Social media marketing is quickly becoming one of the hottest, most talked about, and most effective forms of marketing out there. While thousands of marketers battle for the best PPC advertising spots, conversion rates, and lowest bid prices, smart marketers are building communities, fostering organic support, and launching their products to ultra-cheap promotion through social media.

However, not every social media product launch is a success. By the very nature of social media, some launches end up more successful and noticeable than others. If you are planning on launching a product and want to use social media for promotion and publicity, these four tips will help you lower costs, maximize marketing power, and create a scalable long-term marketing asset.

1. Start building a long time before you launch.
One major problem that affects social media marketers is a premature product launch. Social media runs on buzz, and when you do not give your community enough time to generate that buzz, your product launch is destined to be a failure. You need to dedicated months, sometimes even years, to the launch of a product. Build real relationships, plan out interviews months in advance, and offers samples of your new product to top bloggers, social media users, and online presences.

2. Capture email addresses if possible.
In marketing circles, Twitter gets a lot of attention, some of which is relatively undeserved. While Twitter is a great short-term marketing platform, it is not fantastic for building deep connections. Twitter is naturally a low-commitment platform, which means that users tend not to put a huge amount of value on the average tweet. If you are capturing potential sales using Twitter, be sure to market your product through a more powerful platform. A good way to start is by capturing email addresses through social media websites, and then marketing directly to them when your product is available.

3. Do not spam, do not push, just encourage.
In email marketing, a bad user experience just means a lost sale. In social media marketing, a bad user experience means a lost sale, and a potentially devastating round of negative publicity. When you push someone towards a sale in a domain as public as social media, you risk them responding negatively. Your focus as a social media marketer should not be on pushing sales and creating short-term profits, but on encouraging users to try your products, report on what they find, and become long-term customers.

4. Remove gatekeepers.
For decades, direct mail marketing campaigns were the most effective way to sell products. Why? Because they were relatively long, yet they had no real barrier to entry. All that was required to become excited about the product was to open the letter. Now, users open a browser instead of an envelope, and read through marketing pages instead of printed letters. Social media does not favor difficult sales processes. Remove every potential gatekeeper — sign-up pages, introductions — and focus on offering your product directly. The quicker the transition from link-to-sale, the more effective the campaign.

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MATERIAL CONNECTION DISCLOSURE: You should assume that I, Andrea Kalli, have an affiliate relationship and/or another material connection to the providers of goods and services mentioned in this page and may be compensated when you purchase from a provider. You should always perform due diligence before buying goods or services from anyone via the Internet or offline.