But in even bigger news, two weeks ago today, I gave birth to a healthy baby boy. Announcing… David Jacob Weinberg!

Little David (who is named after my beloved Grandpa David) has been a bundle of joy so far (and a handful as well, but when are newborns not?!).

Thank you to all my internet friends for your outpouring of support (especially in light of the tweet I sent less than an hour after my son was born); I did so while the doctor was yelling at me NOT to use the phone … but who am I to listen when I was so excited to share such news? And in case you are wondering, my good friend Sam has set up a gift drive, a totally unexpected but appreciated gesture. Thanks Sam — and thanks to those who have contributed!

Hopefully we’ll see little David on social media sites in the upcoming months.

[ Blog post by Tamar Weinberg ]

Announcing the Newest Social Media Prince

In my upcoming book, The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web (Amazon link), which is slated to be released in late Spring, I talk about the importance of brand evangelism as part of an effective community management strategy. Individuals who are passionate and who have never been previously incentivized to promote your product are already talking positively about you on the web. If they’re already raving about your awesome product and promoting your service for free, why not show them that you appreciate all they are doing and offer them additional perks? Why not encourage the spread of goodwill?

This is exactly the process of the Royal Caribbean marketing team, a move that in 2007 was seen as virtually unheard of. Only recently, however, this story has become widely critiqued, with bloggers calling the practice a “vicious … royal mess” that “crossed the line.” In fact, ExpertCruiser made a scathing comment at the end of the article that suggests that this is a filthy manipulative practice:

Like them or not, online cruise message boards are now part of the pool of intelligence gathering and rumor swapping used (and manipulated) by travel agents, cruise line employees, rabid cruise fans, investors, media and the curious to track the performance of a cruise line.

Perhaps this is a “take heed” call to community participants who engage on the social web, but while ExpertCruiser warns its readers that this is a scummy practice, in reality, scouring social sites for mentions of your product, service, and even your competitors is nothing new. The effective practice of social media marketing requires monitoring all channels, from online cruise message boards to social networking sites like Facebook or LinkedIn. If you are not tapping into the online message boards for your own industry or niche, you’re not doing a thorough job at monitoring the successes or failures of your product.  You are missing out on tremendous opportunity for growth and performance of competitive analysis.  If a forum exists for your industry, you should very well be active: you should participate and follow the discussion closely to know exactly what is being said and what kind of feedback you can take back to your executive and development team to enhance your product and to make it better than your competition.

Touching upon the original concern as expressed by the ExperCruiser bloggers, the sheer existence of brand evangelism and the utilization of related programs do not cross the line.  In Royal Caribbean’s case, they simply  tapped into the minds of individuals who already loved the cruise line and expressed themselves as supporters on social networking forums.  Using the same individuals who were already respected in these communities to speak of how much they enjoyed their cruise experience and subsequently by following up with free rewards is not a deceptive practice.  Loyalty programs such as the Royal Champions encourage people to maintain a positive outlook about the company and may further influence them to talk more positively about the same company in the future.  These individuals didn’t have to be paid to do it before, after all, but the nice unexpected perks are certainly not unappreciated.

Because this critical post of Royal Caribbean disappointed me, I polled my Twitter followers for feedback.  I asked to see if anyone disagreed with this promotional tactic, and if not, what kind of incentives they’d offer to their constituents if they chose to engage in a brand ambassador program.  Responses from participants were unanimously in favor of brand evangelism and encouraged offering small perks such as free customer service and a nice dinner to large rewards such as in the case of Royal Caribbean’s free cruise.

@dudester (Mark Patterson) says:
@tamar Brand evangelism is a good thing, as long as the brand is worth evangelizing. You need to live up to the brand.

@zaifmand (Dror Zaifman) says:
@tamar In my opinion brand evangelism is not a bad thing at all. If anything it makes your brand sound different and stand out.

@AdamBroitman (Adam Broitman) says:
@tamar why would brand evangelism be a bad thing? Bribery=bad; but there is a fine line

@skinner (skinner) says:
@tamar Maybe you’d offer a brand ambassador free customer service, free promotion in return, things like that.

@TimMoore (Tim Moore) says:
@tamar dinner certificate? For top advocates, 3 day cruises?

@amabaie (David Leonhardt) says:
@tamar Any type of evangelism is a bad thing if it’s too pushy; it’s a good thing if it is “helpful”…just like a salesperson.

@vangogh (Steven Bradley) says:
@tamar Ideally nothing more than a good brand experience

@deirdrereid (Deirdre Reid) says:
@tamar Brand evang is a great thing. Incentives depend on brand type - how can u satisfy evang’s wants/needs, stroke their ego, incr recog?

@chiropractic (Planet Chiropractic) says:
@tamar I think it’s a good thing. Offer pre-release access to new products/services. Send free stuff. Say thank you a lot.

@dmasocialmedia (Social Media Smarts) says:
@tamar Sometimes all people want or need is recognition & acknowledgment to be good brand ambassadors

@ronhekier (Ron Hekier) says:
@tamar While others disagree I would support brand evangelists financially were I the vendor. But they usually will do it for schwag

The right kind of brand ambassador program does not necessarily demand forum participation thereafter, though they encourage it with a full disclosure of the participation.  However, chances are in many cases that you were already saying such nice things about that company and you’re likely to continue.  Because of your past participation, the company wanted to give a token of thanks to show their gratitude for your support.  A brand evangelism program encourages the commentary to be kept positive in the future.  Any company employing such an incentive program is certainly not participating in anything that is manipulative, questionable, or immoral in nature.

Do you think that Royal Caribbean crossed the line?  Or were they just smart enough to start something brilliant that aroused jealousy among those who were not picked for the program?  I’m compelled to suggest that Royal Caribbean has been on the right track throughout this entire ordeal in their innovative marketing tactic that they launched two years ago.  In fact, I recommend that other companies follow suit to encourage positive discourse and interactions.  They, too, should consider instituting a loyalty program that positively reinforces really good feedback about their own products and services.  What do you say, and how would you execute the program?

[ Blog post by Tamar Weinberg ]

When is Brand Evangelism a Crime? Exploring the Royal Caribbean Promotional Marketing Strategy

Today is my birthday, and I decided to give you all a gift that few of you have been highly anticipating for a few months now. My most popular post on this site — probably by far — was last year’s Best Internet Marketing Posts of 2007 compilation. I spent about 3 days (and nights) on it (without sleep) and I was quite happy with the turnout. This year, I began starting to write this compilation in the first week of December. The collection begins with posts that start in January of 2008 and have been collected and shared in the last 12 months. Like last year, I’ve grouped them into different categories and written short descriptions on each post. There’s no order to the posts; I’ve used my bookmarks and a variety of social sites and peer recommendations to create this list. I hope this year’s list surpasses last year’s. Let me know how I did in the comments.

Here’s how this works: In the Internet Marketing Best Posts “series,” I take posts that are typically timeless — they’re not confined to a specific event or news occurrence — they’re valuable for the long haul in terms of Internet Marketing and creative strategy. Hopefully, you’ll see that these posts are still relevant in a few years down the road.

These posts range from beginner to advanced with a greater emphasis on the more intermediate posts. I’d argue that if you’re starting your Internet Marketing business with not much know-how, you should check out the 2007 posts; in fact, most may still find them relevant regardless of the skill level.

New for 2008: If your article is highlighted in this comprehensive post, we have badges for you!? Feel free to link to this post with the top right hand image, which was contributed by David Mihm who specializes in Portland Web Design. Every post is a winner!

Search Engine Optimization (SEO):

• The SEO Success Pyramid: Matt McGee talks about the process of making great websites. He illustrates this in a graphical pyramid. You can even download it but you have to go to his post to get it.
• Online SEO Tools: The Ultimate Collection: At Search Engine Journal, Ann Smarty has compiled a list of the most valuable tools to perform SEO analysis.
• WordPress SEO: Definitive Guide to High Rankings for Your Blog is written by WordPress optimization expert and coder Joost de Valk and gives you some great tips on how to use WordPress in a search engine friendly fashion.
• How Much Money is a Top Google Ranking Worth to Your Business: Aaron Wall discusses the cost of that #1 link backing up the data with some hard research.
• SEO Mastermind Aaron Wall Brings Bad News: In an interview with Entrepreneur magazine, Aaron Wall talks about all things SEO.
• The Web Developers SEO Cheat Sheet: Danny Dover of SEOmoz shares the “mother of all technical SEO cheat sheets.” Nuff said.
• The SEO Guide to Information Architecture: How do you design a website for efficient crawling by search engines? If you don’t have a clue, Adam Audette is here to help.
• What is the Definition of SEO?: Jeremy Schoemaker asked a number of online marketing experts about their definitions of search engine optimization.
• How to be an SEO Service Provider: So you want to provide search engine optimization services? Here’s what you should do so that you can get the best return for your efforts.
• Don’t Sour Your Link Juice by Forgetting Basic SEO: Loren Baker explains that you could have lots of links — and that’s still not enough if you don’t follow basic search engine optimization techniques.
• 4 Reasons Many Big Brands Downplay SEO: Why aren’t all Fortune 500 companies engaging in SEO? Laura Callow tells you why.
• How to Get New Web Sites to Rank Quickly: Aaron Wall discusses some strategies to get high rankings with a brand new site — and we know those are sites that often need to take time to build trust.
• Keyword Density SEO Myths: Hobo SEO asked a bunch of established SEO experts about their opinions on keyword density.
• How You Can Get Your Google Rankings Back: Ever get a search engine ranking penalty? Aviva Directory did and they tell you what you need to do about it and how to address it.
• Content is NOT Always King and SEO is not always bad: Wil Reynolds explains that search engines can’t choose the best content and those pages with great content may not rank so high.
• Ranking as the Original Source for Content You Syndicate: According to Vanessa Fox, you can get the ranking control over that article that some lame blog just ripped off. As for me, I threaten DMCA takedown notices. It usually works.
• The Beginner’s Checklist for Learning SEO: SEOmoz’s Danny talks again about how newbies can get their SEO learn on.
• SEO Guide for Designers: This is especially useful if you code in Flash or like your graphics.
• The Most Powerful SEO Tactic: Simplify, Simplify, Simplify: Eric Enge simplifies (no pun intended) the essentials of SEO.
• Tools of the SEO Trade: There are a lot of tools out there that make search engine optimization simpler.
• Google Double or Indented Listings: Andy Beard shows you how to get an indented listing on Google.

Social Media: Generic Strategy:

• 50 Ways to Use Social Media: Jeremiah Owyang shows how you can apply social media to some standard social computing objectives.
• What is the ROI for Social Media?: Jason Falls explores the commonly-discussed (but not easily answered) question about social media.
• Scared of Social Media? You May Already be Pro!: Jill Whalen has been active on forums and online communities for 10 years now. But “social media marketing expert?” She didn’t think she was one.
• Top 10 Reasons Why SEOs Fail on Social Media: This is a practical guide for search engine optimizers and their shortcomings with new media.
• The Limitations of Social Media: Social media may seem to be awesome, but sometimes it just doesn’t work.
• The ABCs of Social Media: For every letter of the alphabet, you have a way to relate a word to social media.
• Social Media Marketing: How to Win Friends and Influence People: Sound like a famous book you’ve read? It is. But you can apply these tactics to social media relationships too.
• A Sample Social Media Toolkit: Chris Brogan talks about some of the ways you can tap into the social media field.
• 50 Steps to Establishing a Consistent Social Media Practice: Great tips all in one single post.? What could be better?
• Social Media Will Change Your Business: This is an update to an old article from BusinessWeek on how blogs have changed your business. Not anymore — it’s about social media (which typically encompasses blogs too).
• How Does a Company Dip its Toes in the Conversation?: If you’re new to social media, how do you engage as a company? Let Valeria Maltoni tell you — she’s that good.
• 7 Videos About Social Media You Need to Watch: Samir Balwani has gathered the best videos on social media so that you can further expand your knowledge.
• What I Want a Social Media Expert to Know: If you are Chris Brogan, you might have specific demands of your social media expert.
• Will the Real Social Media Expert Please Stand Up?: On the other hand, if you are Brian Solis, you need to know what to do as an expert and where to listen to the ongoing conversations.
• Intel Social Media Guidelines: Last month, it was discovered that Intel had pushed its social media guidelines out in the open. You can learn a thing or two from it.
• Starting a Social Media Strategy: Perhaps you’d call this a beginner’s piece — perhaps not — Chris Brogan touches upon considerations for implementing social media strategy.
• Big Brand Social Media Interview: Lee Odden interviews Wells Fargo, Home Depot, UPS, and Graco to get a feel of how they are engaging in the social media playground.
• Best Social Media Advice from this Site: Uh, I’m sorry, I just gave you a lot more reading material from Chris Brogan. Please read it after you’re done with this post. That’s all I ask.
• Towards a More Social Organization: Chris Heuer says that we’re becoming more social, so start realizing the importance of this trend and evolve accordingly.
• How to Measure Social Media ROI for Business: Aaron Uhrmacher explains the factors you must consider to see if your social media campaign has had an impact.
• Social Media ROI: Janet Fouts explains other ways to calculate your ROI on social media.
• A List of Social Media Marketing Examples: Peter Kim has an exhaustive list of companies engaging in social media. Is your company on the list?
• Social Media and Business Marketing Links: Related to Peter Kim’s list above, we see other business uses of social media.
• Biggest Mistakes Made by Social Media Gurus: You can still screw up in social media, but you don’t have to. Some people have lived and learned; read the Mashable post to avoid the same mistakes.
• Online Communities and Their Impact on Business: The key to success is engagement, but Michael Mace says that there are some concepts you need to understand first.
• A Social Media Guide: Steve Spalding writes nearly 8000 words on what he’s learned on social media over the past few years. It’s also available in PDF format.
• How to Measure Success in Your Social Media Marketing: So is ROI for social media really hard to calculate? Here are even more ways to measure ROI on your campaigns.
• Social Media Marketing Guide: Barry Welford at Cre8tive Flow talks about political success in social media marketing and explains how to be good at it for business success.
• How to Change the World Using Social Media: Can you really change the world? “Yes — when you turns to we,” Brian Clark says.
• Involve, Create, Discuss, Promote, Measure: Valeria Maltoni gives you 5 key ideas that you must understand fully for social media success.
• How to Champion Social Media at Work: Own social media at your workplace with some solid tactics presented by Jason Falls.

