Take for example you are working in your garage. You need to hang some shelves up so you can neatly organize your tools or whatever it is that you need to organize. Now to hang these shelves you most likely will need a tool to put some nails on the wall. Your tool in this case is going to be a hammer. Your work in this case is putting the shelf up. You see, although hammer is no doubt required to complete the job, it’s only a tool that facilitates the completion of this particular job. You might be able to do without the hammer, but it sure is a must in order to achieve great results (hanging the shelf securely).

The hammer (tool) in the example above is social media. Completion of hanging the shelves up is your work (building a community, viral marketing, sales, etc.). Social media is a tool, a tool that is a must in today’s fast paced world but it definitely isn’t work. Work depends on what you are using social media for. So next time you feel the urge to update Twitter, Facebook or anything else keep this in mind.

Click here if you can’t see the video.

When it comes to social media marketing, Facebook is the “it” platform. If you are going to dive into reaching out to your customer/reader base, it’s a platform that just can’t be ignored. The sheer number of users alone is a good enough reason to get into it and the fact that it’s almost certain that the demographic you are going after will be there. However, we often see many brands and blogs finding it hard to engage their user base. Remember, number is not the main issue when it comes to fanpage, it’s easy to boost numbers, it’s the participation that matters the most.

I will highlight the most effective way of getting fans to participate in this post.

Questions, Questions : All Kinds of Questions

Can it get any easier than this? What does a question require? An answer, and this is one of the most effective ways to get your fans to participate. Don’t use your fanpage as just another platform to post your blog posts or simply update with company news. If you are a known brand such as Starbucks, Dell, etc. you might get away with those tactics, but if you are a small brand or blog you have got to engage your fan base with questions.

Your questions doesn’t always have to be something related to your business. It can be personal. It’s ok to get out of your comfort zone and just ask your fans something that is very off topic, something that almost everyone does…for example : how was your lunch today?

You see, we all want to think of ourselves as someone who knows our stuff. If you have a fanpage that is related to web design, your question related to web design will almost certainly get someone to answer. Simply because they want to share the information with everyone else and be seen as someone “who knows his stuff.” It’s a tried and true method, asking question works! The only thing is be careful of how you do it and what you ask.

Get your fans involved in your internal decisions. I am not talking about something that is too secret of a thing to discuss publicly, but more like ask for feedback. If you are planning on starting a podcast, ask your fans how the intro should be played out, or ask them how you should set apart from everyone else, etc. Try and get them in the decision process. Make them feel they are a part of your community and that they matter. Make them feel that you realize that the 4,511th member of your site who comments on your update matters!

Get personal with your fans. I am not talking about sharing things that are meant to be shared behind closed doors with your spouse. I am talking in general, make them feel they are not just a target market but a friend. As I mentioned before, once in a while it’s ok to ask questions that are not related to your business or blog. Just get out of your comfort zone and take that risk. Ask a question that almost everyone might have an answer. If your fanpage has 200 members and no one answers when you ask “How do you like your coffee – with sugar or without?” then there is a problem. These kind of questions kind of breaks the barrier between brand or blog and the fans. It makes them feel comfortable cause it shows the other side of your business or the person behind that fanpage – the personal, human and friendly side.

Here’s an example of getting personal and up close with fans by asking questions that are out of topic but very personal. Here is the screenshot from the fanpage of FreelanceFolder, a community of freelancers on Facebook

I’ll talk more about Facebook on this blog as we go on. Before I end this post I just want to tell you one thing you shouldn’t do with your Facebook fanpage

Don’t just use it to update with blog posts. What’s the point? If they want to read your blog post they can either subscribe to your feed, visit your blog,etc. I understand some like to stay updated through Facebook feeds, but I am sure they would appreciate a lot more if you said hi and showed that they are not just a “market” you are trying to reach out to.

So there you have it. Share your thoughts. If you have any questions related to Facebook fan pages, feel free to ask.

Disclosure : I am on FreelanceFolder team as community manager.

