Every day I get about 50 emails from people who try to get me to partner with them, use their services or hire them. I’ve been in business for 10 years and I’ve probably replied to maybe 1% of these emails. Last week, when one of my employees asked me how she could approach potential joint venture partners for a project she’s working on, I started thinking about the thousands of people who tried to approach me with offers and the 1% of them whom I actually took the time to reply to.

I realized that there were three things that the top 1% did that the other 99% didn’t.

Customize Your Message
Only 1% of the people who approach others with offers actually takes the time to know the people they’re writing to. They copy and paste the same email to hundreds of people. This is called spam and doesn’t work. Sure, if you send a million emails, someone will reply, but I can guarantee that the busiest folks won’t waste their time and those are the ones you want to work with.

In my case, if someone takes two minutes to read one of my blog posts and says something smart about it, he’ll be 90% in. Too bad most spammers prefer not to waste their valuable time on getting to know the rest of us a little better.

Give Something
The 99% group sent me emails asking me for something; the 1% group offered to give me something. Sure enough, after they offered to give me something, I ended up giving them a lot more in return. I just love working with people who think about how they could help me before thinking how I can help them.

Be Different
Five years ago I got a FedEx package with a letter that started like this: “I’m writing this letter to tell you why you DON’T want to work with me”. Wow, that really caught my attention. The reasons in the letter were along the lines of “I don’t follow some directions very well. If you ask me to stop working, I won’t be able to. It’s in me to keep working until my clients are happy. If this is a problem, PLEASE don’t hire me.” It was funny and different. It worked.

Monitoring brands and key words is one of the most effective ways to market a business. In this article I’ll explain:

1. What is keyword monitoring.
2. What keywords you should track.
3. How to monitor keywords.
4. How to use the information you get to market your company.

What Is Keyword Monitoring?
Basically, you use software that will alert you when people mention a particular keyword on blogs, websites, Twitter, forums, videos, etc. Whether you like it or not, people are talking about you out there. They’re saying both good and bad things about your company. You can pretend that they don’t exist, but the fact is that they do, and a lot of people are listening to them, so it’s up to you whether to step in and be part of the conversation.

What Keywords Should You Track?

• Your company name and all its variations.
• Your URL (yoursite.com).
• Your name and the name of the top executives of your company.
• Some key phrases for your industry. For example, if you have a Star Wars t-shirt e-store, you might want to track “Star Wars”, “Luke Skywalker” and other related keywords.
• Your competitors’ brands and URLs.

How to Monitor Keywords
In most cases, I use three different tools.

1. Google Alerts
   
2. SocialMention
   
3. TweetDeck
   

What To Do with the Information You Get
Here’s where the tools can’t help you. You’ll have to use your brain and social skills for this part of the process. I’ll give you some creative examples on how you can use the information you get.

• When someone says something nice about your company, thank them and ask them if you can use their statement as a testimonial on your site.
• When someone says something nasty about you, apologize publicly, fix the screw up and let them know it’s fixed. If they’re happy with how you handled the situation, ask them if they don’t mind sharing the good news on Twitter (or wherever they posted the nasty comment). Remember: it’s not just about that one customer; everybody else is watching you.
• When they say they wish your product did this or had this other feature, write the comment down. If a lot of people agree that your product needs a new feature, develop it and let your followers know when it’s ready. Even better, thank them for giving you their idea and invite them to try your new feature for free.
• If you sell Star Wars t-shirts and someone asks “do you know where can I get Star Wars t-shirts?”, suggest your site along with two other good ones. Remember it’s about providing value, not shameless self-promotion.
• When people mention how much they like one of your competitors, make a note of that. Do the same thing when they say why they hate them. The more you understand what your audience likes and what it doesn’t, the better you can take care of your own customers.

Start Networking When You Don’t Need To
Most people start networking when they need something. This is the worst time because you’ll tend to ask people for things, and networking is all about giving, not asking. If you don’t “need” more connections now, start working on getting some!

Use Social Media to Learn More About Your Connections
Last week I met with a prospect. Before meeting with her, I did a little research and she had posted to Twitter that her daughter was sick. When we met, I asked her if her daughter was feeling better. This only works if you really care; don’t try to fake interest. Before talking to someone, check their Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn profiles. Have you found photos of their last vacations, a blog post they shared or a video they liked? All those things will give you topics to talk about.

When Possible, Get Introduced by a Common Connection
In his book Never Eat Alone, Keith Ferrazzi talks about “warm calls” and explains why they’re so much better than cold calls. Basically, in a warm call, you ask someone you know to introduce you to the person you want to meet. Both Facebook and LinkedIn show you the connections that you and someone else have in common. Ask these people to introduce you to the person you want to network with. Who Follows Whom is a Twitter tool that shows you the followers that you and someone else have in common. I use it all the time.