Social Media: Strategy for Social Sites:

• Building a Popular Social Media Profile: Seven Essential Characteristics: If you plan on being active in the social media space (where voting is a big part of promotion), you have to make sure you’re doing the right things.
• Top 10 Reasons Why Great Content Fails on Social Media: In case you’re still emphasizing submissions on social sites, here’s why your content … uh, appears to suck.
• 7 Social Media Websites and their Impact on SEO explores Mixx, Sphinn, Twitter, Digg, delicious, StumbleUpon, and Reddit and shows the positive and negative impact of using each.
• How NOT to Manipulate Social News: A Sphinn Experience: For those not familiar with social news, gaming is clearly something you can spot if you know what to look for.
• How to Commit Social Media Suicide: Some people don’t get social media.
• The 2008 Social Media Network Analysis Report: Brian Chappell reveals geographic, demographic, and traffic data for a whole lot of social media sites.
• 10 of the Best Alternative Social Media Sites because not everything social media is Digg, Mixx, and Reddit.
• 6 Social Media “No-Brainers” You Shouldn’t Forget: Social media tips and tricks that aren’t always on the mind.
• How to Promote Yourself on Social Sites Without Actually “Promoting Yourself”: David Wallace presents a practical way of becoming a social media rockstar.
• The ‘El Farol’ Problem in Social News: Muhammad Saleem explains that the community is happy when social news submissions occur in moderation. Not excess. I suppose most things do very well in moderation.
• SEO Explained for Small Business Owners: If you work in a small business and the articles above scared you, then read this one instead.
• The 10 Commandments of the Social Web: Building a social network? At the minimum, you need to follow some rules, according to Nick O’Neill.
• Social Media Marketing ROI: Metrics and Analysis: If you promote content on social networks, you should have some metrics in place to see how effective your campaign was. Here’s a guide to start with.
• Are You a Super Influencer?: Given social sites, there are new influencers in town. Make way.
• How to Get Started in Social Media: There are so many sites out there, so Shana Albert explains how she got involved and the sites you can use for both business and personal purposes.
• How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media: Beth Kanter interviews a nonprofit employee to see how he has found success with social media for awareness.
• Free Online Resources for Finding Missing Persons Through Social Media: This is a bit different but still very important as I’ve read about some amazing stories about how people use social sites to reunite old families.? The bottom line is that social sites are great for marketing a lost person and hoping that they can be found again.

Twitter:

• Twitter Wrote his Column For Me: Clearly, this post itself demonstrates the power of Twitter and the collective.
• 7 Tips for New Twitter Users: Shel Israel talks about how you (as a new Twitter user) should use the service for maximum gain.
• 17 Ways You Can Use Twitter: A Guide for Beginners, Marketers, and Business Owners: People are raving about Twitter, but are they using it to its fullest?
• How to Get Customer Service via Twitter: Which companies are listening, and should you join the conversation? If you’re new to the area, you can check out how to start following what pople are saying.
• How to Use Twitter to Grow Your Business: This recent post on Copyblogger quotes how many businesses has found success with the microblogging service.
• How to Use Twitter to Build Brand Integrity: These are some solid tips for Twitter users to follow in order to add value to the conversation.
• Why Twitter Matters: BusinessWeek cites examples of why the microblogging website is a must-use for everyone.
• 50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business: Chris Brogan covers a lot of ground with this piece.
• The Evolution of Brands on Twitter: Jeremiah Owyang explains how you can evolve your brand using Twitter.
• Getting Intimate (with Customers) on Twitter: Some companies really get it. And they profit. Are you one of them?
• Twitter Goes Mainstream: More and more people are using it. Are you?
• How to Build Community on Twitter: If you want more followers, take some solid advice from Sarah Evans.
• How to Pick Up Followers on Twitter: Guy Kawasaki adds to the list of how you can get more followers on Twitter.
• Building an Effective Business Profile on Twitter: Michael Gray’s guest post on Twitip is golden.? He suggests personalization, professionalism, and humor, among other tips and tricks.
• Twitter Tools for Community and Communications Professionals: Brian Solis is constantly updating this post which includes great tools to make your Twitter experience a much more pleasurable one.
• How to Become a Twitter Rockstar: Now that you’re armed with tools and have the Twitter basics down pat, how do you use Twitter to your advantage?? David Brown explains it all.

Sphinn:

• Beginner’s Guide to Sphinn: Surely there are some of you out there who have never used Sphinn before, but if you are remotely interested in this post, you can imagine that half of the posts I put here were also submitted to Sphinn.? That said, join up and read this Problogger post for some rules of engagement.
• Top 10 Signs You’re Spamming Sphinn gives you more insights into how to use social news sites properly.
• Crappy MP3 Sites, Comment Spamming & Enough Already: Danny Sullivan rants about how there are “search marketers” trying to manipulate Sphinn (and other social news sites). He explores examples and shows how hard it is to be a moderator of a site like this. Hey, I hear you.
• An Analysis of Sphinn: 175 Homepage Homeruns Dissected: This post shows you what people are loving on Sphinn.? It also somewhat correlates to the categories on this post since some topics just happen to be a lot more popular than others.

LinkedIn:

• Why LinkedIn is the One Social Network I Couldn’t Work Without: Jennifer Laycock explains why she hearts LinkedIn.
• Make Your LinkedIn Profile Work for You: Having a LinkedIn profile is one thing. Having a solid LinkedIn profile is a different story.
• Business Uses for LinkedIn: LinkedIn is very powerful, but how do you use it? Valeria Maltoni explains that it’s about community, connections, and more.
• How to Get the Most out of LinkedIn: Mashable’s guest writer Brian Wallace explains how LinkedIn can be used as a valuable tool.
• Elements of a Good LinkedIn Recommendation: If you’re recommending someone on LinkedIn, strive for quality, not quantity.
• 100+ Smart Ways to Use LinkedIn: Just in case the articles above didn’t suffice, this one has many more in-depth articles on making LinkedIn work for you.
• How to Use LinkedIn Jake Swearingen of BNET says that you need to create a good profile, build your network, get the most from your connections, and then manage your network.
• Successful Networking Tips for LinkedIn and Facebook: Loren Baker shows that LinkedIn and Facebook aren’t so different and building your network is key.

Digg:

• How to Level the Playing Field with Digg: While I personally don’t like Digg anymore and find that it’s useless for marketers, Skellie think it’s still valuable. (I’d argue “rarely” nowadays.)
• How I Became a Digg Power User with a 75% Popular Ratio: I got banned in October from Digg with a 67% popular ratio and 278 front page stories and offered very similar tips in 2007, but some people still want to use Digg for this kind of thing.? Personally, I think Digg will ban you when you get popular.? The guy who wrote this blog post speaks from the same kind of experience.

Wikipedia:

• Using Wikipedia to Reveal Web Traffic Data: Jonathan Hochman writes a piece on how, when using Wikipedia, you can find out about how much traffic a top search ranking will send.
• How to Overthrow a Wikipedia Result: This is a good tactic but you should use it in moderation!? Don’t get caught!
• Wikipedia 101 for Marketing: The awesome Todd Defren explains how you can use Wikipedia to market your business.? But as many of you who have attended SEO conferences know, don’t do it from your company IP address or face the banhammer.
• 3 Awesome Wikipedia Tools and How they Could be Useful: I’ve never really known of any real good Wikipedia tools except for WikiScanner until this post (and this post doesn’t even talk about that IP scanner program).? ? So there you have it — 4 tools for your Wikipedia enjoyment.
• What to do When Your Company Wikipedia Page Goes Bad: The problem with editing your own company page when you work for the company is that there are moderation issues and biases.? So what can you do once someone adds bad content to that page?? Jessica Bowman tells you how to make the nasties “fade into the background.”

StumbleUpon:

• The Idiot’s Guide to StumbleUpon: Tim Nash, an active StumbleUpon expert, has offered some strategies on using the social discovery tool.
• How to Write Posts that Set StumbleUpon on Fire: Skellie utilizes real-life experience with the social discovery site to show you how you can get a whoosh of good traffic.
• 28 Tips to Make You a StumbleUpon Superstar: I personally love StumbleUpon — a lot. And you should too when you apply these tactics.

Fark:

• Definitive Guide to Fark and Getting Mass Traffic: One of the lesser tapped social media sites among search marketers is Fark. But not for Glen Allsopp, who reviews it here.

Facebook:

• Ten Things You Didn’t Know About Facebook: Guy Kawasaki is right — you probably don’t know some of these things (like #7)!
• Facebook Insider’s Guide to Viral Marketing: This article on docstoc has good tips if you’re looking to market on Facebook.
• 5 Reasons Why Whole Foods Gets Facebook: Businesses can make a difference on Facebook. Whole Foods did.
• Facebook Ads 101: How to Set Up and Track Facebook Ads: While people like free Facebook advertising, there are wonderfully targeted ads that may even be more effective.? Now you can understand how to leverage them.
• 5 Tips for Promoting Your Business Page on Facebook: If you created a business page on Facebook and actually want people to know about it, you might want to make sure it’s one that people actually are interested in joining.
• Facebook for Those Over 40: How do you explain Facebook to a group of folks who find this technology a little daunting?? We’re so involved in social media today that we may lose sight of the beginner explanation.
• 3 New Ways to Target Your Audience with Facebook Pages: Did you know that you are able to restrict access to Facebook pages by demographic information?? I didn’t.? But doing this can ensure that you get the right kinds of users.
• The 25 Most Popular Pages on Facebook: There’s nothing truly eye-opening about this discovery, but you can learn a thing or two about the power of marketing that has made some of these individuals so popular.
• Facebook Pages and Local Search Engine Optimization: Andrew Shotland offers a little-known tip on how you can possibly find prospects via Facebook through search.
• Facebook vs. LinkedIn: Which is Better for Business? In a 7-page article, ComputerWorld assesses the pros and cons of both.

delicious:

• 6 Ways to Make Life Easier with delicious: How many of you actually use delicious as a search engine? Maybe you should.
• How to Analyze Your Site with Delicious: Ann Smarty dissects the various parts of delicious.com and shows you how you can learn more about your website.

Flickr:

• How to Market on Flickr: While Flickr itself isn’t seen as a community that you would market to, you can find out how to become a respected community member AND market your services as well.
• An Insider’s Guide to Marketing on Flickr: Rohit Bhargava gives some very detailed tips on how you can use Flickr to successfully market products.

FriendFeed:

• FriendFeed Can Disrupt Search and Reshape Advertising: Steve Rubel offers his initial impressions of FriendFeed.
• 25 Different Uses for FriendFeed: FriendFeed power users Michael Fruchter and Louis Gray team up (well, Mike posted the guest post on Louis’s blog) to share some tips on how you can get the most out of this service.? As an FYI, I LOVE FriendFeed (and as another FYI, I said the same about Twitter in 2007 and everyone joined up in 2008.? Just sayin’).? By the way, Louis has a ton of great posts on FriendFeed on his blog and this isn’t the only one.

Blogging:

• The Most Important Difference Between Websites and Blogs: Tad switched his website over to a blog. He reflects on why this was a smart move.
• 10 Ways to Improve Blog Traffic in 30 Minutes or Less gives you some lesser-known (or implemented) strategies to bring you (possibly) more blog visitors.
• You’re Not Just a Writer, You’re the Editor-in-Chief: Dosh Dosh explains that your approach toward blogging needs to be more than just of a freelance nature.
• What Suggestions Would You Offer a Beginning Blogger?: You need to “learn to” do a few things as a blogger. Bill Slawski explains what they are.
• Practical Guide to Starting a Corporate Blog: Jason Falls discusses the steps you need to take before you actually launch that much-needed corporate blog.
• How to Start a Professional Blog: 10 Tips for New Bloggers: Andrew Chen gives some detailed insights on how your new blog can take off.
• 10 Commandments of Business Blogging: If you want to be taken seriously as a business blogger, there are some rules you need to follow.
• Does Blogging Really Work? Here’s the Proof: Mack Collier uses the examples of Dell Hell and Stormhoek to show that blogging is a powerful marketing tool for both the positive and the negative.
• 27 Secrets to Linking Like a Master Networker: This post shows how you can network via blogging.
• 45 Ways to Power Up Your Blog: Here are small things you can implement to make your blog a little more appealing to your audience and search engines.
• How Much Do Top Tier Bloggers and Social Media Consultants Get Paid? We Asked Them!: Marshall Kirkpatrick, you didn’t ask me!
• How to Blog Design Style Guide goes into detail about blog design, from the header to the content area to the comments.
• 3 Phases of Flagship Blog Growth or How to Fall in Love with Blogging: Tad explains that perseverance is important to keep your blog going strong.
• How to Get Piles of Links, Subscribers, and Comments: Skellie explains the ways you can use your blog for awareness and then some.
• The Ultimate Guide to a Wildly Sticky Successful and Outstanding Blog: Liz Strauss takes a bunch of great blogging guides and puts them all together for this tool for serious bloggers.
• 27 Resources fr Evaluating Blogging ROI: Is blogging working for you? You can check against the experts to find out.
• A Sample Blogging Workflow: From the goals of blogging to the tools you should use, Chris nails it.
• 21 Ways to Make Your Blog or Website Sticky: Yes, this is from Darren Rowse at Problogger. Yes, it’s about blogs. It’s also about websites. Read it whether or not you have a blog as it has some great tips on keeping your visitors hooked.
• Ariana Huffington Shares 4 Secrets of Creating a Successful Blog: Learn from someone who knows. HuffPo is a very popular blog.
• Case Study: The Launch of a New Blog: A serious blogger from Traffikd shows how his third blog fared after it launched.
• Why Start a Blog and 25 Tips to Make it Work: A very in-depth article on why you should create a blog and engage in blogging.
• The Sweeney Todd Guide to Blogging Sonia Simone equates characteristics of Sweeney Todd to blogging, marketing, and communication.? An example: Sweeney Todd improvised to get multiple streams of income; bloggers can strategize to get different sources for readers.
• Is Your Blog Going for the Gold? This article discusses the pros and cons of blogging for businesses.? One of the main cons, of course, is the fact that you may be starting a blog with no brand recognition whatsoever.? That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try, though.

