This is a guest post by Angie Haggstrom, an exceptional copywriter, coach, and content consultant.

You can spend years crafting the perfect social media strategy, and you can network the hell out if it, but if you don’t incorporate the right copywriting techniques, all will be lost. No, I’m not saying you have to create all your content like a sales letter, but copywriters use several methods to woo a target audience that can help you significantly.

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Decide What You Want

Now you’re likely screaming at me ‘Traffic! Traffic! Traffic!’, but are you sure that’s what you really want? I mean…traffic is just traffic. You’ll have to be a little more specific than that.

Do you just want to create a buzz? Generate links to move traffic and improve your rankings? Do you want to sell a particular product? Do you want to grow a signup list that will allow you to sell into the long term and build loyalty?

Once you know exactly what it is you want you have to decide the ‘who’. Will you choose a specific segment of your target audience? Do you want to spread your reach and target a slightly different customer than you have previously? Think carefully because you can’t go forward without knowing the answer.

After the ‘what’ and the ‘who’, it’s time to decide the ‘how’. To make this easy for you, I’ve broken down the various types of content.

Link Bait VS Buzz Content

Before we get too far, there’s one set of important definitions you’ll need to know. Link bait is a piece of content created specifically to encourage people to link back to you. Buzz or viral content, on the other hand, gets people talking about you, your company, and what you’re doing.

While link bait can often generate a buzz, and viral content can often generate links, there’s a big difference between the two. Your topic choice and writing style for each type will also vary, so keep this difference in mind as you go.

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Article Marketing

A popular method for a number of years, article marketing tends to use basic, inexpensive, and short articles that include the right anchor text. These are then distributed to lots (if not hundreds) of article marketing distribution sites. The idea is that each of these sites gives your website a link in addition to any outside websites that pull your article from the distribution site for content.

There is no doubt that this type of thing generates links, but I don’t think it has the effect you want it to. Why?

• Not many of these links are quality.
• What kinds of websites use this as content?
• Duplicate content — Google gives the original the ‘link juice’ and ‘discounts’ or ‘filters’ the rest.
• How do you get your article to stick out from the thousands like it already out there?
• You’re making visitors jump through more hoops (i.e. make more clicks and go through more pages) to find your website, where they’ll have to make more clicks to get through the conversion funnel. The more clicks they have to make, the less likely they are to convert.
• Is this type of content how you want to introduce your company to others?
• When was the last time you rushed to read an article on one of these sites?

Now, if you have a brand new site, this can be great to create a ‘link base’, but if you rely on one type of links, you’re asking for trouble. What happens when Google changes its mind and these links no longer count? If you think it can’t happen, consider the history behind ‘nofollow’ or ‘paid links’.

My solution? ‘Content Placement’

Guest Posting and Content Placement

If you want good quality links, you go to good quality websites right? The trick is convincing these types of sites to add a link to your website. So, how do you do that? Well, either you have a good relationship with the site owner, you ask politely for them to add it (Hey CNN, mind linking to my site?), or you *cough* buy links *cough* and risk the wrath of the almighty Google (and if the majority of your traffic comes through search, buying links could be a deadly mistake).

To get around it, guest posting or having one of these authority sites host some of your content is a great option. Google gets fresh, quality content, the site owner gets content he didn’t have to pay for, his readers get something interesting to read from a fresh angle, and you get a link. In addition to a great quality link, you’ll find the content placement method is ideal for targeting traffic, building your authority, and improving your reputation.

So, how do you go about it? First, figure out what your target audience is reading. If you’re looking to simply generate authority in your field, try a complimentary industry. If you want to attract web designers, try Smashing Magazine. If you’re trying to attract clients or customers who just happen to be new parents, try places like ‘Today’s Parenting’. If you’re an SEO simply needing a quality link, consider writing for YOUmoz. (I’m just throwing these names out there…you’d have to work something out with them. I don’t know if these ones will give links for certain.)

Then you’ll either need to study these targets, their writer’s guidelines, and choose a relevant topic/writing style, or have someone craft the piece for you. Once you know what you have for content, it’s time to pitch your idea to the editor or site owner through their preferred channels and work out a deal.

I should mention that authority sites don’t just accept any type of content you have thrown together. You need to match their unique publication and supply them with content that will be of value to their readers (a feature article).

Press Releases

There are four types of press releases, and each are created with a different purpose in mind:

Social Media Optimized (SMO) Press Releases — These are created specifically to be shared via social media networks like Twitter and Facebook. They have bulleted points at the start of the release, short titles suitable for Twitter and other character limited sites, alternative media such as video, RSS, social media sharing buttons, keywords, and tons of other quick features.

Please note one important thing: If your news isn’t particularly interesting, it generally doesn’t create a buzz. This style is often left for important news that directly affects a particular industry or segment or combined with an SEO press release.

Search Engine Optimized (SEO) Press Releases — These are created specifically with link building in mind. They’re optimized with your personally chosen keywords and linked to specific URLs within your website to help improve its rankings. Then they’re distributed on a set number of channels to get the optimum amount of syndication.

Social Media Friendly SEO Press Releases — This is a combination of the SMO and the SEO press release. There is a shortened, keyword optimized title, appropriate linking, and an SM friendly summary. It may or may not have video and images attached, and receives extensive distribution/syndication to help generate links as well as a general buzz around your business.

Traditional Press Releases — These are written according to traditional AP or Chicago style and are designed specifically with newspapers and television stations in mind. These rarely generate links with the exception of possibly one to your main home page in the contact section. Lastly, it is important to note that whether these stories are covered or not depends on the news agency itself.

