You can save me 200 bucks? Prove it.

You can design awesome WordPress themes? Where’s your portfolio?

You know a lot about social media? Who have you helped?

It’s not about what you say you can do, it’s about doing it. Stop saying you can help people with their problems and start helping them. There are people begging for WordPress help on Twitter right now, why don’t you track them down and lend them a hand Mr WordPress expert. Social Media is not about broadcasting your capabilities but rather an excellent platform for displaying them.

There are tons of people creating real relationships in social media because they are communicating. They help and recommend each other. You need to create some sort or tangible social proof. The problem is numbers are a a dying (dead) form of social proof. Your Twitter followers and blog subscriber numbers can both be manipulated. That leaves your actions and thoughts, and the more conversation the better.

So put up a portfolio that proves your artistic capabilities. Reach out to others regularly to both learn and educate. Interaction and communication is your key to developing tangible social proof.

- Photo by Aidan Jones

I love talking to people about the tools they are using to efficiently track conversations in social media. Everybody has there own methods they’ve developed over time and their own goals they wish to achieve.

Most of my Tweeting revolves around TweetGrid and Twhirl. TweetGrid always seems to catch my new replies a split second before Twhirl will so I keep TweetGrid running in the background at all times.

There are a couple very cool features built into TweetGrid that allow me to track local, relevant and high profile conversations.

First there’s the local search. I’ve been using this feature via Twitter’s advanced search tips before it was officially revamped and released in TweetGrid. It’s a fun way to keep up with the local scene as well as find some local tweeps.

Next we have Groups. Keeping up with 2000+ followers can become quite a hassle. To be sure I don’t miss anything too important, I’ve put together a list of friends and tweeps I’ve conversed with in the past that provide value. The list changes on a weekly basis and is usually dominated by the same people (as you can see in the attached photo). But it keeps me in the loop.

I also track terms associated with me and my blog. I recently released my first wordpress plugin and like to keep track of it’s mentions in Twitter. It’s also a great way for me to keep tabs on any problems people might be having with my plugin.

I usually leave a spot for my interests. This grid does not have it, but I usually have a spot for tracking bands I like, games I play and anything else I’m interested in.

And last but not least I can keep track of my friends timeline and DMs thanks to some recent TweetGrid updates.

The one thing I cannot stress enough is the speed at which TweetGrid produces results. I’ve yet to use it as a replacement to tweetchat for jourchat and other hashtag related discussions but I could easily see it being a suitable substitution.

This is a variable video that was going around on Valentine’s Day. I love the video itself however the implementation leaves much to be desired (an embed link, smoother video, better acting). However, the end effect compensates for it’s shortcomings.

You can find some other variable videos and learn more about them here.

Wondering why you’re not seeing any results from your marketing efforts in social media? Probably because you are doing it wrong. Here are a few things you can try doing differently.

Twitter

I feel like Twitter is the easiest one to do right and somehow so many people do it wrong.

First you have your spray and prayers. They follow everyone on TwitterPacks and post one link in their feed that sends them to their website. If very little untargetted traffic is your thing then by all means go for it. You won’t last very long as Twitter is slowly getting better at filtering out the trash in its intertubes.

So the easiest way to use Twitter for business is to develop a following through honest communication.

Wondering why no one’s following you back?

• You’re following too many people
• You never filled out your profile
• You never post anything
• You only post things from your blog
• You’re too hot to be real (or too ugly to be followed)
• You sound like a robot

Key to Success: Reach out to others

I find that those that become resources in their communities often thrive at building trust as well as followers.

Facebook and LinkedIn

Facebook and LinkedIn are great places to network by using their groups and micro communities to find like minded individuals. However, people often overlook the potential in niche community sites outside of the main stream social media. These smaller communities are filled with people that might actually like your service and even welcome it.

Another reason why your marketing efforts won’t work on Facebook is simply because they are not welcome. Facebook is a platform to connect with friends, not your brand. If you once again focus your efforts on becoming a resource rather than just throwing yourself out there, you may see better results.

Key to Success: Be yourself

Like I said, “Facebook is a platform to connect with friends, not your brand”. Use these tools to network the same way you would at a party or any other networking event.

