In today’s webinar, Guy talked about a couple tools that he uses to assist in his Twitter activities:

Objective Marketer is a site that helps you schedule different updates across all your social media accounts. It provides tracking of all the links you post and reports the amount of traffic you’re getting. You can easily manage a social media campaign and measure your efforts.

At first glance, even Guy admits that he thought Twitter was a waste of time. That was until he discovered the possibilities of Twitter Search. For example, do you sell cameras? With this search feature, you can find users who are interested in photography and you can get that info down to miles within your proximity!

Twitter Feed is a great way to schedule posts from your blog feed. As Guy mentions, if it’s worth writing about, it’s worth tweeting! This tool is a great way to get more juice from your old blog posts.

Social Media Advertising Done Right
Five Guys Burgers and Fries are known for freshly-made, gigantic sized burgers. As a rule of thumb, the owners have never splurged on advertising. Instead, they reinvest their profits to go towards their workers and fresh ingredients. Their Facebook page boasts over 200,000 fans and their Twitter page keeps followers updated. With $0 in advertising costs, Five Guys have still managed to grow in popularity and engage their customers. Much like Krispy Kreme Donuts, who is also known for not advertising, these social tools have given these businesses great leverage. These are just some of many examples of social media advertising done right! It also doesn’t hurt that their food is delicious.

One Man’s Story Sparks Online Viral Marketing
While we’re on the topic of food, have you heard about Dave’s Killer Bread? As a former meth addict and felon, Dave Dahl turned his life around by putting his efforts into making delicious, natural bread. With fewer carbs and names like “Killer Sin Dawg”, what’s not to like? Dave’s Bread is also prominent on Facebook and his page has nearly 9,000 fans. If you take a quick glance, you’ll see nothing but amazing praise for his organic bread. We’re not one to be picky, but who knew that people are so passionate about their bread? With such a wholesome product and a compelling story, it’s not a surprise that the popularity of Dave’s Killer Bread took off the way it did.

What are some other unique Facebook/Twitter accounts you’ve seen lately?

Why Organic SEO Content?
We all know that investing in organic SEO is a good long-term decision. Relevant content will help you stay in the ranks for appropriate key words. It’s just another direct marketing resource to keep in your tool box. About 4 out of 5 internet users arrive at their online destination via search engines and that’s where your content will matter. When paired with a PPC campaign, you’ll get the most out of your online marketing efforts. If you need to learn more about how to tweak your organic SEO content, check Search Engine Land for easy-to-understand tips.

Trying Your Hand with Promoted Tweets
The goal of search marketing is to drive your message through all user channels and new promoted Tweets can help you do just that. It’s helpful for business as they can target related #hashtags and trending topics. For example, the Death at a Funeral remake used this hashtag to convey the quirky plot line.  This is probably the easiest and most fun way to engage your audience. Trending topics are meant to be fun most of the times… I mean, “#whenyoursingle”, “igotFIRED” and more – the opportunities are endless. There’s debate whether users will actually click on sponsored ads. My guess is that they definitely will. A good amount of people have even retweeted (or shared) this Death at a Funeral ad with their followers! Like any other ad platform, you can now use Twitter’s sponsored feature to drive traffic to your page.

Prosper is a peer to peer lending destination. Home Exchange allows homeowners from all over the world to swap homes for a more exotic location. Fiverr is a new site where people can buy what other people have to sell for just $5. If you’re interested in effectively participating in any of these sites, the key is to selling yourself of course! If you’re looking to spruce up your self-selling methods, here are some old favorites that are good to keep in mind.

Give yourself credit. Are you an expert in a certain field? Update your portfolio and keep testimonials handy. You want your potential customers to trust your work and the more specific your examples are, the better.

Add value. When you talk about yourself, don’t forget to include how you can benefit your customers. They want to exactly what they will gain by choosing you over others.

Be yourself. From your social media profiles to your resume, it’s important to stay true to yourself. Don’t inflate your credentials and experiences. Instead, polish up your past successes.

If you can successfully sell yourself, you will inspire confidence in others about your company and its products and services. A meeting with you could well be someone’s first encounter with your brand, and you want to give them the best first impression that you can. Good communication skills will make your job a lot easier.

In the end, it doesn’t matter how much you spend on marketing yourself if it’s not effective. Budget your time and efforts to let your skills shine through. As many would agree, peers will find you if you continue to be honest about yourself.
Have any secret tips for selling yourself?

Some wise words from The Ramones. Don’t wait for a next time – start today! In other words: listen to your heart, but rely on the experience to get the best results. This holds true for almost everything in life. Fashion, love, your personal values, and even your marketing mix. Just because everyone is doing it, doesn’t mean that you should. This can go both ways but today, we’ll take the latter approach.

Here are some ways your social media presence can benefit when you take the time to listen to your heart and share your passion. Have any others you’d like to add?

1. People want to know more. This article from Social Media Today shows that the most common retweets are actually “bites of wisdom”.
2. Establish your unique voice. There must be thousands of mommy bloggers, but only one Jessica Gottlieb (@JessicaGottlieb).
3. It makes you interesting! It doesn’t matter if you’re right or wrong, taking a stand will help you stand out.
4. Helps you remain consistent. Are you an avid sports fan or film buff? Your readers will probably never get a chance to meet you, but will grow to know the social you that you put forward.
5. Even if you make mistakes, you can learn and try better next time :]

Currently, waiting for Twitter’s fail whale to disappear…

Anyways, I’ve been thinking about Facebook advertising lately. Have you ever used it for your business? It can even be a pretty effective way to get new fans to your Fan page and more. When you start your Facebook ad campaign, you can either set a maximum price per click (CPC) or per impression (CPM ). You will also be prompted to set a daily budget, which Facebook will not go over (unlike Google). Facebook is going to roll out a beta version of ad conversion tracking. The service will allow you to calculate the ROI of your ad campaigns. Really excited for this to make its way to my account so I can try it out!