Use the “Six Degrees of Separation” Concept to Your Advantage
This concept says that you and any other person in the world are separated by no more than six connections. For example, let’s say you want to connect with Mick Jagger. You email all your friends and ask them who’s a Rolling Stones fan. You find a few fans and you ask them if they are active members of a fan club. Two of them are. You ask them to introduce you to the president of the fan club, who happens to be in touch with the agent who represents Mick Jagger and she can connect him and you.

Of course, you need to give these people a very good reason to connect you with the next link in the chain, but assuming you do have a great reason, approaching Mick Jagger this way is a lot more effective than writing him a letter out of the blue.

Follow Up After the Initial Contact
Right after you meet someone, email or call them with your contact information again and thank them for meeting with you. At most networking events, people meet a lot of new people so this is a great way of being remembered.

Talk to Strangers
As human beings, we always do a lot of profiling. We decide whether a person will help us or not even before talking to them. The truth is that most of my valuable contacts were people I never thought I could work with and I never really connected with some folks who seemed like the perfect match. Keep your mind open and don’t discard opportunities too soon.

Use the Internet to Find Networking Opportunities
There are three website I constantly use to meet people wherever I go:

• MeetUp. The largest in-person networking site in the world.
• Eventful. Find a list of networking events in your area or post your own.
• MeetingWave. One of my favorite in-person networking communities on the web.

Wibiya
This amazing toolbar allows people to follow you on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. It also allows your visitors to subscribe to your RSS feeds, share your contents, chat with other visitors, see who else is on your site and a lot more. The best part is that this toolbar can be installed in just two minutes on your site. I can’t recommend Wibiya enough.

Soocial
A great way to keep your contacts organized and always available online, no matter what computer you’re connecting from.

Google Voice
The new way of talking over the phone.

Mail Chimp
Looking for a free email marketing solution? This is it!

UserVoice
A great way to gather feedback from your customers and improve your products based on the feedback you get.

Ning
You can’t find any social networks in your small niche? Great, because then you can create your own! Ning makes it super easy.

FriendFeed
FriendFeed allows you to see feeds from all your social networks in one place.

Spokeo
Find out information about prospective employees, vendors and partners using this tool. Are you meeting with someone this week? Use Spokeo to learn more about that person.

Jott
Attention ladies and gentlemen, the future is here. Jott allows you to post to your blog, Twitter or Facebook by calling a number from your cell phone and recording a message.

Google Trends
Find out what are the hottest topics in the social media sphere at any given moment.

Do you get depressed every time you see how few Twitter followers you have? Well, don’t! There are plenty of things you can do to grow your followers base.

Before we get started, let’s make something clear: QUALITY matters more than QUANTITY. But, what if you could have a lot of qualified followers? Then you would have quality AND quantity!

Ask Your Followers to Re-Tweet Your Tweets
Teach your followers what re-tweeting is (basically, it’s the Twitter equivalent to email forwarding) and ask them to re-tweet your tweets so their followers can see them and follow you.

Add Your Twitter Link to Your Site, Blog and Email Signature
This is easy to do and will get you a lot of new followers.


Use HashTags
A HashTag is basically a keyword preceded by the pound sign. For example, people talking about Obama might include “#obama” in their tweets so other people talking about Obama can find them. On this website you can find the most popular HashTags. Using HashTags is a great way to ensure your tweets get found and people can follow you.


Be Part of the Conversation
Be active in the Twitter community. Following people isn’t enough. Share tips and cool stuff you find. Help your followers.

Follow the Authorities in Your Field
Make a list of the people in your industry you look up to. Follow them on Twitter, re-tweet their tweets and follow people who follow them. Some of them will follow you back if you’re sharing great content on the same topic.

Go Multimedia
People love photos, videos and music; include them in your tweets.

Follow People Talking About the Things You Talk About
Use the Twitter search to find people talking about your field of expertise. Follow them. Most of them will follow you back.

Are you overwhelmed by all the social media information out there? Do you need visual aid to help you wrap your mind around social media marketing and how to use it to grow your revenues?

The goal of this article is to simplify social media marketing and to show you how all the different elements in the social media world interact with each other to help you get traffic for your website, exposure for your brand and sales for your company.

1. Content
You can create a lot of different kinds of content. My advice is:

1. Use common sense to filter out the types of content that won’t make sense for your business model.
2. Try everything else.
3. Measure results.
4. Keep doing what works and get rid of everything else.

These are the most common types of content you can create:

• Articles
• Videos
• Podcasts (video or audio podcasts)
• Reports/white papers
• Expert interviews (in text format, audio format or video format)
• Resources (these are links to other people’s content, such as tools, articles, etc.)
• Events (calls, webinars, contests, seminars, giveaways, charity events, etc.)