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I use Facebook quite actively and this is something that I just noticed yesterday. I am pretty sure this feature was rolled out sometimes yesterday cause I had not seen it before. I have yet to see anyone talk about it and there could be two  reason for that – either I am way behind and this is old news (which I doubt) or people are not realizing how awesome this little feature is and how it can tremendously help boost your fanpage.

If you have noticed, before when you shared a link from a fanpage on your profile, it wouldn’t say where it came from unless you added “via” yourself. Most people don’t care to add that cause they just want to share the link and aren’t really worried about giving credit to the fanpage where they found it. Besides, many don’t know how to tag people or fanpage yet on Facebook (just add @ and type in the name for example : If i am your friend on Facebook just type @r and you should see all the people with the “r” in their name and choose one. You can type in the full name, first name, whatever.)

Anyways, this is what it looks like when you share links from the fanpage now,

When you share links and the share window opens, you have the option to either give the page credit or remove the “via” option. By default the via option is active so you have to manually remove if you choose not to give credit (not giving credit is a very douchebag act by the way)

This came into effect yesterday (at least for me). I checked the profile pages to see if they had activated this feature when sharing from profiles, but it wasn’t. However, this morning I checked my wife’s page and there it was, this feature has been now activated for profile as well. So if someone shares links from you profile, it will show the “via” option unless they remove it. If you are one of those people who likes the whole privacy things and doesn’t want others to see everything you share, might want to keep you profile private. I keep everything public so I don’t give a rat’s ass. Anyways, here is an example showing this feature when shared from profile

Like I said before, this feature might seem small but it will have huge impact when it comes to visibility, especially for fanpages. If 5 people share links from a fanpage now by default it will show via and fanpage name on someone’s profile. That option wasn’t there before unless you added it manually. If you have a popular fanpage or one people regularly share links from, you should see some good growth coming your way.

Anyways, it’sSaturday morning and I haven’t grabbed my cup of coffee yet. Just wanted to let you in on this. Have a good one.

By the way, what do you think of this feature? I find this one of the best and most useful feature, although small the impact is big.

The problem with shortened URL is that you don’t know what the source is. With this new upgrade, you’ll be able to see the main source of the link and whetyher or not it’s safe to click. That’s one of the reason why many people are more likely to click links on Facebook than on Twitter because Facebook gives you a preview.

I am really glad to see this feature and it certainly sets them apart from other twitter clients. The only reason I don’t use Hootsuite is because of their frame they use when shrinking links through their service. But they seem to be rolling out some cool features, so will see if I’ll make the switch. They have also rolled out some other features such as wordpress integration and more. Visit their blog to learn more about other features.

What do you think about this new feature? I love it!

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You will also notice that I have left “Product” out of the mix, the reason is simple, if you don’t have a good product or service there is nothing to market or create customer loyalty towards. It will fail either now or later. So I have taken product out of the mix cause everything else surrounds the product or the service itself. That is why there is a mix and your product or service is fundamental to making this mixture work.

The First P = People

This is the most crucial part of the social media marketing mix. In the old days when traditional media reigned supreme, brands pushed their products. Today consumers are in control. People want to be heard and people know they can be heard. So the first thing that needs to be done to utilize social media is listen to these people. Let’s not even get to participating and engaging right now, cause they are secondary. The main goal at this point is to listen to what others are saying.

If you are a known brand, there are people talking about you. They are talking on the web, they are talking over dinner at the table and they are talking on the phone about your product while taking a shit. The power in social media lies in being all ears at first so you can analyze. So as to see what they are saying, what emotions your product is evoking among these people. Whether you call them your target market or people that help you with research and development (yup they can be your R&D team if you listen to them), the first element of your mix is people. Without people you have no one to listen to, you have no one to cater to, you have no one to engage with and you have no one to sell to.