Blog

Blogging can be the foundation of your companies online reputation or it can get overlooked completely. There’s no shortcut to developing quality content for your posts. Blog about things you actually know about.

Wondering why no one is subscribing to your feed?

• Your posts are too long
• Your topics don’t provide value
• Your layout compromises your post
• Your title isn’t appealing
• No one knows your blog exists

Key to Success: Focus on writing unique content for a specific audience. Also be sure to seek out your target audience and connect with them honestly and openly.

Wrap Up

There are a lot of specifics you can get into when identifying your target audience online and how you can best reach them. I look at all of my social media conversations and try to be as completely transparent as possible. I also try to maintain a healthy mix of personal and business interactions as I do in life. Remember that social media is just a tool that helps extend our real life beyond it physical limits and it should be treated as such.

So what do you think? What else might be holding back someone’s social media efforts from seeing any results?

- Photo by coxy

Don’t believe everything you read in this wonderful arena called the social internet.

Something I’ve noticed across multiple social networking sites is that a majority (not all) affiliate marketers will either lie or stretch the truth to get you to become part of their scheme. Every single one of them claims to be “the next big thing” on the internet and by getting in now you’ll make millions. The problem with that is all these big things are old things with some spit and a quick shine.

The truth is that there are a lot of ways to make money online:

• Legitimate business sales
• Product sales
• Ad revenue
• Paid blogging

The catch is that all these things require a special secret ingredient that MLMs and affiliate marketers seem to forget, originality.

Here is a classic example of what an affiliate marketer will do to make money.

1. Sign up to a site.
2. Create affiliate links to their ‘product’ or ‘ service’
3. Spam their links and propaganda
4. Deny doing any of this

What happens is they get a small percentage of the profit made off of that product or service if you buy it.

*Disclaimer* Affiliate marketing itself is not bad at all and in fact can be a great way to make an extra buck. It’s the ‘marketers’ that give it a bad name through their slimey methods and they’re spoiling the web with it.

Here is another example of an affiliate marketer, basically being stupid.

Inside Affiliate Marketing Says:

Hey nice blog my friend. Affiliate marketing is the fastest growing business in world. However its not that easy as it looks. Obviously you need advanced knowledge about affiliate marketing. If you are dead and broke , you can learn most of the startup tricks via marketing forums.

I’m sorry but I couldn’t have said it better myself. This was a comment on my previous post about affiliate marketing, which if they had actually read they would have seen it was speaking against affiliate marketing.

So here’s my nugget of gold for the day. Breath it in, swirl it around a bit, maybe gargle, and spit back out into a ceramic pot to keep for later usage. Social media is THE tool to meet people of like minds from all over the world and communicate in real time. That is all.

I’ve talked about variable video and personalized video a little in the past. Now let’s look at some more examples and break down some of their components.

Here are some examples:

• Inspiring Escapes
• Dexter
• Haunted house
• Walts wisdom
• Carmen has a crush on you
• News3Online
• Disney World – New
• I Love You – New

There are 4 main effects that can be achieved in a variable video:

• Variable text – example: holding up a card with the persons name
• Variable image – example: holding up a picture of the person
• Variable audio – example: saying the persons name with actors face covered
• Variable video scenes – example: saying the persons name without actors face covered

If you wanted to create a variable video campaign, there are multiple ways to go about it. All of the above effects can be recreated using Adobe Flash. If you only plan on doing variable text and/or imaging in the video you may not need 3rd party software. If you do wish to integrate your variable video campaign with other software, XMPie recently announced video integration capabilities with their system.

Another important aspect of variable video is the story. To properly recreate any of the videos shown in this post you would need actors, sets, equipment, scripts, etc. But, one great thing about variable video is it’s surprise factor. You could get away with crappy quality video as long as the personalization tied in seamlessly.

The most important part of any variable video campaign is it’s final conversion screen. This is where you encourage personalizing the video for someone else. Someone the user believes will find the video entertaining. People love seeing their name in lights and now everyone can be part of the internet video phenomenon.

Contact Magicomm to learn more about variable video.

About two weeks back I posted a survey “Why do you or don’t you use Twitter?”. It was interesting to see how people responded.

