In May 2008 I did an interview about social media marketing with Muhammad Saleem. That’s right, four years ago! As I reviewed the content, I found it interesting how applicable the same social media strategy is today.

The thought came to mind:

Some things will change; but others will remain the same.

Then I found this picture:

As you can see, he’s made some “changes” (to the tune of about 70 total pounds lost)! Congrats to Muhammad.

The core strategies of social media marketing, on the other hand, haven’t changed too much at all.

Using Social Media effectively will DEFINITELY help your organic search engine rankings and recognition in the online communities.

However, if you “expect value without creating value” you’re going to FAIL and fail hard.

Interview with Muhammad Saleem about Social Media Marketing

5 Basic Social Media Steps anyone can use:

1. Building Relationships
2. Being a part of a community
3. Understanding the dynamics of different communities
4. Sharing the right kind of content
5. Voting and commenting on other peoples content

Social Media Manual: 10 Steps to take to become the Next Social Media Maven

Why Do you love Social Media?

The community aspects: you become a part of the whole process of submitting, voting, commenting, engaging and being a part of the process of opinion on things you’re interested in or passionate about.

3 Tips for Beginning to Intermediate Social Media Marketers

1. Understand the community before you start participating: what the age demographic is, what stories are popular, avoid mistakes
2. Build relationships with other visitors: talk to people, IM, comment on their stories, bookmark their stuff
3. Make sure your main goal is to not just promote yourself: create value for the community by submitting other peoples stuff, vote and comment on other peoples stuff, be part of the community, share content from other people to create value that doesn’t come directly back to you – it’s more than just scratching one another’s back – it’s bigger than that

How does effective SMO influence a website’s presence?

• Traffic, Traffic, Traffic: 10′s of Thousands of unique visitors, thousands of page views on a post
• Building links: hundreds to thousands of links – the more links you have, the higher you get ranked in search, which makes long-term organic traffic from search engines.

Thanks again for your information Muhammad. Stay tuned for more podcasting at MollerMarketing.com.

This is a guest post from Laura Jorgensen of Cedar Fort Books. Follow Cedar Fort on Twitter and Like them on Facebook!

Why should people network?

The answer might be obvious to many who have benefited from the effects of networking.

“Many people make introductions, get promoted, or jumpstart career transitions because of networking – having the courage to meet new people and having the discipline to maintain familiar contacts,” says Caroline Ceniza-Levine of SixFigureStart.

For myself, about half of the jobs that I’ve had were because I knew someone who already worked there. From an internet point of view, networking is a way to get your message heard by as many people as possible. The more friends you have the more people willing to listen and repeat your message.

You’re probably saying to yourself about now, “Wait! I thought you were going to tell us how to not network.” So I am, but first I wanted to set the stage of what networking can do.

Recently I went to two different conventions, one for fun and personal interests and the other for work. Conventions are great places to network because it is a bunch of like-minded people getting together to talk about something that they’re passionate about. You don’t have to seek them out, they’ve gathered together for you.

Unfortunately I mostly failed at the whole networking thing, especially at the second convention (granted the second day I was sick, but still). I only gave out my business card to one (count them, 1) person total, and that was because I told myself I couldn’t leave until I did (I left right after). I was able to say hi to some of the panelists, but it wasn’t anything that would make them remember me out of the hundreds of other people that were there trying to network too.

On the whole, the one good experience was definitely a foil for my many other failures. And from those, here is what I’ve learned about how to NOT network:

6 Ways to Network Unsuccessfully

1. Blend in: If they can’t see you they won’t know that you’re there.
2. Don’t talk: Not even to your neighbor, not even about the weather, cause that might lead to something else.
3. Be obnoxious: No I wasn’t (at least I don’t think I was), but I noticed some people that, even though they had good resumes, I wasn’t sure that I’d want to be in contact with later.
4. Be sick: Well I guess that’s not really a requirement, but being grumpy and miserable is indeed a turn off. If you really want people to stay away you could hack into a handkerchief every once in a while.
5. Be self-centered: One-sided conversations, are great ways to not get to know other people.
6. Don’t have a purpose: At the first convention I knew more the type of person that I was interested in networking with. At the second I didn’t. So I ended up just swiping swag off their tables and not really talking to them.

Moral of the story: Don’t do what I did at the conventions.

Go talk to people. Be memorable. Be interested in other people and they will most likely be interested in you. Be a likable person so that people will WANT to be your friend. And don’t be afraid to talk to strangers–they may be just the person you’re looking for. Also stay in contact with old and new friends. You never know when you might hit a gold mine.

Email Marketing is, or should be, an important part of every business owners efforts to connect with their clients, remind them about products or services, and keep them in the loop of upcoming events.

There are quite a few different email autoreponders in the market. When I first started internet marketing Constant Contact was the email autoresponder I decided to use. It wasn’t a bad product at all, but I didn’t really understand the true value of email marketing and probably didn’t use it as well as I could have. I was also new to a lot of the “code” stuff like HTML and didn’t really understand how to make my email campaign look similar to my website.