Viral Marketing:

• The Top 10 Viral Marketing Campaigns of All Time: Patrick Altoft reviews the most popular YouTube videos and explains why they rock.
• Hard (but Important) Lessons About Viral Marketing: Having realistic expectations is important so that you don’t fail at your viral marketing campaign.
• The Viral Marketing Glossary: Dan Zarrella gives definitions for a bunch of terms related to viral marketing.
• What is Viral Marketing?: Seth Godin’s post from the last day of 2008 is the reason why I held publication of this post till 2009.? He explains viral marketing and then shows a case study of how it works.

Link Building:

• Link Building: A Complete Walkthrough: Many of you may be reading this and have no idea about link building at all. That’s where Saad Kamal’s in-depth introductory guide comes in.
• The Fundamentals of Link Building: Adam Audette also gives you some in-depth but beginner information into the art of link building.
• 11 Experts on Link Development Speak Out: Rae Hoffman has gathered some great authorities in the area of link building and asked them several questions about sources, strategy, and more.
• Link Building Secrets Revealed by Top Linking Experts: In this article, twelve link experts talk about lesser known strategies. The report is also available in PDF format.
• The 30 Easiest Was to Get Links and Exposure suggests some strategies to get more links to your website.
• Link Building Strategies: 69 Solid Tactics for 2009 tells you even more ways to get links to your site.
• 30 Ways to Get Links Naturally and Stop Link Building: On the other hand, if link building is too time consuming, you may want to think of other strategies.
• A Linkbuilding Method So Effective I Can’t Believe It’s Not Blackhat: The basic premise is that you should find pages/sites that used to offer a service and no longer do. The fill that void.
• Where Do You Start Your Link Marketing Campaign?: Wiep Knol discusses some strategies on where you can think of gaining some new links.
• 6 Sure-Fire Tactics to Re-Ignite Your Linkbait: You wrote something awesome. It sucked on your targeted social media site. Now what?
• How Getting a Link is Like Picking Up a Woman: Link building is not much different than flirting. Really.
• There’s No Such Thing as a Worthless Link: …because they all end up pointing to your site, right? But Deb Mastaler shows that there’s more.
• Get In Touch With Your Inner Link Self: Finding out where your customers go and targeting those areas is a golden way to get links.
• The Definitive List of Link Building Techniques in 2008: Jeff Quipp gathered every single link building tip he could find.
• Link Exchanges: It’s Not the Size of the PR, but How You Use it: Not everyone likes link exchanges (raises hand), but then again, I’m a blogger who gets 384824 link exchange emails a week.? However, there are legitimate non-blog websites that get a lot.? The question: how do you research sites for link exchanges?? David Leonhardt offers solid strategies on how to choose sites for link building and link exchanges.
• The Ultimate Guide to Internal Linking and Part 2: In two posts, Pete Wailes uses some PageRank formula to guide you through an internal linking strategy and then brings quantum theory into it.? Yes, really.

Reputation Management:

• Dealing with “Impossible” Online Reputation Challenges: Brett Borders goes through the various problems relating to reputation management and lets you know if they’re solvable — or not.
• Five Steps for Recovering from an Online Reputation Crisis: Two different events, two different responses. You need to handle your reputation issue appropriately.
• 12 Reputations Every Company Should Monitor Online: When you are a public facing company, reputation management issues can come at you at all different sides. Make sure you have your bases covered.
• How to Remove Negative Posts and Links: From asking to suing, you have a way to [usually] remove those bad search results.
• How to Bury Negative Online Mentions of You: Search Engine Watch covers some intermediate-level strategies on how to deal with a reputation management crisis.
• The M&Ms of Online Reputation Management: We’re not talking candy here.? Actually, we’re talking M&M&M&M: monitor, manage, measure, and mediate.
• Digital Reputation Management with SEO, Social Media, and PR: Taking a proactive approach toward ORM (online reputation management) is important.? This post touches upon the surface and unfortunately Lee Odden discussed the rest in person at a conference.
• Reputation Management: Because You’re Worth It: In a lighthearted post, a female working for a search engine marketing agency explains how reputation management is like a beauty emergency.
• Treat Me Mean, I Need the Reputation Tom Critchlow shows you what negative reputation looks like.
• Online Reputation Management: What Goes Around May Be Total Crap: Kim Krause Berg talks about the ethics of reputation management and then some.
• Pre-emptive Reputation Management Comes of Age: Don’t fret about reputation managment.? Tackle it before it becomes a problem with preemptive reputation management.? ? The ideas Jeff Quipp presents in his article are really clever.
• Reputation Crisis Management: 8 SEO Triage Tips: Marty Weintraub says that reputation management isn’t much different than SEO.
• Reputation Management Tips from Around the Web: Many search marketing experts weigh in on one very important reputation management tip.
• Online Reputation Management for the Small Business Owner Providing high quality service will avoid the reputation management issues you could encounter.? If you get a negative review but provide great service thereafter, the newer positive reviews will mitigate the negative review.
• Ten Tactics that Could Save Your Online Reputation: Perhaps you’re not in an online reputation crisis yet.? Maybe you’ll never have to be if you read these tactics.
• Your Seven-Step Online Reputation Crisis Plan: If you already have a problem on your hands, now you need to create a strategy.? In seven steps, you can successfully avoid the crisis.? ? Here’s how.
• Reputation Management and Defending Your Brand: This is a good beginner article for smaller businesses and gives some solid tips on how your local business can be more visible in a positive way.
• Online Reputation Management is Hot — But is it Ethical? Some companies discuss their failures due to a reputation management issue.? Others talk about how they are helping address the issue.
• Online Reputation Management for Individuals: We’ve talked about business reputation management, but you can still lose your job using social media channels and lose out on good opportunities.? Don’t forget that your personal brand is still something you may want to protect.

Analytics:

• 8 Awesome Google Analytics Hacks, Tips, and Tricks offers tips on how to get more out of Google Analytics rather than what comes out of the box. Note: Some programming may be required!
• The Huge Collection of Google Analytics Tips: In case the previous link wasn’t enough for you, get tracking of your outgoing links, links to banner ads, downloads, and more.
• How to Use Bounce Rate as a Metric to Improve Your Website Performance: A lot of people ignore bounce rate. Maybe you shouldn’t.
• 8 Stupid Things Webmasters Do to Mess Up Their Analytics: Google Analytics isn’t that accurate after all. Find out if you’re being impacted.
• How to Analyze and Improve the Bounce Rate for Your Website: Dosh Dosh gives insights into the hated bounce rate and then suggests strategies on how to reduce that percentage.
• Context is King Baby! Go Get Your Own: Avinash Kaushik argues that the single most important missing ingredient in understanding your analytics is the context you can place around the analytics data you’re provided with.
• Using Stats and Goal Tracking for Your Blog: Want analytics for your blog?? Michael Gray gives some tips on how you can get some.? And yes, you should.

Personal Branding:

• Resumes are for Sh!t: The 4 Things You Really Need: Want to build your personal brand? Dave McClure says you need LinkedIn, a blog, keywords, and social media.
• How to Get Noticed: Jeremiah Owyang offers tactics for becoming noticed in this space.
• Seth Godin: Profile of a Marketing Guru: How’d Seth Godin score his own action figure? Read this.
• Gary Vaynerchuk’s Keynote at Web 2.0 Expo NY: Sure, while this is a video (!) and I still emphasize articles in my yearly post, I actually attended this 15 minute keynote, and it’s a real morale booster. Watch it. It’s worth it.
• Why You Need to Care More About Your Personal Brand: Mitch Joel explains why personal branding is important.
• We Are in a Recession, so Build Your Brand on the Internet Now: It’s a perfect time to build your Internet presence.? This Internet Marketing firm did it for their clients by establishing its presence on multiple channels.? Find out which ones they used (and feel free to just use this as a starting point — there are more channels to leverage!).
• Personal Branding: What a Difference a Year Makes: Dan Perry was nobody in 2007.? (No offense, Dan!)? But in 2008, he became somebody according to Google.? What were his takeaways?

Local Search:

• Local Search Ranking Factors collects advice from 20 experts in the area of local search marekting on a variety of ranking factors.
• Local SEOs Share Geolocation Tips from Around the World: The Distilled guys who are in the UK ask several SEOs around the world about how to optimize for search engines.
• The Mother of All SMX Local/Mobile Recaps: David Mihm attended a conference and shared the top takeaways. The post provides very valuable information even though it’s a conference summary!
• Local vs. Traditional SEO: Why Citation is the New Link This is a very detailed post explaining some new discoveries about local SEO.? Links aren’t that important in local SEO, and David explains why.
• Website Optimization for Telephone Leads: Surely there are companies out there that get a lot of leads via phone.? If your phone number is prominently displayed on your website, you will likely get a lot of good leads. (I’d add that it’d be a smart idea to get a number specific for web-only inquiries to ensure that the lead came from there.)
• Free Local Marketing Options that Bring Real Traffic: Mat Siltala takes a look at easy local search tweaks you can use that will bring some valuable traffic.? The sites he mentions are high-trafficked ones, and if you cover your bases, you can benefit from a gift that keeps on giving.
• How to Create Effecitve Local Business Landing Pages Are you missing any of these essential elements from your landing pages?

Content Development:

• The Secret to Compelling Content: Anna Bourland describes how you should organize your website and create a hook that drives your visitors to perform a desired action.
• How to Have a Constant Flow of Content Ideas: Sometimes, getting that idea in your mind is the hardest obstacle. Here’s some help.
• Writing Killer Headlines: Top 20 Viagra SPAM Email Subject Lines: I feel like my email subscribers just got this email blocked due to this actual post, but it’s a REALLY good read, so I had to include it.
• Link Bait Ideas: Lyndon Antcliff gives some strategy into creating the ultimate piece of content.
• 12 Tips on Creating Content for Social Media: Let’s face it, people are talking social media nowadays. It’s time to create content that works.
• The 5-Step POWER Copywriting Method: Want to be persuasive and rock? Follow some guidelines.
• 5 Great Marketing Lists and What You Can Learn from Each One: Make a list. Profit. Rohit Bhargava explains the benefits of 5 popular lists.
• How to Maximize Current Events for Social Media: The 10e20 blog shows what you can do with current events to create compelling content.
• How to Write an Article in 20 Minutes: Let me put it this way: this article did NOT take 20 minutes to write.
• Writing Content that Works for a Living: The key takeaways of this article are to make it simple and do it right.

Web Development:

• 50 Questions to Evaluate the Quality of Your Website: Explore questions of accessibility, navigation, design, content, security, and more with this checklist.
• The Best Damn Web Marketing Checklist, Period: Stoney deGeyter breaks down the intricacies of web design into easy-to-digest categories with this exhaustive but awesome checklist.
• I Can Make Your Site Run 10 Times Faster: Site not running fast enough? Search engine spiders and visitors may not appreciate it. Mike Peters tells you what you can do to get that needed boost.
• 101 Five-Minute Fixes to Incrementally Improve Your Website is a great checklist on usability, writing, and design, and refers to 101 more articles just in case this list of posts wasn’t enough.
• A Design is Finished When: Twenty-three designers offer their insights on when your website design is complete and you can take it the next level.
• Let’s Talk Landing Pages: Rebecca Kelley at SEOmoz shares some really great tips on how to make the most out of your landing pages.
• Website Checklist: Getting to the Close: Peter da Vanzo outlines the steps for beginner web designers to get visitors to perform a desired action.

Affiliate Marketing:

• Five Effective Copywriting Tactics for Affiliate Marketing: Want to sell your affiliate offers? At the minimum, make sure you follow these tactics.
• Jonathan Volk Interview: If you don’t know Jonathan Volk, meet this kid through this interview, because he’s in his early 20s and is making 6 figures a month.
• Three Killer Content Strategies for Building Affiliate Marketing Assets: Brian Clark gives even more affiliate marketing tips.
• Only Wanting the “Thrill of the Chase”: Why do most affiliate marketers fail?? Because they have an initial rush of motivation but then get annoyed at the hard work required, according to affiliate marketing mastermind Rae Hoffman.
• Managing Risk: Legal Issues for Merchants and Affiliate Marketers Affiliate marketing is not a risk-free endeavor, so be sure you are aware of all the risks before you take the plunge.
• The Diary of a PPC Newbie and Why You Should Expand: As you’ll see, this article isn’t really about Pay-Per-Click.? ? It’s how you can use PPC and affiliate marketing to make some money.? Don’t you want to do that by now?
• 81 Useful Affiliate Marketing Resources: If you’re ready to start with affiliate marketing, here are some tools that can make your life easier.
• Making Money Online with Local Affiliate Programs: This great post by Jeremy Schoemaker was suggested by @ronhekier and gives some great advice on how you can make ends meet especially if you just got laid off during the recession.

Domains and Domaining:

• How to Pick a Kickass Domain Name: Lisa Barone gives solid tips on choosing the domain name that’s perfect for your company.
• On Domain Names, Size and Quality DO Matter: Daniel Scocco looks at the top 250 domains on Alexa and shows how the most popular sites actually all have very powerful domain names.
• How to Find Available Domain Names: With the Google AdWords tool and a bulk whois checker, you may be able to get some great SEO-friendly domain names.
• 2018: A Domaining Odyssey: Experts weigh in on the future of domaining in this article.
• How to (Really) Make Money with Domain Names: Finding a good domain name is half the battle.? Once you’re done with that, there are some good strategies you can use to make money with them.? One key is defensible traffic.

AdWords/PPC:

• Eight Keyword Research Mistakes that are Costing You Money: You may be spending lots on Google AdWords, but are you spending smartly? Christine Churchill gives you some points to review.
• Marketing Lessons Learned from Pay-Per-Click Analytics shows what you can learn about general marketing from reviewing your PPC analytics.
• Landing Page Optimization: 5 Elements that can Impact Conversion Rates: While this could fit in this blog post’s “web development” category, it is a better match for giving you the biggest bang for your buck if you engage in pay-per-click marketing.
• How I Optimize My PPC Campaigns: Harrison Gevirtz, a teenage genius and CEO of a company, teaches us tactics that made him successful in a guest post on Shoemoney.com.
• PPC Spend Should be More than SEO: John W. Ellis explains the correlation between Pay-Per-Click and Search Engine Optimization but still contends that your PPC budget should exceed your SEO budget.
• 7 Ways to Save Money During a PPC Campaign: Saad Kamal offers practical tips on how to reduce your Google AdWords or Yahoo Search Marketing ad spend.

