Social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter make it easy for people to come together and share opinions, experiences and thoughts on a number of topics. Smart companies understand this and are using the power of social media to connect and inform their customers, and prospects. Referred to as “Social Media Marketing“, it’s a smart way to open the lines of communication between you and your customers/prospects.

Social media activities run the gamut from Blogging, micro blogging sites such as Twitter, social networking communities such as LinkedIn and Facebook, video and music uploading sites, discussion forums, photo sharing and more. With so many different sites and ways to participate, it can be difficult to keep track of all your efforts.

Participating in social media doesn’t take a lot of money, but it is very time consuming and businesses want to know that all of this investment in time is paying off. Before launching a campaign, you should have a firm grasp on what it is you’re trying to accomplish. Is it increasing website traffic? Getting more ezine subscribers? Having more people download your free ebook or whitepaper? Or maybe you just want to work on your company’s brand image. Whatever it is, you need to have a plan. As the old saying goes, “If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll never get there”. Have your game plan intact before getting started in marketing yourself, or your company with social media.

There are many different forms of social media, so it’s impossible to use them all. Pick three or four, and funnel the majority of your efforts there. Even if you won’t be working them all, at the very least you should claim your name or company name on as many social services as possible. You don’t want to find out later that someone has the user name that you want. If you need to see if your chosen user name is available try Namechk.com which checks dozens of social media networking and bookmarking sites all at once to see if it’s available. Claim your name now so you won’t end up being sorry later.

How do you monitor all the buzz?

How do you monitor your brand and protect your hard earned reputation? I thought you’d never ask. There isn’t one fool-proof method but there are many services and tools out there that will make it easy to see who’s talking about you online. Some are free and others will make you pull out your wallet.

These “online reputation management” tools, as they’re often referred to, will help you to define keywords, or phrases you wish to track and then watches for any mention of your company name, products, or services. It’s important to defend and monitor your online reputation.

Let’s take a look at some of the measuring and tracking tools at your disposal:

1. http://BackTweets.com
   A search engine for Twitter. See who’s tweeting your links and more. Can also sign up for email alerts of new findings.
2. http://Addictomatic.com **
   A little different than the others , you type in a keyword, topic or phrase and out it goes searching the top blogs, news sites, Google, Technorati, Ask, YouTube, Flickr, Digg, Topix and more. You’ll be given a personalized results page to bookmark with everything it finds related to your topic.
3. http://Surchur.com
   Search for the latest and greatest on topics that are popular right now. Type in a keyphrase and it searches blogs, social news sites, photo and video sites for your chosen topic.
4. http://AlertRank.com
   A better way to organize and sort Google alerts. Get a daily report emailed to you in a spreadsheet format of what it finds.
5. http://www.google.com/alerts **
   I’ve been using this “secret weapon” for years. Simply type in your name or company name and receive daily emails of results found. They do the work, you receive the links. Free and nice.
6. http://BrandsEye.com
   An online reputation management tool with a real-time, concise overview of your online reputation. Multiple levels of services and pricing available. Starting at $1.00.
7. http://Twazzup.com
   Another Twitter only search engine.
8. http://SocialMention.com/alerts
   Just like Google Alerts but for social media. Enter your keyword phrase and email address to be notified of any new findings. Searches blogs, microblogs like Twitter, bookmarks, comments, events, images, news, videos and more.
9. http://BlogPulse.com
   A search engine that searches only for data posted to blogs. Enter your keyword, hit submit and off it goes to gather results.
10. http://Topsy.com
    Topsy will track your tweets that have been retweeted so you can find out who’s been sending you all that “link love”. Type in your Twitter user name and you’ll be amazed at what you find.

If you’d like to track incoming traffic from your various social media profiles, an easy way to do it using Google Analytics can be found here http://Tinyurl.com/kuc9rL **.

Just as there are many ways to market your company using social media, as you can see, there’s a multitude of tools and services at your disposal to track and see if all of that hard work is paying off. Smart companies realize the importance of social media in their marketing efforts and are utilizing it on some level. How smart are you?

To deliver useful search returns from the so-called Real-Time Web — such as seconds-old Twitter “tweets” reporting traffic jams — Google has adapted its page-ranking technology and developed new algorithmic tricks and filters to keep returns relevant, according to a leading Google engineer.

Google rolled out real-time search technology last month, to offer searchers access to brand-new blog posts and news items far faster than the five to 15 minutes it previously took Google’s Web crawlers to discover newly created items.