Since that first trial, I’ve been testing other email newsletter options. One is Get Response and another is AWeber.

I’ve done quite a bit of research and here’s a bit of info on what I found out about these two email autoresponders:

The Pros and Cons of Aweber and Get Response:

AWeber

Pros:

• Customer Support: Aweber is great at customer support: they’re thorough and helpful
• Feedback: Aweber allows unsubscribers of your email list to fill out feedback form
• Testing: Aweber encourages you to create an A/B test campaign
• Analytics: Aweber offers Google Analytics integration to keep track of stats

Cons:

• No picture hosting! This means that if you want to have pictures in your email campaign, you’ll have to host them at a place like Flickr.com – which can be a pain if you’re new to HTML.

Get Response

Pros:

• User Friendliness: Get Response has flexible and easy-to-use templates and an email editor for simple email creation
• Customer Support: Get Response has thorough and helpful customer support
• Reports: Get Response provides comprehensive reports analyzing subscriber actions
• Picture Hosting: Get Response allows 1 GB of picture hosting – that’s a ton!
• Testing: Get Response lets you to create A/B test campaigns
• Analytics: Get Response integrates with Google Analytics
• Flexibility: Get Response email templates are incredibly flexible

Cons:

• I really couldn’t find any cons yet, although I’ll continue looking and keep you posted.

Here’s a cool video about creating a newsletter with Get Response:

Try Get Response!

I’ll continue to test but up to this point, I recommend Get Response.

Which email autoresponder do you prefer?

I’ve talked to clients a lot in the past about one key question:

What have you done TODAY to make a sale?

I’m going to take it a step further today and ask another simple question:

What have you done TODAY to find a new client?

Some might ask at this point, “Isn’t making a sale and finding a new client the same thing?”

In the past, my answer was yeah, sure. However, as I’ve thought about it more, I realize that I can make one sale today but then never, ever see that customer again. On the other hand, if my goal is to find CLIENTS, I’m really not only looking for a “sale”, but I’m also looking for a long-term business relationship that I can develop, leading to sale after sale after sale to the same client.

I was reading an article today titled “5 Smart Ways to Find Clients“. They mentioned that finding clients is something almost every small business owner struggles with from time to time. There are quite a few ways to do it, but finding new clients really boils down to putting yourself where your clients are, being approachable, and fulfilling a need or solving a problem. It doesn’t have to be much more complicated than that.

Who’s Your Ideal “Golden” Client?

Do you get so many emails that you don’t have time to really focus on anything else?

Are you sick of getting SPAM or stupid forwards from your family and friends that simply waste valuable time?

I read an article quite a while back on Zen Habits stating the author was ditching email all together; at the time I was honestly like – “Yeah right!”

As of today, though, I’m seriously considering ditching my email too.

But, thanks to Google and a few other cool online tools, I’m considering a couple options before I throw email to the curb:

1. Use Twitter for all correspondence. Leo Babauta from Zen Habits uses Twitter for the majority of his communication. Here’s why:”What I love about Twitter is that it’s very limited (140 characters), so you have to keep things brief, and also there isn’t the expectation that you’ll respond to every message, as there is in email. Friends can DM me on Twitter for personal communication.”

   Another great thing about Twitter is that, if you don’t want to get messages from specific people, you can block them or just not follow them.

2. Set up a Gmail Account!

Gmail is always coming out with cool new functions. One I discovered today is Priority Mail. Check out this cool video:

Here are a few more details from the Gmail Team:

Get through your email faster

Try reading and replying to the messages in the “Important and Unread” section first. Mark anything that requires follow-up with a star, then go through the “Everything Else” section. If you leave Priority Inbox, you can return to it by clicking the link next to Inbox on the side navigation of Gmail.

How it works

Gmail’s servers look at several types of information to identify the email that’s important to you, including who you email and chat with most, how often you email with these people, and which keywords appear frequently in the emails you read.

Train Priority Inbox

If Priority Inbox makes a mistake, you can use the buttons to correctly mark a conversation as important or not important, and Priority Inbox will quickly learn what you care about most.

And more…

• Customize Priority Inbox: You can change what type of email you see in each section (like switching the “Important and Unread” section to just “Important”). Just click on the section headers or visit the Priority Inbox tab under Settings to customize.
• Use filters to guarantee importance: If you want to be absolutely sure that some messages are always marked as important (like email from your boss), you can set up a filter and choose “Always mark it as important.”
• Search by importance: If you want to see all the messages that have been marked as important, both read and unread, do a Gmail search for “is:important.”
• Switching back to your old inbox: If Priority Inbox isn’t for you, you can easily switch back to your normal inbox by clicking “Inbox” on the left or hide Priority Inbox altogether from Gmail Settings.

To learn more about managing your email with Priority Inbox, check out the Gmail Help Center.

So, set up a Gmail Account and save yourself some time!

Why aren’t you using Gmail yet?