White Papers, Reports, Case Studies and Research

While this style of content often works best for both links and traffic, the topic you choose and how in-depth you cover the subject will ultimately determine what it generates the most. Resource papers and those which give people important information often generate links well into the future because they remain relevant and rare. Other papers such as case studies tend to be dated and are often best used for buzz content and as highly effective advertising material.

Regardless which style you use, it’s a good opportunity to boost your RSS readership, email list, or follow you on a particular social network. After all, if you’re going to all the work and expense to have one done up, and you’re not asking for anything permanent, it’s a fair trade.

Blog Posts, Pillar Content and Feature Articles

This is where link bait and buzz content really comes into play. With link bait, you’re looking to create something that stands out. This could be a constructive rant, arguing against the norm, something funny or cute, resourceful, breaking news (a slanted editorial angle), or something completely out of the ordinary that’s never been done before.

Pillar content are resource pieces that people will refer back to time and again. And while they qualify as link bait and buzz content, these pieces are often linked to well into the future, giving you a constant trickle of fresh link juice. The little hook with this is that it needs to be unique.

With buzz content, you want to consider arguing against the norm (slightly outrageous, but verifiable and sensible), something completely out of the ordinary, or a breaking news item. The other tactic is to involve your readers, name drop, or simply give away something through a contest.

With this, you need to have a solid social media presence and connections with a decent social media presence before releasing either type of major content. Otherwise, you could have the best piece in the world, and it won’t take off for you.

Also, you’ll need to have content between these pieces that aren’t exactly earth shattering. The idea behind it is that this type of content keeps things fresh, keep readers coming back, and keeps the site indexed without getting taxing on your readership (they’re going to stop getting excited if you always have something amazing). This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try, but don’t expect everything to take off, or expect your network to promote everything.

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Newsletters

While this type of content isn’t usually known for generating links back to your site, it can definitely generate a buzz if you do it right. The idea is to create a quality newsletter with the goal of becoming the industry’s best newsletter, filled with quality content that people want to read and learn from. This gets people talking about you and helps to generate authority within your industry. And, you can alternatively use some of the content on your blog or in your article section to get a little more mileage from these types of publications.

Creating social media content, and making the right connections with it, is all about knowing your market, knowing what catches their attention, and how it catches them. Once you have that and combine it with a solid social media presence, there’s nothing stopping you.

As the Senior Copywriter, Coach and Content Consultant of Angie’s Copywriting, Angie Haggstrom combines SEO, Social Media, branding and other techniques together with quality copywriting services to provide high-end content for companies of all sizes. Feel free to contact her through her site, catch her on Twitter, or email her at angie [at] angiescopywriting [do(t)] com.

Copywriting and Social Media: Making the Connection is a post by: Samir Balwani

Some of you might have noticed that over the weekend I added a Google Friend Connect members widget on my blog. You may be wondering why and I expect to fully explain it.

I didn’t add it because the widget because it looks good or to just take up space. Instead, it was a calculated decision and one I would recommend you follow.

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Google Social Search is Coming

The first reason for adding Google Friend Connect, is the simple idea that Google Social Search is coming. Taking the time now to position this blog as one connected with a number of fans should help increase the site’s relevancy in any type of social search.

The current iteration of social search, shows results from friends in social networks. If Google uses Friend Connect similarly to a social network, than by having people become fans of this site they’re more likely to see my articles in their search results pages.

Also, there’s been a lot of buzz about a recent patent Google developed called “Trust Rank” (different than Yahoo!’s). Bill Slawski has a great in-depth analysis of the Trust Rank patent.

The patent outlines how Google may use data about specific users to influence search results rank. It looks at annotations and labeling of the user, but seems like it could easily be expanded to include signals like size of community. If this is the case, I’d like to have a head start on building one, especially a community within Google’s own Friend Connect.

The Widgets Are Useful

Another reason why I added Google Friend Connect is that it includes two very useful widgets: Members, and Recommendations. Each widget is useful in that it helps build the community and the interactions on the site.

Members Widget: I really like this widget, although it’s difficult to get started with. The plugin allows other Google users to become a fan of your page. From there you’re able to add users as “friends”.

This widget has the potential to do a lot more. Once you have a community built, it will be interested to see what more functionality Google rolls out. If integrated with Google Calendars or even potentially Google Wave, this community widget could be become very powerful.

Don’t forget to fan this page, you can find my Google Friend Connect widget on the right sidebar.

Recommendation Widget: Most blogs use some kind of “most popular” widget to highlight what posts are most read based on a number of criteria. In addition to that, I like using the recommendation widget.

The reasoning behind this is that most recommended articles are not only popular but also elicit strong emotions from people. It doesn’t take much to get someone to read an article, but it requires something unique to convince users to actually “recommend it” or “share it”.

Conclusion

Social search is going to be a shift in the way we search for products online. I already use digg / reddit as a search engine, searching based on up-votes. Products are searched by number of reviews and ratings. It seems like the next step would be to search information based on reviews.

I hope you’ll take a moment to add yourself as a fan of this blog. You can find the FriendConnect widget on the sidebar to the right, just click “Join This Site”.

How are you preparing your site? Have you included the Google Friend Connect widget? Are you trying something different? Don’t forget to become a Facebook Fan and Friend Connect Fan!

Why I Added Google Friend Connect is a post by: Samir Balwani

Imagine a scenario where the shit just hit the fan. A stupid mistake or a simple misstep leads to a PR nightmare. How do you handle it? For a social marketer, there’s a number of ways to diffuse the situation, it simply depends on what the best strategy is for you.

I’ve put together two potential strategies for a brand that is experiencing some kind of PR backlash.

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Scenario 1: A Simple Misunderstanding

Sometimes a PR backlash just starts because of a simple misunderstanding, or rumor. It’s not always true and it’s up to you to clear it up quickly.