Bing, Cuil, and other search engines also provide various kinds of real-time results. Both Google and Bing have also forged major deals with Twitter to get real-time access to tweets, those 140-character microblog posts sent out by Twitter members. But Google claims to offer the most comprehensive real-time results by scanning news headlines, blogs, and feeds from Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and other sources.

The tweets are a mainstay of Google’s real-time results, but Google has not previously discussed how it ranks them. A fundamental Google strategy for identifying tweet relevance is analogous to that used by Google’s PageRank technology, which helps find relevant Web pages with traditional Web search. Under PageRank, Google judges the importance of pages containing a given search keyword in part by looking at the pages’ link structure. The more pages that link to a page–and the more pages linking to the linkers–the more relevant the original page.

In the case of tweets, the key is to identify “reputed followers,” says Amit Singhal, a Google Fellow, who led development of real-time search. (Twitterers “follow” the comments of other Twitterers they’ve selected, and are themselves “followed.”)

“You earn reputation, and then you give reputation. If lots of people follow you, and then you follow someone–then even though this [new person] does not have lots of followers,” his tweet is deemed valuable because his followers are themselves followed widely, Singhal says. It is “definitely, definitely” more than a popularity contest, he adds.

“One user following another in social media is analogous to one page linking to another on the Web. Both are a form of recommendation,” Singhal says. “As high-quality pages link to another page on the Web, the quality of the linked-to page goes up. Likewise, in social media, as established users follow another user, the quality of the followed user goes up as well.”

But Google’s social-ranking tricks are hardly the only method the search giant uses to extract relevance from tweets. Google also developed new ways to choose which (if any) tweets to surface for common terms like “Obama”–and to avoid spam or low-quality tweets–all within seconds.

Source : Technology Review

Detailed below is the set of links Guy Kawasaki used to demo Twitter at the OPEN Forum booth at CES 2010 – an overview of why Twitter is such a valuable marketing tool. An additional overview of how one can best use Twitter can be found here.

Introduction

• Home page
• Search
• “Audi A1″ introduction

Prospect

• Advanced searches

Tools

• CoTweet for a “CRM” approach (disclosure: advisor)
• Objective Marketer for tweeting (disclosure: advisor)
• One Forty Twitter app store (disclosure: advisor)
• SocialToo for auto-following and spam killing.
• Tweetdeck for Mac or PC
• Tweetie for iPhone
• Tweetmeme to build traffic (disclosure: advisor)

Best Practices

• Always be linking—“inform.”
• Always be responding.
• Always be getting retweeted.

Dogmas to Ignore

• You should “me-form.” You can but only if you’re Lance Armstrong.
• You should not repeat tweets. You shouldn’t if they’re boring, and you have only 100 followers. You can if they’re not, and you have thousands of followers.
• You should not automate tweeting with feeds. You shouldn’t if you don’t want to have a life, but you can if you do.
• You should not use ghosts. You don’t need ghosts if you’re omniscient, but more smart people looking for good links is always better.
• You should make everyone happy. If you’re not pissing someone off on Twitter, you’re not using it right.

Please note, this article is repurposed from Guy Kawasaki's own blog, originally posted here.

1. Let us know you’re on Twitter!

Include a Twitter icon or a “Follow us here” or “Hey, we’re on Twitter” type of badge on your site. Don’t make us scroll down to your footer links- give us something at the top of the page. Additionally, make sure it’s CLEAR that you’re on Twitter. Saying community, in my mind, sounds like a forum or entire social network in and of itself.

2. Talk to us!

Now, responding to followers doesn’t have to be an obligatory, “every time someone tweets our name, we have to tweet back at them” type of thing. However, if you’re tweeting ONLY as a one-sided marketing tool, you’re missing the point. If someone asks a valid question, acknowledge it. Even if you don’t have an answer, we like to know you’re listening (and really, we do appreciate it).

3. Keep us in the know!

We’re going down for updates in a couple minutes – sorry for the inconvenience, but we’ll be back up within the hour.

It tells us the service that is going down is keeping us in the loop. They want to make the service better, of course, and though it’s an inconvenience at the time, they give a warning that it’s happening or they advise their us that there’s nothing catastrophically wrong.

Now of course there are times when we want a solution. However, if there is some information that would better help us understand what’s going on, you’re making a great start.

4. Don’t spam us!

Seriously, do I even have to say this? This includes mass @ messages (consisting of only usernames with no message) and tweeting the same message to different people over and over, among a multitude of others.

5. Be human and be honest!

Let us know who’s we’re talking to, whether it’s a team or an individual. It’s really simple. We understand the difference between a company that says it cares and a company that actually does.

