I met her during my freshman year of college, though she was two years my senior. We’d exchange greetings when we passed in the dormitory hallways. Nine years later, we met again when we were assigned to the same tables at a local luncheon. She told me she worked in Internet Marketing, which I was quite excited to hear given that there was no marketing discipline taught at all in our alma mater.

We started talking about the last few years and our dreams for the years ahead. We then got into the nitty gritty of business. With Internet Marketing, there are many ways to go, from affiliate marketing to SEO to social media to email marketing. What was she doing? Her answer surprised me. Essentially, her focus was SEO, and her daily grind consisted of keyword stuffing clients’ websites.

Anyone who knows a good search engine optimization expert knows that keyword stuffing is not an approved tactic. Perhaps this is a fact that her agency overlooked, so as a good friend, I told her that it would be in her best interest to learn about approved tactics through the many free blogs, to engage in acceptable and informative (though not free) SEO training, and to read the best SEO book/training program (aff). Even though there is a cost for entry for some of the best resources, the solutions were highly worthwhile, I explained.

Over the next few months, I received multiple invites to various groups on Facebook and messages imploring me to participate in activities in which I had no interest. All social media etiquette rules were not heeded to. Rather recently, she told me that she had enough and was going to quit.

I was excited at the prospect that there might be some freedom for someone who was forced to clearly break every rule that was in the ethical Internet Marketing handbook. I suggested the same blogs and training courses and told her that she could potentially go out on her own and do her own thing after she learned the basics and knew how to apply them.  But first, I cautioned, “you must learn the material.  Your work environment didn’t allow you to do so.”

My friend ended up going out to do her own thing, offering “Internet Marketing services” to anyone who would bite. The instruction I gave her and resources I provided, though, were ignored. I am not afraid that she’ll find this blog post and know that she’s the subject of the story because I know she won’t. I’m honestly worried for her clients who are being cheated out of money and time.

A few weeks ago, another person connected with me on Facebook who was referred to me by a social media buddy I never actually met. “I am a relatively new internet marketer trying to break into the industry,” he wrote. “What are good companies to target? Should I learn a specific skillset?” Overall, the questions were basic and I worried that the individual was looking to target companies for clients before actually understanding the nuances of the culture of Internet marketing as a whole.

While this person’s intentions were more pure — I later learned that he was looking for agencies to target, rather than clients, and that he was willing to endure pain (learning) for ultimate gain (clients which would lead to money) — I began to worry that there are others out there like this college colleague of mine. There are others who sell internet marketing services who are ultimately clueless about changes in the industry that could ultimately amount to them not seeing any increased rankings or improved traffic. At all.

There Are Different Specialties in Internet Marketing

“What do you do for a living?” he asks.  ”I do Internet Marketing,” I say.

“Oh.”

If you’re involved at all in Internet Marketing, “oh” is not a suggested response. Internet marketing is a vast field.  There are different specialties to Internet Marketing. If you’re going to take “Internet Marketer” at face value, you’re being silly.  In the study of medicine, doctors have different specialties; Internet Marketing is no different.

If you’re a brand new Internet Marketer, choose a discipline and a niche that you can tackle head on and be successful at. You can’t do everything at once. Sure, a basic understanding of different Internet Marketing elements is fine, but it’s not practical to be everything to everyone. Here are just some concentrations you can explore:

• Search Engine Optimization:  Someone involved in search engine optimization is focused on building out websites in such a way to be understood by search engines (and by people).  A search engine optimization expert is usually focused on changing URL structure, optimizing title tags, and making code tweaks to a website to make sure the search engines find the site and the pages contained therein.
• Link Building: Part of a search engine marketing strategy includes the process of building relevant links to your website.  This often includes submissions to directories and contacting webmasters of related websites.
• Affiliate Marketing: Affiliates are individuals who market a particular product or service and who get paid commissions by a merchant when they make the sale.
• Pay Per Click Marketing: PPC is another search engine marketing strategy that utilizes contextual advertising; based on a search query or the content of a web page, ads will appear.  PPC requires understanding of keywords, having appropriate landing pages, and other factors.
• Social Media Marketing: In social media marketing, you are tasked with leveraging the social space through its media to market your products.
• Email Marketing: Email marketing relates to the promotion of products and services through e-mail.
• Content Marketing: Content marketing refers to writing relevant articles on your site (or having good site copy) that can bring awareness to your website property.

