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

The upcoming New Year holds something else for every different person. Some live and die by their yearly resolutions, which usually include some sort of gym membership or an intense commitment of some sort. Now, say what you will about me, but I’ve never been one for “resolutions”; I guess I don’t hold the thought of a New Year as a new beginning like some people do.

In all cases, though, my 2011 year will be revolving around some of the most important times of my life. In early May of 2011, I will be graduating from Appalachian State’s Walker College of Business with a degree in International Business, and a minor in Spanish.

With graduation comes a great challenge. We college kids like to call it: “The Real World.” What I mean is that, come May 2011 I hope to be employed. So here’s the unabashed point of this post: If you are looking for an entry level Account Manager or Social Media dork, I’m here! My LinkedIn Profile is most likely the best place to find the most up-to-date and pertinent information about me. So check it out, get in touch, I’ll be looking for you too!

Jim Tobin – Ignite Social Media

Avoid the Spelling errors, I will come back to re-edit!

No one ever got rich from Facebook Fans.

What is Social Media?
Monitoring
Publishing
Social Networking
Microblogging
Widgets – I’ve got to get people to see this, and put it on their own site.
Collaboration
Photosharing
Video Sharing
Personal Broadcasting Tools
Virtual Worlds – Think naturally of second life. “Club Penguin” – 80% of online sales will be based on the experience online.
Social Commerce
LBSs
Social Bookmarking and news aggregation.

You can’t do ROI – focus on Return on Engagement, if you’re not getting a return, do something else.
Questions you should ask yourself

What do you want to gain from a social media plan
What does your business offer that people are likely to want to discuss
What’s your current business model and how can social impact them?
Do they sell trough e-commerce, retail stores, third parties, OEMs?

Forrester’s POST Methodology
People: Who are you trying to target, and why do they care?
Objectives: What are you trying to Accomplish?
Strategies: Define how you will accomplish this through social media.
technologies Look into technologies that fit.

The Ignite Method of Social Media Strategy

* Step 1 – Discovery
* Getting up to speed
* Step 2: Community Analysis
* Conduct a deep dive into the social space, uncovering where target audiences are active, how they interact, etc. Complete review of current social media efforts and competitors.
* Step 3: Goal Setting
* Objectives chosen for SM activities, Metrics, Foundations for measurement
* Step 4: Engagement plan
* Detailed plan and set of recommendations on SM tactics, resources, timelines and budgets that support business and mkt obj.
* You cannot write plans saying hey this is cool lets do it, there are things you cant do unless you wanna spend $1M
* Step 5: Metrics and Measurement Strategy
* We agree on how obj wil be measured and what goals will be assigned and reported on and what long-term monitoring needs are.
* Step 6: Implementation/Training
* Develop assets, train specific teams, put plans in motion, and provide ongoing support.

Channel Analysis

* What Channels are currently being used by the brand?
* Do they serve an clear social media needs for both the brand and an audience?
* Are the resources in place to support all the current channels?
Previous campaign analysis
Benefits? Weakpoints?
How does SEO support the campaign and or how does the brand improve its SEO because of the campaign.

Competitive Analysis
Who?
Audience Analysis

*      Who is the target audience for the SM plan?
*      What can we learn about the target audience so far?
* Which networks are they on?
* What are their social behaviors?
* What do they believe/watch/do that’s different than non-targets?

* What do they want from the brand?

Social Strategy (Engagement Plan)
Strategy refers to a plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal.
This is where all of the information from the community analysis is used to make a roadmap for the client to use social media to succeed.

Channel Strategy
What channels will be used to implement the plan?
Refer back to the audience analysis – where is your target audience and how can you effectively engage them?
Which channels are the brand ready to support (content and resources)?
Campaign Development
What sort of campaigns fit the client’s needs?
Will they be audience specific?
Event Specific?
Specific to diff. prods or prod. lanuches?
How will these campaigns be measured?
How do they support the larger business objectives?

Measurement
What sort of conversation will take place?
Frequency? Keywords? Escalation paths?

What programs will be used to monitor? To measure success?
What are the measurable and actionable goals that the social medi aplan will be working towards?
What are the kpi’s
What are the goals?

Price tags
Things to take into consideration when creating a price tag?
The technical architecture
How much content creation will be involved
How often updates need to be made
What sort of social media optimization will be involved
How frequently channels are updated, monitored, replied to
Ho much it will cost to do the analytics and monitoring of the plan.