When something happens, time is of the essence. If the brand doesn’t respond quickly, people will start to make wild assumptions. These assumptions can end up hurting the brand more than the original misunderstanding.

A socially savvy marketer will work to quickly get the correct information out. For many that means using Twitter, Facebook, or some other micro-blogging platform to inform their consumers with what is happening and why it occurred.

Once the initial statement on Twitter has been made, the next step for a brand is to explain the situation in-depth on a blog and through a press release.

The idea is to get as much information as possible out. Making sure the information is easy to spread, not published as an image, ensures that the right story is being told and not a false rumor.

Scenario 2: Damn It We Messed Up Big Time

Not every emergency situation is as simple as the scenario above. Sometimes, (yes it happens) the brand messes up and makes a huge mistake or just does something that they hoped no one would ever know about.

In this instance, it’s important to maximize the response while minimizing the footprint. What I mean by this is, you want to remember that any press releases or answers you publish will forever exist online. Most press gaffes will blow over, especially once a response is given, but by adding content about the gaffe, you may be the reason why it lives on forever.

To minimize the footprint, the best way to respond to any public relations issues is either on Twitter or Facebook. Don’t include a link to your site, and make a simple announcement. This ensures that the the news gets out, while minimizing the longevity of the problem.

Conclusion

Not every public relations emergency is the same, some require a shotgun approach of getting out a message, while some responses shouldn’t be publicized. The Internet has changed the way PR has to be handled, and the idea that even a response lives on forever needs to be kept in mind.

Don’t let your response exasperate the problem, but don’t let inaction let a backlash snowball. Recognizing the proper response takes experience and an understanding of your community. If you’re comfortable interacting with your fans, it can be easier to respond correctly.

A Social Marketer’s Emergency PR Workflow is a post by: Samir Balwani

Ok so social marketing isn’t really dead, it’s actually just in it’s infancy, but if all the SEO’s can do it, why can’t we? (examples?! check this out, and this one, and here’s another article).

But let’s think about this notion for a moment, “the death of social marketing”. What would cause it? Why would it happen? How can we ensure it doesn’t happen?

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What Is The End?

When I talk about “death” it means the end of social marketing as an effective marketing technique. Right now, social media has allowed brands a new way to connect with their consumers. Companies can reach out to new demographics, interact with consumers, and introduce them to the conversion funnel over-time.

Social marketing may lose its effectiveness even before consumers stop sharing on social media sites. We still listen to the radio and read newspapers, yet most would argue that these forms of advertising have become less effective. Similarly, there are a number of events that can cause the premature demise of social marketing.

Death by Terms of Services

The first and most likely is the dreaded terms of services death. A good number of social media platforms have recognized the power they wield as a hub for brands’ consumers. Most sites believe they can use their terms of services to bully brands into paying for access to these consumers.

I agree that corporations should have to pay to interact with consumers on a social site, but within reason. Offering business accounts with a monthly fee may work, but requiring brands to advertise on a site before accessing elements is short-sited. Enforcing this through terms of service may mean that brands forgo using the social site altogether.

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Death by Spam

Social marketing is all about trust. For it to be effective consumers not only have to trust the brand, but social media as whole. If someone is being continually spammed, they begin to lose trust in the platform and are less likely to believe the authenticity of a brand on the site.

Think about it like this. If you’re continually getting spammed on Twitter and suddenly find the “Alyssa Milano” account. Would you instantly believe it was a real account? (In this case, yes that’s her real account, follow it for a good example of how a celebrity and business should use Twitter)

The assault on “social trust” by spammers is a real threat to social media marketing.

Death by Brands

I think the saddest situation possible is that brands may kill social marketing on their own. Right now there’s only a handful of brands actually interacting and using social media platforms. What happens when every brand is on Facebook because of the bandwagon effect?

Most brands don’t offer value and end up spamming users instead of actually interacting.

The learning curve for brands may be too painful to consumers.

Death by Trust Change

Finally, there’s always the chance that users just change their mind. Maybe next year users realize that they hate business on Twitter and start to flow to another site that is personal use only. Taste change is always a variable that can shift the way we market products.

Realizing that this change is a possibility and preparing for it can save a business from struggling to keep loyal consumers.

Companies need to be sensitive to changes in the marketing climate (example: change from push TV advertising to pull online marketing). If not, they may find themselves continually catching up or losing to their competitors.

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Conclusion

Social marketing is in no way dead, it’s just starting. None the less, realizing that one day it will change is important. Keep an eye on these potential signals that may mark a change in how consumers want to interact online.

The Death of Social Media Marketing is a post by: Samir Balwani

With the sudden explosion of attention businesses have begun giving social media, many are jumping into the social sphere without understanding how to use it to its fullest.

I mainly blame a lack of training and an abundance of sub-par resources.

To try and help people find a better way to get started with and understand social media marketing, I asked five other Social Marketers for their thoughts on the subject.

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Meet The Marketers

Lisa Barone: Lisa is an established blogger, search engine optimizer, and social marketer. She is currently the Chief Branding Officer at Outspoken Media, a firm specializing in SEO, SEM, Content Creation, and Social Marketing. You can find her blogging on the Outspoken Media blog as well on Twitter @LisaBarone.

Jason Falls: Jason is a successful social media and public relations consultant. He’s worked with a number of Fortune 100 companies through his own consulting firm, Social Media Explorer LLC. He shares his thoughts at Social Media Explorer and through Twitter @JasonFalls.

Tamar Weinberg: Tamar is a social media specialist and author of The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web (O’Reilly, July 2009). She blogs at Techipedia, is Community and Marketing Director of Mashable, and is on Twitter @Tamar.