Most people that I know will excel in one discipline but have a working understanding of the others. If you know someone who is great at every single Internet Marketing discipline in the book, it’s likely too good to be true. If you’re studying Internet Marketing, learn everything you possibly can, but you’ll typically find an area you’re most comfortable in and end up going with it. For me, that’s social media marketing.

Get the Right Training Materials

Depending on the type of work you’re looking to do, your best bet is to learn everything you can on the subject matter. Some of the sites I recommend for educational materials include:

Free

• Sphinn: Sphinn is an Internet Marketing social news site.  Users submit timely news articles to Sphinn, and the community votes up the best stories to appear on the front page.  Normally, the front page consists of high quality content, though even the upcoming queue has good stuff that doesn’t always get promoted.
• There are hundreds of blogs on each specialty’s subject matter.  How do you find the signal through the noise, you ask? Find those who influence you, and then find out who they are engaging with. And read this post from Mat with some good suggestions.
• My top three forums include Cre8asite Forums, Webmaster World (which is mostly free but also has subscription-only discussions), and High Rankings Forum.

Paid

• SEO Book: SEO Book is the bible of search engine optimization.  Aaron Wall nailed it when he released his extremely informative PDF about a decade ago.  In the last few years, he moved his forever-changing content online in the format of members-only training guides and forums.  He also offers high quality tools, many of which are free.
• SEOmoz PRO: SEOmoz PRO features a rich library of informative guides, a myriad of tools, and a strong active and close-knit community.  If you’ve seen their free site and know what kind of great information is already provided, you can only imagine how much value is multiplied behind the pay wall.
• SEO Dojo: David Harry’s SEO program is the newest kid on the block, but it already has a very active group of members and engaging online discussions, in addition to easy-to-read training materials and video tutorials.
• Training Social: Samir Balwani has worked tirelessly to provide one of the most (the most?) comprehensive social media marketing training there is.  I highly recommend you follow his stuff.

If you like books, you should also check out Winning Results with Google AdWords, Pay Per Click Marketing, The New Community Rules (which was authored by yours truly), The Art of SEO, Search Engine Optimization, and Search Engine Optimization for Dummies.

Find the Right Agency to Work With

Unless you’ve been doing it for years, it’s never a good idea to go into Internet Marketing without an educational foundation. And most people won’t follow sound advice, instead eying dollar signs as soon as formal education ends.

If you’re serious about this kind of thing, beyond online training guides and books, you need to apply those skills.  Any educational experience in the work world, thus, will help bring you to the next level. Consider working at an agency, even in an internship capacity. Being able to work alongside the brightest minds in the industry can be extremely empowering. Having hands-on experience — the much-needed application of your learned skills — is incredible, especially when working alongside brilliant minds and analytical thinkers.

Every newbie should start working for someone before he embarks on the journey alone. Learning among the smartest in the industry is a sure-shot way to get ahead of most playing the same game.

Not All Agencies are Created Equal

As evidenced by the the story I provided in this article, not all agencies are competent. Keyword stuffing, for example, might have worked 5 years ago, but it’s not a successful tactic anymore.  If you’re about to start working for an agency, study it out before you actually work for it, because if you don’t, you might end up finding out that you’ve wasted years of your life learning the wrong strategies.

One of the easiest steps you can take is to look at their website.  The first thing I normally look at for “SEO” firms is to see if their canonical redirect is in place.  It’s one of the smallest things that can be done, but so many “SEO” firms, including the one I mentioned earlier in this article, actually don’t do it at all.  Also, check the website’s footer: are there keywords stuffed there?  If so, it might be a good idea to turn your back away from the opportunity.

