http://www.mzinga.com/a/pdf/mzingawp-socialmedia_marketers.pdf Blogs provide a mechanism for members to share their thoughts and ideas while also  following the blogs of experts and thought leaders.  The conversational nature and flexibility  of blogs make them ideal for communicating with your customers and prospects, while also  allowing them a channel to provide feedback to you via commenting.     Discussion forums – Forums enable sharing of multiple perspectives on specific topics,  better connecting members both in terms of ideas and personal relationships.  Helping  foster tighter personal relationships means greater participation and engagement.  Forums  are also the “grandfather of social media,” having been in use for decades, and provide a  familiar jumping off point for many new members Video and audio sharing – If forums are the grandfather of social media, then podcasts and  video are the “new kids on the block.”  They provide a compelling alternative to text‐based  content and can add a new dimension to your community initiative.  They do, however,  require an additional level of oversight and moderation.  Adding audio and video content  can be a critical component to some marketing community initiatives.    Idea management – This application gives your customers and prospects a voice in your  innovation process.  With simple idea creation, total transparency, and straightforward  voting mechanisms, idea management streamlines innovation and gives you immediate  feedback on your initiatives.      Social profiles – Social profiles provide a way for members to connect socially as well as  professionally, enabling new members to locate expertise within the community. Social  profiles also provide visibility into member challenges, giving your company insights into  potential pitfalls and opportunities before they arise.  As with Facebook, advanced social  profiles allow members to post on each other’s “walls,” update their status, and chat with  one another, creating a more cohesive and personal community experience.     Ratings and rankings – Ratings and rankings are designed to enable members to provide  feedback to other members within the community.  It’s also useful to have member rankings  (and status) corresponding to each member’s level of activity in the community, creating a  hierarchy of membership based on the criteria that’s important to the sponsoring company.     Shared file repository – It’s often necessary to share product documentation and other files  in online communities.  The shared file repository is built to support this requirement. The  file library is critical for communities built to support discrete events where presentations,  transcripts, and documentation are an important component of success.    Event chat – This application is designed to provide a way for community members to ask  questions and receive answers from an industry expert or luminary.  The event chat provides  multiple layers of filters and reviews to manage the high volume of questions that typically  flow in during live events.  Event chat is also a fantastic way to gauge member  interest/sentiment around a certain topic.   

Blog Marketing Innovative Techniques to grow your business! http://www.majesticsocialmedia.com Natalie Guse

That’s our GOAL! You will learn… …to understand social media! …to set up your own blog! …that content is the key! …to market your blog online! You can do it! That’s our GOAL!

Role of Blogs in Social Media Blog Marketing Process! How to blog! Social Media Marketing How to promote your blog! Summary! Content

The Big Deal over Social Media Marketing Marketing Natalie Guse More than 133,000,000 blogs have been indexed by Technorati since 2002 and around 77% of Internet users read blogs according to Universal McCann

The Big Deal over Social Media Marketing Marketing Natalie Guse The Role of Blogs in Social Media!

“Blog” is short for “weblog,” a term coined by Jorn Bargerin 1997 and popularized by Cameron Barrettin 1999. In 1999, a company called “Pyra” released “Blogger,” a service that let anyone publish a blog for free by typing in a box in their web browser. As of April 2008, Technorati, a major blog monitoring service, claimed to be tracking more than 120 000 million blogs.

Social media marketing is a term that describes use of social networks, online communities, blogs, wikis or any other online collaborative media for marketing, sales, public relations and customer service. Common social media marketing tools include Twitter, blogs, LinkedIn, Facebook, Flickr and YouTube. In the context of Internet marketing, social media refers to a collective group of web properties whose content is primarily published by users, not direct employees of the property. Social Media Marketing…

Common Social Media Applications

Study on growth of Social media – 75% of Internet users involved in Social Media. Social Media Marketing…

10 Internet Users by Continent Social Media Marketing…

11 Two-thirds are male 60% are 18-44 75% have college degrees 40% have graduate degrees One in three has an annual household income of $75K+ One in four has an annual household income of $100K Professional and self-employed bloggers are more affluent: nearly half have an annual household income of $75,000 and one third topped the $100,000 level More than half are married Blog Statistics

