Together with LMC, who is hosting the event at the Bertrand Crossing Campus in Niles Michigan, we at SocialMarketingExpert.org  were keen to share our enthusiasm for this new communications channel and highlight the opportunities for organizations and businesses of all sizes and in a range of industries.
Managing Director Lizz Clarke said:
“We’ve been working with social media for some time now and have been delivering real benefits to our clients. We wanted to get involved with Social Media Day and know that there are still so many people who want to know more about social media but are uncertain where to start, or what will work best for their business. Our morning seminar will help to demonstrate how to integrate social media into a communications strategy, and offer case studies of successful projects as well as provide a chance for delegates to ask questions and share their experiences.”

We are finalizing the dates for the four events, so if live around the South Bend Indiana area, and you are interested in attending these social media webinars, contact Wayne Clayton @ socialmarketingexpert.org – PH: 5764-514-5095

I am going to touch on 5 social media practices: forums, social bookmarking, blogging, article submission and social networking sites. Not everyone will agree that all of these topics fall into social media, and that’s fine. The way I see it, all of these topics deal directly with people and therefore fall into the social media category. But enough of that and on to the subject at hand.

1. Forums
Forums are a great source of information. You will find a wide range of expertise on the subject matter of your choice, from beginners to gurus, and all levels of people use forums to share their opinions and knowledge.

Generally, there are a few things that you need to remember when using forums:

- You may only be using them to try and find information but they are a great way to get your brand out there and get some backlinks – that doesn’t mean you should spam them with replies or threads that don’t really contribute or are merely for advertising purposes. Start threads that will entice people to reply or click the link in your signature, when you reply, reply with something helpful. Ask your own questions. Using forums in this way builds a good reputation for you and your brand, earning traffic as well as links. If you spam the sites people won’t give your contributions a second glance and you may even get banned.

- You should read the rules for the forums that you join, that way there is less chance of you being banned for something you might not have known you were doing that is wrong.

- If you do have links to your websites in your signature, try not to list more than 3 otherwise it looks spammy. I’m more inclined to only list 1 as it is more “authentic” but most forums suggest no more than 3.

- The most important thing to remember is that it’s not just about getting the links, this is a good opportunity to find regular traffic and learn new things, make it count.

Some good forums are webmaster-talk.com, www.irishwebmasterforum.com and webproworld.com.

2. Social bookmarking
This is another good way to get links and if you use it, the right kind of traffic too. Social bookmarking is simply telling bookmarking sites that you like certain articles or stories, and sharing those articles with other members when you submit them. You can vote on stories that you like or don’t like and leave reviews.

Of course you can submit your own blog posts or article submissions, but if people see only submissions relating to your site, you could lose valuable traffic because you look like you are spamming the sites.

There is no “trick” to using this kind of social media – all you have to do is not “pretend” to look authentic…but actually be authentic. You will receive worthwhile traffic and build a good reputation this way. Submit interesting articles you read, or blog posts you find funny, include a profile picture…do anything a real user would do – because that is what you should be. There is no quick fix. You need to act like a human in order to receive human interaction with your site.

Some sites you can use are StumbleUpon, Digg and Sphinn.

3. Blogging
By owning a blog you get to share your thoughts, ideas and business with a huge audience. If your content is useful enough you will get links and loyal followers too.

The trick here is to not make the blog about you, make it about your audience. If you have specials running, sure, share it with them…but don’t make your entire blog about specials your company is running. That will encourage…nothing. No links, no loyal followers and no comments.

Make your content relevant and interesting to read. Comment on other blogs you find interesting too – people read those comments and you may get some extra traffic if you contribute something worthwhile, maybe even a link from the blogger whose post you are commenting on – if you get their attention. Interaction is key to making your blog successful.

Other ways of getting more traffic and links in this social media category is by guest posting on other blogs and sponsoring competitions (you will earn links from the bloggers running those competitions etc).

Some good blogs for SEO are mattcutts.com/blog, seobook.com, seo-scoop.com and www.interleado.com/blog.

4. Article submission
There are many online article submission sites you can use to showcase your articles. As with blogging, if they are interesting and helpful enough, they will earn you links and traffic.

Most of these social media sites require an article length of around 500 words – this is to help to ensure that the articles that are submitted are worthwhile reading. As with the other mentioned social media categories, making an article all about a special you are running won’t earn you anything and will probably not be published – most sites have a waiting period of up to 7 days so that the articles can be reviewed.

