Outsource My Social Media Marketing

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In this paper we offer an introduction to the new Internet phenomena – Social Media Marketing explaining:

1. Why it’s important for small businesses to understand it
2. What to do, and how to go about it. (all the site names are links)
3. Where to go to start building a web presence.

Why you need to be marketing via Social Media

Do you need to get into Social Media Marketing (SMM) – Almost certainly YES because a) the other approaches don’t work so well anymore, and b) because it offers a much wider reach, to a more closely targeted audience. And it’s free.

a) Other approaches don’t work any more:

* Cold calling on the street – when was the last time anybody got invited in to make their pitch?
* Cold calling on the phone – talking to voice mail isn’t fun anymore.
* Print and other broadcast media – far too expensive and unproductive.
* Email – authorized sender lists and other filters send these to Trash.
* SEO your marketing site – Google ranks advertisers first and content (in blogs) next.
* Adwords – cost per click is driven up by big brand budgets and only Google makes money.

On top of these is the resistance we all have to intrusive advertising. Our brains, our Firefox or our Tivo, allows us to filter it out.

b) Social Media platforms aren’t intended for marketing, but do help us get messages out there, to people interested in the subject. The creators built these systems so communities could interact, on the Internet. Members avoid advertising like everybody else, but as in other social places, they are open to meeting people and learning and sharing. Participating in these communities, we can meet people who are buying what we sell.

Social Media Marketing is:

1. More effective
2. Wider reach to people who are interested
3. Free!

The Seven Secrets to Being Welcome

Getting started with SMM can appear intimidating. All of these places seem full of experts who use their own special languages. We have to write and publish stuff in ways people want to read. Most of all it seems to take up so much time.

But actually it’s easy, provided we stick to the fundamental principles:

* Avoid Internet Marketing Experts like the plague. Sites are dominated by these characters trying to drive readers to their blogs, in the hope they’ll click an Ad. They know less about SMM than we do, or they wouldn’t act the way they do.

* Find some genuine (there are a few) SMM experts and read what they generously share in their blogs. A great starting place is chrisbrogan.com. Find Chris’ paper “Fish Where the Fish Are” for the most clear explanation.

* Sign up to sites where your prospects, or people they know, hang out. Be social. Fill out your profile as if you’re joining a club. In Social Media, members like to know the person behind the business. It’s just like meeting people at a cocktail party.

* Write blog posts on stuff you really understand. Make these posts short, to the point, and offer genuine expertise. The objective here is not winning a Pulitzer Prize – it’s sharing your expertise. Don’t pretend to know something. Frauds are exposed in a heartbeat.

* Write comments in forums, sharing what you know with people who don’t. Answer questions posted with short comments directly on subject. People interested in the same subject watch the answers to questions. The question becomes the focal point of a mini community. Here you can answer one question and have ten people recognize your value add.

* Don’t make promises you can’t keep. Bad news about a product or service will be around the world in a nano second and consign the perpetrator to oblivion.

* DO NOT SELL. There are plenty of fools who do, but they’re noticed as Spammers. There’s no need to sell. When we know what we’re talking about, people in the market will want to buy.

Anybody following these rules will be welcome on discussion forums and other meeting places.

Easy Steps to Global Presence

We need to think of the Internet as a spinning plate. We can stand in the middle and not move while it goes on around us, but we know there’s stuff going on out there. The perimeter is moving much faster then the center. It’s all a blur.

To join in we’ll need to move toward the outside and be prepared to move more quickly. The further we get out there the faster we have to think, and move. What’s happening isn’t near the center, it’s out there on the edges. In today’s world it’s a case of “be out there, or be square”.

In B2B, the good news is we don’t have to get to the extremes of what the gurus are dreaming up. Our audience, being more focused on business than redefining the world, congregates in places where it’s easier to play a part. Not that far from the center. Further out there will be opportunities in the future so we should stake out a place, but we probably aren’t going to do business there – yet.

Most of the sites out there have been started by people wanting to get paid for advertising, one way or another, and run the site for their own benefit. Why not start at Front Office Box User Group ?- it’s run for your benefit. You can manage your own communities, get all your blog posts automatically sent to content distributors. Get your profiles indexed by Search Engines, and advice from the Social Media Marketing group.