12 More than half are parents Half are employed full time, however ¾ of professional bloggers are employed full time. Around half of bloggers are working on at least their second blog, and 68% have been blogging for two years or more 86% have been blogging for at least a year Blog Statistics

13 Motivation of Bloggers 71% say they blog at least in part in order to speak their minds. 72% say they blog in order to share their expertise. 61% say they blog in order to supplement their income. 53% of professional bloggers are interested in attracting new clients from blogging. 72% of those who are self-employed and blogging are interested in attracting new clients. 19% are concerned that their employers might disapprove of their views on their blog. For most bloggers (81%), even if the economic downturn has disrupted lifestyles or lives it has not changed the kind of topics or themes they write about. 63% of respondents say that blogging has led them to become more involved with things they’re passionate about as a result of blogging.

14 Motivation of Bloggers Respondents report that blogging has had chiefly positive impacts on their personal lives; just 6% say that relationships with friends or family members have suffered as a result of blogging. 42% have become friends with someone they’ve met in person through their blog. 15% say that they have more executive visibility within their company as a result of blogging. 57% say that their future plans include blogging even more (including 74% of 18-24 year olds). 35% – including 43% of part-timers – plan to one day publish a book. Part-Timers, Pros, and Self-Employeds are blogging as much as or more than ever (73%, 76% and 80%, respectively), while Hobbyists are blogging somewhat

The Big Deal over Social Media Marketing Marketing Natalie Guse Social Media and Blog Marketing Process!

A blog (a contraction of the term "web log")[is a type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. "Blog" can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog. Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, Web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs.

Social Media Marketing CISS Formula

YOU Interact with costumers! Communicate! Socialize! Share!

C I S S Communicate w/ customers Stay in contact E-Conferences E-Interviews Communicate Interact Socialize Share Build own networks Invite your contacts Interact with costumers Example: NING, MEETUP Create public profiles Stay in contact Example: LINKEDIN, XING, FACEBOOK Promote Infomercial Promote Business Publish press releases Example: YOUTUBE

www.slideshare.net www.myplick.com www.authorstream.com www.slideboom.com Publish www.reddit.com www.free-press-release.com www.prlog.com www.articlesbase.com Promote/Market Google adwords Google maps www.superpages.com www.yellowpages.com www.hotfrog.com Publish

Publish Promote/Market Publish www.youtube.com www.vimeo.com http://www.ustream.tv/ Website Integration Blog Integration www.wordpress.com www.blogger.com www.mybloglog.com www.technorati.com www.global-free-classified-ads.com www.craigslist.org www.hoobly.com www.backpage.com

Be organized!

The Big Deal over Social Media Marketing Marketing Natalie Guse SWOT and Target Market Analysis!

Weaknesses Strength Threats + Opportunities Strategic Planning Goals Vision Mission Operative Planning TARGET MARKET! TARGET MARKET! Content Design Promotion

Weaknesses Strength Weaknesses Strength Motivation of Bloggers

Products Target Market Young professional Students Working Moms The Beauty conscious Trend-setters The Health conscious Opinion Leaders Elderly People Families Business People Social Media Target Market Analysis

Directories Blogging Social Media Sites Communicate Interact Share Families Socialize Young professionals + Students Business People Trend-setters The Beauty focused The Health focused The Health focused Working Moms Elderly People Opinion Leaders Social Media Strategy Matrix

Products Target Market Social Media Target Market Analysis Demographics (Age, Household Size, Income, etc.) Lifestyle (health focused, beauty, family oriented, etc.)

Goals The major outcome of strategic road-mapping and strategic planning, after gathering all necessary information, is the setting of goals for the organization based on its vision and mission statement. A goal is a long-range aim for a specific period. It must be specific and realistic. Long-range goals set through strategic planning are translated into activities that will ensure reaching the goal through operational planning.

Corporate Vision Corporate vision is a short, succinct, and inspiring statement of what the organization intends to become and to achieve at some point in the future, often stated in competitive terms. Vision refers to the category of intentions that are broad, all-inclusive and forward-thinking.  It is the image that a business must have of its goals before it sets out to reach them. It describes aspirations for the future, without specifying the means that will be used to achieve those desired ends. This image, which we call a vision, may be as vague as a dream or as precise as a goal or a mission statement."

