Supposedly there’s some ultra-mega-super-awesome secret to social media marketing. FACT! That’s not really, 100% true. It’s a lot simpler than that. While kicking ass at social media requires an investment of time, effort, and ambition (maybe even passion). I wanted to give you three easy ways to get ahead on social media and make it an effective outlet for your brand and marketing efforts.

Be valuable

(I give the worst, best advice, ever.)

Your network looks to you for a reason, or vice versa. Whether you are creating content, aggregating from other sources in order to provide a hub for valuable knowledge and thought leadership, or you’re simply driving thought provoking conversation, your network has a certain expectation of you.

If you’re providing value to your audience you know what they want. Whether it’s articles relevant to marketing, entrepreneurship, small biz, or how to create awesome web designs you will know. Nurturing relationships online is one of the most valuable things you can do for yourself and your network online.

Automate some stuff, not everything.

I automate.

The bane of existence on social media. It’s supposed to be personal, and engaging, and stuff……right? Well, it is. There’s no harm in posting an interesting article that you found the night before, or during the day for a later time. Allow people to engage with content you have found on your time & schedule. Or, even better, automate to match your audiences schedule. Use tools like Argyle Social, or Crowdbooster to monitor interaction levels with your tweets an to find the best times to tweet according to your audience.

Embrace competition

You’d be surprised, or not, at how much content is recreated, repurposed, rephrased, reused…the list goes on. Your competition is a source for many things. Amongst others they can be a news source should you not be the leader. I read other blogs and huge content creators every day. As a matter of fact this blog post was an amalgamation of thoughts from multiple blog posts. It happens, but the thoughts and opinions are still mine. I still tell you how I think about them and I choose which ones I believe work best, and recreate them here for you.

There are three easy ways for you to kick ass at social media. If you have any more, please add them in the comments, I’d love to hear from you.

Image Credit - Tattoo_Lover

Yes, ROI matters. There’s nothing I can say that will disprove that ROI is a huge aspect of marketing, business, and sales. The reality comes down to: Does ROI matter to YOU?

Find what is important to you and track that.

What matters are your KPIs. Key Performance Indicators. In an older Argyle Social article there were four KPIs addressed. The KPIs that I choose will not be the same that you choose for many, many reasons. Here’s an example: my KPIs have nothing to do with conversions, or leads, or sales. My KPIs should be indicators of: what are people reading on my blog? How long are they reading these articles? Do they opt to learn more about me?

These indicators tell me whether or not my content is applicable to my readers and if what I am doing is providing value to them. Values that you choose can be tangible, monetary value or value can be knowledge. Either way, a value must be given to your readers or visitors.

Stop thinking about ROI and think about the people.

A Harvard Business Review article brought up a good point from a study that was done about 50 years ago by Ernest Dichter. Essentially, what it all comes down to is Word of Mouth. Now, we’re all going to pretend that we’re smart and that we knew this already (which we did, obviously). I may just be naïve, but I believe that we’re trying to track and put a monetary number on something that just doesn’t matter.

Word of mouth is a part of any product, service, business, blah blah blah (insert whatever it is you’re marketing here). I don’t deny that it is an extremely valuable aspect of marketing to track. But! Do we really need to add a dollar value to it? Thik abot the conversations around what you do.

Sentiment, maybe? Are there concerns? Are people trying to understand more about you?

Stop measuring start talking.

The bean-counters want their numbers. Give them the numbers. The key to marketing, PR, and advertising today online, isn’t about whether or not you have an effective campaign. Marketing today is about being a part of the customer’s interaction online. The consumer wants you to answer their questions. Consumers want companies to give feedback, give help, or even just give them a pat on the back sometimes.

The only thing I ask you to do when you become “a part of the conversation”: Don’t sound like a damn robot!

Be yourself. Build relationships. And give back to your customers, leads, and even random people talking about you online. Be a person, it doesn’t hurt.

Image by – Socialspice.de

In case you haven’t noticed, the trend today in marketing is going one way. Back to the roots. Now if you’re like me you question things, and you ask yourself: “What the hell are the roots?” In my perspective there’s one root to any form of marketing. It doesn’t matter if you’re using social media for marketing, if you’re using print, TV ads, whatever.

When I look at marketing I tend to try to ask myself one question:

What is the value of what I’m giving these people?

This seems like a fairly straight forward question. But the reality is so many marketers aren’t answering this question. It doesn’t matter if you choose Facebook, Twitter, a Blog, etc. You absolutely must provide some sort of value to your consumer.

As an online marketing dude, specifically my blog – I know that the value I attempt to provide is knowledge value. The ability to give my readers the opportunity to think about what they’re doing in their online marketing strategies.

So I ask you if you’re reading this, to leave a comment and tell me: What value are you giving your blog readers, your consumers?

Image Credit – James Cridland

This post is on where I want your inputs, I want you to tell me the importance of your content strategy. Whether it’s through email marketing, Twitter, or Facebook, let me know.