There are many free article submission sites online such as eZineArticles and ArticleBase. You will be able to find lists of these sites on forums and in blogs – all you have to do is search.

5. Social networking sites
These sites put you in touch with people of similar interests. You are able to create groups that you can send updates to, network with other members and on some sites post articles that the members of the groups may find interesting. Some examples are LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.

The thing to remember with social media is that pretending to be involved isn’t enough to earn you the traffic you need. If you are interested, people will be interested in you – show them your interest. Let your audience know that you have opinions and knowledge to share, or questions to ask.

More importantly – make sure your business will benefit from this aspect of SEO as it is time consuming and hard work needs to be put in. Articles and blog posts need to be optimised for the search engines, profiles needs to be created, forums and blogs need to be checked and contributed to. But what’s anything without a little hard work?

Some people are buying into the idea that you MUST participate in this recession thingy.

Personally I’m not. It’s not that I don’t think we are experiencing weird economic times…we are. I just have been blessed with paying clients…too many in fact. Well to be more exact, too many that are too far away.

I have been lusting after one thing — local and regional clients. How nice would it be to not have to do skype calls and white board presentations in the middle of MY night? How great would it be to meet a client for lunch…YES actually meet in person… and develop more of a long lasting relationship. You know the kind…where you invite them over to your house for Super Bowl parties, or you bring them to Chamber of Commerce functions or Meetup meetings just to get them out of the office or store? Real world “stuff”… the kind of ”stuff” that makes a CONNECTION.

“But waaaaiiit,” you say, ”I thought this social media stuff was the end all, be all for business?”

Nope.

You take social media for what it should be: blended into your marketing efforts. You don’t stop advertising or doing traditional marketing and replace it with social media… not unless you’ve got lots of money and resources to throw at it. Let me give you the analogy I give my clients…

It’s alot like the card game of poker. You don’t win with just ONE card in poker; I don’t care how good that card it. It’s not how it’s played (unless you’re playing one card poker: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~ggordon/poker/.)  Instead, you win with a number of cards that work together. Synergy.

The unfortunate rub in this is most advertising is bad. Clients forget the rule of advertising:

It’s what you say times how many times you say it times the quality of the people you say it to.

What you say is the ad. Most advertisers have no budget — or for that part,any idea how to test their advertising. Most just “wing it.” And they usually experience FAIL ad results.

How many times you say it if the repetition factor. But a bad ad repeaqted over and over  still doesnt get you results, or the results you desire. 

Which leads us to the last part of our equation: the quality of people you say it to. If the target audience or demographic of the viewer/reader/surfer is not YOUR target audience, then you FAIL again. Fourteen year old skateboarders do not buy Lexus’ cars. It wouldnt matter how many times you repeat that message, even a good message to them, it still is a FAIL with the audience.

What’s this have to do with social media marketing? Many clients do the same FAIL habits with social media as they do traditional advertising. Get the first one right and repeat it on the second one. Clients from all around the world sometimes need the same hand-holding to change marketing habits as so the local and regional clients do. In fact, I’ll venture to say it’s harder with a client around the other side of the world. Sometimes being able to sit down with the client, shake their hand, look ‘em in the eye and tell it to them straight is the best way. It’s that CONNECTION I talked about.

I want more local and regional clients. I want to make a difference in MY community, MY state, MY country.

What does this have to do with social media? For me it’s the answer to “what’s my responsibility to help in these strange economic times?” For me it’s this. How can I help, who can I help? What can I do that’ll make a real world difference?

I told my plans to a good friend of mine. He blurts out, OK… but is there a market locally and regionally?” Well I am situated ideally between about 10-12 million people within a 2-3 hour drive. So I’m not too concerned about that. But even locally, I searched LinkedIn.com and found:
 28,083 results within 25 mile radius
64,779 results within 50 mile radius
985,204 results within 100 mile radius

I was slow out of the gate to use LinkedIn.com due to my use of Twitter and various other social media and social networking sites. But I have fallen in love with what LinkedIn.com offers a small business person like me. So if I was a betting man, I’d say the odds are in my favor that I’ll replace that revenue quickly.

My point is: opportunities are all around. Most business people drive by more business on a daily basis that they could adequately handle. You must get rid of what you don’t want (like the “driftwood” in your life and business) to make room for what you truly desire and want. So my question to you is: do you have any clients you SHOULD fire?