At WeCanDo.Biz create a profile in the directory, receive endorsements from customers and business partners, contact other members via messages and post any business needs to the community. Coming soon will be a business forum.

At implu.com find up to the minute details of 167,000 company officers, create a personal profile and share your “stories” about corporate America. There’ll be blogs and a forum coming soon.

Not many people know but you can set up a business profile on Facebook go to Mari Smith for a guide.

Next go to to Linked In. Here we find 25+ million professionals, like us, wanting to connect for business: reconnect with past colleagues, receive job offers, get help from their peers. Linked In has 1,000s of special interest groups and posts questions and answers in 100s of categories.

Growing fast is a host of special interest sites using Ning and Collective X software. Both offer directories of their sites. There are 1,000s of Ning sites, some with 100,000s members, focused on special interest or geography. Ning makes it particularly easy for us to set up our own, and keeps a consistent profile of us and our “friends” across all of it’s sites. Find some interesting groups, join and join in discussions. You’ll be familiar with the way it all works- the user group’s a Ning site.

Spread your Internet footprint by submitting content at Ezine Articles. From December 2008 join AddsYou for more of the same opportunities. Post the same content in Squidoo lenses and Google Knols. Contribute to Knols Debates. – researchers use these like encyclopedia.
Get a Google account. Post content in your Blogspot blog, publish it in Google Sites pages, make videos and publish on You Tube.

Answer others’ questions anywhere you find them – particularly at Linked In, Yahoo Answers and Knol Debates. People appreciate the help, and Google is watching – by now you’re becoming a world authority on your subjects. (worth remembering 99% of the content on the web is regurgitated garbage – if your stuff is good it’s easy to stand out).

Microblogging and What We Can Do With It

At the extreme edge of our plate we come to microblogging with Twitter, Pownce, Yammer, Plurk and a few more – on the face of it the most meaningless service imaginable, with broadcast publishing limited to 140 characters and a host of complimentary software/services adding value to it. The number of people joining Twitter is growing at a blinding rate, because the members are creating purpose for it as they go along. With Twitter the lunatics really have taken control of the asylum.

Even further out we come to Twingr. This is a site/service letting people create their own communities, just like Ning but limited to the 140 character post size. (It’s brand new so might need some time to fix a few things.)

Why limit messages to 140 characters? Because it cuts to the mustard. People out there want to benefit from our insight, not out literary skills. The limit focuses minds on the meat. Readers can scan hundreds of posts in a few minutes, choosing ones they want to know more about.

Microblogging started with simple status updates – what I’m doing now – between friends. Then it exploded with users and innovation.

Now news services monitor Twitter posts to find out what’s happening. Journalists monitor them to find out what people are thinking. Politicians are doing the same, and engaging a new public with their own ideas. Software companies are publishing service notices to their users. Brands don’t need customer surveys anymore, they just monitor Twitter.

Sales guys are monitoring Twitter to find out who’s interested in what, and what’s being said about their competitors. This is the new source of sales leads, and we don’t have to look for them, they come to us.

More than a million early adopters are publishing news and opinions to the rest of the world. The service is so successful, developers everywhere are writing programs to add value – including Twitter Search, monitoring keywords and sending every post using them to our RSS reader, and Twellow, a directory of Twitter users with more than 620,000 entries.

With Twitter we can find new friends and colleagues anywhere in the world. We can learn of a new opportunity, evaluate and decide within just a few minutes.

We can be so much more productive, because we’ve got access to so much more information and support. It’s the ultimate question and answer service.

What’s Next ?

Beats me! We just need to keep up with pace.

Steve discusses corporate social media policies with Tedrick Housh, an employment attorney with Lathrop & Gage. Socialology can help you get your guidelines together before firing an arrotney like Tedrick to finalize them.

Visit Toolbox.com Advertising, bit.ly This brief video introduces B2B marketers to social media marketing solutions at Toolbox.com.

Kathy O’Reilly, Director Social Media Relations at Monster.com gives tips to Corporations on how to approach their social media strategy to Linda Sherman. Filmed at SXSWi. Linda Sherman blogs at ItsDifferent4Girls.com and http

Emergency management organizations and agencies that are restricting social media from their networks may be doing more harm than good. 