Here’s why:

From what I’ve seen especially on Twitter and Facebook is that much of the content seems sporadic, but yet relevant. The topics, articles and discussions that follow usually are random banter and don’t seem to be the focused kind of conversation that a business or publisher should be striving for. So my question is, what is it that you do? Do you stick to a certain category expecting feedback or just pushing out content for the benefit of others?

Please use the comments and tell me about your content strategy.

With the economy the way it is, the employment rate slowly rising again, and social media being a mainstream way of finding jobs, rules for personal branding and how to behave yourself online have become somewhat of a staple. For some that care they watch their mouths on Twitter. You could go back and find not a single four letter curse word or malediction to be seen since the inception of their account.

Now for those of you who know me understand that my mouth tends to get away from me, on a very frequent basis. But rules like: “Don’t cuss on Twitter”, “Don’t show yourself drinking”, “Build productive relationships”, for the most part are just there to cover your ass. The best and most productive relationships I’ve built on Twitter have been because I have been “myself”. No bars hold, it has been pure, simple honesty and opinion. Which, isn’t that what social media has been about? Building these relationships? No one wants to engage in nonversations as my friend Morgan Siem (@morgansiem) would put it.

So if you’re Blogging, Tweeting, Facebooking or linking on LinkedIn but you’re becoming a simple square only reTweeting obvious content (say the same links 5Million people Tweet a day by Mashable), where’s your originality? Breaking the rules and breaking the mold makes you stand out. Am I advocating that you go out and berate everyone who says something you disagree with, absolutely not. But proving your knowledge by aptly advocating your position and opinions with well thought out discourse, never hurts.

Breaking the rules doesn’t mean go against the grain. I will never advocate someone to do something against the law or their company/university disciplines. But many of the so-called rules that have been established for social media have become a way for everyone to fit in a mold of uniformity. Social media gives everyone a voice, and if you’re not creating your own, whose are you miming? Take the time to develop the same personality you have offline into the same persona online. There isn’t a difference.

Stand out, and make yourself memorable. You won’t do that by following the same rules as everyone else.

Image by – Whologwhy

In the best Twitter conversation I have ever had, Olivier Blanchard (@thebrandbuilder), myself and others had one of the most intriguing conversations. We realized that while there’s some sort of “algorithm” that tells us how influential we are, where’s the true, realistic value that yields an almost tangible result?

Klout is full of it

Like it or not, Klout is math. It measures, analyzes, and then shows you a result. But what is it measuring? How can one single Tweet have a value to it because it was retweeted 15 times, or replied to with a witty answer? Simply put, it can’t. The value of a relationship, of an interaction, has a fallout that is immeasurable. Let me put it this way: Over the course of about an hour and a half the thoughts that were exchanged have built a level of communication that in the future could hold more for me or Olivier than what happened in just that time. This blog post may yield some clicks on an affiliate link or a Google Ad, or maybe even reach someone willing to employ me. Can Klout measure those repercussions? Yeah…no, they can’t.

@desertronin said:

But digital influence is like a mirage, I may be known by a certain segment, but there’s a good chance that I’ll ever be able to move them to buy a product, give to a charity, start any meaningful action.

I couldn’t have said better. But to him my answer was that the people that we meet first-hand, in person and have held a conversation with become the people that influence us or that we influence; Klout can’t measure that. We are better off using the smaller communities that we are a part of to get a message out to those with whom we have mutual trust.

Gaming the System

Chris Brogan was right in Trust Agents when he talked about tinkering and gaming the existing models for out benefit. As NSFW as this is Olivier was right:

The problem is the combination of “personal branding” and “influenceitis.” It turns social platforms into a giant circle-jerk.

Quora, Twitter, Blogs, it’s all a “You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” mentality. The constant revolution of using these tools to promote ourselves and prove that in an atmosphere where the playing field has been leveled, we are all competing against each other where we are all the same. Essentially perfect competition. The people who can become these influencers are the ones that have tinkered with it to form “influential opinions”.

Tools like Quora are beneficial, they do give us answers questions that need solutions. Too often though, are we asking the wrong questions, we ask for opinions on solution, not for the solution itself (which goes back to perception).

It’s time to start seeing social media as a problem solver, not an opinion giver (yes I realize that I’m stating an opinion to a solution not a solution, call me a hypocrite). When you realize that someone is looking for a solution, where’s the harm in an explicit answer, not some roundabout bullshit answer that may vaguely give the asker a concept.

Stop caring about yourself, trust me your personal brand with grow more by helping the people in your community rather than boosting yourself.

Follow this on David Armano’s Question on Quora.

Image by beckitten

Disclosure: I used to work with Argyle Social, however I received no compensation for this post and I did it because I think they’re bad ass.

Update: Since yesterday, Eric Boggs has emailed me with the new Argyle Social logo, and updated Goals video.

When OneForty, Brian Solis and JESS3 debuted their new (amazingly awesome, might I add) graphic regarding the Twitterverse, I must admit that I was kind of shocked not to see an Argyle Social logo overlapping about three different lines. Between Social CRM, Stream Management, Communication Management, Relationship and Dashboard, Argyle Social was nowhere to be found in this infographic.

