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As you begin to enter the social media marketing space, you’ll start to hear about “fans,” “friends” and “followers” — variations on the connections that people make in these environments. These relationships provide a first layer of measurement for social media marketing success, as they define your primary high-value audience.

While you don’t want to evaluate success strictly in terms of the number of followers or fans you amass — their activity, particularly relative to blog pageviews or, even better, purchases is far more important — this is the foundation from which you will drive the interactions that yield returns.

So, why do customers and clients become company and brand fans? Well, the answer varies with the type of social media user involved.

According to MarketingSherpa, there are three basic categories: Daily Users, Max Connectors and everyone else (i.e., “All Respondents”). Max Connectors are users with more than 500 social connections (e.g., on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter). Daily Users are exactly what you think they are, though they lack the number of relationships as Max Connectors. Finally, All Respondents consists of Max Connectors, Daily Users and everyone else who participated in the study.

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IT manufacturers and resellers have been looking into social media marketing, unsure of whether there’s an ROI case in it but understanding that eventually they’ll need to make the plunge. Well, an announcement by Dell yesterday shows that you should explore social media marketing … for all the right reasons.

Dell says that it has generated more than $6.5 million in sales via Twitter alone. The company’s broader social media presence – which includes Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube – has more than 3 million members, according to Manish Mehta, vice president of social media and community for Dell.

Let’s be realistic: $6.5 million is a drop in the bucket for Dell. At the same time, social media is but one part of its overall marketing strategy. So, it looks as though the return Dell has generated is at least close to proportional.

So, we should all rush over to Twitter and get started, right?

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There are two reasons to enter the social media marketing space: to protect your brand and market share and to go out and grab more. How many reasons are there to avoid this marketing venue? None.

The ubiquity of social media means that you have to enter the space. IT manufacturers and resellers are already experimenting with blogs, LinkedIn profiles and Twitter feeds – some have already made them marketing priorities. Their reasons for doing so vary, however.

For the cautious, blogs and other social media tools are defensive. They provide a way to protect the company brand and keep competitors from rushing to claim the high ground online. By maintaining a social media presence, including regular and consistent blog-based communication, they are able to prevent other technology companies from reaching out to their clients. This protective approach doesn’t generate a powerful ROI case it does help prevent revenue from leaking to the competition.

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