Helping You Rock Out Your Site Like A Rockstar!

The two things in the title of this post might be a bit vague, but really you can use social media marketing as a support system. While there are people out there willing to teach these methods in exchange for money, your time, and an open ear, there are many more online more than willing to connect and help you – for free.

Forms, social networks… blogs, and other websites are just some of the ways. Really, all it takes is some knowledge, how resourceful you can be, and how imaginative – the same things in regular marketing practices. While blogs are not forums, some blog sites are so active, you can really feel like you are in a community that is giving you a hand – whether for your personal site or your business.

Here are some places I believe you should hook up to for your own social media marketing support system:

Social Media Club (you can even find local or area SMC groups near you!)
Chris Brogan
Liz Strauss at Successful Blog
Problogger
Wired PR Works
Mashable
Social Media Clubs on Facebook and LinkedIn (all you have to do is search)
Cre8asite Forums
UTalkMarketing.com

Feel free to leave links to other places that are helpful to people needing their own support system. I am actually gathering links for my resource project for several areas I cover on Blondish.net

It is not as simple as it seems. It is often hard to get a hold of business owners after you have found out if they have an online presence.

However, you can leave a business card. The problem with doing that is that you are leaving it with someone that might not truly understand. So what do you do? Well, you go back another day or even ask an employee when is the best time to speak with the owner.

When you finally get to speak to them, try not to be overwhelming. A lot of times you should not tell them that they need, but show them how having an online presence will enhance their business…. and even their own community!

1. Ask them if they thought about having an online presence. If they have, but decided not to, ask why. A lot of times owners believe it is not necessary, when in fact it really can be helpful. Even that one wonderful restaurant in small town USA (or another country), might actually be worth having a website because not only it allows them to share information about their business, but their town is known for having a restaurant that is a ‘must eat at’ place. Please remember when approaching to not be overbearing. These business owners are often passionate about what they do and may have some success in the community already. They may even have been a business for several generations.

2. Ask if they understand or know how to create an online presence. Often business owners are clueless where to begin or have been given expensive information that has been overwhelming.
3. Be prepared to have solutions available, but able to speak in layman’s terms. Small towns, or large cities, there will be business owners who are still hesitant or not very savvy about the internet.

4. Be prepared to show them how you can help them. Having a solution and being able to walk them through makes the business owner at ease with the process of social media. It is not difficult, and even if they might want to train an employee to do some social networking for the business (like introducing coupons), it can be something they can do at their own leisure.

5. Encourage them to keep in touch and be prepared to contact from time to time. If there are new things that the business owner needs to know, contact them and ask them if they are interested in hearing more. Of course, it is good to ask them how they have found the tools you gave them to work. Following up and taking an interest builds a good relationship between yourself and the business owner. They will be more apt to continue working with you and even recommending you to others.

Of course, this is a one-on-one method, but even when having a group meeting, you can exercise these points.

How have you reached out to local business owners?

Social Media – it was a word that popped up in the mainstream and blew everyone away by storm. Well, at least those who were not as computer savvy nor marketing savvy.

We learned Social Media and Social Networking were not the same, where social media was a technique to market yourself or your company a social networking were the sites you could exercise your marketing strategies. Of course, there are still people who get those two words mixed up a lot.

This past year, we saw social network giants clamber to be the top, making unique features to draw more users. In fact, there are probably more users that jumped on the bandwagon of social networking versus blogging. In fact, users found more ways to flex their social media muscles on the social networks to attract people to their blogs. Some users found web celebrity status this year, overpowering teeny bopper half clad girls on MySpace who just wanted you to leave a comment while debasing themselves.

We saw governments crack down on Twitter usage, even countries banning their own people from telling the horrible truth about them to the world.

We even saw celebrities and normal everyday people gets sued or even fired or literally roasted online for their Twitter usage.