Why Plaxo users Tweet

(Percents represent the percentage of Plaxo users who do use Twitter)

Why Plaxo users don’t Tweet

(Percents represent the percentage of Plaxo users who do not use Twitter)

The main idea being Twitter is a great resource to network and learn new things.

You can continue this comment stream here as well as post links back to your own Twitter accounts.

Comments

I’m surprised by the lack of Twitter users on Plaxo

http://www.twitter.com/spazcer
Me

I am one: http://twitter.com/godsent247

http://twitter.com/godsent247
Bogdan Wrzesinski

I have to add to my vote (I voted: Yes, to learn new things) – to learn new things about what’s happening with my friends, to learn new things by meeting new people and to find the occassioanl, amazing link.

http://www.twitter.com/chgroup
Sabine Pyrchalla

I’m glad to see the results evened out a little. I agree with you Sabine, i tend to use it less for marketing and more for learning and meeting new people.

http://www.twitter.com/spazcer
Me

Jon,

I think Twitter is one of those sites that you “get” as you use it…if you don’t use it, don’t connect/follow others…you probably don’t see what the big deal is. So only by using will you find the benefits.

And if you don’t use it….well, you get the picture….

http://www.twitter.com/chgroup
Sabine Pyrchalla

Sabine, that’s exactly what I did. I actually stumbled across this site:http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2008/01/internet-marketing-experts-twitter.html and began following a few of them. Ultimately I have learned a lot through Twitter and now my following grows pretty regularly as i continue to use it.

http://www.twitter.com/spazcer
Me

Twitter is fun. I especially like twittervision in 3D

www.twitter.com/CosmicHog
Mitch Aase

Jon,

Seriously don’t know that much about it … can you provide some definition of its dynamics.

Vernon Collins

I collected what I thought were some of the best resources across the web concerning Twitter here: Twitter 101

Here is a good article from MarketingProfs

Lastly I would just say that Twitter is a blogging service with many tools to help you access and update easily and because of the restricted number of characters you are allowed to post it is easy to scan and takes very little time.

http://www.twitter.com/spazcer
Me

Twitter is known as a “micro-blogging” service. I have also explained it to others as a “platform independent text message service” — anyone can use that, I’ve not trade marked it yet

That said, i think 90% of the twits on twitter are pointless, useless drivel and nothing but a waste of time.

Twitter makes it easier for no-bodies to feel self-important since they have “followers” and suddenly feel like everyone gives a hoot about what they ate for breakfast and how many emails they answered.

Worse is you never can tell just who will be a waste until you follow them – and then be prepared to be suprised.

Oh, yea, Im on twitter, you can follow me at http://twitter.com/mediamanx

I promise not to bore followers with the mundane and bombard them with the minutae of living.

http://twitter.com/mediamanx
Allan Sabo

Allan,

I believe its all relative to what you want to take out of using Twitter. I personally enjoy the mix of useless drivel and interesting tweets that make up my friends feeds. However I was very careful to only follow people within web development and marketing for a long time. I’ve only just recently begun looking for local Twitterers.

I also think you can tell who is going to be a waste of time by just looking over that persons tweets before you follow them, then, you can always unfollow them later.

That said, I am now following you on Twitter. Please do not bore me.

http://www.twitter.com/spazcer
Me

lol. thanks Jon.

http://twitter.com/mediamanx
Allan Sabo

Jim Turner made me curious about Twitter and so I am very slowly learning about it and what people are doing with it. Thanks for the 101 on it, every little bit of information helps my brain!

It fascinates me how you can twit-twit there and it can turn up at Plaxo….well, my Plaxo thingy doesn’t tell me what everyone else ’s status of what they are too anymore (usually on the right hand column) is anymore…puzzling….have they changed it again?

Marie-Dominique D

Plaxo should show all of your friends tweets that are both on Plaxo and Twitter. If you tweets aren’t showing up in your status, check your Profile Settings to sync it with Twitter. I have noticed tho that sometimes Plaxo will miss a tweet or two when updating my status but always catches it eventually to put in the pulse.

http://www.twitter.com/spazcer
Me

I can see my status thingy even with my tweets but not anyone else’s anymore…. is this what you all are experiencing too?