Allowing access to social networking sites may actually boost productivity if not morale. Many large organizations use social media to boost sales, encourage team work and generate information and helpful leads. So too, can emergency managers find these tools to be productive. Agencies can quickly share lessons learned and other helpful information, faster than can be done even by phone or email. While there is obviously a need for a social media policy to avoid the posting of inappropriate messages, (see a cautionary tale here) the ability to instantly communicate with other emergency managers as well as the public is invaluable. 

Additionally, there is value gained in using tools like Twitter to put out EXACTLY the message you want to your followers. Why not advertise? Does your organization’s web site home page have a link that says, “Follow Us on Twitter” yet? Why not? As overwhelming as the world of social media can be, on the other side of that anxiety attack is the most control we’ve ever had as emergency managers to manage the conversation. Want to know what people are talking about on Twitter? The real value from this social media wonder IS NOT the status updates – sure that’s cute for funny quips and posting tiny URLs, (wondering what a “Tiny URL” is?) but the real value in Twitter is the search capabilities. Try the Twitter Search (www.search.twitter.com): plug in any topic and you will get a list of the most recent tweets about it. Want to know what is REALLY going on during a disaster? Search it on Twitter rather than Google…you will be surprised how many people are tweeting from the actual scene! (Hint here: they’re not all responders) If you’re a public figure, you should be doing a Twitter search on yourself every day – want to know how you’re really holding up in the public poles? 

Gone are the days where the work we do can be done in a silo – everything we do as emergency managers is open to public scrutiny. But this is a good thing! This level of accountability should motivate us to take all of our planning and preparedness initiatives to the next level. Our co-workers are no longer limited to the locale we serve. Tweet about your highs and lows. Connect with colleagues and coworkers on LinkedIn, create fan pages and group pages for initiatives and projects that would be better served with more input or a different perspective. Worried about input overload? Don’t; you’re still the project manager. Use the information to your benefit. Worried someone might steal your ideas? Good; that means you must be doing something right! Emergency management is only effective if everyone is on the same page and working toward the same finish. 

Don’t know how to manage all of those status updates, groups and fan pages? Try a handy utility updating site – my favorite is www.Ping.fm.  Here you can update one status and all of the other social media sites you manage will automatically be updated with the same message…or you can make groups of your sites, just like with your email. Utility sites can manage anything from the usual suspects like FaceBook, LinkedIn, Twitter and MySpace, to the more obscure or lesser known sites like Yammer, Plurk and Ning (here’s a ridiculously long, but probably not exhaustive, list of social media). AND, unlike anything else you do in emergency management, it’s ALL FREE!                                                                                          

The point being, rather than shy away from or limit access to social media, embrace it! Chances are your people are already using it anyway; why not encourage it and use it to your benefit? Anyone who has ever had a web security page pop up while trying to get through a Google search at work can tell you it’s beyond frustrating; it’s usually blocking something related to the job at hand.  Ultimately, employers who are trying to reduce the amount of time workers spend socializing rather than working may really be doing the opposite. And if you’re that worried about your employees goofing off and not being productive, you may want to reconsider your hiring practices. 

The inspiration for this article lies in a fantastic slide presentation I saw fairly recently on slideshare.net. The presentation, aptly named “What the f*** is social media?” was put together by Marta Z Kagan.

Over 74 slides, one is just hit with fact after fascinating fact – initially about the reach and penetration of social media, and then how to converse with audiences. It’s truly inspiring stuff.

Wikipedia broadly defines social media as the use of electronic and Internet tools for the purpose of sharing and discussing information and experiences with other human beings. Kagan sums it up nicely saying “social media is people having conversations online”.

The mechanisms for these conversations include a number of mediums – some are communicative, others collaborative and others include multimedia or a combination of all three. Social media can take many forms, but one element that consistently sets all of its incarnations apart from “traditional” media, is that it is produced to be shared.

There’s more to social media than social networking sites. While extremely popular (Time magazine wrote in October 2007 that social networking sites are officially more popular than porn!), they are not the only way people connect online. Other media include wikis, microblogging (like twitter), blogs, social bookmarking (like del.icio.us and StumbleUpon), photo sharing (like Flickr), video sharing (like YouTube), pod casts and many others.

How big is this phenomenon really?

There are over two and a half million articles in English on Wikipedia. 75% of Americans watch at least one video online a month. YouTube alone has hundreds of millions of videos being viewed daily. There are over 200-million blogs on the internet. Just under 60% of the people online have joined a social network.