I want to be clear – these are the absolute bare-necessity basics and I’m only scratching the surface. But they are a few things that I’ve come to expect from my favorite brands and businesses on Twitter.

What do you expect from businesses on Twitter?

Can you afford not to have your brand on Twitter?

One of the objections that I hear often whenever Twitter is mentioned as an integral part of an overall integrated marketing and customer service strategy, is: “We don’t have the resources for this.” This from companies who spend thousands – sometimes even millions of Euros on automatic systems that only serve to get users frustrated. The other common lament is “If we go in there we will be bashed by all of those angry customers, and for that, we have our dealers or retailers”

If people care enough to speak about your brand (good or bad), it means that they are emotionally attached to it. Even those who use Twitter or one of the many other social mediums to say “Hey ‘brand name’ I could not give a damn about you!” they still hope that you will listen to them and act on whatever it is that’s frustrating them. Fundamentally, customers WANT brands to hear them.

To the “We don’t have the resources…” the answer comes in the shape of another question: “Can you afford not to be where your clients are?” But this is not the only problem facing brands who are not embracing Twitter, and Social Media, in general. There are, most definitely, bigger things at work.

Enter Google’s Real Time Search

If you haven’t read about it yet, Google’s Real Time Search is simple to describe: You enter a search term and you get what is being said on Twitter (and other social mediums) about that search term. Live. Real time.

The time for excuses is over. Brands who don’t get Social Media and who are not willing to embrace it will be severely affected by this. The time of being an option, a plan, something to think about is also over. Brands should get to it – like right now.

And if you are reading this and you work for Audi, I would really like to review the Q5. And I think that my feedback will be more than a little valuable to you.

Back in the earlier days we used the term “e-Business”. Web sites were commonly prefaced with the letter ‘e’. Products and services were e-this and e-that. But what business is not ‘e’? It didn’t take long for the ‘e’ to drop. We quickly realized how redundant and useless that little prefix was. It provided no additional information to any word because the fact was – everything was ‘e’.

The ‘Social’ in ‘Social Media is a useful terminology because it helps organizations understand a fundamental shift in how consumers think, work, and live. ‘Social Media’ may be just another buzzword, but the fact that media is social is no fad. The ‘Social’ in Social Media, like the ‘e’ in ‘e-Business’, will soon be implied, redundant, and unnecessary. Media that is not inherently social will die and one-way communications will simply be ignored.

The cluetrain has left the station. Is your company on board? If not, here are 49 compelling facts you can use to help them get a clue.

Facts of Social Media

1. By 2010, Gen Y will outnumber Baby Boomers.
2. 96% of them have joined a social network.
3. Social Media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the web.
4. 1 out of 8 couples married last year met via social media.
5. Years to reach 50 million users:
   • Radio: 38 years
   • TV: 13 years
   • Internet: 4 years
   • iPod: 3 Years
6. Facebook added 100 million users in less than 9 months.
7. iPod application downloads hit 1 billion in 9 months.
8. If Facebook were a country, it would be the world’s fourth largest.
9. China’s QZone is larger, with over 300 million using their services.
10. 2009 US Department of Education study revealed that, on average online students out performed those receiving face-to-face instruction…
11. 1 in 6 higher education students are enrolled in online curriculum.
12. 80% of companies are using LinkedIn as their primary tool to find employees.
13. The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year old females.
14. Ashton Kutcher and Ellen DeGeneres have more Twitter followers than the entire population of Norway, Ireland, and Panama.
15. 80% of Twitter usage is on mobile devices people update anywhere – anytime.
    • Imagine what that means for bad customer experiences.
16. Generation Y and Z consider e-mail passé.
17. In 2009 Boston College stopped distributing e-mail addresses to incoming freshmen.
18. What happens in Vegas stays on
    • Facebook
    • Twitter
    • Orkut
    • Bebo
    • Flickr
    • digg
    • myspace
    • YouTube
19. YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world.
20. YouTube hosts more than 100,000,000 videos.
21. Wiki is a Hawaiian term for ‘Quick’.
22. WikipediA has over 13 million articles.
23. Studies show it’s more accurate than the Encyclopedia Britannica.
24. 78% of these articles are non-English.
25. If you were paid one dollar for every time an article was posted on WikipediA, you would earn $156.23 dollars per hour.
26. There are over $200,000,000 blogs.
27. 54% of bloggers post content or tweet daily.
28. Word of Mouth is now World of Mouth.
29. 25% of search results for the world’s top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content.
30. 34% of bloggers post opinions about products and brands.
31. Do you like what they are saying about your brand? You better.
32. People care more about how their social graph ranks products and services than how Google ranks them.
33. 78% of customers trust peer recommendations.
34. Only 14% trust advertisements.
35. Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI.
36. 90% of people that can TiVo ads do.
37. hulu has grown from 63 million total streams in April 2008 to 373 million in April 2009.
38. 17% of 18 to 34 year-olds have watched TV on the Web.
39. Only 33% have ever viewed a show on DVR/TiVo.
40. 25% of Americans in the past month said they watched a short video on their phone.
41. 35% of book sales on Amazon are for the Kindle.
42. 24 of the 25 largest newspapers are experiencing record declines in circulation.
43. We no longer search for the news – the news finds us.
44. In the near future, we will no longer search for products and services – they will find us via social media.
45. Social media isn’t a fad, its a fundamental shift in the way we communicate.
46. More than 1.5 million pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) are shared on Facebook daily.
47. It’s a people driven economy.
48. Successful companies in social media act more like Dale Carnegie and less like David Ogilvy – listening first / selling second.
49. Successful companies in social media act more like party planners, aggregators, and content providers than traditional advertisers.

