All of these social media spaces have two things in common:

1. They are being used to leverage awareness of a brand or product.
2. They are most often being used in the wrong way.

The Wrong Way To Use Social Media

With the overwhelming growth of social media, major corporations like McDonald’s, BestBuy, and Dell are creating accounts to interface with potential and already existing customers.

The sad part is that most companies using social media just don’t get it.  They are promoting their products but not taking the time to engage in conversation with their customers.

Social Media is a place to build and foster relationships for so much more than forcing your product on everyone with whom you come in contact.

The real reason companies are getting it wrong is because they are bundling social media with their marketing department.

Social Media is so much more than marketing, and the two should never be paired together as one group in a company.

If companies want to be successful with social media, their best bet is to create a social media position or even team, and hire those of us with experience in creating and maintaining those relationships.

Look at Crocs.  They are a company that understands social media enough to know that they didn’t understand social media.  And hired someone for the sole purpose of running the social media side of the house.

The Right Way To Use Social Media

If you really want to use social media correctly, hire an expert and let them run the show.  But if you can’t afford and expert, here are some simple guidelines to follow that will help you tremendously, at least until you figure it out.

1. Never forget that social media is about person-to-person connections. You are not speaking as “the company”, but as an individual within that company. Many companies don’t know how to do this, and it takes a lot of practice to find that voice and feel comfortable with it.
2. Be a good listener. All companies say they listen to their customers, but do they really LISTEN and let people know that they are listening by responding?
3. Be patient. This takes a long time because you are going to be transforming your company, one person at a time.
4. Be opportunistic. Start small with the people who are most passionate about building relationships with customers.
5. Be flexible. You never know what’s going to happen so you have to constantly adjust your thinking and learn.
6. Be collaborative. You need people from up and down the management chain to buy-in.
7. Be humble. Remember that you are not as influential as your community. If you forget this, they will let you know.

Are You Social Networking or Social Notworking?

If you aren’t sure which it is you’re doing, it’s as simple as asking your community.  People are very opinionated and they will not hold back in telling you whether you’re doing it right or wrong.

This goes back to the step on listening.  If you can keep your mouth closed for a moment and truly listen, you’ll hear things you’ve never heard before.

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The majority of regular Twitter users seem to be bloggers who have started using it because other bloggers have as well, but there is a growing usage of Twitter from businesses trying to reach their target market to create more sales and a better customer relationship.

This is very important, especially with our economy the way it is.  So as a business, whether your blog is your business, or you have a more traditional business, here are very important ways in which Twitter can help further your efforts, and fatten your wallet.

Customer Relations

Recently I made a comment on Twitter about how Crocs were the ugliest shoe ever made, but within a matter of minutes, @georgeGSmithJr, the social media representative for Crocs, reached out to me and offered a view of different styles of Croc shoes that I had never seen before.

My view of the shoe as well as the company changed dramatically.  They actually do have some decent looking shoes. (I even own a pair of the flip flops for men, now.)

The fact that the company had a representative reach out to me gave me a view of them as real people and not some giant machine that sucks everyone in.

I’ve even met George at a couple of blog and social media conferences since that time and have realized he is a really cool guy.

Had Crocs not been on Twitter and not reached out to me, they would have one less customer, or even less depending on how many other individuals they’ve reached out to in the same way.

Your company will be talked about, whether you’re using social media or not.  Your best bet is to jump in and help direct the conversation in a way you want it to go.

Increased Sales

I have Tweetdeck to help manage my Twitter efforts, and recently I added some search columns looking for any conversations involving web design and other variations of the topic.

My intentions were to monitor who on Twitter was looking for a website designer and to offer my services.  I was hoping to get one or two new web design projects using this method, but what I wasn’t expecting was to get so much business from it that anything else I’ve been working on would get neglected (such as this blog).

But I’m finding that it doesn’t bother me, because all of this new work is putting money in my pocket to better take care of my family and build my business.