Mission Statement A mission statement is an organization's vision translated into written form. It makes concrete the leader's view of the direction and purpose of the organization. For many corporate leaders it is a vital element in any attempt to motivate employees and to give them a sense of priorities. A mission statement should be a short and concise statement of goals and priorities. In turn, goals are specific objectives that relate to specific time periods and are stated in terms of facts. The primary goal of any business is to increase stakeholder value. The most important stakeholders are shareholders who own the business, employees who work for the business, and clients or customers who purchase products and/or services from the business.

The ultimate outcome of your blog. What’s the reason your blog exist? Are you building a list, get prospects for your consulting practice, or build loyal followers and traffic to increase the value of the virtual real estate of your blog? The needs of your audience. Most of us guess, but rarely we are correct about it. You can gain insights into this by walking in their shoes, researching on public forums or asking them. Meet the needs with the outcome. This allows you to target the right audience while reaching your purpose at the same time. Content Planning

Brainstorm: Come up with 3 topics that your potential customers would be interested in. How to get 1,000 Twitter Followers in a week! How much time do I have to spend on my Social Media Profiles! How to make money with my blog! Content Planning

Brainstorm: Create a content plan and try to update your blog weekly. Topics can be related to the seasons! (summer, winter (wellness, health, restaurants) Topics can be related to holidays! (labor day – places to stay, to see, etc.) Topics can point out the benefits of your products or services! Topics can point out the importance of your products or services! Make Your Blog Interesting!

The Big Deal over Social Media Marketing Marketing Natalie Guse Set up a blog!

WordPress started in 2003 with a single bit of code to enhance the typography of everyday writing and with fewer users than you can count on your fingers and toes. Since then it has grown to be the largest self-hosted blogging tool in the world, used on millions of sites and seen by tens of millions of people every day. Everything you see here, from the documentation to the code itself, was created by and for the community. WordPress is an Open Source project, which means there are hundreds of people all over the world working on it. What: Blogging Site Year: Launched 2003 Unique Visitors: 28,048,281 Visitors: 65,278, 721 Annual growth:+29

Blogger is a free blog publishing tool from Google for easily sharing your thoughts. A blog is a personal diary. A daily pulpit. A collaborative space. A political soapbox. A breaking-news outlet. A collection of links. Your own private thoughts. Memos to the world. Your blog is whatever you want it to be. There are millions of them, in all shapes and sizes, and there are no real rules. Blogger was started by a tiny company in San Francisco called Pyra Labs in August of 1999. This was in the midst of the dot-com boom. What: Blogging Site Year: Launched 1999 Unique Visitors: 31,699,703 Visitors: 6,344,571 Annual growth:+31

Xanga is a website that hosts weblogs, photoblogs, and social networking profiles. It is operated by Xanga.com, Inc., based in New York City. Xanga's origins can be traced back to 1999, when it began as a site for sharing book and music reviews. It now has an estimated 40 million users worldwide. As of May 24, 2008, Alexa Internet ranked Xanga as the 231st most visited site on the Internet. All Xanga members receive a "Xanga Site", a web site made up of a weblog, a photoblog, a videoblog, an audioblog, a "Pulse" (mini-blog), and a social networking profile. Members also have the option of joining or making blogrings (groups) What: Blogging Site Year: Launched 1999 Unique Visitors: 4,029,165 Visitors: 26,248 Annual growth:-16

You probably know a ton about your favorite bloggers - what they think about the subjects they write about, maybe some of their work and life history... you may even know what toothpaste they use. But how much do you know about all the other people who read their blogs? For all this talk of a global conversation throughout the blogosphere, there's a lot to be desired. Readers can become friends with other people who read your favorite blogs. See what else they're reading. Check out their MySpace and Friendster profiles and view their Flickr photostreams. Authors can learn more about their readers individually and as a group. What do they like and what are they ignoring? Mybloglog.com Category: Blogging Site Primary Value: Strong profile ranking User: 1.300.000 visitors Set up blog Promote blog Write articles Inform about the product Use it as a second webpage Connect all your sites to mybloglog Information Description Use/Benefit

Where Content is King… Blogging is all about…. Content Delivery – putting it out there Content Visibility – letting some people see it Content Virality – broadcasting it to EVERYONE!

How to blog! ?

