I begin my public foray into the world of Social Media Marketing with this blog post. My desired outcome from this endeavor is to develop a level of understanding relative to Einstein’s grasp of physics. Well, at least a gravitational pull towards practical expertise…. At times it feels as if my current grasp of Social Media Marketing is more on par with, My immediate goal is the  attainment of a certificate in Social Media Marketing from San Francisco State’s Extended Learning program http://www.cel.sfsu.edu/socialmedia/  The faculty and classmates that I have encountered  have been top notch. My coursework started out with an overview of cohesive marketing strategies with Deb Doyle http:// www.stage2west.com The coursework then moved on to how to use the major Social Media Marketing platforms, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube etc. to build your customer base. Best practices and  back end optimization using the various sites were introduced by Michael Nuendorff,  http://www.buildandbalance.com/   My current class led by the infinitely listenable Suse Barnes http://susby.com/ is Maximizing Your Visibility: Social And SEO. The “meat” of the discipline is perceived by most organizations to be in these processes. “How do we keep our companies on the first page of Google”, and “how do we optimize our social presence?” are questions asked in an ever growing amount of businesses and organizations all over the world. I plunge in vowing to develop the knowledge of Social Media Marketing that enables me to: apply the principles of search engine and social media optimization, constantly challenge the keywords used to capture the eyeballs of searching clients,  improve the relevance of content for an ever expanding customer base, and drive endless traffic that converts into leads and ultimately consistent high margin business. Social Media Marketing it’s not just a job, it’s an adventure!