The Second P = Platform

Now that you know the key to making things happen for you business revolves around people, you need to know where these people are hanging out. Although your first reaction might be to jump on Twitter and Facebook, that may not always be the wisest decision. You need to know what platform these people (people you want to reach out to) are on. If most of your consumers reside in Brazil, your first option might be to monitor Orkut which is huge in Brazil rather than Facebook and so on. The key is to know where the people you want to reach out to are. Opening a Facebook account just cause everyone is using it may not be the right approach for you.

Maybe your target market isn’t really heavy on these “social networking” sites, and communicate heavily on one of the early forms of social media such as forums. In that case you should be finding these forums where “your people” are talking, and listen to them to see how they see your product or services. Just cause everyone is on YouTube, Facebook, etc. doesn’t mean these are the first platforms you should target on. You need to find where the people are (the first element) and choose your platform and then expand to others. It will be much easier to jump in where the people who use your products and services are because that’s where they are comfortable. You can’t move a community that is already thriving on one platform and try and pull them where you want, you have to adapt to the paltform they are on and keep listening.

The Third P = Participation

Of course you know all about the participation. Nothing happens on social media without participation and this is the third element of social media marketing mix. You are listening to people, you know where they are and it’s time to engage. It’s time to respond and tell them you are listening. Everyone is always touting you should participate and engage but this is not the first step in utilizing social media for your business. You need to listen first and know what they are saying so you are ready to participate and respond.

Social media is all about participation. But participation doesn’t mean simply starting a conversation for the sake of it. Participation means knowing how to build a relationship with people who are using your products/services or are thinking of it. How do you make these people to buy and talk more about your product so the word spreads? Just listen to them and respond to their concern. Be where they are and BE THERE.

The Fourth P = Promotion

Promoting a product on the web isn’t easy. Sure you can shout and say “buy me,” but it would be hard to sell using that approach. The last element of social media marketing is the one that is already happening if you are integrating the first three element. You may not see the impact in sale or word of mouth activity right away but as you move forward, you will be monitoring a lot more chatter about your brand, hopefully in a positive way.

Of course to sell products and services you have to promote. Just listening and responding won’t do the magic alone, so you need a strategy to tap into the people you have now made friends with. Try going on Facebook, Twitter, Forums, YouTube or any other community platforms and say “buy our products” and the community will say to you “Don’t tell us what to do, ask us. Ask us politely cause we matter.” The words may not be exact but that’s what the implications will be. Be careful when promoting.

Wait it out, build the community around your brand and listen to them when they bring problems. When they have a concern, respond to them what you are doing to fix them. That right there is your promotion. That right there will boost word of mouth marketing. When you have a loyal group of people that are ready to talk about you, unleash the marketing genius in you.

These four elements are very critical to make things happen for your brand through different social media channels. Like I said, although I didn’t include “product” in the mix, don’t assume it’s not there. The product or the service is the reason why these four elements are required. If you have to call it The 5 P’s of social media marketing, so be it.

Your turn to share. I would love to hear your take on social media marketing mix.

Traditional marketing isn’t going to die. No matter how much social media purists chant that traditional marketing will eventually come to an end, that’s not going to happen. Social media marketing and traditional marketing will eventually merge in a way so as to give new meaning to marketing itself. SMM is evolving and brands are finding new, creative ways to utilize different channels, however, this doesn’t mean traditional marketing is dead or will die. That’s simply not going to happen. For example : Although divorce rates are high and many people choose to stay together without getting married, it doesn’t mean the practice of marriage will die. Same applies to marketing as well.

Social media is highly overrated. Yes, I make a living creating social media campaigns and advising businesses and individuals how to utilize the social web. So why am I saying social media is overrated? Cause it’s a fact and you can twist, bend and choke but the facts aren’t going to change. One of the reason I say it is overrated is because of the central philosophy that surrounds it. The philosophy of “engagement.” Yes, without engaging your customers or potential customers, there is nothing to gain in the long run. But engagement alone doesn’t create the urge to buy, the urge to follow and the urge to spread the word.