Marie-Dominique D

Plaxo seems somewhat slow on occassion when it comes to updating Tweets….

http://www.twitter.com/chgroup
Sabine Pyrchalla

Oh ya they changed that…. i kinda liked it the old way, when you could see everyones status on the right.

http://www.twitter.com/spazcer
Me

I am glad I am not the only one whose page has changed! How do we tell them (Plaxo) to change it back to the way it was when you could see everyone’s status?

Marie-Dominique D

Marie,

Hate to say this – but I dont’ think it’ll happen until ‘quite a few’ of us request a change…because until that happens…Plaxo will be convinced that it was a change for the better.

http://www.twitter.com/chgroup
Sabine Pyrchalla

Mini Blogging or Digital stalking – I started using Twitter at SXSW 2007 to connect with new friends to find our where the next party is. And while its a great too for conferences and festivals and finding out whats hot right then. But I am using it more and more to learn about what the latest cutting edge trends in marketing and technology are.

http://twitter.com/marcdole
Marc Dole

I use twitter for story ideas for The Responsible Marketing Blog (http://responsiblemarketing.com). It’s actually now my favorite applications.

http://twitter.com/patrickbyers

Patrick Byers

As much as I LOVE Twitter right now, I cant wait for when its a little more reliable. However at the same time, 98.72% uptime is not bad at all in the grand scheme of things. But all that said, anyone in here use FriendFeed as an alternative when Twitter is down?

http://www.twitter.com/spazcer
Me

Hi Jon….can you explain what is FriendFeed?

Marie-Dominique D

FriendFeed is a social media aggregator that brings all of your social media posts(digg, twitter, blogs, flickr, etc) into one stream. You can also post directly to FriendFeed. So kind of like Plaxo, except it has more sites you can add to your stream.

http://www.twitter.com/spazcer
Me

Thanks for that, Jon.

So it would be like if I posted something on my Plaxo status and it also turned up on Tweeter and anything else anyone happens to have as well?

The simplest way I can visualize it would maybe be FriendFeed is like a cow’s udder, where the milk (post or writing) goes to the teats (this cow has more than four) where one teat is Twitter, another is Plaxo, another is digg, etc?

Marie-Dominique D

I was awarded ‘comment of the day’ on another site for this description…

“Twitter reminds me of deranged broken monologues, typically held in front of a medicine cabinet mirror while fumbling aimlessly for the brain medication.”

But I’m still Twittering and love it!

Steve Nimmons

Thats the explanation for people who already know what Twitter is, and enjoy spending hours in front of that medicine cabinet mirror.

http://www.twitter.com/spazcer

Me

I don’t know about every one else but I started using twitter but didn’t know too many friends who used it and i just kind of got bored adding updates that know one else would see. I also find that I just don’t have the time for so many Social Media sites. I use facebook for my social life, Plaxo and Linkedin for business related contacts and groups, I use MSN messenger, Gmail chat, Skype, Myspace sometimes, and then I have to work! I also use delicious and try to read as much as I can online, so I just don’t have time to put updates on twitter – unless I want to be chained to my computer 24/7 and get divorced

Simon Burgess

Simon,

If you did really want to give it a shot, go to http://twitterpacks.pbwiki.com/ and you can find some like minded individuals who would be glad to follow you back.

Then download something like http://www.naan.net/trac/wiki/TwitterFox or http://www.twhirl.org/ to streamline your twitter experience. Using TwitterFox i never really have to stop working as i can scan quickly and reply even faster.

http://www.twitter.com/spazcer
Me

Thanks. I’ll try it out but I think it’s interesting from a marketing perspective in that which social media site or network do you go with to reach your target audience? Do you try to cover them all? Is there going to be a fall out from social media when people just get overloaded with options? I gues that these sites need to keep adding new applications that make using them attractive again – I found that I just stopped using facebook for a good few months until they added the instant messaging system. Now, because I can instant message any of my contacts who have it set up I’m on it all the time. Interestingly (and I am in ad sales so I do try and interact with advertising) I have never ever interacted with any advertising on Facebook. I find it banal and completely untargetted and irrelevant to me. They really need to sort that out because it could be such a money spinner

Simon Burgess

I agree that facebooks ads seem to be untargetted still however I wouldnt rule them out for ads. Facebook is now one of the most used websites in the world … it competes with Google for pageviews daily. I think once they get their act together it would be a great advertising medium (thats not to say it isnt already).