Jeff Quipp: Jeff is President and CEO of Search Engine People Inc; a full service SEM, SEO, and Social Marketing firm based in Canada. He often writes on the Search Engine People blog and is on Twitter @JQuipp.

Brian Wallace: Brian is President of NowSourcing, a Social Marketing firm, and author at NowSourcing and Collective Thoughts. He also guest posts at Mashable. You can follow him on Twitter @NowSourcing.

List of Questions:

Question One: Social media marketing pretty much started out of nowhere. One day someone realized “Oh I should sell things by talking to people online!”. How did you get thrust into social media? What did you do to get started?

Question Two: Everyone has their secret resources, the places you go to get the answers and insights which mold your strategies. Fess up, what do you recommend new marketers read?

Question Three: Sometimes people just need a place to start. When learning how to best use social media, what is the number one thing someone needs to know?

Question Four: Social media isn’t something you just start with and get right away. Somehow you have to find the time to keep up with and test new ideas. Aside from not sleeping, what’s your process to ensure you’re always perfecting the technique?

Question Five: So you’ve got a new hire, they’re smart and understand what social media is, but they have no idea how to make the magic happen. How do you get them started, how do you help them learn?

Question Six: One of the best ways to learn is by making mistakes. Aside from agreeing to do this interview, what is the biggest mistake you’ve ever made, and what did you learn from it?

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Question One:

Social media marketing pretty much started out of nowhere. One day someone realized “Oh I should sell things by talking to people online!”. How did you get thrust into social media? What did you do to get started?

Lisa Barone: I don’t think it started out of nowhere. Social media is exactly what people have been doing offline since the beginning of time. It’s people talking to other people about their needs, wants, likes and dislikes. Now we just have tools that facilitate the process online. We have blogs and Twitter and all the other social networks that bring people together and make their voices louder. And on top of that, businesses can now find where their offline communities are hanging out online and reach out to them there. I don’t think it’s so much new as it is we’re finally realizing that the Web has a pulse.

I’m part of the generation that grew up in social media. I had a blog at 14. I had a MySpace page early on (it’s defunct. Age brings taste, thankfully.), a Facebook page, other accounts. In February of 2006, social media became part of my job and that’s when I really started to look at the opportunities out there for businesses and how it could be used to foster conversations and build site communities. It’s been a major part of my life ever since.

Jason Falls: First, I think social media has been around forever. People have conversations about products, services, recommend things to others and have for centuries. Only now has the technology existed to make those conversations take on a documented life of their own. The barrier to entry for the web is lower than it ever has been. That’s just magnified and accelerated what we see now as social media.

I wrote a newspaper column for my hometown newspaper in 1997 but the newspaper didn’t have a website then. I found a way to publish my column online where I invited feedback from readers, then published their comments with answers the next week. When the newspaper fired me early in 1998 (I have a demented sense of humor they didn’t appreciate), I was technically blogging. I was also an early adopter on Classmates, MySpace and a couple of other social networks. But all that was my personal interest. I was a PR guy in college athletics for a long time, learned some basic web development and taught myself some code and this and that. Still, it took me until 2006 to realize I could use my fascination with communications via technology to help clients reach customers. Because I’d been playing in social media so long, I knew it without really knowing I knew it.

Tamar Weinberg: I’ve been on “social media” since I was a little kid. I remember getting on AOL and conversing about different topics in the chat rooms of yore. Back in the old days, AOL had a variety of niche communities. I remember playing Bingo in the casino (known as “RabbitJack’s Casino”) and serving as a chat room host within kids’ communities. I loved meeting people on these communities and still have friends to this day that I met there. When I was in junior high school, this was further localized; my county’s public library offered free subscriptions to its local BBS. There, I met an environmental activist who I communicated with for years and then invited to my high school’s Earth Club.

I was an early adopter of most social media channels. I always liked its appeal. I was raving about Twitter long before people even signed up. And I lived on Digg for awhile at first — I understood what Digg was all about and became a top 100 user in a period of about 3 months, so people started asking me how to use the site to directly (or indirectly) market their products. That’s how I got “trained” — by being an end user who never stops learning while in the practice.

Jeff Quipp:I got thrust into social media, because as a company we realized that social media was a valuable seo tool. At first, I tried assigning it as a project to people internally, then each major social site to specific people, but none of them took the ball and ran with it. That’s when I decided to take it on as a project myself, and throw myself into it.

To get started, I talked to lots of others to find the biggest and the best sites that I needed to focus my time and energy on. I then threw myself into them … full time. To start, I watched a lot. Then, began to participate, and really learn!

Brian Wallace:I’ve always been a web kinda guy – got started in 1994 and haven’t looked back. So it was a natural evolution of sorts. I’ve been building communities online (think everything from Intranets to IRC to forums) in a variety of capacities, way before we had cool buzzwords for it. Been blogging since 2001 and really saw opportunities in social media around 2005-2006.

Question Two:

Everyone has their secret resources, the places you go to get the answers and insights which mold your strategies. Fess up, what do you recommend new marketers read?

Lisa Barone: I read a lot of marketing blogs. Some of my favorites include 10e20, Graywolf, SEO Book, Copyblogger, John Andrews, Andy Sernovitz and of course, I hear there’s this awesome blog at Outspoken Media. You can learn a lot from blogs, but at the end of the day, too much blog reading will make you dumb. You need to get out there and start doing.

Jason Falls: I go to the other popular bloggers in the industry, along with some other writers I admire. Valeria Maltoni, Chris Brogan, Todd Defren, Brian Solis, Seth Godin and Jeremy Pepper immediately come to mind. Amber Naslund, Geoff Livingston, Brian Clark … there are about 15-20 folks I read almost religiously. I also admire the thinking behind Malcolm Gladwell’s work. But more than anything, I try not to follow. Use the expertise you can glean from folks like those I mentioned and make your own path. That sets you apart, even if the path is wrong.