Another thing you should do is to talk to people in the industry that you know to see if they can tell you anything about the company’s officers or about the company itself. If the right people have never heard of the company, that could mean that the company itself consists of self-proclaimed marketing experts who likely get websites banned from search engines rather than ranked higher.  It could also mean that the company is keeping a low profile,  so use the website check to see if the company is up to shady tactics not worth your investment — even if the job offer is there. (You never want to work for a company who has a bad reputation, especially if you plan to remain in this industry. Word travels.  If you’re already there, get out while you’re still ahead.)

It’s probably a good idea to step away from the agency if you find out that the tactics employed in the company don’t match what is taught in the training materials I recommended earlier.   These materials are written and maintained by real experts who know their material cold.  You can do better.

Going Off On Your Own

Only after you have spent at least 18 months to two years at a reputable company should you actually go at taking clients alone. Keep in mind that it’s not as easy as it seems. Doing the solo gig requires you to be the sales department, the financial and accounting department, the secretary, and the person you were hired to do: the marketer. You’re not only doing everything, but your salary is variable as you take and lose clients on a month-to-month basis.

If you’re choosing this path because you’re unhappy with your current company, look for another.  If you’re doing it because your freshman college friend is able to do so successfully, focus on the food on your own plate, Miss. If you’re ready to take on more responsibility, by all means, go ahead and do it.

Just don’t be the girl who leaves a company that wasn’t challenging you anyway — and then starts your own thing without the right educational foundation or skill-set. Be the student who mastered the subject through learning and application, and who eventually graduated to be the teacher. And keep in mind that the best teachers never stop learning either.

Internet Marketing Snake Oil

The Internet is rife with “experts,” but not all self-proclaimed gurus can actually deliver. A lot can talk the talk, but they can’t walk the walk.  They might sound great on the phone,  but they might not be able to actually increase traffic to your website through search engine optimization.  They might not have any clue how to effectively manage your Pay Per Click campaign to actually increase leads.

Unfortunately, not all “clients” will be so savvy enough to know the difference between someone who knows his stuff and someone who doesn’t.  As such, when the marketing dollars they invested actually result in nothing, they call the entire practice a scam.  There will always be a few rotten apples who ruin it for the rest of hard working decent folk who are truly looking out for the entire industry.

Buyer beware.  If you or anyone you know is looking to engage in this practice, do yourself a favor and do due diligence before going with your expert.  Interview prospects.  Comparison shop.  Don’t just look for the cheapest option; it might be the worst.  (“You get what you pay for.”) Then again, the most expensive option might not be better.  High costs don’t always translate to better quality.

Don’t Be that Guy

Every single profession has “snake oil” salesmen. There are doctors who don’t really know how to practice medicine and teachers who don’t know how to teach. If you’re an Internet Marketer who genuinely wants to sell your services, consider being well-educated and well-rounded. Consider focusing on a specialty where you can excel — and know your stuff cold. It’s hard enough that there are con-men and scammers who bring the industry to shame, but if you care about the future of the profession, don’t.

There’s probably not a single one of you reading this who is that guy. However, you might have encountered individuals who want to be just like you but might be looking for a silver bullet. Give them the full truth. Let them know that this profession is real work, just like any other type of profession. If they want to protect the integrity of this profession’s future, they should consider being well-read.

For me, Internet Marketing is not just a profession but it’s a passion. I read books and blog posts on the subject not only to further my career but because I love what I’m doing and I want to feel empowered personally and professionally. If you’re like me, you’re in the right place. You understand that this kind of work comes easy, and that you were meant to do it. But someone might approaches you for direction despite the fact that they don’t have gusto to do the work and to learn the ropes. They might just try to cash in simply because they see that some other people can do so successfully, even though those are the people who consider this more than just work: it’s a lifestyle, and they had to climb a ladder to be where they are right now.

Those of you involved in Internet Marketing for a long time might have faced this dilemma. Be up front. This is a discipline and it’s not a walk in the park. Knowing the tools doesn’t make you an expert. Ignoring the tactics makes you even less qualified. Ignoring the paid (and free) learning materials makes you a failure.

Everyone needs to work for success. As your role is now of a mentor, be the guiding light.

