Index p. 371-380 ; Social media marketing a strategic approach is built upon an eight step planning cycle that helps ensure the development of a winning social media marketing plan. This model incorporates the conceptual foundation and practical techniques necessary for creating a comprehensive and effective social media marketing plan. This planning cycle begins with observing an organization's current presence and competition on the social web, followed by the establishment of realistic social media goals ad effective strategies to achieve them. The next step is to define an organization's target markets on the social web. This process makes it possible for a company to identify the social media platforms with the highest concentrations of its target audiences and determine how they are participating on those platforms, which enables the organization to select the optimal social media platfroms for reaching its target audiences.