Tamar Weinberg: I love Brian Solis (briansolis.com). He’s one person who you must follow in this space. His lengthy posts are brilliant. And I may sound biased as I work for them, but there are some great pieces of content on strategy at Mashable. I also really value the content from Valeria Maltoni (conversationagent.com), Jason Falls (socialmediaexplorer.com), Chris Brogan (chrisbrogan.com), the guys at Top Rank Marketing (toprankblog.com), Lisa at Outspoken Media (outspokenmedia.com/blog), Rebecca Kelley at 10e20 (10e20.com/blog), and others. I also think that new marketers should read “The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web,” but I may be biased again there too.

Jeff Quipp:Wow … there is so much good information out there to read. The reality for me is, doing is much more productive than reading. If you focus too much on reading, you’ll suffer “paralysis by analysis”. Instead, delve in, make friends, participate, and watch what the successful people in each site do. Make and support your friends submissions, and always submit great content, and you’ll be successful with social media.

Brian Wallace:I’m pretty partial to my Collective thoughts friends. Andy Beard and Dave Harry tend to be the most active of the bunch. I also try to find anything to do with neuroscience/HCI, the kinds of things that Kathy Sierra would write (http://headrush.typepad.com/) – if she would blog again

I’m a firm believer that new marketers should know some history and see what’s been said and done already. Start with your base and grow from there.

Question Three:

Sometimes people just need a place to start. When learning how to best use social media, what is the number one thing someone needs to know?

Lisa Barone: They need to know that six months ago most of the “experts” using these social media tools were at the same point they were. The tools we’re calling “social media” are still pretty infantile. We’re all still figuring them out and coming up with the best strategies and methodologies for our clients. Don’t think you’re that far behind the curve. You’re not. Just jump in, test the waters and get started. And focus on the right stuff – finding your audience, forming real relationships, participating in conversations. That’s what matters. Inflated follower or friend counts mean nothing. Don’t get blinded by what doesn’t matter.

Jason Falls: It’s all about the customer. See the brand, the product, the communications through their eyes. If you see it correctly, you won’t screw up too much.

Tamar Weinberg: Realize that it’s all about the people — your communities. You marketing message comes after that. Understand the people you’re talking to and study what they’d want (or what they don’t like). I don’t care what it sounds like to you — you’re the business owner or the marketer. You need to think about them and how they’ll see it. Put yourself in someone else’s shoes, and don’t shove the messaging down their throats.

And understand that it’s a time commitment.

Jeff Quipp: PARTICIPATE!!!!!!!!! Sure there is more to it than that, but lack of participation is the #1 reason people fail in social media. They want to use the site to promote their content, but not have to invest anything into it. Succeeding in social media isn’t a part time gig … its full time! Get involved in the community. Add value. In the end, you get out of something what you put into it, and social media is no different.

Brian Wallace:Prepare yourself for total immersion. If one wanted to learn a foreign language, it is suggested to move to a country and learn the language integrating yourself into the community. This is how a newbie should approach social media too. It isn’t about which site to start on or how many Twitter followers you have. People obsessed with Twitter followers need a better hobby Followers, friends, interactions, sales, and the like all come with time, effort, learning, and persistence.

Mind you, if a newbie is not prepared to take the time, they should hire a social media consultant. The consultant’s role should be to offer up strategies and practices that best fit the client’s time, ability and preferences. One could also be successful with this kind of “borrowed ladder” approach/ramp up.

Question Four:

Social media isn’t something you just start with and get right away. Somehow you have to find the time to keep up with and test new ideas. Aside from not sleeping, what’s your process to ensure you’re always perfecting the technique?

Lisa Barone: You just have to keep testing stuff and keep your involvement level high. You can’t simply chase what’s hot “right now”. You need to have your fingers in everything, be constantly toying with things and to put metrics on what you’re doing so that you can look back in a month, 6 weeks, three months and see what you’ve gotten out of it and what you can do to see better results. There’s no magic science behind these tools and no “one way” to use them. Get in there, find what works for you, and do it as loud and as hard as you can.

Jason Falls: Well, you got the not sleeping part right. Heh. You just have to be diligent in trying the new tools and platforms. I get 25-30 pitches a week these days. I read them all, discard the irrelevant or non-eye opening ones. I put the rest in a to-do folder. I try to make an hour or two available every week to play with them. The ones that really stand out, do so right away. They get reviewed first. The others sit there until I have enough time.

But you also keep an eye on other blogs and what other writers are mentioning as tools they’re trying. I was on Posterous.com for six or seven months before I really tried it out. I was inspired to do so watching Steve Rubel talk about moving his blog to the blog/microblog hybrid with Posterous. Once I re-visited and realized how awesome their multimedia handling was, I was hooked. (jasonfalls.posterous.com)

Tamar Weinberg: I’m not sure there’s a systematic “process” for this. It’s important to always be receptive to feedback and use that to your advantage. If you get negative feedback, make adjustments and try again. Don’t shy away from it entirely.

Jeff Quipp: More and more, social media is about quality content. Accordingly, I spend a whole lot of time testing different content ideas and concepts. One great technique I personally use is to test content using StumbleUpon Ads before launching full out to other social media. StumbleUpon Ads shows me what percentage of people like it, and dislike it. Then I can tweak and refine it, to ensure the content we release is the best it can be.

Brian Wallace:Always have an open mind. Even if I’m going to do what seems to be the same kind of social media campaign for a company, I always try to start with a fresh set of eyes. There may have been something in the past that I missed along the way, and different social sites always have components changing. Community memebers come and go, so it’s really a moving target.