Social media sites are already becoming centralized through services like FriendFeed and even Plaxo, and you’ll continue to see this centralization over the next couple of months. That said, don’t rule out any social media network if it seems to contribute some kind of value.

http://www.twitter.com/spazcer

Me

My website www.solutionsabroad.com is aimed at expats looking at moving to Mexico and having relaunched recently we are in the process of developing a social network in our own small way with a community finder where you can find and link with other like minded expats. I certainly believe that social networking is THE major development since search in terms of what it means for marketers/advertisers. Facebook is an amazing opportunity for advertisers, I just hope that (as a user) they start improving their targetting soon

Simon Burgess

Simon, good question. Thats where being part of a group like twitter or plaxo can help. You can ask people which social nets they have tried to get impressions of quality of audience.

Then, next step, join and lurk / observe. Poke around the groups, look at profiles, in all, investing 1 hour to evaluate is a good start – remember, keep an excel spreadsheet with your notes, user names, paswords etc (I also use roboform to rememebr passwords for me).

Belonging to up to 4 should be enough, more than that becomes difficult to manage without an aggregator – there are some early attempts to create profile aggregators but the jury is still out, but the good news is that soon, someone will get it right and make it possible to join and participate in many more.

But, your social media strategy should not stop there, it should also include other tools and services such as bookmarking, commenting, and articles

www.twitter.com/mediamanx

Allan Sabo

Twitter opened new horizons, make me meet new people, from new friendships and got me my new job. Good enough reasons to be on it I think?

Marloes Lammers

It may appear to be a waste of time, and can certainly become one. However, if/when used properly it can create new connections that lead to profitable relationships. After 1 month, I had created over 200 followers and created a number of valuable connections. Click on the “FOLLOW” beneath my photo on the Twitter link below and see what happens!

www.twitter.com/markgilbert
Mark Gilbert

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve had the privilege of working on a cross media marketing campaign for Canon Europe. In true ‘I can do anything’ fashion, we at Magicomm decided to throw everything we had into it. The campaign is going to be showcased in the Canon booth at Drupa.

I’m not only excited about this campaign because of the client, but what we did in the campaign itself. It’s basically your standard PURL, kinda like the one we did for Magicomm, however we’ve simplified and viralized the whole microsite. I’ve been talking alot about interactive video in the past couple weeks and the potential it has as a marketing medium. Now I finally get to put my theory to the test as the last page of the PURL features its very own interactive/personalized video.

The PURL will go live in Drupa mid next week and we’ll have it live for the public a couple days after that. Be sure to check back to see how the campaign is doing as well as learn a little more about how effective it actually was.

I talked awhile back about personalized video and how it could be (is) the next big marketing medium. The benefits of personalized video are obvious, you’ll get better quality personal information and it is very viral.

The key here is personalization and interactivity. The internet took a turn a few years back with the rise of social and interactive networks. From that point on, the user was given control, and thats the way it going to be from now on. I showed in my previous post how successful personalized video is and now, I want to show you how easy it is to pull off.

Here are two videos i made when first experimenting with how flash could be used to manipulate video:

The best part is that i made each of those videos in under 15 minutes.

All you need to do it upload your video in flash:

1) File -> Import -> Import Video

(Note: I had to rerecord my video as a wmv because i could not get avi to work properly)

2) Then choose:

“Embed video in SWF and play in timeline” is what allows you to manipulate movieclips on top of your video. Now what you could do with this is map certain items to sync with the video and possibly even change those items at run time. You could insert personalized images, text, etc.

As more and more people look for the “easy solution to making money”, they find themselves exploiting affiliate links on their favorite social networking sites. Unfortunately these social networking sites are also yours and my favorite social networking sites. It’s sad to see the fruit of the web rotting in front of my eyes and, unfortunately, there is little I can do about it. CAN-SPAMM laws only protect us from e-mail spam (or try to), but will there be a move to protect your favorite social media site? One can only hope. If the educational fiber of sites like Plaxo, Facebook, etc gets permanently tarnished to the point where you can’t weed out the legitimate from illegitimate posts, then i might have to resort back to books :0 (god forbid).