It has been quite the year for Social Media. Can it get better? Yes. But it could get worse as well. In 2009, spammers crawled out from their holes and found they could play with the social networking masses.

What is in store for 2010? Who knows? For myself, of course, I would love to strive to be better than last year. I went to having a Google PR of 1 to a Google PR 4, and on Alexa, I am doing better than 200K. I actually made my goals, AND beat my goals. I even improved my content. I have more than one blog – each focusing on some of my major interests. I opened Blogrity, a social bookmark site for bloggers that is built with WordPress. I started guest posting at other blogs. I educated and influenced people. I believe I am a blog rockstar, but nothing huge…yet.

What have you noticed this past year in social media, and have you met your goals? How did you go about achieving them and did you use social networking to do it?

Recently in WebProNews, there was an article called Ghost Tweeting: The Real Phantom Menace and let me say it was ridiculous to read such garbage. Well, maybe not garbage, but it is terrible to know that people would whine over such things.

First off, there are plenty of brands online that pay employees to tweet, including celebrities. Yeah, it might be wonderful to receive tweets from the person, but at least those who follow are getting the information they need. I tweet my own stuff. I am not rich nor special enough to hire people to tweet for me. I would not “ghost tweet.” However, there are people to do.

Ghost tweeting, although it is a fairly new word, it is not a new concept. It is not unethical and certainly does not call for people getting in a tiff over. As long as the people behind the account are up front and honest, there should be not issues. Really, there should be a note on the account that either none or some of the tweets are ghost tweeted, or a note at least on the user’s personal/ company website explaining who is tweeting.

While you could rely on your followers to give you feedback on their expectations, you really just need to be honest and up front about who is to be sending information FIRST. Some of the people I follow that I know use ghost tweeting are people that at least share something worth my time reading. Of course, knowing that the actual person that that the account is about, especially for individuals like celebrities and well known people in niches I follow, I appreciate their efforts. They do have busy lives.

And think about it – if you are not happy about it, just unfollow. Right?

What are your thoughts about Ghost Tweeting.

A lot of times, I am sure most bloggers would love to connect more with their readers. They offer email subscriptions to their RSS feed or newsletters. Or they have plugins on their WordPress blogs like the Thank me Later plugin which allows you to send an automatic email at a later time to invite former readers to come by or subscribe to your feed.

I recently found in my stats that someone asked about if it was okay to take the emails of your users and invite them to social networks like Facebook.

In fact, here was the search
can i use email addresses of people who have bougfht from website to invite them to join facebook?

Unfortunately, their search ended up at my tag section for facebook. My answer – well, this is kind of tricky. On one hand, I would say no harm done as you can simply send an invite. However, on the other hand, it could be seen as spam. You might be inviting a totally brand new person from your site to a place they might not be a member of or they do not have any interest to become a part of Facebook or any other social network. Please remember there are people that still try to hang on to their rights to privacy online.

Now, if the person you are inviting is someone you regularly see on your blog and you think might be interested in joining in on the social network crowd, that is fine to invite. The better alternative instead of inviting is to blog about the site and share why you enjoy the site and how your readers might enjoy a particular social network site. As an example, since I have blogged about Twitter, a lot of my regular and past readers have actually joined. I did not tell them – “hey go join.” I have been talking about Twitter from various angles that I thought were interesting, as well as conveying how you can harness social networks in social media techniques.

What do you think? Is it spammish or rude to use the emails of your readers to invite them to social networks?

In SmashApps.com, they published a post Search Engine Traffic vs Social Media Traffic? Which is Better? listing pros and cons, but it was leaning more thoward social media.

For one, Social Media is not Social Network. Big difference as one is a way of marketing while the other is the actual place online, like Facebook or Twitter. Google is tracking social network traffic like Twitter and this boosts those who have blogs and are trying to drive traffic while pushing their site’s content to the masses. Google tries to keep up with social networks, but obviously the real time results in getting news is a bit overwhelming.