Question Five:

So you’ve got a new hire, they’re smart and understand what social media is, but they have no idea how to make the magic happen. How do you get them started, how do you help them learn?

Lisa Barone: You re-teach them how to be human. You break down that cold wall they’ve developed when talking to people, you eliminate the corporate speak, and you make them human again. It sounds really dumb and simplistic, but to me, that’s really what’s missing from most social media attempts – the humanity. We’re so used to looking at the Web as this cold device that we use to sell people and we’ve forgotten how to talk to our customers like they’re people. We’ve forgotten how to hold real conversations, to create relationships and to talk to one another in a real way. I think that’s what needs to be taught.

When you start speaking with your customers like they’re real people, that’s when the “magic happens”. When you start going out of your way for them, when you’re helpful, when you help them answer their questions and you just act like a real person. That’s when these great relationships are formed and when you can then leverage them to do really cool stuff. That’s the magic in social media – the people.

Jason Falls: I make them read not just blogs, but blog archives of the thought leaders in the industry. I make them write blog posts every day, even if they aren’t posted, just to get in practice of producing compelling content. And then I coach them to go wear out software platforms, looking for hidden features and thinking through the use cases for them from a fresh angle. Every time I’ve asked someone to play with Delicious or Yelp or some other tool and report back, they come back talking about a feature I didn’t realize was there. The fresh eyes are always useful. Plus, they get to see the tool for themselves and make their own decisions about what it can be used for.

Tamar Weinberg: Get them reading those influencers. Let them shadow you and follow you to see what you’re doing and let them contribute to the project too. I almost was a computer programmer, but I never succeeded by leaning by a book. The way I learned how to program (though don’t ask me to code for you!) was by studying code, understanding what it did, and creating new projects based on the code snippets I learned. Similarly, you should be learning by doing.

Jeff Quipp: I can guide them, but in reality here’s the process I would set forth for them:

• 1. Set up an account and PARTICIPATE … vote, comment, rate, save, etc.
• 2. Make friends, and support those friend’s submissions
• 3. Slowly start submitting GOOD content (after participating for 2-4 weeks), and not always your own. I like the ratio of at least 7:1 … the content of others (especially your social media friend’s content) versus your own
• 4. Track and monitor … who is being a good friend, and who is not. Drop those who are not, or at least don’t spend time supporting their stuff
• 5. Look for new friends with similar interests, and who are active
• 6. Study the content that works, and the content that doesn’t. Learn, and adapt.
• 7. Help others!

Brian Wallace:One thing you’ve got to understand about my background is that I’ve managed teams, hired and fired people and even spent some time doing IT recruiting. That said, my approach to new hires is a bit different from the traditional approach.

Usually, a hiring manager says to the prospect “so, tell me about yourself.”
I usually say to the prospect “so, let me tell you everything I know about you so far ”

Kidding aside, the point here is that there is no magic formula, but there is a certain skillset/personality type/learning capability that I look for in individuals that show a predictable outcome for them to perform well. It’s not about experience so much, more about learning how to learn.

Question Six:

One of the best ways to learn is by making mistakes. Aside from agreeing to do this interview, what is the biggest mistake you’ve ever made, and what did you learn from it?

Lisa Barone: See now, that’s hard only because I’ve made so many mistakes. For me it’s always an issue of being responsible with my words.

There was an incident not too long ago where a quick mouthed Twitter comment was taken the wrong way and resulted in Outspoken losing out on a really great opportunity. Basically, I made a quick joke without thinking and it was taken much differently than I meant it. It was a good reminder that, even if you don’t realize it, people are always watching and listening. I’ll never be the type of person to sit on an issue that I feel strongly about or to hold back an opinion, however, sometimes I do need to think before I throw something out there. For me, it’s not really about losing clients or offending people, it’s more about responsibility – realizing how weighted your words can be and not being careless with them.

Jason Falls: I think I would say the biggest mistake I’ve ever made in social media is taking on too many responsibilities. When I was with Doe-Anderson, the ad agency I worked with for three years, I just kept taking on more and didn’t say “no” often enough. It got to the point where I had so much to do, my work suffered. The last few months there, I was a pretty lousy partner for our clients. With my consultancy, that’s priority number one: Only take on the amount of work you can manage and still deliver great value to your clients. I never want to feel inadequate in the value I provide again.

Tamar Weinberg: I remember when I first started using social media news sites and didn’t really grasp what it would do for me. I simply submitted content that I thought would work BEFORE meeting the community members and studying what they liked. If you saw my first Digg submissions, you’d see that it was rather embarrassing. But eventually, it just clicked.

I learned from this experience that it’s super important to know that you’re dealing with people and that the communities won’t adapt to you — you need to adapt to them. Again, this is a very time consuming process but you’ll reap the benefits of it by playing by the rules.

Jeff Quipp: Wow, I’ve made so many mistakes over the years, but its only because I try. I guess the reality of the matter would be that the biggest mistakes anyone could make would be (1) being afraid to make mistakes, and (2) repeating the same mistake twice, and failing to learn from it.

I therefore don’t think of mistakes as negative … but rather as positive. That said; the biggest mistake I made (which became a tremendous opportunity) was to leave it with someone else to figure it out for me (and Search Engine People). In the end, the mistake was recognized, I learned from it, and took it upon myself to become a social media expert. What a great process!

Brian Wallace: Feels like I’m on a job interview now

Tough call here. I’d have to say that setting reasonable expectations is most important. I once worked with someone that we did good work for but they did not heed our web hosting recommendations, so whenever we did “well,” the site would not perform. You cannot win in a situation like that, and it made me take a hard look at managing expectations.