[ Advice for a New Internet Marketer (or How to Spot Internet Marketing Snake Oil) is a post written by Tamar Weinberg. ]

Read more about The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web, a primer to social media marketing. Or you can subscribe to the Techipedia RSS feed.

This is a guest post by Glen Allsopp, a 20-year-old genius who has been in this industry for as long as I remember — and you can tell he’s got a knack for brilliance. Follow him on Twitter.

There are a few jokes going around the blogosphere right now regarding what it means to be a social media expert. Now that the stay-at-home-moms (and dads) are finding their way to a five-figure Twitter follow count, they’re offering all types of services and branding themselves as all-round experts.

Despite the title of the post, having worked as the social media manager for Fortune 500 companies, and a lot of knowledge here being totally personal, I do not think of myself as an expert. In fact, I don’t think becoming a social media expert is something that people should be worried about; they should be focused on becoming expert communicators instead.

Because of the less serious checklists that are being passed around the web right now, I thought it would be a good time to look at what some of the influencers online are really doing, and how you can join their ranks if you’re so inclined.

Highlight Others

Do you ever read the tweets of Chris Brogan? I know there are a lot of them, but that’s because he’s spending a large portion of each day highlighting the work of others. Darren Rowse? Brian Clark? Daniel Scocco? They might not tweet as much, but they are definitely focusing their attention elsewhere.

I’ve personally taken this concept so far that I now have a pretty new box at the end of most blog posts which highlights other bloggers that I enjoy. Right now, you’ll find the likes of Tamar, Jonathan, Lisa and Rebecca in my feed reader, and consequently, in that box.

You can help your bid to become more transparent online by sharing what you enjoy. Plus, if you know anything about how blogging works, you should know that no blog is a competitor.

Grow Biggers Ears

I did have another way of saying this, but Chris’s term sounds better. Quite simply: the true social media experts are willing to listen to the ideas of absolutely anybody in this space. That could be from traditional media, my sister, a friend, the radio, or even a small child. If someone has an idea I like the sound of, I’m not going to care about where it came from – I’m going to see if I can use it.

Remember, to make an impact in the social media space you have to become the best communicator. And, to fulfil that position, it requires you to be willing to give your time, attention, and logic to people with a variety of different ages and backgrounds.

Accept a New Normal

When I talk about accepting a new normal , I’m talking about two different aspects of life. The first is personal. Take my own situation as an example. Because I have quit my job, and I blog about personal things, I have written about quitting my job and in turn found that this interests a lot of readers.

In terms of influence though, people email me about whether they should quit their job or not, and expect that a 20-year old from England really should know the answers to such important career advice. Influencers accept that they have a position to hold and won’t abuse it for a quick buck.

Not only do experts accept a change personally, they also accept that the business world is changing and the way to get sales no longer means interrupting your audience via every medium they hate being interrupted in.

If you resist the changing times, you’ll just get left behind.

Make Everything Else Irrelevant

In aiming to be the best communicators, it’s important that we don’t discriminate anyone by age, gender or ethnicity when working with them. However, as an influencer, you must remember that while many people will praise you, lots of others in the same niche will not even know who you are. Therefore, aim to constantly focus on producing the best products / posts / services that you can, to make your previous background or achievements irrelevant.

For example, when I first started making money online, I was 16 years old. I knew that unless I went above the effort of everyone else who was blogging about my topic and offering services to clients, people just wouldn’t take me seriously. Because of this, I believe the influencers in any niche should be the people who are the most passionate about their industry doing well.

If you feel the same, then you must also realise that these people don’t fit a cookie-cutter image. Social media experts realise that you can’t control what people say about you online, but you can continue to focus on putting out your best work possible, whatever your medium can be.

Despite all the noise online, it’s still possible to become a signal.

Ignore Social Media Checklists or ‘Top’ Lists

It’s nice to be featured in press both online and off, but allowing that to influence your ego or strategy is just silly. The people that deserve to be the influencers are the ones that realise 10,000 random followers can not be compared to 1,000 or even 500 people who genuinely care about what you have to say.