This post really hit me when my good friend Brian McDonald wrote about shortening your own URLs with YOURLS. I said, “Wait, Argyle Does this, don’t they?!” Sure enough, they do! And the more that I poke around OneForty finding new tools, like a URL Shortener (custom or not) which integrates with TweetDeck, a CRM tool, an Analytics tool or a tool that lets you integrate a RSS Feed, I realize that not one that I have used compares to Argyle Social and even better: why use multiple tools when you can have just one!

Among other things, Argyle’s UX is top-notch. The simplistic layout and smooth colors make doing anything as easy as possible. By integrating Facebook and Twitter, Argyle Social brings conversion tracking, Web Analytics integration, and in-depth reports to your social media strategy. Their forté is easily link tracking with a focus in Goal Conversion tracking. I have yet to see a tool that integrates this easily and effectively as they do.

If in doubt, take a quick peek at the Demo for Argyle Goals:

Give Argyle a shot, you won’t regret it.

Personal Branding is a unique aspect for anyone considering to launch one. Here I’m going to give you a short list of tools, and tips for starting up your personal brand on Twitter.

Before You Post a Word

Twitter is all about understanding the system and the way it works. The most consistent questions that I get always have to do with, “What do I put on there? I don’t want people know what I’m doing all the time.” Part of that comes because of Twitter’s original tag line, “What are you doing?” Which is naturally misrepresented for anyone who has used twitter for a while.

The best way to learn is by Trolling. The problem is that this term is confused negatively, with being obnoxious and irritating to existing users. That’s not what I mean. By trolling, I mean finding users with similar interests (See the Tools section to see tools for finding people to follow) and simply “listening” or following them for a time to get a grip on what’s being talked about.

Harder than anything is getting your first 100 followers and to keep the number of people you follow to those following you consistent, as to not look like an automated account. By keeping your Bio filled out with details about your industry or interests, you will be able to be found easier through some search tools, not to mention that you give a more “human” element to your Twitter profile.

Your First Posts

If you have a blog, that may be the one and only thing I will ever say that should be automatically posted to Twitter, your new posts. Aside from those, every Tweet should be an honest, typed post. After trolling and following a select group of people, you should have a good idea of what kind of conversation and information they engage in. Relevant posts should include:

1. @ Replies to topics that interest you. Make your comments relevant and on target, this lets your opinions get ReTweeted or Replied to in return.
2. ReTweets of common ground. If your interest is analytics, then you should be consistent. Stick to analytics or topics closely related. If you have character space to do so, add [ ] and inside the brackets add your opinion and a way to express that that is your opinion, like “/G”. G being your initial.
3. Honesty. Without honest opinions, posts, or conversations the whole principle of Twitter gets shot down. The reason people (who don’t use Twitter) believe that it’s all about “What you’re doing?” is because there are people that ruin it. With automated spam, ridiculous comments and simply not being the person your mother taught you to be, kills it.

Find People to Follow

My top three tools for finding new people to follow are:

1. Twellow – Simply put, is the Yellow Pages of Twitter. A directory of literally thousands of users based on their focus. Anywhere from Business to Health or whatever fits your fancy. Browse based on your interests. I highly suggest looking for the users who don’t come across as bots. Keep an eye out for how often they reply or ReTweet.
2. Listorious – Listorious unlike Twellow is a collection of lists. Which lets you find whole groups of users that share similarities. For bulk adding like users, this will get you further than Twellow.
3. Search.Twitter.com – Simple, yet extremely powerful. Search for keywords relative to you and your topics of interest and keep an RSS feed of them. You are bound to find people worthy of following. Bonus if you use the advanced search.

Constant Monitoring

My friend Eric from Argyle Social, is great at reminding us to, “Beware the Tether.” The tie that we have to the online world as we become more and more engaged in our online profiles. We get to the point where we can’t disconnect. But for those of you who are looking for a good set of tools for monitoring, Janet Aronica has put together a great comprehensive list for PR Students.

I hope that this is useful for anyone looking to start using Twitter, especially upcoming PR/Marketing/Communications graduates.

If you feel that I missed, or overlooked an important aspect to starting up on Twitter, leave a comment, I’ll update this post!

I’m not going to sit here and tell you that Quora is the Twitter killer of 2011, cause that would be dead wrong. It’s not. It’s a simple Q&A platform where you can, like Twitter, follow other people and answer or comment on questions that are being asked.

If you notice in my screen capture here, the notification for Who are the most interesting speakers on social media topics? When I look at a topic like this, I think to myself: What’s stopping you from making a continuously updated post on this exact thing, compiling from answers on Quora?

Well, that’s exactly it. Quora now as a Q&A platform has now become a database for blog topics! The more people or topics that you follow the more opportunities you have to build up your ideas for blog topics.

I know for a fact that sometimes I struggle for ideas. But now, there’s no doubt in my mind that spending some time over on Quora will yield a plethora of content.

Have you done this already? Leave a link in the comments if you’ve written a post from ideas you found on Quora, I’d love to see what you came up with!