And these are just some of the staggering numbers that get thrown around. This just serves to prove just how powerful and wide the reach of social media is.

What’s the difference between social media and traditional media?

The main difference is that social media is not a monologue. It is a dialogue that the brand sometimes does not lead. People are talking online right now – and this is an aspect of social media marketing.

Research has shown that 90% of people who can skip television adverts do just that.

A 2007 Nielsen report entitled “Trust in Advertising” showed that people trust referrals from their friends and other customers far more implicitly than one-way company messaging. Fundamentally, people don’t care what a company or brand thinks, they care what their friends think.

So, how do you harness this?

The short answer is: subtly. You can’t always lead the conversations – and you need to be honest. Don’t bombard the audience with noise and marketing messages – they will just switch off, or you’ll be lost in the din – neither are optimal situations.

Create personas and communicate. You need to allow your customers to feel ownership of the brand. You need to enable, engage and inspire people. A flat one-sided message is not going to get anybody excited about a brand or product, and this is how to start a buzz.

There’s no real “trick” to social media marketing. What it comes down to essentially, is listening to your customers and participating with them.

Quick, what single word that comes to mind when you try to describe social media? Authenticity? Immediacy? Participation?

What about meanness?

It seems the best way to drive traffic to your blog is to write that something or someone is:

Lame

Dead

Irrelevant

Clueless

It’s the social media version of the Mad Libs game. Title your blog post “[proper noun] is [adjective from above list]!” and watch the comments roll in!

The problem with this game is that often, innocent, or mostly innocent people are caught in the crosshairs, and exposed to undeserved risk to reputation and career.

Certainly public condemnation is called for in many situations, but where do you draw the line? Gross ethical misconduct? Easy call. But what about a poorly thought out business model, a bad user interface, or a momentary, innocent lapse in judgment? Do these kinds of situations deserve the social media equivalent of the public beating in the town square? Or is it that the risk to reputation and career of harsh public criticism directed at specific individuals and companies is outweighed by the usefulness of this kind or reportage in helping others avoid the same mistakes?
There are several things that encourage negative behavior in social media. The first is the idea that a good blog is one that gets lots of visitors and lots of links. That’s good if you sell advertising on your blog or if your ego demands it. So we write provocative headlines and we take on sacred cows. Because (mixing a few metaphors here) social media is like a day at the race track: some people come just to see the crashes.

Another more subtle factor is the need some of us feel, and I include myself in this category, to offer our professional wisdom to others in the industry. It’s often easiest to do that by commenting on a case study. Case studies involve real, identifiable people and their behavior, so it’s hard to write about them without naming the people involved.

In my journalism school days, during the Coolidge administration, we talked about the dismal failure of “good news:” print and broadcast news outlets designed to balance the doom, gloom, death and depravity highlighted every night on the evening news. The truth is, for whatever reason, bad news sells.

When I write about something I’ve read relevant to social media, PR or corporate communications, I try to base my analysis on the facts, and to avoid character assassination. I tend to stay away from the big four adjectives above, although I did call a couple of people “weasels.”

Lately, I have been giving a lot of thought as to whether all of this negativity is really necessary, and whether there is another healthier, more useful way to carry on these discussions.

This all started a few weeks ago when I left a comment on a blog in which I was critical of someone’s professional conduct. I soon realized that while I thought I was participating in an academic discussion on social media ethics, I was in fact unfairly questioning the integrity of a fellow professional based on only a handful of facts (those included in the blog post.) I did two things I have never done before. I apologized to this person, and I asked the author of the blog to delete my comment.

I then wondered, is it possible to talk about hypothetical conduct to avoid criticizing specific individuals, or is it only through “real life” case studies that we can understand difficult concepts, particularly in the area of ethics? What kind of conduct merits public disclosure? Where do we draw the line when it comes to criticizing the thoughts and deeds of others?

I’m not sure what the answers are. I’m still working through it. Until I figure it out, I have for the most part stopped using case studies on my blog, and have stopped criticizing people as a way to make a point.

And to help me establish my own rules of engagement, I decided to write my Social Media Love Manifesto. Despite the evidence that “good news” and kindness are not big sellers, I thought I would give it a shot.

While many claim that Web 2.0 and social media have brought with them new and uncharted terrain, where etiquette is defining itself with each advance and new rules are being written every day, the line between the online world and the real world was largely erased a long time ago, and there is no longer any reason for two sets of moral and ethical guidelines.