The word “engagement” itself is overrated. Everyone is talking about engagement. Honestly, if you are simply engaging without a bottom line it’s a waste of time and resources. Engagement can be measured! After building a community around your brand if you are still having a hard time selling your product and services, your time in social media is a waste. One way or the other, engagement needs to be tied in a way so it can be measured in some form, whether it be through clicks, sales, etc. your community’s participation needs to be measured.

If you are using social media to market something and at the end there are no sales, your efforts have failed. You can have a thriving community around your brand with high engagement from your members, but remember, not all communities are built on trust. Many are built on distrust and hatred towards brands as well.

Social Media is overrated due to the fact that everyone is chanting about engagement. It is overrated because most don’t know how to capitalize on that engagement and drive sales, traffic or whatever the end goal is. This is why there are strategist coming out of the woods touting the same old philosophy of “engagement.” And this word alone at times makes social media marketing highly overrated cause it’s not all about engagement. It’s all about how you capitalize on engagement.

And that is exactly why social media marketing is overrated and underrated at the same time. Cause it’s mostly driven by many who talk the talk but have no clue or idea how to walk the walk.

Well, that’s my take on it. Would love to hear what you have to say.

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Let’s face it, sponsored conversations are here to stay. Paid blog posts, tweets, updates, stories are all being looked upon as serious marketing tool by major brands. It seems like the web is divided in two halves when it comes to sponsored conversation – one group doesn’t see anything wrong with it and the other hates it with a passion. I belong to the first group. I have done paid reviews on different blogs many times and have sent out a few sponsored tweets as well. Not as many as I would like to but I will admit that I have made a few hundred bucks from sponsored tweets. There, I am sure I have fueled enough anger in those who hate sponsored conversation and you are probably going to scroll right to the comment section and bash me without reading any further. Be my guest.

To those who want to read why I think sponsored conversations are ok, I am going to try and bring this online marketing scenario to the real world so it’s easier to picture.

When your friend calls you over for a beer and says “Beer’s on me,” what do you do? If you are like me, you tell your wife “Honey, I am going to run over to Jason and help him out. I think he’s got a virus on his computer. I will be back soon.” And off I go for free beer. Now let’s think for a minute. That free beer your friend bought you is similar to “sponsored conversation.” How? Say your friend buys you a six pack of corona, he is helping promote the corona but corona isn’t paying him. He is buying it cause he likes it and that happens to be his first choice. Now if Corona calls him and tells him “hey, we will pay you to buy our beer for you and your friends,” wouldn’t you jump at the opportunity? I can guarantee you would.

Sponsored conversations are similar in a lot of ways. If I am using a service already and enjoy their customer service and their product, why should I hesitate getting paid and telling everyone how much I love their stuff. I am not saying you should mislead people, but if it’s a conversation that you can back up, then definitely go for it.

Whether it be blog posts, tweets, facebook updates whatever, if it’s your message is not misleading, sponsored conversations are by no means unethical. One more example – Say you were buying Kraft’s single cheese at a grocery store. A representative from Kraft’s comes over to you and says “Hey, we will buy a year worth of Kraft’s cheese, would you be willing to talk about it to your friends and family, or serve them our cheese when you have a gathering?” What would you say? You would say “Yes!” You were already going to purchase that brand of cheese anyways, so what’s wrong with them paying and you having to feed that cheese to your family and friends? You would do it anyway. You see my point?

Anyways, that’s how I look at sponsored conversation. If you can stand behind your message, whether negative or positive, a sponsored conversation shouldn’t be a problem. Mark my words – social media is evolving and sponsored messages will be something you will just have to get used to. You just have to learn to differentiate between spammers and people who stand behind their messages.

Next time when you see a sponsored tweet, updates, posts, etc. make sure you tie it to the real world and not just the virtual world. If you are willing to do it in the real world, there is no reason why you shouldn’t be able to put up with it in the virtual world. Don’t be so judgmental everytime you see someone making money off of sponsored conversations. It does more good than bad if you do it the right away.

Your turn to share. What do you think of sponsored conversation?

note : Of course I wasn’t paid by Corona or Kraft to mention them on this post. Would I take the money if they asked me to? You bet your ass I would. If I don’t have a problem mentioning them for free, I don’t see any reason I would have a problem getting paid to mention them. I like their product anyways, might as well get paid for it .