More Articles to Read On Learning Social Media:

What I Want a Social Media Expert to Know
10 Question to Evaluate a Social Media “Expert”

Ask The Experts: Learning Social Media is a post by: Samir Balwani

Social marketing requires so many processes going on at once that it can quickly become overwhelming. It’s no wonder that things can slip through the cracks.

Here is a list of often forgotten but extremely important actions for almost every social marketing campaign.

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Set Goals

It’s amazing how many campaigns are run without a set goal. Marketers understand that social media is interacting with consumers, but forget they need goals to track success.

The goal doesn’t need to be a sales figure, it could be something as simple as number of @ replies on Twitter or Facebook fans.

By analyzing your current standing, your goal, and your % change, you can decide what has been working and what hasn’t. Without these numbers you can neither optimize your campaign nor determine success.

Link Profiles

Linking your social media profiles to a hub and each other is a simple and effective way to build a community throughout your network. By making it easy for consumers to find the brand profiles, you’ve removed an obstacle for them to join the community.

Imagine a consumer, that is both a Facebook fan and Twitter user, discovers the brand Facebook page. If the page doesn’t cite the brand’s Twitter account, this would be considered a lost social conversion. You didn’t convert the consumer into a Twitter follower because they didn’t know it exists.

Giving consumers multiple ways to connect with the brand increase the likelihood that they will.

Use Multimedia

The web has evolved to go beyond just textual content to include images and videos. Leaving out this section of content means disregarding a large section of consumers.

Don’t forget to utilize social platforms like Flickr and YouTube, but also lesser known sites like DailyBooth, 10SecondVideo, or Vimeo.

Taking advantage of these sites can open up new avenues for consumers to discover and interact with the brand.

Listen Intently

When engaging in social media I recommend a 60 / 40 split. 60% of your time should be spent listening to the industry, your niche, and mentions of your brand. Only 40% of your time should be spent actually interacting with consumers.

By listening, I mean actively tracking conversation and reading mentions. Just knowing that they exist isn’t enough, you need to know what they’re talking about, how they talk, and what the trend is.

Brands can either create Google Alerts for free, or invest in a program like Trackur to track the conversations.

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Most Importantly – Have Fun

One of the forgotten, yet most important aspect of social media is to have fun. Brands forget that they’re engaging consumers, talking to them instead of broadcasting a message.

By having a good time yourself and staying upbeat, consumers enjoy interacting with you. The brand must set the mood for the engagement, just like in offline relationships, online consumers will take cues from the brand on how the interaction should occur.

Conclusion

Remembering these 5 strategies can help make your social campaign a success. They may be easy to forget, but they’re extremely effective.

What have you forgotten to do when engaging online? Is there anything you find yourself leaving out in your social marketing campaigns? Leave a comment, and let us know!

5 Simple Things Most Social Media Marketers Forget To Do is a post by: Samir Balwani

One side effect of TV and Internet is that people as a whole have become tired of waiting. We want change, we want something new, and it’s become harder to impress consumers. With that in mind, what are you doing to stay ahead?

Innovation no longer applies to just the product. Businesses must think of new ways to interact with the consumer, create a product, and even market themselves.

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The Importance of Innovation

When a consumer is looking at a business to buy from they ask themselves a number of questions;

• Why should I buy from here?
• Is the price competitive?
• What makes this store better than the others?

Before consumers were sophisticated in the use of the Internet the question “what makes this place better than others?” referred to only the other businesses known to the user. Now, the average consumer is able to search and review businesses easily online.

For a business this means that they are now competing with everyone, not only those that a consumer knows about. The importance of a “value added” or “edge” has grown and with it, the need for innovation.

What makes your business special? Are you able to answer the simple question? If your answer is the generic, “we offer a great product and are reliable blah blah blah”, I think it’s time you invest in something more substantial.

Where Innovation Can Occur

The most obvious aspect of a business to invest in is product development.

If you create a better product, you create a better edge, changing who your competitors are and how you compete with them.

Innovation can also occur in customer service. When Comcast began offering help through Twitter, they created a paradigm shift. The idea of email, phone, and mail as the only avenues for customer service has been shattered. Because of Comcast’s innovation a number of companies adopted the new method.

Another effective field to invest in, is marketing. The idea of social media marketing came to fruition through innovation in marketing.

Marketers realized that the offline relationships they cultivated could be built and maintained online. This realization helped make marketing more efficient and effective as a whole.

Businesses that invest in innovation are the first to try new processes and lead in paradigm shifts. The companies profit from being first, garnering consumer attention and trust.

Who Should You Listen To?

New ideas and paradigm shifts occur by thinking, doing, and listening.

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If you’re not consciously looking to better every aspect of your processes and product, you won’t recognize a possible change. A business will have to actually be actively doing something and be willing to experiment to find new paradigms.

Most importantly though, a business must continually be listening. Listen to consumers, employees, and even competitors. If you ever hear, “I wish” or “I want to” or “if only I could”; you’ve identified an area that could be bettered.

Innovation occurs by solving problems, streamlining daily tasks, or simply making things easier. Every question or concern is an opportunity for change.

Conclusion

The Internet has made it more difficult for businesses to compete without a well defined value or edge. Investments in innovation can help a company define their value and make them stand out to a consumer.

Making things easier for your employees and consumers alike is what drives innovation. Remember to listen for potential shifts, identify areas for new thinking, and invest in change. If you’re not moving forward, you’re falling behind.

Why Aren’t You Investing in Innovation? is a post by: Samir Balwani

A few days ago, Seth Godin wrote an article titled “If TV Ads Were Free.” (Louis Gray wrote something similar on BrianSolis.com) Seth’s post is meant to push people to just go start with social marketing, but he also tells readers to stop worrying about learning social media marketing.