The people we “meet” in our online interactions are real people. They probably own a computer or two, write a blog or participate in a social network, and through the social media filter we see only glimpses of them, but that does not mean that they are not real, or that we are in any way excused from treating them like any other person we would meet.

I have therefore resolved that when writing on my blog, or when using any other form of social media, when calling into question the conduct of a specific, identifiable person, I will:

Base my comments on the facts, and make reasonable efforts to gather all of the relevant facts before weighing in on a controversial discussion.

Weigh carefully the value of any comments I choose to make against the potential for harm.

And I will not:

Make assumptions about people’s motivations.

Generate controversy for its own sake.

Join others by superficially “piling on” when someone is under attack

I will always strive to:

Treat people online with the respect and kindness I would extend to a friend or colleague.

Take time regularly to leave a supportive comment on a blog or acknowledge someone positively in a public forum.

Maybe I’m naïve or foolish. If I come across as didactic, preachy or self-serving, I don’t mean to. But I’d like to think we could all be a little nicer. Since I have agreed to follow my Social Media Love Manifesto, I have found less to write about on my blog, and my position in the Advertising Age Power 150 list of media blogs, the only ranking I watch, has slid gradually downward.

I’m a writer, and I try to choose my words carefully. That’s why I called this “My Social Media Love Mainfesto.” I wrote it for me, and I intend to give it a try. If you like it, feel free to use it. If you want to add to it, leave me a comment. And if you don’t like it, feel free to tell me why, but please try to be nice about it.

No Plans for Twitter Ads This Year Social Media Policies From 80+ Organizations Redskins Player Deleted MYSpace Trumps Facebook With Syncing Social Media 2.1 – Social Media And Dating Twitter Worm Guest: Dan Fletcher of TIME talks about Social Media Full show notes: socialblade.com Watch LIVE every Thursday at 10pm EST / 7pm PST socialblade.com

Social media marketing is a new, free and very powerful tool and it can serve you very well when you are searching for free internet marketing methods to promote your internet home business online.

Social media site are called social for a good reason. This is a place for people from all over the world find and connect with other people with same interests and hobbies, and form groups online, build friendships, have new relationships and share their favorites interests and ideas.

It was only natural for these people to start and use these groups, friendships and new relationships for their businesses. When you have online friends, you can reach a larger crowd of people, all are potential customers, and this is how the social media marketing or social networking was born.

So how easy it is to use the social bookmarking for internet marketing purpose?

Step 1 – Join some of the leading social media sites. Websites such as Digg, Mixx, StumbleUpon and more are very popular social media sites. Bookmarking a page in those site and some other sites can be indexed very quickly by the search engines, this is very good if you want to drive traffic to your website, free and let the search engines notice you.

This tactic is very good, When you need to drive traffic to a new website and have no money to invest in advertising.

Step 2 – Complete you profile. If you want to promote your internet home business using social media sites and social networking, try to give as much details as you can. When you are online do not hide behind a screen name, if you are here for business let the people know a little about you, sign in with your real name, write a few detail about yourself and on your home business. At the end give a link back to you website and a few of your mostly recommended products.

Step 3 – After finishing your profile is time socialize. Social marketing is all about making friends, finding people with the same interests as yours, joining groups and building relationships.

These friends are important for your business and they will help you in time to promote your home business, but you will have to help them too.

Step 4 – Now it is time to start the social networking. Social bookmarking is the word. You bookmark you website or blog, and you let people know about it. You also have to bookmark other people websites and blogs, and vote for your friend’s bookmarks.

When in social media marketing you need to give to others if you want them to give back to you, this is when you get the best results.

Step 5 – Ask your friends to vote for your favorite links and offer to do the same for them. From here the traffic to your website will only grow and you get it all for free.

If you join the top leading social media sites, you will get more traffic, as the website popularity grow you will get more votes, your bookmark get indexed faster and this is also counts as a backlink from some of those sites.

How should business handle social media? Dell was one of the early players in Corporate Blogging and Lionel Machaca was one of the first names that became well known for being an important Community Manager. Here Lionel explains to Linda Sherman how Dell is evolving in this arena. Linda blogs at ItsDifferent4Girls.com and http Thank you to Jeff Rago for filming.