Note: For some reason this didn’t post on Monday, and I’ve been too busy to notice… This post is about my favorite posts from over this past weekend.

Here’s another collection from over the weekend of the Five Posts that have caught my attention. I want to know how you feel about these posts, so be sure to leave a comment about them and tell me.

1. NSFW: Generation Whine – Why I’m Relieved not to be a Millennial

I’ve made my position about being a millennial very clear before. So naturally this post struck a nerve with me. This belief about a sense of entitlement for people born between the ’80′s and 90′s feels like loads of bullshit! If we do feel entitled, we’re sure learning it the hard way. Jobs are just as hard for us to find, and if we don’t find these jobs we’re stuck; unable to pay off loans, sitting at home, entitlement isn’t just given, so don’t pretend we’re out here hoping for handouts.

2. A Living Organism

Mitch Joel has hit the nail on the head, again. Looking back on a post I wrote this past week, the aspect of thinking of social media and its environments as a continuously evolving and interactive “thing” is key. My favorite part here is the end. These growing platforms will (for the most part) be out of our individual control. We will grow as a community and keep moving towards a larger and sometimes more unique social atmosphere.

3. When the long tail is underwater

The truth is sometimes a hard thing to face. As the long tail has been a part of iTunes, Rhapsody, Amazon, and many other businesses. There are always products whose sales are 0.

4. The Opposite of Product Placement

If you saw last night’s Mad Men, then this might be a little bit more reasonable. But is placing a competitor’s product in stead of yours a better marketing strategy? This “unbranding” strategy might be successful, or not.

5. The 7 Deadly Fears of Blogging and How to Overcome Them

I haven’t been blogging long, and I don’t do so for the money. So, as often as I have problems coming up with topics to write about or dilemmas to complain about, this post addresses that and much more. These 7 points are all true, and they affect everyone, even seasoned bloggers.

I have decided to do a weekend wrap-up every week, of 5 great posts that I have come across or read. Here the are for this past weekend (Oct. 1st-3rd, 2010).

Does Complaining About Customer Service In Social Media Make A Difference?

Complaining publicly and sometimes way too over-the-top, Mitch Joel and Joseph Jaffe discuss the way people are using social media and to voice complaints. A great well flowing pod-cast, this is well worth a listen.

This morning I got this ad on my Recommended Pages on Facebook  –

Now, I haven’t really complained about Facebook recommendations before, because hey sometimes they’re actually relevant and have led me to find new interesting pages or new articles it can depend.

In all honesty though, take a look at the related page – FarmVille Sheep - WTF? There are over 2,000,000 (yes, 2 Million) who Like this page. I get if you like the game or whatever, but the sheep themselves…people need to find new hobbies.

More relevant though are:

1. How are Bing & Farmville Sheep even comparable to be recommended with eachother?
2. I have hidden all Farmville related things from my news feed.
3. I have never played Farmville.

So why dear Facebook, are you giving me ads related to things I have obviously indicated negatively towards?

Does this happen to you? Tell me your most ridiculous recommended page or friend via Facebook!

Happy Father’s Day, Pai!

Pai, the Portuguese term for, “Dad”, is the man! A man of few words, many actions and always on the move, this man is the influence in my life, and has been a great role-model and coach. His passions, ambitions and aspirations to do everything in his power for his friends and family has been my inspiration to be the best man I can be, and for that I am thankful.

Right now, he’s following our home country in the World Cup, Brasil!! So, time to share in some great bonding memories.

Love You Velho!

May 7th 2010 Follow Friday people! Some friends, some great workers and all around great people. Here is this week’s follow friday:

1. @Cord – Cord Silverstein – EVP Interactive and Social Media at Capstrat.
2. @GwynneMurphy – Probably the best example of someone you would want working for you. Just from Twitter I can tell she’s smart, knows her way around, and that she’s who you want working for you.
3. @KristinEDziadul – Along with myself and other students, she was featured at the Student Branding Blog for her phenomenal work as a student personal brand.  A strong writer and a smart woman!
4. @DavidBThomas – Social media manager for SAS in Cary. Great guy who loves his foods & wines. Listen to him and you just might learn something.

That’s it for this week!

Disclosure: This is a sponsored post by eCampus, I have received compensation for this post. That will be all, continue to read. -Greg

At Appalachian State, we have a great resource that not many other campuses have. Most universities require a student to buy their textbooks, whether from Amazon, second hand, or any cheap way they can get their hands on. We all know that us a students are probably the most thrifty when it comes to money. We sacrifice good beer with cheap beer, good soup with Ramen noodles, the list is endless really.