Internet Marketing:

• The Internet Marketing List: 59 Things You Should Be Doing But Probably Aren’t: Ian Lurie presents what you may want to put into a checklist — things you should be doing on your website and that you may have ignored.
• How I Turned My Mediocre Website into a Million Dollar Business: Erica Douglass speaks from experience. The bottom line: customers deserve great value.
• Colorize Your Brand: How Color Builds Your Brand: Ann Smarty presents “color in business” theory and shows its application to Internet technology.
• Firefox 3 Shows How a Good Landing Page Can Convert Seven Million Visitors a Day: Test, retest, and enjoy the benefits.
• The Digital Rules of Engagement: If you’re going to engage, make sure you know what you’re doing. This AdWeek article ties in well with social media, but it has some other important concepts that caused me to put it in the Internet Marketing category instead.
• The Internet Marketing Handbook: SEOmoz has compiled a huge list of almost 100 tools and resources. Sweet!
• 14 Must-Have Resources to Launch a Small Business: How many people have you spoken to who say they want to start a business but don’t know how?? Maybe you should point them to this checklist.? (It’ll help if they know exactly what kind of business they’re looking to start, though!)
• The “Poochie” Effect: While I love social media, one-way advertising is still practiced by many companies. In this post, you’ll consider the questions that you need to have answered before you engage on an advertising campaign.

General Marketing:

• Top Experts Dish with their Best Kept Marketing Secrets: Some of the most brilliant experts provide their one best marketing secret.
• 38 Things I Wish I Knew When I started in Marketing offers some advice that I kind of still don’t apply myself.
• Tell Us Your Most Outrageously Creative Money-Saving or Business Growth Tip: Anita Campbell delivers again by gathering expert quotes and offering some brilliant insights into what they’ve done to take their businesses to the next level.
• What Do You Know?: Seth Godin’s list that is 3 years old (and counting) never grows old. Yes, this is a reprint from 2008 with some newer tips.
• The Essentials of Guerrilla Marketing: Jay Conrad Levinson shares concepts that will make your business rock.
• 8 Strategies for Successful Realtions with Clients: Since social media is within the scope of Internet Marketing and is a lot about customer service, client relations should follow. If you have good relationships from the outset, you may avoid those reputation management crises and more.
• How to Deliver the Perfect Client Pitch: Client acquisition is all the rage, but are you actually getting new clients?? If not, perhaps you need to adjust your pitch.
• Why Clients Won’t Buy: The Hierarchy of Choice: You could be an awesome salesperson but your customers still won’t necessarily buy from you. Find out why.

Best of Techipedia 2008
I typically don’t put posts from my blog in the “Best Internet Marketing Posts of 2008″ list, but this year, since I’ve grown a considerable number of subscribers, I’ve decided to give new users the opportunity to read the two best posts without feeling that they need to dig through the archives.? Of course, if you don’t mind reading the other posts I’ve written, by all means, go ahead.? There’s some good stuff there that I’m not highlighting here (including two on FriendFeed, which is a great content discovery and community building tool which simply doesn’t get much love).

• The Ultimate Social Media Etiquette (or Netiquette) Handbook: My most popular post of December 2008 was about social media etiquette and goes through a variety of social sites to suggest what should and shouldn’t be done.? The comment discussion is great as well.
• What Traits Define a Social Media Marketer?: Experts on social media marketing weigh in on the essential characteristics of the ideal social media marketing guru.

Thanks again to the Portland Web Design company for their awesome badges (and to Jill for the idea).? Also, thanks for all your contributions to this series.? Stay tuned for next year’s!

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Happy 2009!

[ Blog post by Tamar Weinberg ]

Best Internet Marketing Posts of 2008

As a blogger, you have the potential to reach a tremendous audience. As an individual, perhaps a company or an entrepreneur who is looking to spread the word about a new product launch, you have the potential to keep marketing costs down by reaching out to bloggers and having them talk about your product. One of the best ways to achieve this goal is through blogger outreach, which typically includes more than just sending out your press release: give the blogger the opportunity to try your product. Send them your book. Or your beanbag chair. Or give them full download rights to your new software product without restrictions.

You can do something else entirely. As part of the Don’t Just Give a Gift, Grant a Wish campaign by the Sears department store, I had the opportunity to participate in a shopping spree to help me or someone else realize our dreams. The idea behind this initiative was that I was given a $500 Sears gift card to “Grant a Wish” for myself, a loved one, or charity. At the same time, I was to photograph my experience in the store.

At first, I had no idea what to do. I was recently moved by “The Secret Millionaire” and wanted to realize the dreams of someone who may not be able to buy anything at all — so I decided to make sure my own purchases included gifts for young children.? After walking up and down the halls of the whole department store, my husband and I finally settled on gathering a shopping cart full of toys that we will end up donating to cancer-stricken children just in time for the holidays.

I also found myself being fascinated by the number of tools available for the DIY (do-it yourself) enthusiast.? I ended up buying a much needed tool that will hopefully allow me to remove stripped screws so that I can free up a trapped IDE hard drive in an external case.? Seriously — Sears has aisles upon aisles of drills, drill bits, and other thingamajigs that I wouldn’t even know how to use.

Still, though, I’m happy that I was able to use this experience to give to those less fortunate.? It’s such a perfect time to consider gift giving (and wish-wishing) for those who you may not know.? I’m sure it will put a smile on someone else’s face.

Giving Back, Contest Style

Do you want to make a wish for a special someone in your family or perhaps a few people at once? With IZEA’s help, you can also help realize the dream of someone you love or care about. Check out three possible three gift packages that I’ve crafted to make that happen:

The Family Fun Package
- Casio 8.1MP Digital Camera EX-Z80 (link)
- SanDisk 4GB SDHC� Memory Card (link)
- Casio Leather Pouch Case for Exilim S and Z Series Digital Cameras (link)
- Emerson CDG Karaoke System - iPod Compatible (link)
- Fisher-Price Digital Arts & Crafts Studio (link)
- Harvard Electronic Single Shootout Basketball (link)
- HoMedics Bubble Spa Footbath (link)
- One For All 8-Device Learning Upgradeable Universal Remote (link)

The Camping Package
- Kenmore 596 square inch 3 Burner Gas Grill with Side Burner (link)
- Craftsman 4 pc. Barbecue Gift Set with Bottle Opener (link)
- (2) Coleman Hibernation Sleeping Bag (link)
- Craftsman Toolbox Cooler (link)
- (2) On The Edge Marketing Folding Chair (Flame) (link)
- Northwest Territory Dome Tent (link)

The Pamper Herself Spa Relaxation Package
- Conair Double Sided Lighted Mirror (link)
- Conair Foot Vibes� Massaging Slippers for Women (link)
- HoMedics Therapist Select Shiatsu Message (link)
- Rosetti Handbag Ring Tote (link)
- Relic Flap Checkbook Clutch Wallet (link)
- Metaphor Beaded Satin Clutch (link)
- Colorworks Fantastic Beauty Fan (link)
- Royce Leather Travel & Grooming Kit (link)
- 1/2 ct t.w. Diamond Composite Stud Earrings, 10K white gold (link)
- Seiko Ladies Calendar Day Date Watch with White Dial and Two-Tone Link Band (link)

There are three ways to win one of the above packages:

• Leave a comment on this blog. Let me know the name of the package you are most interested in.
• Use Twitter! Simply tweet out the following message: �RT @tamar please grant my wish to win the #Sears (package name) - tweet to win your own wish http://urlbrief.com/5ead6c�
• If you’re a blogger, write a post about the contest and link back to this post.? If you proceed down this route, make sure to leave a comment here letting me know that you did.? Include the URL to your post.

You can enter up to three times (each Tweet, comment, or blog post counts as a single entry). The winner will be chosen at random and will receive the package s/he selected.? The contest ends on December 23rd, so be sure to get your entries in ASAP. Please be sure to read the official rules for more information about the contest.

Good luck!

[ Blog post by Tamar Weinberg ]

Contest: Make a Wish for Someone Else this Holiday Season (and the Power of Blogger Outreach)

• Jump on the friendship bandwagon without properly introducing yourself?
• Consistently talk about yourself and promote only yourself without regard for those around you?
• Randomly approach a friend you barely talk to and simply ask for favors — repeatedly?
• Introduce yourself to another person as “Pink House Gardening?”

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you may need a refresher course on social media etiquette — and perhaps real-life etiquette also. Here are some egregious sins that you must not perform on social media sites. Avoid these violations and learn how to manage and maintain online relationships on a variety of popular social media sites.

Facebook

• Adding users as friends without proper introductions. If you’re looking to make friends, tell people who you are. Don’t assume they know you — especially if they, well, don’t.
• Abuse application invites and consistently invite friends to participate in vampire games. Many call this spam.
• Abusing group invites. If your friends are interested, they’ll likely join without your “encouragement.” And if they don’t accept, don’t send the group request more than once by asking them to join via email, wall post, or Facebook message.
• Turning your Facebook profile photo into a pitch so that you can gather leads through your Facebook connections. Thanks, but no thanks. Facebook is about real friendships and not about business — at least not to me.
• Using a fake name as your Facebook name. I can’t tell you how many people have added me and their last name is “Com” or “Seo.”? I’m not adding you unless you can be honest about who you are. Once upon a time, Facebook deleted all of the accounts that portrayed people as business entities or things. I wish Facebook would employ the same tactics yet again, because I’m not adding a fake identity as a friend.
• Publicizing a private conversation on a wall post. In case it isn’t obvious, Facebook wall posts are completely public to all your friends (unless you tweak your privacy settings). Private matters should be handled privately: via email or even in Facebook private messages.
• Tagging individuals in unflattering pictures that may end up costing your friends their jobs. Avoid the unnecessary commentary also, especially on your childhood pictures that portray your tagged friends as chubby and not so popular. Further, if your friends request to be untagged, don’t make a stink of it.

The image above was taken last night and represents the number of pending requests I have on Facebook. If you’re one of the pending friends, you may have violated one of the above rules. Otherwise, see this post.

That said, there’s one other rule that some individuals follow. I know this isn’t the case for all individuals, so your mileage may vary:

• Forgetting that some individuals won’t network with you on a “personal” space like Facebook without knowing who you are, even with the proper introduction. If you’re looking to establish a professional relationship with someone, consider LinkedIn. Otherwise, consider building up a rapport with an individual before randomly adding them as your friend. Some people require face-to-face meetings before they invite you into their private lives. After all, Facebook was a tool that college students were using before it was open to the public, and some still use it as a purely personal and not a professional tool. LinkedIn is still seen as the more professional of the two.

Considering the above example, I pose a question on Facebook etiquette: Is it appropriate to let these requests sit in pending mode or to reject the friends outright?? In many instances, these requests are probably better off sitting indefinitely (and it’s healthier than the rejection). Plus, in the future, you may want to end up responding to that friend request positively.

Twitter

• Following a user and then unfollowing them before they have a chance to follow back. Or unfollowing them as soon as they follow you.
• Mass-following everyone so that you can artificially inflate your numbers. Then, you use that number as a success metric for influence. And maybe then you submit a press release about it.
• Consistently using your Twitter stream for nothing but self-promotion and ego. Profy highlights this phenomenon quite well.
• Requesting that your friends Retweet your Tweets on a consistent basis. This is much more bothersome when the request comes via IM or email and not on Twitter itself. The bottom line: If your content is good enough to stand on its own, it will be Retweeted. There is no reason to make a personal request. (And if it doesn’t stand on its own, it usually doesn’t need to be retweeted.)
• Not humanizing your profile. Twitter is also about real relationships. Add an avatar and a bio at the minimum. Let people know who you are. To take it a step further, make it easy for people to contact you outside Twitter if necessary. This is especially important if someone on Twitter needs to reach you but can’t direct message you since you’re not following them!? If they’re making the effort, it’s probably because they really want to talk to you. (Was it something you said? Usually.)
• Streaming only your blog’s RSS feed on Twitter. (If you’re following anyone like this, feel free to take my advice and unfollow them right now. They won’t engage with you, so why engage with their narcissistic self-promotion?)
• Using Twitter to repeat personal and confidential correspondence. If you’re not happy with the way an email communication progressed about a private matter, take it up with the person who you were emailing to square things away. Certainly, don’t broadcast your dissatisfaction with the turnout to your entire Twitter audience. It looks unprofessional for you and makes you appear untrustworthy.
• Leverage your Twitter connections to send spam via direct messages to those who follow you. Two days later, you may wonder why they don’t follow you anymore.
• Abusing Twitter hashtags during a crisis. It’s a shame that Mumbai happened, but this was not the opportunity to capitalize on your CRM software.
• Using your Twitter feed as a chat room for conversations that are exclusive in nature and not as a broadcast medium. It’s nice that Twitter empowers you to use the @ symbol to talk directly to individuals, and that’s fine in moderation. As a friend recently said to me, “I’m tired of my Twitter feed being a [private] conversation between person X, person Y, and person Z.” Why don’t the three of you get a room? [Update: Since this particular tidbit had some follow-up discussion, I summarize this point from @cheapsuits: "The tweeps that talk everyday to each other about banalities gets old."? The emphasis here is on "chat rooms" that exclude other individuals in conversations that do not provide value. At all. Ever. I think we all would agree about that point! I also added some new points in italics to clarify.]
  

LinkedIn

• Gathering all the email addresses of users you are connected to — even locating email addresses of LinkedIn Group managers — and utilizing this mailing list to promote your own company or service off-site. In a specific case, I manage a few LinkedIn groups so my email address is far more visible on the site than I’d like. I’m not connected to the LinkedIn individual who spammed me, but he still took the liberty to use my email address for his personal gain in a completely unsolicited fashion. Perhaps this individual lost sight that LinkedIn is a professional network and not a spam facilitator. Even so, recipients should still be required to opt in.
• Asking for endorsements from individuals you don’t know or that didn’t do a good job in your employ.
• Writing a recommendation for someone and then firing them just a few days later.