G. Wayne Clayton is the founder and Chief Visionary Officer of Integerol LLC  along with SocialMarketingExpert.org.  He’s a former newspaper publisher and investigative journalist. He has been seen seen and heard on CNN, Fox News Talk radio, quoted in The Toronto Star and is a Guest Blogger on FastCompany.com.

Twitter has implemented a small change today, which by comparison to Retweets and UI redesigns isn’t such a huge deal but it’s definitely worth mention. Twitter’s prompting question above the box from which you Tweet from has been “What are you doing” since the microblogging platform launched. Today, it’s been changed to “What’s Happening.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/19/AR2009111903110.html

While not all companies use social media sites in the hiring process, the numbers are growing. According to a recent survey (June, 2009) by CareerBuilder, the number of employers using social networking sites to screen candidates has more than doubled since 2008. Out of more than 2,600 hiring managers, 45 percent reported using social networking sites to research job candidates’ backgrounds for information — up from 22% in 2008.

Michele Porfilio, a strategic sourcing director for Crowe Horwath LLP, a public accounting and consulting firm, says “We leverage social media sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter for our information security hiring needs.” Based on the skill set in need, Crowe implements the tools for target search and outreach and “within LinkedIn, we continue our visibility in creating an information security professionals pipeline,” she adds.

Read the complete article at http://www.bankinfosecurity.com/articles.php?art_id=1957

Whenever the question comes up of about using social networking tools at work – the common debate tends to be focused around productivity. That is many people from a management perspective take the thinking that using tools like Facebook takes people away from doing the tasks that they are employed to do and ends up costing the company money. Users of Social Networks however counter that with the thought that it is by using tools like Facebook they are actually able to do the job they do and that social networking tools help the company do business and make money.

read the complete article at http://blogs.oracle.com/jobsatoracle/2009/10/facebooktwitter_banned_at_your.html

What is the IT? It is Social Networking/Social Media Marketing — sites like Twitter, Facebook, and some of the up and comers like Google Wave (the supposed Twitter “giant killer.”)

The hype of Social Networking/ Social Media Marketing is clearly producing results these days. People are seduced into the ease of giving, receiving and searching for information by clicking their mouse..

Conversations between people through social media have been continuously increasing, and even more in these weird economic times. Statistics from a Google Trends shows that in less than three years, there’s been a 300% increase in the number of searches at Google for the term SOCIAL MEDIA.

The rate of conversation in relation to the impact and effects of social media is increasing. According to Google, searches for “SOCIAL MEDIA” has increased by the hundreds in a span of less than three years. It has maintained such a tremendous rate of acceleration that it has sparked interest and curiosity to the masses this year.

If it is being searched, then the safe assumption is it means people are interested to know what it is all about. “That’s a no-brainer” you say? Well then the frequency of the search can safely be used as an indicator of most people’s interest, which ultimately means that it relevant to the person doing the search. Another no-brainer, right?

But is it safe to conclude that for most instances, the change is not nearly as important as the rate at which the change occurs. In financing, the rate of change in money is called interest. Will this term apply in the same manner to human behavior? Is interest the basis for currency? Interest on the money is supposed to act as compensation for the risk that the lender took. When there is devaluation the interest is suppose to be negative. Does this mean there is a negative risk? Since in finance a negative risk can not exist more money printed to compensate for the risk. This makes the currency inadequate.

In a word, no.

Social currency is different because it can handle negative interest rates with ease. In my opinion, this then makes it a superior currency. As can be seen in the present statistics from Google, the increase in the interest over social media is reflective of the growth of the rate of social networks and the use of the social media.

We can surmise that there is now a paradigm shift, and that these shifts are actually creating a new avenue for human interaction. What we are actually seeing here is a systemic change. The rate of change is so out of control making predictions difficult if not impossible to do because when the inputs are changed then the process is changed too, and consequently we see a change in the results.

The currency of a conversation gives different kinds of results. When conversations increase the currency of the conversation accelerates. This creates or adds value. If you want to improve on a result in the relationship economy, then you must engage in conversation that will impact those results.

G. Wayne Clayton is the founder and Chief Visionary Officer of Integerol/SocialMarketingExpert.org. He’s a former newspaper publisher and investigative journalist. He has been seen seen and heard on CNN, Fox News Talk radio, and is a Guest Blogger on FastCompany.com.