The problem is not to compare the results as there are more search engines than just Google, Bing and others – and they are great at documenting information in the long run. Twitter and Facebook still have glitches from time to time in coughing up info from months ago while searching, but the search engines – they will have it documented. I think that the social networking sites are great for pushing content anytime, but will never phase out search engines, so in the long run, it really is not something that should be a competition.

Both search engine and social networking depend on users possibly being interested in what you will say. While social networks are a great quick fix for short term traffic, search engines are great for long term results. While some of the SmashApps article is a bit “pulled out of the butt”, I would agree with a few points other than bandwidth issues due to the fact many web hosts offer pretty hefty bandwidth on their eyecandy packages.

Most of this depends on your ability to target an audience that shares an interest in what you talk about- your niche. It is great to attract visitors from the social network streams OR the search engines EQUALLY, not to depend on just one or the other.

What is your insight on obtaining traffic via search engine or social networks? Which one do you feel are more effective?

Paid to tweet or sponsored tweets have been something that has popped up majorly in the past year, especially since Twitter has really exploded onto the mainstream. Basically paid to tweet is as it says. Usually you will get the final say on what goes through your own social network stream and all these sites require full disclosures, which is great since the laws on endorsements have changed for both bloggers and social network users. Below I have listed a few sites that offer these services for user looking to make a little cash. Although I may have an account with each, none of them contain my referral. If you plan to join, and like to use my referral, please ask me via my contact form and I will send my referral link.

RevTwt: I have really never been paid by RevTwt, though I do not doubt their services. The problem is that their opportunities come in increments below $1 per tweet. Even their cost per followers is quite low, which makes it almost impossible to make anything with this service.

Twittad: Twittad has both paid to tweet services and also replacing twitter backgrounds with full ads. The user can submit and search topics that are relevant to their Twitter stream conversations and choose ads which best fit. The payout is okay, but nothing to impress. Opportunities for those who stay true to their interests may not be lucky as those who do not give a care.

Be-A-Magpie: Has been promising and is the first paid to tweet system I joined. I was a bit skeptical, but it does pay out and I have gotten a fair amount of opportunities. The thing is that opportunities are usually in groups, or it seems there is a time when more opportunities come through my stream. In the past Be-A-Magpie has been a bit funky with getting tweets out, but apparently that has been fixed.

SponsoredTweets: Opened just a couple months ago and by far is the best program I have tried. It is ran by Izea, creator of Pay Per Post, Social Spark and other sites. The system seems to be great and their support is right on top of anything that might go wrong or if anyone has any questions. I have not had to wait too long for opportunities, but I am thinking compared to other paid to tweet sites, this one gets more business because it has a company with influential and trustworthy people running it. Payouts are not hard to obtain and I like how their system allows you to list your interests and you can even have opportunities in which you decide how your twitter ads will be displayed – of course with a disclosure intact. This company requires full disclosure.

After so many people asking, I thought I would add my experience with these sites.

Any other sites I should check out that I missed? Do you use any paid to tweet services?

I blogged back in March 2009 about DandyID Plugin for WordPress. DandyID allows user to share their social network identities on their blog, Facebook, and other places by simply applying their code or widget. This eliminates the issues of manually coding each social identity you have online and placing it in your blog’s sidebar.

Recently, DandyID rolled out a new feature. With their article New Feature: Control the Visibility of Your Identities, you can now select what features you wish to display to your visitors. Along with this feature, they have also come up with a premium plan for users who would like to know how their visitors are connecting. So you can now track what social networks most of your users are coming from when they visit or where they leave. It is a great way to try to understand what your visitors are looking for when they come to your site and where you should work more on your site to attract other visitors from the social networking communities.

I actually am using DandyID on Blondish.net. It is on the sidebar.

Are you using DandyID? If so, how do you like it and what other features would you suggest. If not, are you manually inserting your social identity links or using a different plugin?