This is a great blog post on creating killer content.

2. Your Blog
Your blog is the hub of your social media marketing campaign. That’s where you want to drive people to.

3. Content Distribution Channels
These are all the other places you’ll be posting your content to. These are some of the most common content distribution channels:

• Social networks (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.)
• Forums (a.k.a. message boards or discussion boards)
• Groups (LinkedIn groups, Facebook groups, Google groups and Yahoo! groups)
• Video sharing sites (YouTube, Google Video, Vimeo, Yahoo! Video, etc.)
• Social bookmarking sites (Digg, Delicious, Reddit, Mixx, StumbleUpon, etc.)
• Other people’s audiences (there are several ways you can do this, such as guest blogging, asking people who have big email lists to broadcast your offer to their lists, asking a blogger to write about your product, etc.)
• Article directories (such as EzineArticles, GoArticles, ArticleBase, etc.)
• Podcast sites (like iTunes, PodcastAlley, etc.)
• Email lists (blog subscribers, people that downloaded your free report, list of potential clients, current customers, etc.)
• Blogs (you can’t post your articles on someone else’s blog without their permission, but you can use comment marketing to your advantage.)

There are two things you need to keep in mind:

1. You are not going to use all the content distribution channels mentioned above. Just as with the content types, discard the obvious ones that won’t work for your campaign (such as video sharing sites if you don’t do videos), try everything else and get rid of what doesn’t work.
2. Not all your content will go to all your content distribution channels. For example, you might want to promote your white paper on your blog and on video sharing sites but not on Facebook, and you might want to promote your next webinar using only Facebook Events.

My advice is this: “create a 2-column spreadsheet. In the left column put a list of your content pieces. In the right column put your content distribution channels. Then, for every piece of content, decide what channels you’ll use to promote it.”

This is a great blog post on finding your audience online.

4. Calls to Action
Pay attention to this because it’s one of the most important parts of social media. There are two things you want to do right:

1. Get people that find your content in the distribution channels to visit your blog.
2. Get your blog visitors to follow you through as many content distribution channels as possible.

OK, let’s talk about how to make it happen.

How to Get People that Stumble Upon Your Content to Visit Your Blog
The short answer is, “with a call to action”. This call to action should be related to the piece of content they stumbled upon. For example, in your soccer bloopers video you want your call to action to be something along the lines of “Visit www.mysite.com/blog for more soccer bloopers videos!”

How to Get Your Blog Visitors to Check Out Your Other Content Distribution Channels
The more ways someone is connected with you, the higher your chances are that they’ll see your content. Someone who follows you on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook,  LinkedIn and is subscribed to your blog RSS feed is a lot more likely to see your content than someone who only follows you on Twitter. Different people prefer to follow other in different ways, so give them some options and let them choose.

On my blog I invite people to subscribe by email, RSS, follow me on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.

5. Public Relations
Not only do you want to attract the attention of potential clients; you also want to attract the attention of the press. The best way to do this? Do something newsworthy. I see so many press releases about new hires, companies giving discounts… they all look the same. You need to stand out by doing something very different. These are two great articles on creating newsworthy content:

• http://www.mediacollege.com/journalism/news/newsworthy.html
• http://www.howtodothings.com/hobbies/how-to-know-if-a-story-is-newsworthy

6. Keywords Monitoring
One of the most effective social media tactics is to monitor the top keywords in your industry so when someone mentions them you can jump in and become part of the conversation. Let’s say you sell ballet shoes, your name is Jane Wolowicz and your site is BalletShoes.com. These are the keywords I would track:

• “ballet shoes”
• “ballet flat shoes”
• “ballet shoe”
• “buy ballet shoes”
• “purchase ballet shoes”
• “ballet shoes” best brand
• “ballet shoes” where to buy
• Jane Wolowicz
• BalletShoes.com
• BuyBalletShoes.com (your top competitor)

I use two tools to track keywords: Google Alerts and SocialMention.

7. Network Development
Developing your network involves two different things:

1. Quantitative growth: getting more Facebook friends, LinkedIn connections, Twitter followers, email subscribers, etc. This helps you reach MORE people.
2. Qualitative growth: talking to your social media connections. Remember, Social Media Marketing is all about making friends. This helps you build STRONGER connections that pay MORE ATTENTION to your messages.