You don’t become a social media expert by promoting yourself as a social media expert. In fact, if you don’t mind me letting you in on a little secret, there is no way to become an expert in the eyes of everybody anyway. Instead, what you should be pushing to become is the biggest communicator, thought-provoker and connector in your niche.

Then, and only then, will people really start to see you as an expert at something. And perhaps it will be deserved.

Glen Allsopp writes about the topic of Viral marketing at ViperChill. He’s also a huge fan of Tamar and very thankful to have her offer him this opportunity.

[ 5 Things True Social Media Experts Do Online is a post written by Tamar Weinberg. ]

Read more about The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web, a primer to social media marketing. Or you can subscribe to the Techipedia RSS feed.

Finding productivity on Twitter, especially if you are a large company or one that manages several profiles for clients, can be quite difficult. It’s especially difficult to build up a strong following. Fortunately, Tweet Spinner is here to help. Tweet Spinner is a powerful application that manages the more high level management Twitter tasks for you, from managing followers/friends to changing your profile design and then some.

Tweet Spinner Feature Set

Tweet Spinner features four main features. We’ll get into these in detail in the next sections.

• Direct message management.  Consider spam protection for your email inbox ported over Twitter.  Sadly, this feature has become necessary, and TweetSpinner helps you maintain anti-spam rules to weed out the junk.
• Profile design rotator. Tweet Spinner actually lets you schedule different Twitter backgrounds, bios, and profiles, so that you can see which profile types might get the most engagement.  It also can be used to tell your followers more about you (and to encourage them to check your page more often!)
• Twitter CRM. Tweet Spinner is a CRM tool too, allowing you to connect with potential followers. You can find potential customers by location, view followers of your competitors and “mimic follow” them, analyze keywords you use that elicit the most response, and more. The tool will also prevent you from following spammer accounts through a variety of tactics.
• Scheduled Tweets and DMs. For a big company account, it’s difficult to actually engage all day long (and all week long, especially if you’re a 9-5 shop).  Therefore, you have the ability to schedule messages and to personalize them too.

Direct Message Management

When it comes to direct messages, TweetSpinner understands that you probably have been inundated with messaging that you’re not interested in. And while you could keep those messages stored on Twitter’s server, it might be in your best interest to have them stored to a separate account in the event that Twitter goes down or for ease of searching. With Tweet Spinner, you get a DM archive listed in an easy-to-read page that is searchable (via Ctrl+F on your keyboard; additional search facilities would be useful for accounts with thousands of DMs). You can choose to delete spam DMs or all DMs. Personally, I think something along the lines of an exportable data set would be excellent, but I’m a digital pack rat.

Tweet Spinner: Direct Message Archival

Spam management is offered within Tweet Spinner as well. In Tweet Spinner, spam management can only be applied to messages in your inbox, so if you’ve already archived your DMs, there is no need to run this as it will not find anything. You can choose whether to archive spam (do you really need to wade through those “is this really you?!” messages?) or not. You can also choose a very aggressive spam filtering method that will consider any DM with a URL as spam.

Both archival and spam filtering can be scheduled. This is a subscriber-only feature and occurs every four hours. You cannot change the schedule.

Tweet Spinner: Direct Message Spam Management and Archival

Follower Manager

One of the niftier features of Tweet Spinner is the follower manager. This is where you really can go golden in terms of finding targeted followers but ensuring that those you follow are relevant.

Filters

Right under the “Follower Manager” heading, you see some powerful filtering options that you are recommended to take advantage of. The first, “show/edit filters,” is broken down into four parts.  The “show/edit follower filters” lets you choose how you’re going to follow users on the service. This is further divided into two parts:

