When it comes right down to it, there is nothing better than incorporating social media into your business marketing strategy. As of July 2011, Facebook alone has 500 million users. And, social media is one of the most affordable tools that companies have to use when executing a marketing promotion.

So, if you are using social media as part of your marketing strategy but you are not seeing the results that you feel you should, you are most likely making at least one of the five most frequent mistakes that people make when using social media.

Listed below are five of the most common mistakes to avoid when using social media as part of your total marketing program:

#1 Not having a company website

This is the biggest mistake that companies make. Social media is a good tool to use however you absolutely must have a company website. When you use social media the correct way, your social sites should drive traffic to your company website. How will your visitors learn about your products and services that you offer if they don't have a website to go to?

#2 Tweeting exactly the same message over and over

Here is another big no-no. When people visit your Twitter page, they should not see a whole bunch of tweets with the same message. Even though you could be promoting an identical product or service, it is important for you to change up your language every time you send out a tweet.

#3 Having a lot of spelling mistakes on your pages

People are people and people make mistakes. You certainly will always have the occasional typo in an article that you're writing or content that you put on your Facebook page. However, if you constantly have typos on your pages, you will definitely look totally unprofessional. You can certainly use Word to type out your content before putting it on your social media page. Word will highlight typing errors and all you have to do is to correct them.

#4 Being unprofessional on your personal site

Even though your personal site is apart from your business site, it is only a fine line. If people desire to work with you online, they will search for your name on line. Don't post suggestive pictures on line or anything that might have a negative effect on you personally. It will definitely have an unfavorable effect on your business.

#5 Spamming

If you participate in discussion groups and online forums, you should not promote your goods and services there. If your particular subject comes up in discussion and you contribute to the discussion with valuable information, then you can mention your particular goods or services. Not to just promote, but also to assist people with problems that they could be having. If your product or service can truly help the people in the discussion, then mention it.

If you go into discussion forums with the sole purpose of promoting your products, you may be labeled a spammer and no one in the groups will pay any attention to you.

#6 Not measuring results

Measuring results is something that a lot of us can forget to perform. How will you know if your social marketing plan is working if you don't measure your results? Depending on your particular category or niche, you will definitely measure things differently. If you only measure people who hit the "like" button, that won't let you know if people are really listening to you or if they're visiting your website and then purchasing your products. Some measuring tips would be to keep track of the number of sales that you get from referrals, how many visitors you are getting to your website and if you utilize coupons, just how many coupons are being used by your clients. You should utilize what's going to work for you and your particular type of business. But, you need to track everything. You need to know what is working and what's not working so that you don't spend all of your time on things that aren't working for your business.

So, listed below are the most common mistakes that are being made with social media:

Not having a business website,tweeting the same messages over and over again, spelling mistakes on your pages, being unprofessional on your personal site, spamming and not measuring results.

Work diligently on these 6 common mistakes and watch your social marketing strategy take off!