VERY IMPORTANT: How to Grow Your Business Using Social Media Marketing
So far, we’ve talked about how you can get thousands of visitors to your blog. Now, let’s talk about how you can monetize your traffic. I have two suggestions for you:

1. Have a soft offer and promote it heavily
   A soft call to action is something that doesn’t require people to spend money. It could be a free report, a free video series, a free trial or whatever you can offer for free. Because it’s free, you shouldn’t feel shy about promoting it. After all, you’re giving people something of great value in exchange for an email address. Once people opt-in, market your paid offer to them but don’t be too pushy; remember that they signed up for something free.
2. Have a hard offer but don’t promote it much
   A hard offer is your paid product or service. You shouldn’t promote this much. People go to your blog for content, not to buy your stuff, so don’t annoy them by showing them specials. That being said, there’s nothing wrong with having a link to your e-store or “Our Services” page in your navigation menu and/or your sidebar. If people love your content, they’ll dig around to find out what you do.

A FREE Social Media Marketing Report
Did you like this post? I wrote a FREE Social Media Marketing report that will teach you all you need to know about Social Media. Get your FREE report from here: http://www.theoutsourcingcompany.com/social-media-marketing.html (scroll down and look for the report on the right side of the page).

When people hear about posting comments to blogs to get traffic to their sites, they automatically think “hey, that’s spamming!” Well, it can be, but it doesn’t have to. If all you do is say “Great post” and put a link to your website, sure, you’re a spammer. But what if you actually provide useful resources, opinions and solutions to other people’s problems? You’ll earn their respect and you’ll be working on building your reputation and positioning yourself as a true expert in your industry.

Step 1: Find Blogs In Your Industry
Do a Google search for “[keyword] blog”. For example, if you’re a marketing consultant, search for “marketing blog”.

Step 2: Filter Out Blogs that Don’t Have Any Traffic
About 80% of the blogs you’ll find will be of no value to you because they have very little traffic. There are a few great indicators that can tell you how much traffic a blog has:

• Comments. A blog with a lot of comments is likely to have a lot of readers.
• Votes/Re-Tweets. Some blogs have the TweetMeme plugin or some other sort of voting system that allows you to see how many people liked a given post.

Step 3: Add Value to the Conversation
If you’re a real expert, you should be able to add a lot of value to the conversation. Give, give and give some more. Don’t worry about getting anything in exchange yet. People need to see your comments over and over again before they start seeing you as an expert.

Most blogs have a field for your website link. If people like your comments, they can click on your name to visit your site. Make sure that you rank at the top of Google for your own name, as some people will search for it.

If one of your blog posts can help you make your point, it’s OK to include the link in your comment, but don’t over-do this.

Step 4: Leverage Your Relationships with Bloggers
Bloggers love comments and people who post them. If you comment on a blog often, you’re very likely to be noticed by the blogger who writes it. Leverage that relationship. Ask them if you can interview them for your blog, ask them if you can send them a guest post and offer to promote it and work with them in any way you can to promote their businesses and yours.

Very few people know this, but LinkedIn has some very cool applications.

These are my three favorite:

WordPress
Show your latest blog posts on your LinkedIn profile page.

Tweets
A great way to integrate Twitter with your LinkedIn account.

Events
This application will allow you to find events in your area and events your connections are attending.

Check out the rest of the LinkedIn applications here.

Shooting a video and posting it to YouTube is OK; it’ll definitely help with your marketing. But, if you want to be really successful at video marketing, you need to take it to the next level.

In this article I’ll share with you 3 of my favorite resources for video marketing.

Video Marketing Resource #1: TubeMogul
TubeMogul is an awesome tool that allows you to distribute your videos to a lot of video sharing sites at once and gives you statistics that you can use to learn what works best (so you can do more of it).

Video Marketing Resource #2: UStream.tv
What’s better than online video? LIVE online video! This website allows you to broadcast your videos LIVE to the whole world.

Video Marketing Resource #3: Advanced YouTube Tricks
Did you know that you can download YouTube videos, embed high-quality videos on your site and make your YouTube videos autoplay on your website? These are some of the coolest YouTube tricks.

TweetBeep
Awesome tools that notifies you every time your name, brand or any keyword you choose is mentioned on Twitter.

FriendOrFollow
Find out A) who’s following you that you’re not following back and B) who you’re following that isn’t following you back.

Twitter Tools
WordPress plugin that allows you to pull your tweets to your blog. It can also update your Twitter status every time you post.

Ping.fm
The easiest and fastest way to update your status on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and over 40 social media sites.

Qwitter
Are you losing a lot of followers? This fantastic tool can help you understand why.

Twitter Grader
Do you want to find out how good is your reach and influence in the Twitter community? This tools can help you.

TweetDeck
An amazing Twitter client that allows you to sort your tweets into
replies, topics, groups, keywords, etc. You can even filter the results.

HootSuite
In my opinion, the coolest and most powerful suite of Twitter tools out there. Track your stats, manage multiple Twitter accounts, monitor your brand, schedule tweets, update all your social networks and much more.

TwitPic
Cool Twitter app that allows you to send photos on Twitter.

TweetStats
A great tool that gives you a very valuable insight on your Twitter marketing campaigns.