Of all the marketing tools currently being used on the Internet, social media marketing is one of the most important and effective. But if you're serious about achieving social media optimization, then you need to read on and use some of the tips that I'm going to share with you here, courtesy of some expert advice from Glen Allsopp, writing for the SearchEngineLand.com website. According to Allsopp, "You must get involved in the top social media sites to understand them thoroughly. My thought process behind this was that the only way to start understanding the type of content that works is by being exposed to the stories, titles and content on a daily basis. Therefore this mainly involved using Digg, Reddit and StumbleUpon on a regular basis." This makes sense to me. You can't use a medium like social media marketing effectively, unless you know how to use it. Next, "You must be a real user. When getting staff to start using these sites I encouraged them to forget about the client side of things. I simply asked that they vote for what they found interesting whether it be fashion, cars or music and then add content submitters as friends if they wanted to read articles on the same subjects." So whatever social media platform you intend to use, become familiar with social media marketing, and be aware off the social media marketing pitfalls that are out there.