I certainly am not the the one who has over 50,000 or 100,000 followers on Twitter or thousands of friends on Facebook. However, I do follow over 6,000 people on Twitter and have over 8,000 following me back. On Facebook, I have a little over 500 friends. There are other platforms such as digg etc. where I have thousands of fans. I have a few Facebook fanpage that collectively has over 30,000 fans if not more. These numbers in no way boost my ego or make me feel proud in anyway. Cause if there are 50,000 people that are following me on a platform and only 5 interact with me, the 45,995 are just numbers. And trust me numbers help. Even if they don’t interact they help when help is needed.

Think of it this way. If you are holding a conference in the real world what would your first concern be? That’s right. You want as many people to come in as possible. Now say if 8,000 people show up to your seminar, is everybody going to pay attention to your speech? I certainly doubt it. Once your speech is over, do you talk to every 8,000 of them and thank them for coming. Absolutely not cause it’s just not possible. You interact with who you can and you communicate with those that show interest in communicating with you. But what about the rest of the people that came to listen to your speech? Although they didn’t get a chance to talk to you or even pay attention most of the time while you were speaking, your name is now embedded on their brains. If you gave a talk on blogging, next time they sit down and talk to someone about blogging they might say “Ohh yeah, I went to a blogging conference once, X was the speaker” (that X is you).

You see my point. I know many of you are against numbers. I am against it too in some ways but not altogether. I can’t communicate with all and interact with every single one of em. But those who ask of me or just say hi, I do communicate with them. The rest are the numbers. Numbers that are not just there for the sake of being there, those numbers help me out when I least expect them to help me out. They are what I like to call the “sleeping community.” These sleeping communities wake up every once in a while and create some buzz for you. It’s always better to have your brand and name floating around on the web as much as possible. That’s all there is to it.

Numbers matter and that’s that. If you use these numbers to simply boost your shitty ego and say “I am freaking awesome,” these numbers won’t do you any good. But if you keep doing what you do, in a humble and respectful manner with 5% of your large following, the rest will follow sooner or later. Just make sure you don’t ignore the “sleeping community.” They matter and that’s why numbers in social media matters.

What’s your say? Do numbers matter?

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We hate spammers with a passion, don’t we? Of course we do. There is nothing to love about people who manipulate the system in a way that only benefits them. They are a hated bunch on the web. They are the reason we enable “comment moderation,” the reason we freak out on Twitter and Facebook over “Mafia Invites,” etc. However, if the question arises do we need spammers, I would have to say the answer is yes.

Let’s think of it this way. There are many parasites, bugs we hate and squash the minute we see. Do we need them? You bet we do so the chain keeps on going and so on and so forth. There is a place for everything and everyone whether it be the virtual world or the real world. I hate spammers as much as you do but I think spammers are necessary to some point, especially for us marketers. Feel free to disagree, but usually when there is a platform that can be utilized as a marketing channel, it’s the spammers who are the early adopters. They figure out how to manipulate it, they learn how to get things going and rest of us wait and see what’s happening. When the activity reaches a certain level and these spammers start making money, we realize the channel has serious potential and we jump on board.

Whether or not you agree with me, spammers are essential when it comes to finding out true potential of any social media channel. For example : You may never think of using Facebook ads. One day out of nowhere you hear someone making $10,000 dollars a month (some really are and much more than that) and realize that you could use it to market your own business, blogs, etc. Let’s face it. Spammers suck but they do give us insight into how to explore a platform. What we can’t do is follow their path. What we can do is learn from them and create a positive impact using these marketing channels rather than becoming a spammer ourselves. I will say this with tongue in cheek – most businesses and brands realize the true potential of a platform once they see rise in spammers. It tells them the platform has serious potential as a marketing channel.

If you disagree, let’s have a healthy discussion. What do you think? Do we need spammers? I say YES! What do you say?