Are you networking strategies producing the results you want? If not, incorporate the Social Web into more of your plan.

It’s new and hot. The Social Web. Sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Slashdot, Digg, YouTube. . . the list gets longer and longer with each passing day. The balloon of convergence grows bigger and flies higher. The time when it is no longer important which network you are using is ready to be ushered in. However, proper management of whatever network you choose will soon validate the difference your company’s value. With the opening of previously exclusive systems, interacting systems will soon find that their merge into one. Soon which network is better will no longer be a question needing an answer. Rather the question will be limited to which value proposition to use and how to use it to reach your business or personal goals. You will have in your own hands the power to build your own kingdom of networks, relationships, information, knowledge and ultimately your value.

Technology has already placed in your hands the tools you will need, and the relationships that you build using these tools will give value to your company. The relationship economy is a reality now. You need to step up and face the challenge. The methods of yesterday no longer apply like they did previously, instead you need to adapt and grab the opportunity to maximize your value.

I have a few suggestions on how you can decide and plan for your chosen social network. Use them to evaluate whether you can stay on with your present networking strategies, improve on them or whether you need to totally trash them and work on a new plan.

Choose the social networks that you want to work alongside with the ones you are using now. Work towards building your relationship capital. Of course you don’t the selection randomly. You need to look for the networks which echo your own interests and values. Which one matches or complements your own choice of personalities and content. Choose the one which will give the best relationship capital for your company.

Look for the networks that will help you geo-target your audience and prospective clients, be it according to industry or topic. What’s that… you want to just work a network locally or regionally (geo-targeting)? Will the Social Web still help you? Without a doubt. Take for instance, if you used Twitter, since small businesses rely on local customers, it would imperative that they find and connect with local Twitter users. I recommend using these sites to do that:

Twitter Advanced Search http://search.twitter.com/advanced
Nearby Tweets http://nearbytweets.com/
ChirpCity http://chirpcity.com/
Tweepz http://tweepz.com/
Monitter http://monitter.com
Twitter yellow pages http://twellow.com
Scoopler http://scoopler.com

One important recommendation: manage your “stream.” When you first start to follow more and more people, you’ll notice the “stream” fills up quickly. Use Twitter search function to follow your own company/name mentions, and use tools like Tweet Deck to help you filter out the noise. This helps you focus on the most relevant users.

I read one great idea: since you’re ultimately trying to connect with complete strangers, before randomly follow anyone locally, take a creative approach and make your most recent tweet says something like “I’m looking for other Chicagoland folks to follow on Twitter.” That way, when they see I’m following them and check out my profile, the message explains the reasoning why a total stranger is suddenly following them. You’ll find it’s much easier to take the next step in networking, in person meeting, if others can just “check you out first” on Twitter, or where ever

Know the rules of the networks you will choose. What are their standards for connections? Do they employ RSS feeds? Picture…video’s? Does it offer a wide array of social media?

If you haven’t decided on the image you want to project and the brand you plan to use as your image, you had better start on it. If you’re using one now, ask if it will build your value proposition on your desired level – locally, regionally or globally.

You can now use multi-media tools to enhance your company’s value. Choose which network channels will help you reach your targeted audience.

And to sum it up, always keep your goal in mind and work your way towards it using all the tools that are now available, tools which will link you to the whole world.

Microsoft appears to have come to its senses over an advertisement that had some observers claiming it was the worst technology commercial ever.

The company has yanked official versions of the online-only ad for its Internet Explorer 8 Web browser off online video sites after users complained it was offensive. If you haven’t seen it, count yourself lucky.

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/07/02/microsoft-makes-users-sick-pulls-ad/

Below is the tasteless video in question… sorry you MUST see this if only to learn what to NEVER do…

Bing in its tenacious desire to beat Google at its own game has latched on to real-time search as a means to that end. On July 1, Sean Suchter, general manager for Microsoft’s Search Technology Center in Silicon Valley announced that Bing will be “unveiling an initial foray into integrating more real time data” into their  search results, “starting with some of the more prominent and prolific Twitterers from a variety of spheres.”

“We’re not indexing all of Twitter at this time..just a small set of prominent and prolific Twitterers to start,” he wrote. ..

Read the entire article By Ron Callari at: http://smashfuse.com/2009/07/bing-searching-for-twitterati-vs-tweeps/