Social News (Digg, Sphinn, Mixx, Reddit, Tip’d, and a whole load of related sites)

• Submitting only your own articles and posts to social media sites.
• Consistently “taking” (asking for votes) but never giving back. Social news is about reciprocal relationships. Even if the people you are asking votes of will never actually ask you for votes, a random IM that pops up that says “Digg this for me” is far more obtrusive than saying “hey, how’s it going?” and having a real conversation first.
• Shouting the same story repeatedly to your friends. Can we say spam? (And if you are still being shouted at repeatedly, why haven’t you unfriended the offenders?)
• Submitting a story to a social news site that is completely off-topic. It’s important to understand the communities you contribute to and to understand the rules of the sites that you target. Your story about celebrity cell phones simply does not belong on financial social news site Tipd, no matter how you try to spin it. And when I, as a moderator, tell you that that the submission is not appropriate for the audience especially as it has no relevancy to the subject matter of the site, don’t argue with the decision.
• Using the comments field to drop links, especially to related submissions that were made after the fact.
• On social sites where buries are public (though professional in nature), assume that it’s personal. In a recent instance, a “bury” on a popular social site upset the submitter so much that he resorted to an unprofessional attack on the person who buried the story by blogging about her. Sadly enough, the bury reason (which was public for all to see) was not at all about the writer of the post but was about the content itself. In social media and in relationships in general, you should be disagreeing with the statement. That means that you shouldn’t be assuming they’re talking about you as the person who made the statement and that the statement is a reflection of a character flaw. They didn’t like what you said and disagreed. Grow from it. Don’t turn it into something personal when it clearly isn’t.

FriendFeed

• Using the service completely for self-promotion. If you’re going to claim your social media profile on that totally awesome service, either don’t share your feeds at all or interact on a semi-consistent basis. Please? FriendFeed is a service but it’s also a community.
• Cross-post on all social sites using a site like ping.fm. I don’t need to see the same message from you on Twitter, FriendFeed, your Google Talk status, your Facebook feed, and on your dog’s scrolling LED collar. Keep the spam broadcasts to a minimum. It’s obvious on FriendFeed when this facility is abused.

YouTube

• Asking someone repeatedly to watch your crummy video, subscribe to your channel, and give you a 5-star rating.
• Force people to subscribe to your YouTube channel by applying an iFrame exploit.

StumbleUpon

• Sending more than one story to your network daily. The key to success is moderation. Excess converts to spam.
• Submitting and reviewing only your own articles. Do you self-promote this often in real life?
• Submitting a story from another social news site to StumbleUpon for more visibility and eyeballs. Once upon a time, I stumbled upon a Digg submission of a Sphinn submission of a blog post. Seriously? Why don’t you just submit the blog post directly instead of using the other sites as conduits? (This infraction goes for all social sites that accept submissions, and not just StumbleUpon.)

Blogging and Commenting

• Commenting on other articles and using the name “Yellow Brick Plumbing.” Isn’t your name actually Alan? There’s no SEO value to these comments (they’re nofollowed by default), and all this approach does is makes you lose credibility in the eyes of the blogger. This isn’t the way to network!
• Using content from another blog without attribution. Sometimes a specific blog will get an exclusive. Then, another blog will write on the story using the original blog post as its “source” without attribution. Even popular blogs will rip off stories from lesser known blogs in their space. Don’t let greed get in the way of your own blogging habits and make sure to link out where appropriate.
• Sending a pitch to a blogger requesting a link exchange even though your site has no relevancy at all to their content. I write about social media, people, not about beer bongs. And well, they say that social media is the new link exchange, so instead of asking for an old-fashioned link (which might have worked in 2002), consider using a more viable strategy for this modern time period.
• Turning a blog into a flame war against someone you don’t like. Scott Hendison recounts how forum spam not only turned into a bitter heated battle that may end up going to the courts but how the individual responsible for the abuse is not slowing down. If you’re wrong, acknowledge the wrongdoing and don’t use other blogs to tarnish someone else’s image.

Other Social Sites

• Join a new social network and then invite everyone you’ve ever emailed in your lifetime to the service by submitting your entire Gmail address book when the service requests it. Reading the fine print is a wonderful — and you should never volunteer your email account’s password to the social site anyway. (It’s also helpful to keep in mind that your email account password should not be the same as your social profiles, and that’s not a question of etiquette — it’s common sense!)

Finally, a word on social media etiquette in general:

You’re leaving your digital signature on the Internet right now. Think about the consequences of your engagement on any social site. Racial slurs, criticisms without warrant, and blatant abuse don’t work in real life, and they really have no place in the social media channels simply because you are far more anonymous on these sites. If you were living in New York and you walked up to a stranger with the same foul-mouthed comments that are rampant on many social media sites, you may never make it home. Consider how your comments would be perceived before you actually post them, and think about logic above emotion at all times. Above all, think about maintaining a certain level of professionalism, since people can use whatever you make “permanent” on these sites against you. Not all blogs will remove a comment after you’ve requested that they do so simply because you were angry when you wrote the comment. Before you hit “post,” realize that this will be a permanent reflection of your identity and that it may never be erased. It may even be used against you.

Conclusion

Remember that social media communities are real relationships, real conversations, and as such, they should be treated like they are real. It’s not about a me, myself, and I mentality. It’s about the collective, the community, and the common good.

Do you find that there are other social media violations that are committed on any of the above social sites — or perhaps on sites that I haven’t yet shared?? If so, please share these infractions in the comments.

(Thanks to Twitter users trontastic, jillwhalen, BrettFromTibet, digiphile, ezrabutler, hakerem, debramastaler, aviw, seofactor, danielthepoet, Stuartcfoster, RuudHein, papei, lunaroja, gingie822, rafaelmarquez, susqhb, chrisgarrett, brokerkathy, DavidWallace, rogerdooley, WayneLiew, JasonPeck, and BarbaraKB their insights!)

[ Blog post by Tamar Weinberg ]

The Ultimate Social Media Etiquette Handbook

I�m taking two seminar courses at school this term, and they each resemble a particular form of social media. A seminar is different from a regular course in that it necessarily involves interaction with the students — a seminar is to a regular lecture course as web 2.0 is to web 1.0. What is interesting about these two seminars I�m taking is the difference in the teaching styles and the relationships that result.

Professor Daniel Jutras� classes begin with him and/or students covering some current events relating to the seminar�s topic. Then, Professor Jutras lectures for about an hour, covering the principal ideas in the week�s readings. We pause for 10 minutes, and when we return, the class asks questions or makes comments, to which Professor Jutras responds.

I see this seminar as a blog. The blogger (Professor Jutras) posts his ideas, occasionally throws in some editorial and takes some light, widget-fed microblogging (the current events some students share). As an aside, Professor Jutras makes it obvious when he�s editorializing, which makes it easy to take it for what it�s worth: an informed opinion, but not necessarily fact.

Then the comments come in, and a conversation takes place. But it�s only ever got two participants: the original commenter and the blogger. Sometimes a commenter will reply to what another commenter said, but the response is not �threaded� � it�s addressed to the blogger and answered by him.

Rod Macdonald�s seminar is more dynamic, and the format changes every week. In part, this is due to the fact that we students frequently teach it, based on the readings Professor Macdonald has assigned. Typically, a fair portion of the class involves group work and some interactive elements � we�ve had discussions, card games, Jeopardy, chart-making, a range of Montessori activities, videos, song-writing and much more.

I see this seminar as a forum. The admin (Professor Macdonald) / moderator (students teaching the class on a given day) create categories of conversation, which are analogous to deciding on forum names/topics and sticky threads. (In a forum, some threads get �stuck� to the top and are thus afforded more visibility. Non-sticky threads can be pushed down by threads with newer comments.)

Then it�s up to the members to direct the specifics of the conversations. Members start a thread and then it�s a multi-directional conversation, with members addressing each other directly in the thread.

What concrete results have these differences in pedagogy made? At the end of the semester, I only know a couple more people from the blog than I did at the beginning. I don�t feel particularly close to any of them in particular, though I gained additional respect for some of the members whose comments were particularly insightful. Having known and respected most of those commentators beforehand, however, I can�t say the seminar did much for me in terms of expanding my social experience at school. As to Professor Jutras, we maintained a cordial but arm�s length relationship, which distance I suspect he prefers.

On the other hand, I know the names of every member of the forum. I also know a fair amount of personal stuff about them, since the seminar often encouraged sharing that sort of thing. And I feel a certain solidarity/friendship towards them �- including towards Professor Macdonald �- as fellow travelers who�ve experienced something in common. And that�s also shaped my attitude towards the course in a positive way, since I associate it with new friendships and some really fun experiences. (Gasp! Fun� At law school! Stop the presses!)

In fairness, Professor Macdonald�s seminar was 1 hour longer per week. That said, I doubt another 2 hours per week in Professor Jutras� class would have brought the class any closer together.

It should also be noted that the two professors� goals were different. Professor Jutras aimed to impart a professionally oriented knowledge of class action lawsuits, so that we might comfortably join a litigation firm/team upon graduation. Professor Macdonald wanted us to become better people and enrich us emotionally as much as he wanted us to become better teachers. By these standards, both professors were quite successful.

I wish that I could segue from here into a �10 lessons to gather from this,� but I�d rather leave it up the comments. In any case, I can�t see any obvious lessons.

How do you think this knowledge applies to site development and marketing? What functionalities do you think Wordpress, vBulletin, and other common platforms need to be able to better develop communities? What annoys you about WordPress, vBulletin, and these platforms? Beyond the core of people who want to demonstrate their expertise in a niche by blogging, will blogging continue to grow, or will community-oriented sites become more popular? What tasks are more important to developing a popular community versus developing a popular blog?

Gab Goldenberg writes a search marketing blog for which he has plenty of good arguments for you to follow by RSS feed. He�s also getting ready to launch a Wordpress membership plugin.

[ Blog post by Tamar Weinberg ]

Choice of Form: Two Legal Seminars As Social Media

A few weeks ago I wrote a post over at SEO Scoop comparing the quality of search engine traffic against social media traffic. The aim of my little experiment was to test the assumption that search traffic was of a higher quality than social media traffic. And as most would have guessed, the mighty engines prevailed as the superior source of traffic. Many people found the research interesting, but a number of people commented that the social networks probably shouldn�t be grouped together. Some are built for the masses whereas others have tightly defined niche audiences. So the question arose - was social media traffic misrepresented by grouping traffic from all networks together? Is traffic from highly targeted niche networks better than traffic from generic networks? (Hat tip to Gab for posing that question to me.) Let�s find out.

To help me in this quest for the truth I enlisted the help of a couple of my fellow online marketing and SEO buddies. Gab Goldenberg and Steven Bradley came to the party and donated their site stats for analysis, thereby providing three data points for observable trends (along with my own site). Three cheers for them!

Let the Social Media Traffic Quality Analysis Begin

In order to answer the question of whether niche social media drives higher quality traffic, two social networks were chosen for analysis � one generic and one niche. Let�s get ready to rumble…

1. Generic network: StumbleUpon: In the blue corner we have Stumbleupon - one of the largest social bookmarking sites on the web. While some argue that StumbleUpon traffic is targeted, the broad nature of content categories and misclassification of content means this is rarely the case. As such, it has been selected as the generic social network of choice.
2. Niche network: Sphinn: In the red corner we have Sphinn - a social news network dedicated purely to online marketing news and discussion. All three sites at the centerr of this analysis sit within the online marketing and search industry. Subsequently, Sphinn is perhaps the most relevant niche social network on the web.

In order to provide an assessment of the quality of traffic driven by each network, four site metrics were analyzed:

1. Average page views
2. Time on site
3. Bounce rate
4. Percentage of returning visitors

Let�s see what the figures reveal.

Round 1: Average Page Views

Average page views is the first indicator of traffic quality, demonstrating the propensity of a user to explore a site beyond the initial click. Logic says that the more pages a user views, the higher their level of engagement with the site. Unfortunately for StumbleUpon, users rarely seem to explore beyond the initial page, with the average page views hovering just above 1:

• Online Marketing Banter � 1.36 page views
• SEO ROI � 1.2 page views
• Van SEO Design � 1.15 page views

While a parity in page views exists between social networks for Online Marketing Banter, both SEO ROI and Van SEO Design experience higher engagement levels from Sphinn members. It�s likely that the technical nature of content on SEO ROI and Van SEO Design rarely hits the target audience in StumbleUpon. Indeed the most appropriate categories of �Marketing� and �Science/Tech� are extremely broad and unlikely to deliver traffic with an interest in SEO. Conversely, with a slightly more generic subject matter (and the occasional gag post), Online Marketing Banter seems to be a little more popular with Stumblers.

Nevertheless, Sphinn takes out round 1 based on the enhanced engagement levels seen in 2 of the 3 blogs.

Round 2 - Time on Site

The average time spent on a site is a secondary measure of reader engagement. Naturally, the more time a user spends on a site, the higher the level of perceived engagement. And the data provides a very strong indication that users from niche networks spends far more time consuming content. In fact, the additional time spent on each site ranged from 25 seconds up to 72 seconds!

The browsing intent of the audience is likely to be a significant factor in the disparity in engagement levels. Most Stumblers are casual browsers by nature who use the network to discover new and interesting content. Professional content probably isn�t a priority. On the other hand, Sphinn is a professional network dedicated to industry news. Users are actively seeking information that will enhance their professional knowledge. So it comes as no surprise to learn that they are more committed to information digestion.

Subsequently, Sphinn knocks StumbleUpon to the canvas and takes out round 2.

Round 3 - Bounce Rate

Bounce rate is the third and final measure of reader engagement. Bounce rate measures the proportion of users who leave a site without visiting a second page, a common trait amongst social media users. At first glance it appears that StumbleUpon holds the upper hand, with a lower bounce reported on both Online Marketing Banter and Van SEO Design.

However, bounce rate data for StumbleUpon is misleading. The StumbleUpon toolbar often pre-fetches a page before displaying it to a Stumbler in order to help it load faster. When this process occurs two page views are counted instead of one, thereby lowering the bounce rate. This trend is discussed further by Jamie Harrop and Rebecca Murphey. Unfortunately, this anomaly renders StumbleUpon�s bounce rate data invalid. After all, how could Van SEO Design maintain a bounce rate of just 58.2% in StumbleUpon when the average number of page views from that source is just 1.15…?