By doing the same thing, you can use Twitter to build your business, while spending virtually no money in marketing.  Which brings me to our next benefit of using Twitter for your business.

Free Marketing

While you don’t want to simply blast your marketing campaigns on Twitter (I explain why in a recent post that shows how Twitter is A Sports Bar), it is still a great platform for marketing your business.

Traditional methods of marketing often cost thousands of dollars and offer very little chance that you’ll actually get any return on investment from it.  You may be marketing your business to a huge audience, but what percentage of that audience is even in your target market?

With Twitter, you can market your business for free, and can even target your product or services to an audience that is interested in what you offer.

Social media websites like Twitter are putting many traditional companies with non-internet limitations out of business because they offer your company increased profit by decreasing your overhead.

How do you use Twitter to build your business?

If you couldn’t make it, don’t worry, you can join in on the conference too.  Here’s the live stream from IzeaFest:

Free Webcam Chat at Ustream

This live stream is only available between October 2, 2009 and October 3, 2009.

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So I’ve come up with a real world analogy to better understand how Twitter can only work if used correctly… through real conversation.

3 Major Uses Of Twitter

There are 3 ways you can use twitter.  Each producing a much different outcome than the other.  But only one of these 3 uses of twitter will produce the outcome you desire, unless you’re some kind of psycho stalker.

Here’s the scenario:

“You just got off work and you’re on your way to the local sports bar for a drink and to check out the local hotties.  As you’re enjoying your beer at the bar, you spot the most amazing girl you’ve ever seen.  You’ve got 3 things you can do…”

1. Observe & Leave Alone

You prop yourself up against the bar and whisper quietly to yourself, “Damn, she is fine!” Then you continue to watch her all night, never making a move to go speak to her.  Eventually she leaves with another guy, and you go home to spend more time with no one but yourself.

In this scenario, you are observing.  The relation to twitter is simply watching others have a conversation.  You don’t choose to follow anyone, or participate in a real conversation, you scan others profiles and read about what they have to say to each other.

2. Make A Feeble Attempt At Being Social

You prop yourself up against the bar, whisper quietly to yourself, “Damn, she is fine,” and take a shot of whiskey.  Then you scribble your number down on a scrap piece of paper, non-chalantly make your way over to her, and without a single word, slip your number into her back pocket.  She doesn’t even notice, and again, you go home to spend time with yourself.

In this scenario, you make an attempt at being social, but in the wrong way. The relation to twitter is following others, never saying a word to those you follow, and blasting out your latest product or offering every chance you get.

3. Engage In Real Conversation

You prop yourself up against the bar, whisper quietly to yourself, “Damn she is fine,” take a shot of whiskey, and walk boldy up to her.  As she makes eye contact you say, “Your eyes are as blue as window cleaner.”  It’s probably not the best thing you could have said, but you’re trying, and she giggles.

You spend the rest of the night talking about both of your likes, dislikes, your careers, and anything else that comes to mind.  You being a relationship and she’ll remember you the rest of her life.

In this scenario, your akward attempt at making a real attempt at connecting work.  And this time it may have been akward, but as you do it more and more, it will become second nature, and you’ll find yourself becoming more and more successful each time.

The relation to twitter is following others, but making an attempt at engaging in conversation with each and every person you follow.

When you truly care about what others have to say and join in the conversation, you’ll notice that others will come from all over because they want to be a part of that conversation.

Being real, causes others to realize that there is more behind a company, product, or service than the cold corporate exterior.  They soon will realize that you are just as real as they are.  You laugh, hurt, sing, and cry just like they do.

Twitter is exactly like a sports bar.  What you make of it, will determine what it makes of you! Rather than asking others to follow us on Twitter, shouldn’t we be asking them to join us in conversation?

So how do you use Twitter?  Are you engaging in conversation and listening to what others have to say, or using it as another tool to talk about yourself?