Update frequently – Look, nothing is worse than having a great blog and then abandoning it. You lose momentum, any buzz you might have generated and most importantly, you lose readers. Its not easy (and to be honest I need to follow this rule more often) but a lame post every now and then is much easier to recover from than going two months without posting.

Link to your social media profiles, integrate your facebook, twitter and linkedin profiles. Also add your blog to your linkedin, twitter or facebook profile.

Be controversial – There’s nothing like a little controversy to help promote your site. Take a stand on a controversial issue, and then write intelligently about it. People who agree with you will link to you to in support of their arguments, and people who disagree with you will link to you as they attack your position. Just remember not to take disagreements too personally.

Include images – We live in a society of over stimulation. We’ve got flashing billboards, instant information at our fingertips, and about 15 different forms of media on our phones. So, if you can break up your posts with a picture or two, you might be able to retain those of us with shorter than average attention spa…

Link to other sites – This one is pretty simple, the more you link to other blogs or sites, the more likely they will be to link back to you.

Be original and make unsexy topics sexy – As we talked about in point 2, there are a ton of blogs out there. Don’t just rehash the same stuff that every other blog in your area is talking about. If there is a major news story, don’t just post the news; post your take on it. Take a different angle. Do something to set yourself apart from the mass of other blogs. Be original.

Grab them with the headline – Just like a newspaper, the headlines are critical. If it’s interesting, people will check out your post. If it’s not, they’ll ignore it. It’s as simple as that. And, just like in newspapers, there are some words and phrases that are attention grabbers. “Top 10…”, “How To…”, “Warning:”, or any other alarming words work great in headlines.

Tell people – So you’ve got a great blog post. Now what? The last rule for blogging is to tell people about it. Mention it to your friends and family, ping sites such as pingomatic.com, and submit it to social sites such as digg.com, reddit.com, fark.com, or any other appropriate site. Sure it’s a bit of self promotion but if you wait around for someone else to do it for you, you’ll probably end up blogging to yourself.

The Big Deal over Social Media Marketing Marketing Natalie Guse Promote a blog!

Yahoo News & Blog Search Sorted by relevance. Only top 4 get onto News SERPs Google Blog Search Sorted by relevance. No way to submit. Only a matter of time before it ends up in the “One Box” Technorati Sorted by date. Tagged posts featured in sidebar. Feedster Sorted by date. PubSub No immediate SERPs. Delivered only in RSS. Optimizing for Blogs and Search Engines

What is Technorati? Technorati is a real-time search engine dedicated to the blogosphere. It only searches through blogs to find exactly what you're looking for. At the time of this writing, Technorati was tracking over 22 million sites and over a billion links, a mind-boggling amount. Technorati.com Category: Blogging Directory Primary Value: Strong profile ranking Promote your blog Information Description Use/Benefit

Technorati.com Rank #15 2,861,683 Unique Visitors 4,379,508 Visitors Annual Growth of -16.16% Founded by Dave Sifry Launched in November 2002 Blog Search Engine Technorati is an Internet search engine for searching blogs. By June 2008, Technorati indexes 112.8 million blogs and over 250 million pieces of tagged social media.The name Technorati is a portmanteau of the words technology and literati, which invokes the notion of technological intelligence or intellectualism.

Bloglines is a FREE online service for searching, subscribing, creating and sharing news feeds, blogs and rich web content. With Bloglines, there is no software to download or install -- simply register as a new user and you can instantly begin accessing your account any time, from any computer or mobile device. And it's FREE! Bloglines is a window to a whole new world of dynamic content that is being created and distributed over the new "live" web. You can make your own personalized news page tailored to your unique interests from our index of tens of millions of live internet content feeds, including articles, blogs, images and audio. Bloglines.com Category: Blogging Directory Primary Value: Strong profile ranking Visits: 2.417.000 visits Promote your blog Information Description Use/Benefit

Blog Catalog is the premiere social blog directory on the internet. Search, Browse, Rate and Review thousands of blog sites. Blogcatalog.com Category: Blogging Directory Primary Value: Strong profile ranking Visits: 3,558,000 Promote your blog Information Description Use/Benefit

Optimizing for Blogs and Search Engines

Blog Marketing Innovative Techniques to grow your business! http://www.majesticsocialmedia.com Natalie Guse