Unfortunately, round 3 has been tainted with StumbleUpon attempting to bite off Sphinn�s ear. No clear winner can be declared.

Round 4 - Percentage of New Visitors

The percentage of new visitors provides a basic metric for user loyalty. While not a perfect measure, it gives an indication of the proportion of visitors who return to the site after first discovering it. And the evidence is fairly damning for StumbleUpon, with less than 5% of visitors ever returning to a site they discovered:

• Online Marketing Banter � 97.6% new visitors
• SEO ROI � 96.5% new visitors
• Van SEO Design � 97.2% new visitors

While Sphinn itself doesn�t generate outstanding loyalty from members, its users are significantly more likely to return to a site they found. However, it should be noted that the smaller pool of sites submitted to Sphinn means there is an increased likelihood that users will re-encounter a previous site.

Despite this, Sphinn clearly wins the fourth and final round.

The Verdict

The judges are unanimous and the decision is in: niche social networks do indeed have the ability to drive higher quality traffic than generic networks. Members of niche networks view more pages, spend more time on a site and come back more often. And if this post isn�t proof enough for you, check out Steven�s post relating to the quality of forum traffic, which often have even tighter knit communities than Sphinn. Steven reports that the average user from one niche forum stays for more than 7 and � minutes! Which is nothing compared to a second forum where visitors spend over 16 minutes on the site.

If your social media traffic is unengaged, perhaps you need to reconsider the networks you�re participating in.

Special Thanks

A special thanks must go out to Gab Goldenberg of SEO ROI and business card design software, along with Steven Bradley of Van SEO Design. Their valuable input allowed real insights to be made into the topic. Thank you to both of you.

[ Blog post by Tamar Weinberg ]

The Great Social Media Traffic Debate: Niche or General Networks?

I was able to interview Dave, one of the brilliant minds behind the company and the game, and he has given some really great information about the viral marketing piece, including the costs and the execution. Sit back and enjoy, and then play the accent game to see how an excellently-crafted viral marketing campaign can really help get people talking about you and your products.

Tamar: What does your company do?
Dave: Basically we�re a language training company. We organise language courses worldwide for businesses, one-to-one students, and small groups. You contact us and tell us what language you want to learn and where you live or work, and we�ll find a qualified native teacher of that language and arrange a customised course for you to take place at your home or workplace. The whole thing is centred on personal tuition and the student�s convenience.

Tamar: What inspired you to do the accent game?
Dave: Well, we can�t actually take all the credit for the game. We hired a Brighton SEO company to come up with some ideas for something to put on our site that would not only be fun, but also show that we at Language Trainers have a genuine interest and passion for languages. They pitched us the accent game idea and we loved it.

Tamar: How long did it take from the first initial brainstorm to come up with the game?
Dave: From the initial meeting to completion of the Flash game, I think it took Upstream about a month to make. The exciting thing is that all we need to do is get more footage of more accents (we encourage people to send in their own videos on the site) and we�ll be able to make as many of these games as we want.

Tamar: How long did the actual execution of the game (filming, traveling, etc) take?
Dave: Both ourselves and Upstream Connections are lucky enough to be based in Brighton and Hove, in the UK. Not only is it one of the more pleasant places to live in the country (in my opinion anyway!), but we�ve always got so many people from countless different cultures and backgrounds, making it the ideal place to get the footage for something like this. We didn�t have to travel far to find all these different accents!

Overall we could have had a much wider scope of accents but seeing as we wanted this to be the first of many, we figured we�d keep it quite basic at first. The filming took place on three separate days, during one week of good weather!

Tamar: How did you find the people to participate in the game? Were they hesitant? Did you offer them any compensation or did they just participate for the fun of it?
Dave: Well, we waited for a sunny day and sent two people out onto the streets of Brighton with a camera. Most people were obviously hesitant at somebody walking up to them and asking if they had an interesting accent, but it was all done in a very friendly way. We didn�t offer any compensation — well, we filmed a couple of guys outside a pub and bought them a pint afterwards — we only took their details so we could tell them about the game when it was complete. A few people involved were friends of people in the office, and those were filmed in their own homes.

Tamar: I noticed that you asked a few people in Central Park in Manhattan. Where else did you go to film these users that were interviewed?
Dave: Well, I�m pretty impressed that some of my hometown�s parks look enough like Central Park to be confused with it! Everything was filmed in Brighton.
Tamar: Oops.

Tamar: Did you have a camera crew?
Dave: We had one cameraman and one other person armed with a clipboard, canvassing pretty much everybody who walked past. About 1 in 20 people stopped, and 1 in 5 of them were up for reading 2 lines of a poem for us. Never underestimate the power of a clipboard!

Tamar: Did you scrap any footage?
Dave: Of course. We originally had enough people to have them do a single line of the poem each instead of 2, but we thought 2 lines would give a much better opportunity to spot the accent. However, we�re keen to get as many accents together as we can for future games and projects, so if anybody wants to be involved in the future, please send in your videos!

Tamar: How much (approximately) did the whole project cost?
Dave: Well, it�s hard to say! We didn�t pay people to speak their bit, and Upstream Connections dealt with the rest of the job. The price for the project was somewhere in the region of $12,000, and we�re happy that the groundwork has now been laid to make future accent games very cheaply.

Tamar: The game has been live for about a week so far. What are the initial reactions (besides mine, which is “this is totally awesome!!!”)?
Dave: So far we�ve had an overwhelmingly positive response from both the people to whom we�ve distributed the link, as well as the social media crowd. We�ve also discovered that people are finding it very difficult � we deal with so many different languages every day that we actually thought it was going to be too easy � certain accents at least! The ones that most people are getting wrong are the Hungarian and Lithuanian accents, which I guess isn�t particularly surprising.

We�re really glad you enjoyed it, and we�re really happy with the response we�ve got. We�ve got a Spanish version coming, and eventually we are hoping to extend this to a bigger scale � The Accent Project. Once we�ve collated enough material we want to start creating a global database of national and regional accents and keep adding to it over time � it�s something of an ambitious plan but one that we hope to achieve over time.

Conclusion
The success of Language Trainers and this viral marketing strategy — which is still new enough that most of you probably haven’t even heard of it — indicates that you really can succeed with social media if you have the right tactics in mind and think about the community above your own needs. Of course, the important thing is to consider relevance and ensure that your game or viral strategy somewhat relates to your product or service.

Some of the greatest pieces of viral marketing are those that engage the user but also turn regular people into internet superstars. The internet society has evolved in the past few years; now everything is now all about you, and embracing the talent of the “amateur” (in Andrew Keen speak) is a way for companies to acknowledge and empower everyday people but also to implicitly compel them to share this material. It spreads like wildfire.

And that’s the power of the viral marketing.

(By the way, I only scored a 17 on the game!)

[ Blog post by Tamar Weinberg ]

Is Viral Marketing for Everyone? An Interview with Language Trainers, Creators of the Accent Game

Smile, I’m sending you some sunshine. Did your room just light up?

What can you say about a beautiful girl who died? In the words of noted internet hedonist Halcyon Styn, from a Flash animation he created in her honor: “I want to introduce you to the bravest person I know / She is a warrior of the finest sort / She shoots sunbeams from her fingertips / makes rainbows shine on sunny days / and leaves a wake of smiles in her path / Kaycee, warrior supreme”. Kaycee Nicole Swenson brought her sparkly brand of wholesome, flirtatious courage to a wide audience on the internet from 1999 through May 14, 2001, when her mother Debbie announced that Kaycee had passed away suddenly. At a family gathering in celebration of her remission from leukemia, sometime around sunset, a blood vessel burst in Kaycee’s chemotherapy-weakened body; she died peacefully in the arms of her loved ones.

I can tell you that when I read this news, I cried off and on the rest of the day. I can also tell you that Kaycee Nicole did not, technically, exist. She was created and portrayed entirely by her “mother”, Debbie Swenson, a middle-aged Midwestern housewife with some serious issues. For nearly two years, thousands followed and supported this fictional construct as she fought a deadly disease, an astonishing run when you consider the challenges involved. Kaycee was a chat host at the now-defunct CollegeClub.com, she spoke at length by phone with many of her internet friends, she emailed, she sent gifts, and she blogged vividly and poignantly through the horrors of her chemotherapy, often closing with her trademark, �Smile, I’m sending you some sunshine. Did your room just light up??? She was quoted in the New York Times, and some of the most prominent internet personalities of the day considered her a close friend, and somehow none of them realized that she was a complete work of fiction.

This is not to say that no one doubted her. As early as September, 2000, there were suggestions that Kaycee was too good to be true, but they were shouted down by her ardent supporters. The final, successful inquiry started with Kristin at online conversation site Threewayaction.com, then moved to Becky-Says’ blog. In February of 2001, Becky was expressing her skepticism, and as you can clearly hear in the defensive tone of her subsequent posts on the subject, her theories were not well-received. By May 18, the MetaFilter community dared to ask the same, very unpopular questions Becky and some of her friends had been asking for months. The delicate tone of the MeFi post is absolutely uncharacteristic of that site, which tells you just how touchy a subject this was. The initial responses were mild and respectful, and even with that there were vehement objections from close Kaycee friend, web host, and confidante the BWG (Big White Guy, Randall VanderWoning). No one wanted to believe this lovely, tragic young woman was a lie.

The investigation on MetaFilter lasted the weekend, 309 comments that moved through all the stages of grief while slowly and painstakingly picking apart the whole story. There were inconsistencies in the medical aspects of the story, conflicting personal data on various websites including some question as to age and birth date, and a dearth of pictures, some of which were clearly photoshopped to remove logos from sweatshirts. The majority of the comments still expressed a belief that there were basic truths within the story, even if they acknowledged that some details were obviously altered. Debbie Swenson, who’d been living with her deception for years, finally broke down early Sunday on May 20, 2001, posting a confession on her blog. The discussion moved to this thread, where the posts ranged from expressions of grace and forgiveness, to rage and calls for federal prosecution.

Kaycee Nicole never came out and asked for money, although the subject of the financial burdens of her illness did surface from time to time in her posts. She did receive many gifts, and emails circulated frequently taking up collections: “We want to fill her room with flowers, buy her a digital camera, a scanner, send her to Disney World”. People did donate, and when the hoax came to light federal authorities were notified, but in the end no charges were brought. Some said we lost our innocence in the Kaycee Nicole scandal, but there still exists a vast network of potential support out here in the social networks, and from time to time scammers succeed in tapping into this resource. This happened last week on the tightly knit community on Plurk, which has a unique and friendly atmosphere as Tamar described a few weeks ago.

It began with a Plurker calling herself LillyAnn, who projected an image of sweetness and light, punctuated with occasional vague references to difficult circumstances in her life. Her bio states she is “Lilly Calandrello, personal growth expert, MS, MA, Ph.D, is a relationship, marriage, family therapist, motivational & inspirational speaker, spiritual intuitive counselor, and author”. It does not list links to her various websites, however from time to time she would post links to recent posts on her StumbleUpon blog, many of which are also featured on her business website, Whispy.com, a portal which offers a wide variety of spiritual and psychic services. The blog and the business site both feature many lengthy inspirational articles, some of which were copied and pasted, word for word, from their original authors. No one suspected any of this until Lilly Ann, aka Barbara Calandrello, made a desperate appeal to her social media friends for financial assistance with life-threatening medical conditions for which she was uninsured and being denied treatment until she could pay. Someone claiming to be her 17 year old daughter, Gabrielle, posted using her accounts on Plurk and Twitter with an urgent appeal for donations, which were accepted through her PayPal account. Gabrielle then (claiming someone helped her) set up a ChipIn account, which was promoted on Digg and StumbleUpon by Lilly’s very close friend, DaveJazzHound. They collected a little more than $350 on the ChipIn page, and a number of PayPal donations including at least two for $100.

We may never know why someone who (by her own claims on Google Groups) was pulling in $5,000/month via counseling fees, affiliate marketing programs, and essays posted to paying websites such as Squidoo, would risk it all in a scheme that only raised a few hundred dollars. Her image as a successful professional advisor with lucrative hobbies like raising sea horses was in direct contradiction with this sudden, urgent need for cash, and this is one of the reasons it took several days for the questioning to begin. No one wanted to think that LillyBarb, whose online persona was always warm and supportive, brave and kind, would deceive her friends for money. By the second day, the threads on her Plurk profile were still overwhelmingly concerned and gracious towards her plight, but at least one person came out and said that she would love to send flowers, and where should these go? There was, of course, no answer to this, but it sparked a private discussion that lasted until three in the morning, during which a long list of contradictory information came to light.

By morning of the third day, there had been one thread deleted, and the remaining thread had shifted in focus from kindness and worry, to doubt and frustration. I was at this point in possession of a growing list of disturbing information, but to be honest I did not want to be “that person”. I did not have the luxury, as Becky did in her initial posts about Kaycee, to make pointed but nameless references and know that people in the know would recognize what I was talking about - the social media world has grown by several orders of magnitude since those days. I waited to see if anyone else would take up the task of summarizing and archiving the information, but by the end of day three I knew I had to do something.

So I did, but I did it in the most apologetic tone, practically falling over myself saying I was being a horrible mean awful cynical bitch and I was probably wrong but here’s the information anyway. Like the first person to suggest Kaycee was a fraud, I came forward with information I felt needed to be shared, but you can see in both cases, these posts were made cringing and bracing for attack. No one wants to step up and accuse someone of committing fraud, only to discover one has just kicked the poor sick person while they were down. In fact this trait is one of the main reasons people will always use these kinds of heart-tugging stories, because they know it’s really difficult to be “that person”.

In the days that followed, the evidence built up. More and more instances of plagiarism came to light, along more and more conflicts in the stories we’d been told. LillyBarb’s daughter Gabrielle, who had been very active in the early stages of the discussion, stopped responding to the posts. This 17 year old girl claimed she wasn’t allowed on the social networks, but knew how to navigate them with uncanny skill for a newbie, and knew when to fold up shop when the consensus had turned against her. At this writing the pretense is still active on StumbleUpon, and all of the plagiarized content is still up on the commerce-based websites. Apparently the scam is still far from over in spite of the little teapot tempest we’ve had about it over on Plurk. The energy to pursue this fraud has dissipated a little, and the truth is that the amounts involved are probably not enough to compel a criminal investigation. The story is still developing, but there is nowhere near the intensity directed at it than there was towards the far more high profile Kaycee Nicole case. And let’s face it, the level of fraud and malice necessary to catch the attention of the federal authorities is significantly more than what we’ve seen so far with LillyBarb.

