Everyone wants to be liked. That’s what social media marketing is all about!

One of the things that throws businesses a little when they’re looking at all of the splendid things that social media marketing can do for them is the lingo. There’s a fair amount of it whether you’ve started with Facebook or even Twitter as your marketing tool of choice, but you’ll need to get a handle on some fairly simple terms so you can make the most of any campaign that you set out on. Remember, for instance, that when a firm is getting a number of ‘likes’ on their Facebook page, that term is actually a metric that people are using to determine what works and what doesn’t and not just a fanciful way of showing approval.

Take the results from a new poll from Effie Worldwide and Mashable. The numbers that were derived here show that smart businesses are striving to get more fans to ‘like’ them and the companies that are looking for that accolade might be of a higher caliber than you might have expected. The poll finds 87% of executives in companies like Bank of America and Colgate-Palmolive said social media was "important" or "very important" in their quest to get to their adverting goals for the year.

Another interesting statistic was the 70% that said they planned to pump up their social media planning budget by 10% in 2011. These are the folks that understand the need to keep on top of all the latest technology as well. Even though 35% said they planned to target Facebook users in 2011, this same bunch was well aware of the uses of mobile technology. To that end 80% said they planned an iPad ad campaign or even getting an application designed that was specific to their firm.