While options exist, like Craigslist or re-selling on Amazon or eBay to make your money back for the hundreds you dump on textbooks every semester, eCampus offers a unique solution. Textbook rentals from online. As one of the only services that does this you’re saving money at the beginning of the semester which gives you a better deal at the end of the semester when you’re really strapped for cash.

Lets thing about this logically, over at Amazon, the textbook Sociology in Our Times is on sale (New) at $95.97, the used book price is around $70-$75. The same textbook over at eCampus is, $62.10 for the full semester (130 days), Free Shipping and Free Return. So, even if you buy from Amazon and re-sell at the average used book price, you’re saving around $10/per book, that’s a couple runs to CookOut after a night out (If you’re from NC, or any place with a CookOut you know what I’m talkin’ about).

How it Works

eCampus revolves around their plan of the 4 R’s.

• Rent
• Receive
• Read
• Return

Simple plan, simple solution is the way I see it. You find the book(s) that you need, you order them, pay, use them, when your rental time is up, you log in to their book return, and print out your return ticket for UPS (you’re up to package it though. I feel like I should add more to this process, but that’s it…really.

Besides just renting textbooks eCampus offers the opportunity to buy textbooks as well as college apparel or DVDs & Blu-ray.

Have you used eCampus? What was your take? Would you use this? Leave a comment, let me know!

Image by Anonymous9000

I was proposed by a friend of mine, Andres, to make a post for students about the tools and services I use that are best for any student in any stage of personal branding or social media marketing.

Twitter Tools

Hootsuite

My prime online web-base Twitter manager. The ability to control various profiles, set up columns, team management, and best of all the speed at which it runs is absolutely amazing. I have used other tools, AIR based like TweetDeck, and Seesmic (online also), but HootSuite by far has won my approval as my Twitter manager.

search.twitter.com

The easiest and simplest way to search Twitter and get optimal results by filtering through the noise. search.twitter.com is just as quick in its updates as is the online web stream from the Twitter homepage. The best way to use Twitter Search is by using the operating filters. Go through the list and understand the ways that those operators help you.

Example; Social Media AND Case Study filter:links – This will return Tweets with both “Social Media” & “Case Study” with a link available.

Tweet Grid

Tweet Grid was coded by a friend of mine @jazzychad, and I have used it since the day he launched it. I love this site because it allows you to open up one browser window with a grid size of up to 3×3 and 1×10(scrolling) to control your own feed, Direct Messages, and searches. Great for big screens if you want to up the grid size, and amazing for small screens at the 1×3 setting.

Twitter RSS Results

With Twitter Search, you have the option of saving the search as an RSS feed. Now as a student the best thing is being able to “just read it later”. Well by saving a search as an RSS feed, you do have that ability. Once you have entered your search query, on the top right corner there will be an RSS icon save/import that feed into your RSS reader and you’re good to go!

ReFollow

ReFollow is a tool that allows you to see, who you’re following, who follows you back, who you’re following that isn’t following you and other combinations. Allowing you to follow whoever you choose to, or to unfollow if the user has been too inactive. With all the options in ReFollow it’s the best tool for me to manage followers.

Blog Tools/Plug-ins (WordPress)

Networked Blogs

An application for your blog to connect with Facebook with statistical tracking. Also allows you to follow other blogs. Networked Blogs is great for bringing in your blog to Facebook without losing traffic to the Notes section of Facebook.

All-in-one-SEO Pack

Easy to run SEO plugin, changes meta data and optimizes urls for search engines. Download the Plugin here.

Disqus Comment System

Manageable comment system integrating Facebook and Twitter logins. The plugin is simple to use and you can find your comments through your blog website, or the Disqus website.

Yet Another Related Post Plugin (YARPP)

Adds related posts to the end of the current blog posting. Based on tags, meta data, and context of the previous posts. Download here.

Reading

Hopefully to give you more insight on what I skim through on a daily basis to find blog topics, ideas, and keep up on research that happens every day in the online world. Probably the most integral part of developing a brand and learning social media marketing, reading is the Number One way to learn new ideas and strategies.

See my shared RSS feeds.

My Social Media and Branding Feed.

My Business Feed, (includes Harvard Business Review & Inc.com)

My Tech Feed, (includes TechCrunch, Mashable, et al.)

I hope this gives you a clue to what I use and how you can use them too. Suggest any that I might not know, leave a comment I’ll check it out!