So, if the feds aren’t going to protect you from imaginary dying teenagers and psychic kidney patients, who is? Well, you certainly cannot count on the crowd wisdom in social media, as we’ve seen this is very much subject to the fears of individuals to speak out against tragic figures and risk being wrong. The common theme of “I thought there was something wrong about this but I didn’t want to say anything” repeats over and over in these discussions, telling us that the majority would prefer to hold their suspicions waiting for someoene else to speak up. And we know that it feels good to be generous, to give back to the world when we are fortunate enough to be in that position. Psychologically, this creates an atmosphere in which it is very easy to be deceived. Even the short-lived LillyBarb fundraising drive caught a lot of very kind-hearted, generous people before anyone said a word against it. The only protection you really have is yourself.

Now rest assured I am not suggesting you become hardened and cynical, disbelieving everything by default. I could never do this myself so I would never recommend it to anyone else. My solution, which I came up with after the day I spent intermittently weeping over Kaycee Nicole, is that I consider each story I encounter on the internet to be neither true nor false until I have direct knowledge supporting one conclusion or the other. I like to think of this as “Schrodinger’s Blogger”, referring to the famous thought experiment which explains to us the rather odd concept of the quantum state, in which an event exists only as a waveform of possibilities (1 or 0) until it is observed, and that the act of observation changes the outcome of the experiment. In reality we know that this is not the case - the cat in the box is alive, or it is dead, whether or not we know the answer, but in quantum reality, it is both until the very instant we lift the lid and have a look.

So, when confronted with situations in which you are being asked to invest either your emotional energy, or your money, insist upon opening the box. Ask for proof. Demand it, and do not be put off if offense is taken and excuses offered - when someone is asking for you to commit something of yourself to help them, they forfeit their rights to anonymity and privacy. You have the right to know who you are helping and exactly what your help will do for them. Stand firm, and don’t be afraid to advocate for disclosure in public, encouraging others to do the same before they chip in. Realize that no one wants to be the first one to speak up, and the longer this goes on, the more profitable it is for the scammer.

There are many good and deserving people who may find themselves in a situation where they must ask a community of online friends for help, and for the most part they will be very open and forthcoming with proof of these circumstances. There is almost no conceivable reason why any honest person would withhold verification and insist that help be provided on faith alone. As long as you make the effort to suspend both believe and disbelief, and to accept and enjoy your online interactions at face value until such time as it becomes necessary to look deeper, you stand a decent chance of not being taken to the cleaners by sweet and eloquent liars. Be observant! Oh, and smile, I’m sending you some sunshine. Did your room just light up?

[ Blog post by Tamar Weinberg ]

Quantum Entanglements: The Social Media Scandals

Maki, Internet Marketing and Social Media Blogger: The main characteristic [social media marketers] need to have is a genuine curiosity/interest in social media, particularly on how it influences human relationships and business practices. This is not just standard required job skills but rather a deep interest that pervades one’s day to day life. One needs to constantly be informed of the latest technologies while striving always to learn and improve one’s knowledge levels. In order to do well when marketing, one should have tactical knowledge and ideally, first-hand experience of the specific social media platform. This will help a great deal in planning and managing successful marketing campaigns.

Reem Abeidoh, Social Media Strategist: A social media marketer provides strategic online recommendations based on the client’s business goals and intensive research. A marketer also reaches out to the target audience through various methods of social networking, and constantly monitors the buzz surrounding the client’s products and services. They should be passionate, strategic, creative, personable, intelligent, aggressive, diligent, determined, adaptable, motivated and have a sense of humor. To succeed, they need to do the following well:

• Data analysis
• Provides holistic strategies to clients
• Training, presenting, and research
• Relationship-building and networking
• Outreach to online users and bloggers

A social media marketer’s job never ends. They usually work 70 hour weeks and need to be extremely flexible. There are days when marketers may have to serve as internal evangelist by introducing key stakeholders to social media. There are other times when marketers may have to launch a multi-platform outreach campaign. It just depends on the needs of the client.

Additionally, a social media marketer needs to be a contributor and participant online to better understand the space and provide solid recommendations to their clients.

Valeria Maltoni, Online Marketer: Although social media as a set of tools has radically transformed marketing, I do not think it appropriate to use the term “social media marketer.” People do not want to hear from companies as represented by marketers, they want to hear from other people.

The scope of marketing needs to be broadened in view of the new dynamics that have employees, customers and prospects engaged in conversations - horizontally, peer to peer, in some cases even in co-opetition situations.

These scenarios come to fruition in spontaneous communities, on social networks, and other self-service tools - all thanks to the availability of low cost technology and access to the world wide web.

To participate in the conversation, marketers will need to be able to have and provide greater access to decision makers - speed of response is crucial. Other important skills will be the ability to hold or facilitate a conversation where listening and learning take the majority of the attention.

We are now right were we should be, attracting customers, building relationships and trust as we help them connect with each other.

Rebecca Kelley, Search Marketing and Social Media Consultant: A social media marketer needs to be an active participant in the social media sphere. Because social media is so interactive, it can constantly shift and change; therefore, a savvy marketer needs to be extremely familiar with the community and know how each social media website audience is different from the next. Also, one story on the Digg home page does not an expert make. A knowledgeable social media marketer has experienced repeated success on various social media websites and knows what sort of content succeeds and fails, and effective ways to write, submit, and promote various pieces.

Jason Falls, Director of Social Media: A social media marketer is simply someone who uses social media tools to connect products or services with customers or audiences. There’s no real reason to define it any more than the simple semantics of it all. That said, such a broad determination means you can be a social media marketer and not know it. You can also not use the tools correctly or not behave appropriately within communities around the tools and market poorly.

So, in order to be a good social media marketer, in my opinion, you should understand the tools you’re using and the communities to which you are marketing, be they ones that surround the tool itself (Twitter users) or subject matters within a certain tool (FriendFeed room about, say, cell phones.). Some communities are very open to marketers being there and contributing to the conversation. Others aren’t. As long as you earn your keep, contribute meaningfully to the community and gain the level of trust they need to allow you to seed your own messages or pitch your own products or services, and you don’t violate their trust, you’re marketing via social media successfully.

No, it’s still not a clear picture. People are different, communities are different and marketers/brands are different. As a result, the acceptance or success of a social media marketer will vary in different communities, using different tools and for different brands. But those basic rules will apply everywhere social media and marketing collide.

Geoff Livingston, author of Now is Gone and CEO of a Media Relations Firm: I think social media marketing really requires networking skills first, because you are building relationships, not overtly promoting. It�s a unique blend of networking skills (relationships). traditional PR skills (building goodwill), marketing skills (giving customers what they want), and customer service (delivering resolutions to issues). So ultimately, the best social media marketers understand all of these disciplines. It requires a convergence, making the jack of all trades suddenly and incredibly valuable.

MG Siegler, Technology and Digital Writer: I think a person who is a social media marketer is someone who is an expert at all of the various way of getting data on the various social sites out there. By that I mean not only the social voting sites like Digg, Reddit, etc, but also on the social networks (Facebook, MySpace, etc), social communication tools (Twitter, Pownce, Seesmic, etc..), social conversation tools (FriendFeed, and maybe you could even lump in Disqus and the like with it).

That person would ideally knows all the ins and outs of these systems and their various differences. For example, what plays well on Digg versus what plays well on Propeller.

A lot is made about being able to “game” these systems, but more I think a social media marketer should just know how to work with what is in front of them. Knowing the right people to send something to on StumbleUpon or keeping a conversation going on FriendFeed for example. Other example may be creating a fan page on Facebook or creating a company account on Twitter that tracks instances of the company name via a service like Summize.

I also think it’s extremely important for such a person to stay up to date on the most current trends within the social sphere. Things evolve so rapidly and sometimes new opportunities open up quickly that can be utilized.

Allen Stern, Founder of a Blog on Social Media: A social media marketer is someone who possesses first marketing education and/or experience. Second, a social media marketer is someone who markets products and/or services through the usage of social media tools.

Daniel Scocco, Blogger: In my opinion a social media marketer is someone that leverages social media to promote a website, product or company.

As for the characteristics that they need to possess, I think that the most important one is to be a social media user in the first place, and to like the concept.

Social media can be seen as a tool for a marketer, but not a static one like an advertisement. The term itself describes something that is made out of people, so the marketer needs to understand the dynamics behind it.

Michael Gray, Internet Marketer: Being a good social media marketer requires a combination of a few different skills. The first is understanding what are the things that appeal to a certain community. Stories that do well on Digg or Reddit, may not do as well on Kirtsy or Boudica, because the members of each community have different likes, dislikes and interests. A marketer has have an understanding of the community and help craft campaigns, articles, stories, videos and or pictures that appeal to each community.

Another skill is understanding what makes a story viral, or what are the qualities that make it sticky or interesting. Many companies just see this as a new avenue to push existing traditional marketing messages, and this is why they almost always fail. For example an article with “10 Reasons You Should Buy Travel Insurance” is almost never going to go viral, it’s not surprising, shocking, interesting or in any way sticky. But something like “10 People Who Wished They Bought Travel Insurance” showing pictures of prop planes that collided on the runway, or a video of someones suitcase dumping out and the contents strewn down the highway, has a much better chance.

Lastly is understanding that you have to be a member of the community first. if you see the community as a virtual ATM where you can come and get links without ever contributing, eventually your account will run dry. if the only stories you ever submit or vote on are for clients or friends, you are not going to do as well over the long term. The people who do well are the one who contribute lots of good stories that the community values, with a sprinkling in of other stories.

Laura Fitton, Presentations Consultant and @pistachio: A social media marketer is someone who is fundamentally oriented towards LISTENING first, and only then offering contributions that move the conversation forward. The result of their work is that it helps the business grow by genuinely and authentically helping customers. It’s not about any of the tools.

Advertising and marketing currently emphasize selling and helping others sell. That’s shifting to a future where profit comes from helping people buy.

Social media marketers have to listen and respond genuinely, most of all. Characteristics: unselfish, interested in people, open-minded, un-controlling and creative.

Chris Brogan, Social Media Strategist and Blogger: I think the term “social media marketer” might just be a temporary thing, because it’s like saying “email marketer.” I believe the people who use social media tools as a part of their marketing strategy should understand the following:

• relationships over shotguns. — marketing in online communities is a slower, more matching-based approach, where you think hard about whether the person you’re connecting with is the idea recipient of the information you have to share. It takes more time, but sticks much better.
• party hats not bullhorns. - social software and the communities it empowers are for contributing, not pushing. Share something at the party; don’t just barge in to give your messages.
• it’s not always about you. - sometimes, other people’s products are better. In this world we’re developing, we say that outright. We don’t obfuscate or dance around. We just say it when we think someone’s done it better.

People using these tools have to “be human” well, and by that, I mean realizing that all life isn’t based on marketing directives. Instead, it’s about contributing, bringing something to the picnic, and doing what Radian6 Marcel LeBrun calls “listening at the point of need.” That means, knowing when to promote your idea, product, or service.

Darren Rowse, VP of Blogger Training and Co-Author of Problogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income: What makes a person an effective social media marketer? Here’s a few quick thoughts:

1. Playfulness - there are so many tools out there that it can be overwhelming. An ability to be able to ‘play’ with them and work out how they are best used is important. Also not taking yourself too seriously is important.
2. Focus - social media is full of all kinds of wonderful distractions. Knowing what you want to achieve and being focussed enough to stay on that path is important.
3. Curiosity - most social media marketers that I know are constantly asking ‘what if….’ type questions. Curious people are driven to push into new group and solve problems in new ways.
4. Perseverance - building a social media presence doesn’t happen over night. It takes regular participation over a sustained period to build a network.
5. People Persons - being genuinely interested in people, what they think, how you can help them, what makes them tick…. all of this helps you become more effective in your communication and networking

Chris Garrett, Blogger, Internet Marketer, and Co-Author of Problogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income: I think there are three types of social media users: marketers, browsers and active users. Browsers obviously mostly lurk. The difference between the other two is agenda. A marketer has a goal, even if it is just self promotion, while the rest are just taking part out of social or entertainment reasons.

A good social media marketer has to be able to write, particularly headlines and descriptions, and will have a better chance of success if they are a student of psychology. The best like people, are fascinated by them, and enjoy socializing. You also have to be able to take knocks on the chin as social media can provide harsh criticism.

It’s a lot like SEO, people focus on algorithms, tricks and tactics but it is really all about people.

Matt McGee, Small Business Expert and Internet Marketer: I think great social media marketers come in all shapes and sizes, but if there’s one trait that seems to show up in spades in the people I know, it’s that they’re engaged with the world and the people around them. They love communicating and reaching out to others. They love ideas and news. They love sharing ideas and news. They have an interest in other people, whether they’re close friends or not. They have an interest in the world around them, and being active in it. Social media success is about being engaged.

Steve Spalding, Blogger and Entrepreneur: Like any traditional marketing field, Social Media marketing is almost exclusively about understanding the “territory.” You don’t hire a marketer because you think they have some magical ability to make bad products good. You hire a marketer because they understand the people, products and culture surrounding the industry you are trying to enter.

Good Social Media marketers are heavy users of Social Media. They love (or at least respect) the idea that many kinds of content can be distributed most effectively over the Internet, and because they use the platforms so heavily themselves they have the networks and the knowledge that allow them to make those distributions easier.

Almost as important, effective Social Media marketers also act as product designers. They’ve seen hundreds of applications and have used a large fraction of them. More importantly, they know which applications have been successful and have a general intuition as to which design elements sink and which swim in an environment inundated by noise.

To paint my answer in broader strokes, Social Media marketers “get” the web. We understand that the Internet is just like any other country, city, town or industry that has ever existed and that in order to market a product successfully on it you have to understand, respect and know how the deal with the people in it.

Brian Clark, Blogger, Editor, and Entrepreneur: A social media marketer is one who understands how social media works, takes the time to observe what people say and do within the context of social media, and then markets accordingly.