What kills me is that affiliate marketers that exploit social networks don’t believe they are spammers. Well, I would let that slide if I wasn’t getting links shoved in my face for “Air Conditioners” inside a “Help Zimbabwe” group. Others try and say that the community “will benefit from these products”. Well, honestly, I think the marketer is the only one that benefits from these products and I guarantee you I could find a cheaper, better quality product than whatever your getting paid to promote.

So please keep your spam *cough* I mean affiliate links on your own websites and out of my networks. And, to all of the innocent, none the wiser, social media participants who DO want to purify they’re network groups, don’t be afraid to speak up.

*Note: For all the Plaxo members who have fallen victim to these links all you need to do is click the ‘hide’ button under the users link which you believe to be spam. Hopefully over time the spam will go down and we can clean up our community.

Below is a list of all the social networks I use and what I think about them. At the end I will list my personal favorites and i invite you all to publish links to your own profiles below.

Ziki.com – I like this because it gives me free personal advertising. I think they spend like 10 bucks a month per person. Free being my favorite part

Twitter - This one is cool because by following certain people i keep up to date on trends in the marketplace

BlogCatalog - I use for getting people to both my blog and my company’s blog. Its also a cool place to meet other bloggers,

Digg - I use as my general news service and i follow 1 friend at the moment, hopefully more will develop

LinkedIn - A great professional network. Bad thing about it is there are not alot of communication opportunities between networkers besides a Q&A section

YouTube - Video Uploading site. Could be great for viral marketing but theres so much competition out there its hard

Jyte - Fun community full of free thinking OpenID enabled humans where you make claims about things. Not so good for advertising i guess but i think its addicting

gooruze.com – This site is good for Internet Marketers looking to give back to the community and actually learn. The site is spam free and I would appreciate it if it stayed that way :)

Wink – this is an interesting site in that it collects all of your social networking profiles into one page and users can search a master database to find all of your pages.

ning - here you can create your own social networks. this could be great for establishing your brand or company is leaders within your industry if you can develop a large enough following.

Facebook - one of the first biggens. It started off for colleges and now can be used by anyone.

Myspace – other than friendster this was probably the first biggen. In my opinion it is too loaded with spam.

MyBlogLog - youll see the widget for this site on a lot of blogs. This site is very similar to BlogCatalog however i don’t think it has as much activity

Orkut - Google’s version of a social network

FriendFeed - this site brings all of your feeds across multiple networks together.

Plaxo - This is an excellent resource to network and share. The site allows you to share links, messages, pics and more. It also displays all of your feeds as a “pulse”.

* My favorites are currently gooruze.com, plaxo, and twitter.

Please comment and add your own favorite networks and/or your profile links

So this site looks interesting. Its a niche specific social networking site where people can ask questions and provide answers to other users posts. If all works accordingly this could be a very resourceful community. If anyone else is one here please check me out at jonbish.gooruze.com.

Google Maps is one of the most widely used online direction services on the web. That being said, have you checked your company’s listing on Google maps recently. In Google Maps’ Local Business Center you can manage your company’s address, services, image and much more. It also boosted my company’s site up on the local listings. It did take 2 weeks to verify the changes but it was definitely worth it.

So its no news that a personalized landing page as a response portal to any kind of direct marketing campaign can increase response rates dramatically, but where’s the next step up?

Well it seems as if there are multiple cross-media technologies emerging from the web to help engage, interact and even entertain the user, therefor increasing conversions. People have seen XMPie and other related products do cool things with people’s names and putting them in the picture. But what if the user could change their name at runtime. Furthermore what if the users name wasn’t in a picture, but in a short movie. This is the future of PURLs as a response portal and will be a hit in the social media world. Already I was pointed to a website for a TV Show on FX and I was amazed at what they had done. Here is a PURL someone made for me. I like everything about it, from the page looking like a blog to my name being inserted into the movie.

Now here’s something my own company put together. Basically I wanted the user to be able to interact with the flash movie in real time from outside of the movie itself via the web-form. Using javascript, I was able to insert the users name into the newspaper at runtime and its had an amazing response. People need a break from their every day activities and these fun side trackers give them this opportunity, so both the user and the company win.

So I’ll say it now and say it loud. Get Interactive, Engage your Audience and become successful.