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Google AdWords Tip #1

Make sure your ad is relevant to your keywords.  It seems like a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised at the amount of people who run the same ad over multiple keywords.  It is imperative that you write a new ad for every keyword that you use, even if it’s just a slight modification you make to the ad.  When people search on something, they want to see those exact words in their search, and they won’t click on an ad that doesn’t match their search terms.

Google AdWords Tip #2

Write good ads.  While it is important that you use the keywords in your ad text, the ad must also be good.  It has to be compelling, and it has to give the reader a reason to click on it over the other ads as well as the natural search results.  So why should they choose you?  You need to make your case, using your keywords, in very few words.  If you can develop this skill, it will be a very valuable thing to have.

Google AdWords Tip #3

Mix up your bidding strategy.  Don’t think that the same style of bidding applies to all situations.  When you first start out, you may need to bid a little higher on the more competitive keywords because your click-through-rate and standing with Google isn’t so high; but don’t forget, as your standing with Google increases, to go back and lower your bids – there’s no point in spending money when you don’t have to.

Conversely, you also need to bid differently on less popular keywords – in that case, you start low, and slowly increase your bid in small increments until you have the position you want on the first page of results.  By increasing your bid slowly, you’ll get the best possible placement for the least possible amount of money.

What tips do you have for using Google Adwords?

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I’ll be speaking on this panel, so come check it out.  I’d love to meet you, no matter how big or small of a blogger you are.  I love meeting everyone that has something to do with this industry!

About The Event

Here’s a little about the event straight from Doterati:

“Before boarding the IZEAfest bus to Howl-o-Scream, fuel up with Doterati as we demystify blog marketing. Listen as our panel of bloggers and traditional marketers discuss this highly effective form of social media. This moderated panel will help bloggers gain a better understanding of how to fit into the traditional marketing plan while marketers learn how to incorporate blogging into their overall approach.

We will ask our traditional marketers to help bloggers understand how they perceive the blogging world, how they believe it helps them in their marketing efforts and how they integrate blog marketing into their plans and campaigns. We will also ask traditional marketers what they look for in blogging partners, how they evaluate and measure a bloggers successes and how they select bloggers.

This event is also an opportunity for bloggers to position themselves to the marketing community and help marketers understand their value proposition. What makes a blooger tick? Why should a marketer work with bloggers, both paid and non-paid? What influence can bloggers bring to marketers and how can bloggers help marketers with their “pain?”

The goal of this interactive session is to help bridge the gap to insure that marketers can tap into and use the value of blogging as part of their progressive marketing plans and how bloggers can communicate the value proposition to insure they are an integral part of the marketing mix.”

Who should attend?

Bloggers (Beginner to Advanced)

Marketers, Communications, and Agency Professionals

When:

Thursday Oct 1

1 pm to 4 pm – Panel Discussion

4 pm to 5:30 pm – Cocktails

Cost:

$39 for Doterati Members, IZEAFest Ticket Holders, Orlando Ad Fed Members & AMA Members

$49 for Non-Members

Attendees receive one free drink ticket.

Where:

SeaWorld Orlando Renaissance Hotel

6677 Sea Harbor Drive

Orlando, FL 32821

Be there, or be square!

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While most of the popular plugins are very worth having on your blog, there are some plugins that aren’t talked about as often, but they help give character to your blog and put focus on the all of the small details.

Here is a list of the 7 WordPress plugins you didn’t know you needed:

1. Exclude Pages From Navigation

This plugin allows you to choose whether each page you create is included in your navigation with the simple click of a checkbox.

Some blog designs allow for only a limited number of page links and if you create more pages than there is a spot for links, you can cause the layout to mess up and look very amateur.

Click here for the Exclude Pages From Navigation plugin.

2. Feed Footer

When we think of monetizing our blogs, we often overlook a big part of the blog.  The RSS Feed.  Focus up until now has always been on how to monetize your blog for those visiting it, but little has ever been done about monetizing your RSS feed, so those that don’t visit your blog can still see your ads.

Feed Footer does just this.  It allows you to include any type of ads you want below each of your posts in your feed.  And it even offers the option to rotate ads, so you aren’t showing the same ones every time.

