan. Understanding the benefits of social media for business is a key to success.

Speaking of a social media marketing plan, 2014 has been a banner year for social media marketers, so perhaps it’s only fair to implement some newly proven strategies into your 2015 marketing for additional strength, ROI, and profits.

Instead of just followers, build up a community

Twitter is sort of like the live television of social media platforms. Everyone may be watching or reading, but even if you have 10,000 followers, you’ll be lucky to have 1 percent twitting and sharing. Remember that social media is all about interaction. So, try to insert some humor, or personality into your products or services. Social media’s primary aside from communication is to entertain, and the more entertained they are the more they will interact. Of course, when people find your product hysterical, funny, or adorable, they tend to share more with others. For others, they may relate to it, so they share it with others as well. Also, you can’t be conversing with followers in the third person; you need to tweet/talk/discuss/call them out directly, by name even if possible.

Tell a powerful story and create a powerful movement

If your product or service was involved in a powerful story, then tell it on all your social media platforms. Eventually, a sort of movement behind this story may materialize or you can create its own movement. The story should stand out as something charitable, inspirational, or emotional. For instance, as part of its social media marketing plan, an animal collar company posted on social media that for every cat or dog rescued and given a decent home and owner, they would provide free animal collars to the rescued animal. Eventually, law enforcement and animal rights groups began to coordinate with this company, keeping the company up to date on the latest successful rescues, to the point that people became very familiar with the brand name and features.