Todd Mintz, Director of Internet Marketing (and @toddmintz): Social media marketing (as I define it) is the process of delivering a marketing message via the most appropriate social communication channels to a targeted audience. A top-level social media marketer needs to possess the following capabilities:

1. Being able to look at the client situation and perceive the appropriate steps that need to be taken in order to have a successful engagement.
2. Identify who the target audience should be for the message (Note that I�m deliberately starting with the conclusion and working backwards).
3. Decide which social networks / influential persons are the most appropriate conduits for relaying the message to the end users.
4. Creating or overseeing the creation of a marketing message that will not only resonate with the targeted audience in a way advantageous to the client but also resonates with the members of the social networks & key influencers so they will act in such a way that the message gets passed via their collective sphere of influence to the masses.
5. Launching the message out to the networks & people that will spread the word (schmoozing as necessary).
6. Supervising the whole process and when the inevitable hiccups happen, knowing what to do to get everything back on track.

People who can do all this well are Social Media Marketing Rockstars!

Muhammad Saleem, Social Media Maven: A good social media marketer isn’t really a ‘marketer’. He/She is a connector (and is good at social networking), a maven (and is a thought leader and ‘information specialist’ or information resource), and a salesperson that can persuade an eskimo to buy ice. He has to not only be an information resource but be an active participant in the various social web communities that he claims proficiency in.

A good social media marketer is one who can start a conversation that people want to participate in.

Brian Solis, Principal of a New Media Agency and Blogger: Social Media Marketing combines the most effective attributes of PR, Web Marketing, Customer Service, and a working knowledge and genuine enthusiasm of the social networks and tools to listen to, spark, and engage in relevant conversations. In an ideal world, Social Media Marketers will also embrace social sciences to observe and understand the online cultures and social dynamics where they ultimately wish to participate.

Many purport to be social media experts these days, yet most of us are truly students. We overlook some of the most rudimentary elements that define and inspire the socialization of content, especially the social sciences involved with observing the culture, behavior, and conversations within online societies.

We’re excited, and maybe even obsessed, with the tools. We frantically rush from service to service in an exhausting attempt to keep up with our peers, fearing that we may one day relinquish our position as a leading authority on the subject of all things social. We are edglings, and the membership dues are paid in the form of time, attention, vision, and translation as we bring shiny new objects from the edge to the center.

But, are we losing sight of the guiding principles and teachings that foster meaningful and rewarding relationships simply because we’re practically held captive by a never-ending cycle of new and popular social tools? Our thinning attention may be clouding our ability to see the bigger picture.

Suddenly everyone is a social media consultant, yet very few of us are true online sociologists, observers, or genuine conversationalists. The firsthand research and lessons learned in the field are invaluable and definitely tier the experience and expertise of those selling their services. But, just because we’re on Twitter and Seesmic, blogging, or uploading Flip videos to YouTube doesn’t qualify us social media experts.

It’s so much more than the ability to guide companies on how to create fan pages on Facebook, islands on SecondLife, accounts on Pownce or Plurk, and profiles on Bebo or Myspace. Social Media experts must have the ability to determine which networks are relevant to the businesses that they represent, why, and how and when to engage. Most importantly, they must connect participation to brand resonance, customer loyalty and also the ever prominent �bottom line.??

It’s the listening, charting social maps, drafting strategies for meaningful engagement, understanding our relevance in the short and long tail, and the definition of metrics and ROI that count for everything to businesses and respective decision makers these days.

Without a working knowledge of customers, markets, online communities, and the dynamics of their company�s business model, Social Media Marketers will succumb to the brilliance of shiny new social objects and remain hypnotized by their allure and promise.

Jonathan Hochman, Internet Marketer and Wikipedia Administrator: I classify social media marketers by their level of involvement:

1. Listening — Being aware of social media, monitoring your brand, and using that information to make business decisions.
2. Responding — Participating in discussions about your brand on the web in an effort to improve your reputation and increase visibility.
3. Inviting — Building social media applications, such as blogs, wikis, bookmarks, to interact with your audience.

Li Evans, Director of Internet Marketing: A social media marketer understands that utilizing social media is about building relationships through communication and sharing. In order to build relationships with customers, or potential customers for their clients, the social media marketer realizes that those relationships have to be built on trust. By starting out with a solid foundation in social media, marketers realize they can do exciting things with these customers � the potential can really be limitless. With social media, the marketer realizes that the experience of the interaction and engagement with the customers is the ending results � anything else is a by-product.

Debra Mastaler, Link Builder and Search Marketer: What makes a person a social media marketer? The desire to be heard.
What characteristics do they have to possess? The good ones have to be brave, smart and fair to a fault.
What do they have to do well? Good social media marketers need to communicate well, understand not all goals are profit oriented and have the ability to turn casual participants into a legion of loyal followers.

Jonathan Fields, Entrepreneur and Blogger: What makes a social media marketer?

Reality is, everyone who engages in social media on a regular basis is a social media marketer, it’s just a matter of what we’re marketing. Some people are looking to change the world, others to change what people buy and still others just want to make friends. But, in the end, all of us in social media are looking to effect some outcome.

The folks who get “labeled” social media marketers, though, are the ones who tap social media to push a more commercial end-result. So to me, it’s more about the intention behind the action.

Are you choosing your hubs and posts based on a concerted effort to build authority, brand or sell a specific product or service? Are you crafting the language of every sentence toward that same end? That’s commercial social media marketing.

So, while a lot of the actions of a commercial social media marketer and someone pushing friendship or conversation around non-commercial topics may look outwardly similar, it’s the intention and level of focused, deliberate effort that makes the difference.

Wiep Knol, Link Builder and Internet Marketer: In my opinion, the difference between a social media marketer and a “regular” marketer is their point of view. A regular marketer is usually product minded and aims products (or content, or whatever) at target groups, while a social media marketer is consumer minded and matches groups of people with products. Another difference (and characteristic) is that a social media marketer is far closer to the end user. By following, participating, discussing and listening very carefully, a social media marketer is able to adjust both his or her product AND his or her selling technique to the customer.

A social media marketer is like opt-in, where most regular marketers are like opt-out.

I came across a great example earlier today; the form at http://www.conversationmarketing.com/2008/07/how_not_to_design_a_signup_for.htm
was probably designed by a regular marketer.

David Chen, Blogger: A social media marketer thoroughly understands the systems that people use to connect to each other, and knows how to leverage those systems to spread positive messages about a brand.

Michael Dorausch, Chiropractor and Social Media Addict: I’ve been a webmaster for more than 10 years but I wouldn’t consider myself a social media marketer. From the people I’ve met and interacted with, I’ve come to the conclusion that it takes a specific focus if they are to perform well. The best social media marketers that I’ve met have had these traits in common: they network well off-line and online, they offer assistance first and ask for help later, they get great results (for themselves and or their clients). Being able to work well with others, not being pushy, selecting quality content and/or clients to promote, and seeking ways to help others, are all things I’ve seen top social media marketers do well. They are active on nearly all the usual suspects popular social media sites, and they typically bring a lot of value to the community. That’s the one thing I believe separates them from novices and newcomers to social media marketing. It’s like going to an open bar event, the newcomer will ask people to buy them drinks. The advanced marketer will make sure the bartender is tipped well and we’ll see all their friends don’t go thirsty. Doesn’t cost them much to assist others, and they reap many return benefits.

Chris McGill, Founder of Social News Site Mixx.com: To me there are mostly social media enthusiasts� we call them �media hubs??. These are people who are enthusiastic about information and what is going on right now is part of the fabric of their being. They represent somewhere around 15% of the population and they simply have a passion for info and sharing info on the topics and subjects they find interesting/ are passionate. The vast majority of people fall into the �reader?? category in that they consume (and vote) on the content that is being put forward by the media hubs. Again, I think being a media hub is just a part of a person�s being.

Adam Metz, Social Media Strategist: [Social media marketing is] a few things:

1. Experience working with diverse groups of brands, generally (business-to-business, business-to-consumer)
2. Experience executing in at least 10 tools (podcast, video, wiki, blog, social network, etc.)
3. Total authenticity with the client, to the point of being willing to terminate an engagement when it’s clear that the client is not ready for social media counsel.
4. A win-win-win attitude (for the client, the social media consultant, and the users of the social web at large)

Kim Krause Berg, Blogger and Usability Consultant: A social media marketer is an outgoing personality who intuitively understands the medium and its potential to network and communicate ideas, as well as persuade value proposition to readers. Link drops in social media sites are not social media marketing. Creating sites on Facebook and MySpace are not either. There has to be a REASON to go there and retain interest.

Basics and theory aside, I find the social media marketers I respond to the most are impeccably polite polite, friendly, care about the people they network with and are responsive in positive ways. They know their audience and stay in touch. I can sense a “user” type and that turns me away.

Shana Albert, Web Designer and Social Media Addict: What is a Social Media Marketer? They are active honest members of Online Communities where they can naturally get the word out about a product or service�.. causing their message to become viral throughout online communities and bring in viewers/customers/clients to a Website.
Characteristics they must possess: outgoing, extrovert, motivated/motivator, social, easily multi-task, organized, influencer, persistent, creative, friendly
What do thy have to do well? conversation, multi-task, participate, influence, unselfish member of community, creative web content

Jason Kaneshiro, Blogger and Web Developer: A Good Social Media Marketer:

• Should be comfortable and eager to use new technology.
• Should be able to quickly assess a new social website - how it works, how it would be useful, and the characteristics of the community that fits within.
• Should be sensitive to the mores of the community within a social site - what would be considered spamming or rude behavior.
• Should do their best to become part of that social site’s community.
• Should also be comfortable and productive using “old” technology (Email, IM, desktop applications).
• Should be aware of the tools the target audience is communicating with, and able to craft the message to the appropriate medium.
• Should be able to work anywhere, and from any computer, or even just a cellphone.
• Should know how to make their data portable so they aren’t tied to one service for their online identity, and manage that data so it can be retained.

Generally, different social sites foster different communities, where different messages are appropriate or celebrated while others are considered “spam” - and what’s “spam” on one site may not be on another.

Also interesting is the �digital nomad?? trend - increasingly mobile computing, from laptops to cell phones and beyond. I would say it�s a must for social media marketers to have all their data and tools online so they can be productive from any computer in any location. Then consider how one could be productive with just a cell phone, and it may even be a worthwhile exercise to write a blog post using pencil and paper.

The last point is a reminder to be aware of data portability - if not the principle of the thing, it�s good to know how to get all our online data �out of the cloud?? and backed up. A user of new technology should use it to the fullest, but also consider that a lot of technologies fail and it�s never good to become �locked in?? to one company�s products.

Louis Gray, Blogger: A successful social media marketer would be somebody who grasps where his/her audience is and knows where conversations will take place online. They would typically leverage social networking sites and news aggregators, and engaging in such a way that their message or product is communicated.

They would need to display an understanding of how different social media communities interact, and what how each one offers a unique experience, which could be folded into more traditional approaches to public relations, demand generation advertising and brand awareness.

An ideal background for somebody here would include:

• Traditional marketing or public relations experience
• Tie-ins with increasing pipeline and revenue
• Their own active blog with strong writing skills
• The ability to communicate as a public speaker and use PowerPoint-type apps
• Awareness and engagement of leading social communities

Jane Quigley, VP of Social Media and Emerging Technologies: There are a number of different skillsets needed as a social media marketer. Of course, like any job, there are different levels of experience, but I have a pretty set list of criteria that remains constant.

One � Participant
This is the easy one. Where, how, how much (although that’s subjective � people get busy) and how smart they are about it. That’s to say � are they smart about what’s posted on the Facebook profile? Can they identify trends? Are they obsessive about it, or does Social Media seem fun and easy? What blogs are they reading � and what posts have been memorable? Do they go to BarCamps, PodCamps, etc?

I want to see the basics � Facebook, LinkedIn, Digg, StumbleUpon, Flickr, YouTube, a Blog, Twitter (Basic)

Two � Big Picture
How does social media work with other current strategic tactics (SEO, Branding, Advertising). Where does it fit within the entire campaign and especially how does it support the brand?

Three � Relationship Master
Building a client relationship is key � not only in communicating trust and results � but long-term client welfare.

Four � Analyst
Knowing how to analyze a campaign for results. How to set benchmarks, test campaigns, look at trends, analyze results.

Five � Curiosity
Did not kill the cat � it makes each candidate stronger � no matter where you are in a career. Be curious about everything online and offline. Real life has a way of influencing online behavior.

Six � Sharing is Caring
I want to know what excites someone � what people bookmark, what FB apps they like, what videos/pictures they tag. You can tell a lot about a person from what and how they share.

Brent Csutoras, Social Media Consultant: Defining a social media marketer is difficult based on the true definition being the use of social media for a marketing purpose. With �social media� being a vague term that indicates any feature or function that allows other people to participate with any given site, almost everyone is technically engaged in social media and people that use it at even a basic level for some conversion or gain, often refer to themselves as social media marketers.

However, if you were to sell your own car, it does not make you a car salesman. So just because someone happens to use or participate in social media marketing does not make them a social media marketer.

I think being a social media marketer is defined when you are paid, in some fashion, to take an active interest in the way social communities work and start to participate within them strategically. When I was young someone once told me “If you do it for fun, it is a hobby. If you get paid for it, it�s your profession.”

Conclusion

I purposely asked a variety of users of social media, from the media relations and marketing spectrum to the social media enthusiast and blogger spectrum, for this answer. Many agreed that social media is about community-building, passion, and enthusiasm. Creativity, a multi-tasking mindset, and the ability to think outside the box were also heavily agreed upon. Most importantly, those who find the most success in the social media marketing realm are those who are heavily networked and ensure that maintaining ongoing relationships is part of their everyday routine.

Social media marketing encompasses a variety of elements and is synonymous with community (particularly those communities that belong to the new media sphere) sprinkled with other traditional marketing elements, such as dedication, perseverance, and fervor. Successful social media marketers are thought leaders. They must be kept abreast of the latest technologies in addition to buzz surrounding the products and services that they are responsible to market. Above all, though, social media marketers’ contributions to the community should be selfless and should be thought to benefit those who engage within the community.

What is your definition of a successful social media consultant?

(All photos created by Will Lion as discovered by Paul Stamatiou)

[ Blog post by Tamar Weinberg ]

What Traits Define a Social Media Marketer?