Click here to get the Feed Footer plugin.

3. iConnect Social Media Bar

The iConnect bar is very important for those of you wanting to offer your readers a way to connect with you on your social media profiles, or any other website or blog you choose.

The iConnect bar is viewable by your readers no matter where they are on your blog.  It is attached at the top of the page and scrolls as the page is scrolled, so it’s alway in view.

Since using this plugin, I’ve had a very large increase in my readers connecting with me on social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Click here to get the iConnect Social Media Bar plugin.

4. No Self Pings

By default, WordPress pings any post you link back to from another post in your blog.  This posts a trackback in the comments section from yourself, and can look very unprofessional, as well as get in the way of legitimate comments and trackbacks from your community.

The No Self Pings plugin stops your deeplinking from causing trackbacks to appear on each of your posts comments sections.

Click here to get the No Self Pings plugin.

5. Parallel Load

When your blog loads javascripts, it loads them one at a time.  That is why your blog loads slower the more javascripts your are running.

To keep your blog from running slower, you can load the javascripts at the same time by using the Parallel Load plugin.

It decreases the load time on your blog, and also includes the option to load javascripts last, which means your visitors can read your post while your javascripts are still loading.

Click here to get the Parallel Load plugin.

6. SEO Super Comments

For each user comment this plugin will create a new dynamic page on the blog, holding the actual comment information. This page will not actually exist in WordPress database, but will be created dynamically using the SEO Super Comments plugin.

What you instantly get in this way is a big jump in your blog’s index visibility to search engines. This is possible because blog comments are crawl-able, index-able and most importantly rank-able content. Also meaning you will start to get search engine traffic for the context of the comment.

The old author link in the comments will now lead to the newly generated page. The author’s URL will still be displayed (and you can do-follow it now as it will be only one external link on the page).

The concept relies around optimizing the target page using title and H1 tag using the context of the comment. So basically it will take the excerpt of the comment and use it to create the page title and H1 tag and in the body it will hold the content of the comment as well as the commentators previous comments on your blog, causing internal deep-linking as well.

Since now all comments normally drain page rank even when nofollowed (bad for your site) the whole idea of using them to generate links back to your site instead and get free indexable content along the way, looks just much more appealing.

Click here to get the SEO Super Comments plugin.

7. WP-Optimize

For every blog post you write, you are really creating multiple posts saved into your blog’s database tables. And when your post is loaded into your reader’s browser, your blog has to sort through and pull out the correct version of your blog post.

Everytime your blog post is auto-saved, or you go back and edit the post, you are creating a new revision and placing it into your database tables.

In order to get WordPress to work faster and the page to load faster for your readers, you need to clear all post revision saved in your database and only keep the most current one.

You can do this manually if you know anything about MySQL, but if you don’t, WP-Optimize is a plugin that can make doing it easy on you.

This plugin shows you how many unnessesary post revisions you have in your database as well as those database tables that need to be optimized, and with the click of a couple of checkboxes and one button, will clear it all out for you.

Click here to get the WP-Optimize plugin.

What other plugins do you use that are unique and offer an attention to the small details of a blog?

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How do I do that?

There are many ways.  Some secret so I can’t tell you them (give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day… teach a man to fish and he’ll steal all your fish).  But one way I stay current on what’s going on in my niche is to subscribe to the feeds and newsletters of others in my niche.

Subscribing To A Newsletter

I subscribe to about 5-6 different newsletters that are all in the same niche and I’ve slowly gotten to the point where I’m deleting all but one of them everytime they hit my inbox.

Why?

Because they all say the exact same thing.

When a new product, service, or training program comes out in my niche, certain select individuals are given this information in advance, myself being one of them, along with recommended copy to include in the email.

So these newsletters hit my inbox almost every other day with information I’ve already been made aware of.  And the repetative nature of these emails I’m getting become so annoying that I’ve taken to just deleting them and am at the point of unsubscribing all-together.

To me, this much email marketing is too much!