Source: Socialnomics^TM

A lot of bloggers use social media to promote their site because of the huge potential that it brings. Despite the fact that some marketers and website owners are able to get floods of traffic with social media, the vast majority of people using social media are not getting the results they are looking for. If this is the case for you, by changing your approach you may be able to move into that group that is able to get big results with social media.

Of course, social media will always benefit a small percentage of marketers and users the most, as the nature of social media is to provide exposure only to the best or most popular content. However, your chances of success can be greatly improved if you understand the community of users that you are marketing to and if you create the right content.

If you are not getting results with social media, check this list to see of any of these issues apply to you.

1. You’re a Marketer, Not a User

Yes, marketers can certainly have success with social media, but the key is to be an active user who contributes to the community of the site. Be a user first and a marketer second. If other users feel that you are only there to market, they will not be receptive to your submissions, votes, or suggestions.

2. You’re Only Submitting/Voting for Your Own Content

Make a habit of going to your targeted social media sites every day just to be active and vote on quality submissions from other users. It’s a good idea to also submit some content that’s not from your own site, and at some social media sites it’s frowned upon to submit your own content. In these cases you can either wait for someone to submit it or ask a friend to do so if you don’t think it will be submitted naturally by a random reader.

3. You’re Not Creating Content Specifically for Social Media Audiences

Not all types of content will do well with social media, even if it is high quality. Social media users like to be entertained and each social media site will have its own unique audience. Take some time to observe what the users of a particular social media site tend to appreciate. Pay attention to the types of content that draw a lot of votes and comments and this should help you to know what type of content you need to create.

Effective social media marketing involves creating content that will pique the interest of social media users. Once you are familiar with the community at your targeted social media sites, take some time to brainstorm article ideas that may appeal to them.

4. You’re Not Targeting Specific Social Media Sites

One common problem is trying to use too many different social media sites. Because being an active part of the community requires that you visit the site frequently to submit and vote on content, it’s very difficult to be effective with more than a few different social media sites. Evaluate the various sites and try to identify a few that would be a good fit for your content and your audience. Think about your blog’s readers, what social media sites do they use? It’s better to be active and effective with 2 or 3 social media sites than to occasionally use 25 with no real results. Just because you are not active at a particular social media site doesn’t mean that you can’t get traffic from it. Others may submit your content without your prompting, or you could ask friends to submit if for you if you know that they use that site.

5. Your Visitors Are Not Social Media Users

Many sites and blogs, especially those with large audiences, benefit from having readers who are social media users. This makes it more likely that your content will be submitted without you initiating it, and it will make it easier to get votes. If your blog has a low number of social media users you may want to consider introducing them to specific social media sites in your posts.

6. You’re Posting Commercial Content

Social media users do not like to feel like they are being marketed too, and many social media sites even prohibit commercial content. If you are trying to promote your company with social media you will need to do it passively in order to have any success. The best approach is to use social media to build links and exposure to your site, and leave the marketing to other times and situations. If people find content that they like and appreciate at their site and they become a regular visitor, they will be more receptive when you do start to market to them.

8. You Haven’t Built a Network

The most successful social media marketers are very well connected. Having a network of friends and fellow social media users allows you to help each other with votes and submissions when needed. Many social media marketers share voting requests with their friends via email, even via Twitter. If you haven’t yet built a network, focus on getting to know some fellow social media users, particularly those who are bloggers or marketers. These people will likely be interested in building a connection with you because of the potential for mutual benefit.