Seth, I sincerely disagree. Social media is free and everyone can try it, but they shouldn’t before having some kind of knowledge of what they’re doing.

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Why Learning Is Important

In this post, Seth writes that “… new media largely free. So why teach it in school as if it were a scary theory?”. My first question is, why does theory have to be scary?

More importantly though, it’s true that the basic idea of social marketing is easy (interact and engage with your consumers to strengthen the brand and increase the likelihood they buy from you) however, there are social media strategies that need to be taught.

Why shouldn’t a business owner take the time to learn from other brand’s mistakes. It doesn’t make sense to reinvent the wheel. This idea is the reason why case studies are so important and valuable.

Case studies not only outline what worked and what didn’t work, but also can inspire someone to create a new strategy for themselves. For example, a business owner may, after reading a case study, realize the way Vitamin Water creates their Facebook page could work for them.

Taking the time to learn social marketing strategies can help a business owner from wasting time. There are so many studies that explore social theories, outlining what works and what doesn’t work. For example, studies that explain viral headlines, or what can lead you to be retweeted, or even why people share content in the first place.

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How to Begin with Social Marketing

I agree with the spirit of Seth’s post, that you shouldn’t wait forever before engaging online, but to blindly jump in is foolish. I recommend a business owner or marketer interested in social marketing take the time to learn the basics.

You should answer the following questions before entering the social sphere:

• Are you able to build a Facebook page or setup a Twitter account?
• Do you understand the idea of transparency and online public relations?
• Have you actively used a social network, social sharing, or social news site?
• Do you have a strategy for your social interaction?
• What are your goals for interacting online?
• Do you understand the basics behind blogging, micro-blogging, sharing multimedia, and social media press releases?

Conclusion

Not everyone starts with the technical or marketing ability to interact with consumers online. So, for some it’s worth investing time to learn the basics.

Definitely don’t just keep trying to learn, at one point start your own blog. Creating a personal blog is one of the best ways to explore social media. It forces you to learn how to create social profiles and experience interacting with people online.

Social media definitely has a learning curve. It’s up to you to decide whether you want to spend time experimenting on your own or invest time to learn, at least, basic social marketing strategies.

What do you think? Am I wrong? Were you able to jump into social media and succeed or would you recommend someone take the time to learn about it first?

Don’t Rush Into Social Marketing, Think About it First is a post by: Samir Balwani

Social media is all about relationship building; talking to people, making friends, and connecting with your consumers. Few people are better at building and maintaining relationships than Gary Vaynerchuck of Wine Library TV.

Gary is a business coach, social media addict, and wine enthusiast. He’s absolutely a marketing genius, and someone to learn a lot from. With that in mind, I asked Gary if he could help us understand his thinking behind relationship management and building. Here’s what he said:

Video Key-points:

• Caring and transparency are the most important things for building relationships.
• Relationship building is all about what you can give the client.
• Remember it’s still a business, not a charity, don’t give away everything without expecting at least something back.
• Think about what you’re going to do, not what you want.
• Your goal is to follow the 80 / 20 rule. If you give 80% to people, they’ll give you 20%.

Book Information:

Gary’s new book is titled “Crush It”. It’s about his view on business, social media, and life itself. The book outlines the ideas and strategies Gary has used to build success in both his personal career and consultations. You can get all the information about the book at the Crush It site, and pre-order the book on Amazon.

Guest Video: Gary Vaynerchuk Talks About Relationship Building is a post by: Samir Balwani

An often overlooked advantage of social marketing is the ability to utilize multiple platforms as a network, allowing each to help another build a community.

The topic sounds difficult, but in practice can be very easy. It requires resources to create assets, and a time investment to maintain profiles.

Why Network Social Profiles?

Linking profiles not only allows you to funnel new users to alternative brand social profiles, but also enables a brand to send different messages on different mediums.

For example, imagine a brand that has a YouTube account that they link to from their Twitter account or statuses. The brand’s Twitter messages may be short thoughts, while their videos can be in-depth how to’s. By linking the accounts and sending users between the two, the brand is able to reinforce their message.

Not only are multiple active profiles good for message reinforcement, but they also help search engine optimization. The creation of video and image assets means a page can now better rank in Google Video Search or Google Image Search.

What Profiles To Link

Ultimately you want to link different platforms that let you push different messages. The idea isn’t to have multiple micro-blogging platforms, but to have a video outlet, podcast outlet, micro-blog, and blog.

With that in mind, a business serious about social marketing could create and link a Facebook page, Twitter account, YouTube account, Yelp listing, Flickr account, and blog. (These platforms won’t work for everyone, it’s just an example. It depends on resources available and demographic to target.)

The above platforms enables a brand to host applications on the Facebook page, send short updates on Twitter, and upload videos on the YouTube account. The Yelp listing helps the business in local search, while uploading photos to the Flickr account. The blog acts as a social hub and ties all the platforms together.

Making the Profiles Successful

Because the profiles act together there needs to be both an independent and integrated strategy for each platform. What value will consumers gain from making between platforms?

One good example is SEOmoz’s Whiteboard Friday on Vimeo. They use the social media platform to host a series where they analyze the latest search engine optimization strategies.

The blog highlights the latest published video, linking the two platforms.

The reason why the series is so successful is because it offers value to consumers but does not rehash what has been said on other SEOmoz profiles.

Conclusion

Finding a way to use multiple platforms to communicate different messages with users is important. Cross-promoting the platforms and linking them can help the overall success of a social marketing strategy.

Linking Multiple Social Media Profiles is a post by: Samir Balwani