Do you experience the same thing?  How much is too much for you?

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Social Media is different from mass media like television and radio, and should be treated as such.

Using Social Media The Right Way

Social media is for building relationships.  Meaningful, deeper relationships with a small group of people at a time.  If you try to target more than a handful of people at once, you will spread yourself too thin and the relationship will not be as strong.

If you’ve ever been to a physical networking conference like BlogHer, Affiliate Summit, or IzeaFest, you probably noticed that while you talked to literally hundreds of people, there were only those 4-5 that you really connected with.

Social media acts in the same way.  You can only successfully make great connections with 4-5 people at a time.

Focus on building deeper more meaningful relationships rather than building huge followers that end up being shallow.

The deeper relationships you build will result in readers that love everything you write just because you wrote it.  Those readers will then talk about you to the friends that trust them and recommend your blog all the time.

This is a real word of mouth marketing technique that results in a larger, more dedicated following and a more trustworthy community.

Mass Twitter Follower Tools Are The Wrong Approach

Instead of signing up for the mass twitter following tools like TwitterFollower that increase your followers by hundreds and sometimes thousands, try steering clear.

They are great if all you want to do is build a marketing list of people, but you shouldn’t be using Twitter or other social media sites to simply promote your stuff.  If you do, people will stop following you, most likely block you, and sometimes report you as spam.

A Social Media Challenge

I challenge you to pick 5 people on the social media sites you use and really connect with them.  Start a conversation and continue that conversation for weeks, month, and years.

Build those relationships and after a couple of weeks of building the relationship, pick 5 more people and do the same thing.

You’ll be surprised at the results.

What are your thoughts on building deeper more meaningful relationships?  Do you focus on it, or do you tend to promote yourself to thousands of shallower relationships?

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One of my good friends (Joselin Mane) created a social media kit and he sums up how to use social media correctly with these 5 different phases.

1. Research

Determine where your marketplace tends to gather online.  Use Google Alerts & Google Reader to get a sense of the sites that your marketplace is using.  Myspace, Facebook, and Twitter are currently the most popular Social Media sites, however make sure to do the necessary research not only on your marketplace, but also your competition and your industry.  Lastly, commit to a certain amount of time to social media everyday.  Social media is about relationships and they take time to build.

2. Setup

Every website has its profile requirements and protocols.  So make sure you are familiar with what it takes to complete the entire profile.  Take 5-10 minutes to look at existing profiles so that you get a sense of what creating a complete profile entails and what a good profile looks like.  They generally tend to request your name, location, age, photo, website address, hobbies, books, etc.  Make your profile reflect your brand either personal or professional.  Also make sure that the profile highlights your expertise and has links back to your main website and an easy way to contact you.

3. Listen

This is one of the most essential phases because if skipped or done wrong, it can dramatically hinder your brand and/or reputation.  Since each site has its own method of communication, it’s critical to follow the communication protocol of the social media tool you select.  So take time to learn the proper communication style, the language used, and the tone of the group or site.

4. Contribute

The best way to establish your creditability and reputation within any social media site is to focus first on providing consistent value.  Each site is different, but as a rule of thumb to follow regarding sharing your recommendations is for each link to one of your products/services, you should promote at least 5 products/services created by someone else.

5. Relationship

The essence of Social Media is relationships.  Since people do business with people they know, like, and trust, social media is the ideal and fastest method to expedite the relationship building process.  The key is to leverage the social media site for information about the person.  That’s why it’s important to have a complete profile.  Just as you will be looking at another’s profile, he/she will be looking at your profile.  The next step is to email or chat with them to see if there are areas where you could assist them or develop a mutually beneficial relationship.  And lastly, make sure to attend as many live events as you can because nothing beats meeting in person.

For a better idea of how to manage your time and what kind of time constraints you should put on social media, check out an article I wrote called: 8 Daily Tasks to Increase Blog Traffic

What are you thoughts on these 5 phases?  Do you think there are more?  Let’s here your opinions in the comments.

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