The key in direct marketing is choosing your target audience, and with Facebook ads, you can do just that. There are 11 different criteria that you can use to your advantage. Don’t hesitate to take your time to think of the relevant users you want. Did you know that you can target users on their birthday? You can also target a specific radius within cities and even users who have a certain interest or activity. Facebook coupons come up frequently, so make sure to check. I just got a $50 credit and it’s a great way for small businesses or individuals to test their ads.

Some more interesting-reads for advertising on Facebook:

10 Rules for Advertising on Facebook
Facebook Ads Best Practices
Facebook Advertising – An Opportunity for Deep Targeting at Very Low Cost
25 Bad Facebook Ads
Is the big Facebook advertising experiment working?

Following up with their minimalist Super Bowl ad, Google has launched their social service, Google Buzz today.
Google Buzz will incorporate social media into their Gmail platform while also connecting to other services like YouTube, Twitter, Picasa and Flickr. Of course, Yahoo! and Microsoft aren’t too pleased.

Microsoft released the following statement:

“Busy people don’t want another social network, what they want is the convenience of aggregation. We’ve done that. Hotmail customers have benefitted from Microsoft working with Flickr, Facebook, Twitter and 75 other partners since 2008.”

While Yahoo!, took a similar route in this Tweet:

Two years after #Yahoo! launched #Buzz, Google follows suit. Check out the original: http://buzz.yahoo.com

Although I sortof think that Google jumped in late to this game, I don’t think it will hurt them. Following Apple’s iPad ridicule, Google could’ve at least named their service something different from Yahoo’s version.

What do you think about Google Buzz? Check what others are saying in real-time here.

How exactly does this work? If you have good content that your audience can relate to, you can use social media to bring them in the spotlight again. This can happen via Digg, Reddit and even email. After going through your own articles and stories that best resonate with your audience, take the time to make them relevant again. Carol tells us that most of her clients have had success with content that was written months to even one year ago!

Come up with a realistic content plan. Recognize relevant keywords and track their position as you release content that should bring more traffic. Although content marketing is a slow and steady process, it has very real results. Get ready to focus on your content plan today. There are many free research tools that you can use to get started you keyword research that will strengthen your content efforts: Word Vision, SpyFu, Compete, Quantcast, MajesticSEO, SEOToolSet, LinkVendor, Marketleap and PageGrader.

Just attended an interesting webinar, “7 Strategies to Convert Friends, Fans, and Followers into Paying Customers”, with Matthew Arndt. He went over some noteworthy things, like the three main problems that people have with social media. Those problems would be how to:

1) Build quality relationships over social networks
2) Effectively communicate with friends, fans, and followers
3) Turn your network into potential leads

There’s No Single Solution

There is no real single solution to these problems. Although you can scour the internet for tips from self-proclaimed experts, you should try your hand at it. There’s no real way to learn and improve your social media strategy without getting involved. It takes time and you may have to change your plan, but the results are worth it. After all, you don’t have to go it alone. There are helpful tools for your profiles. Some being WeFollow, Mr. Tweet, and Facebook Page Insights. Take the time to integrate these resources as you also come up with blogs, PDFs, and even free contests to involve your customers!

You can’t just accumulate friends and expect business to come flooding in. With spammers and robots on Twitter, quantity doesn’t mean as much as quantity. When coming up with a social media plan, you need knowledge and expertise. While it helps to stay up to date with current information, you’ll also need a team to help you implement a comprehensive strategy.

Real-Time Search for Real Life

Search engines are useful in bringing us relevant results. But what about information that’s relevant in this moment? I was searching for Google’s financials awhile back and came across some reports from before 2004 – before it went public! How and why is this relevant to what I’m looking for? It’s not! In December, Google launched its Real-Time Search, which will help customers get their hands on up-to-date info. With Google leading the way, it’s only a matter of time before others follow. Yes, we’re looking at you Yahoo! and Bing.

Going Mobile to Accommodate Smart Phones

With new smart phones coming out every second, you can’t rule out the importance of having a mobile compatible site. I don’t have a smart phone, in fact, I like to call mine’s a dumb phone. But I do have my handy iPod touch. When browsing the internet on a small screen, you want to ensure that all the essential links are there and that your customers aren’t missing out anything because they’re not on a desktop. The sky’s the limit for mobile in 2010, as consumers will want faster ways to get their info and all in one convenient place. If you haven’t done so already, get started on making your site more friendly with the right mobile web design.

Facebook is Up While Twitter Falls Flat

Ok, so the time is here. In 2009, there were many skeptics who doubted the staying power of Twitter. So far, we can certainly see that Facebook remains in the lead. As Facebook is experiencing increasing growth, Twitter seems to be flat lining. These two giants will continue to fight for the market share in 2010 as they go head to head by releasing international versions of their services. Twitter is working hard to be more personalized and relevant. On the other hand, Facebook’s CEO has publicly announced some questionable beliefs about users’ privacy. In any case, it looks like it will be another exciting year for social media.