• General Follower Filter: You’ll be following users with Tweet Spinner, and based on other criteria, you can pause the rate that you follow users for a specified amount of time.  You can also set a specific follower-to-following ratio, and if you exceed this point, the system will stop following any additional users.  Further, you can limit the frequency of your following behavior; for instance, you may choose to follow 30 people at any specific time and then cool down for a bit so as not to be too aggressive.
• Specific Follower Filter: Let’s say you’re going to follow some users.  They need to meet specific criteria (of your choosing) before you go ahead and proceed, and this will apply to the various types of following options that Tweet Spinner offers (to be discussed).  These are:
  • The number of friends and followers they have.  If they have too many friends and not many followers, for example, you might not want to follow them.  You can set the follower-to-following ratio range in this section.
  • A specific number of friends. You can also follow users who have a specific number of friends (e.g. between 40 and 40000).
  • Age of account. You might not want to follow Twitter accounts that are 3 days old.  You might also want to see that they are future upstanding members of the community.  This is the section where that magic is made.
  • Tweet frequency. You might choose to only follow active users (who tweet between 1 and 100 times a month, for example) and not users who are either way too inactive or are too excessive.
  • Tweet activity.  You might want to follow users who have sent tweets recently.  Why follow someone who last tweeted in January of 2008?  You can set a day here.
  • User-filtering/pruning. If you’ve pruned them before, why would you follow them again?  You might not want to, and here’s a way to prevent the system from re-following someone you’ve unfollowed already.
  • Location. If you’re a local business, you’ll go crazy with the ability to follow Twitter users who are based on a geographic location. I believe that location filtering is based on the location listed in the bio, so someone entering their latitude and longitude will not be followed by this system.
  • Tweet content: URLs.  You might want to follow real people who are engaging.  If a high percentage of the user’s Tweets are filled with URLs, you might not have an interest.  You can specify the percentage threshold here.
  • Tweet content: @replies: You also might choose not to follow people if they are a broadcast tool.  If their tweets contain more than a user-specified percentage of replies, you might opt in.  After all, it shows that they’re involved in their Twitter stream.

With this filter, you must meet all the criteria before a person is followed.

Tweet Spinner: Follow Filters

The “show/edit purge & prune filters” removes spam bots and boring Twitter users.  You might do this based on the health of your Twitter account (good ratio of followers-to-following), or you can stop at a certain percentage threshold.  You can also specify to unfollow a maximum number of Twitter users per action (so as to avoid penalties from Twitter).  Finally, your most recently-added friends might be immunized in the sense that they won’t be affected by the pruning filter (though you might choose to wait a number of days before they do get the axe).

Your pruning filters also can apply to Twitter users who are inactive, if their tweets contain URLs, or if they tweet too excessively (default: 600 per month).

Tweet Spinner also has a “nofollow” user list that will algorithmically never follow users who meet certain criteria.  You might not want to follow specific users ever, and you can put their usernames into this box.  If their username contains fragments of a name you never want to see, you can also put them on the list (e.g. xxx means you’ll block xxxBob, YugoXXX25, and others).  Moreover, you can also nofollow people based on their tweets.  I might never want to follow someone who tweeted about “government grants,” and I can block out certain terms in this system.  At this point, the keyword fragment and keyword list is limited to 50.

Finally, there’s an immunity list (“show/edit immunity list”).  You might never want to unfollow your colleagues ever.  This is a way to keep them from being impacted by the purge.

Follower Manager Statistics

Now that we’ve gotten the filters out of the way (which is overwhelming but gives you solid control over your activities), you can dive into this amazing feature. You’re greeted with some general statistics about your follower-to-following ratio.   Based on this data, you might opt to prune followers. This is a sophisticated method that lets you unfollow spam and stale accounts.  In the future, you’ll be able to schedule pruning, but you can already schedule purging and following and the schedule runs every three hours.

You might want to unfollow everyone who is not following you.  The “purge” lets you remove up to 40 friends who are not reciprocally following you.   On the other side of the coin, you might choose to follow those who already follow you but who you haven’t reciprocated with.

Tweet Spinner: Follower Manager Statistics

Keyword Following

This is where the biggest and best features of Tweet Spinner shine. If people send specific tweets with phrases you’re interested in, you can automatically follow them.  You can also get statistics of whether these individuals reciprocated, and if so, what percentage of reciprocal following you’ve achieved.

Tweet Spinner: Keyword Following

Mimic Following

This is an altogether fascinating implementation of Tweet Spinner as well.  Let’s say I am a competitor of the guy behind the blue widget factory (@BlueWidgets) because I own red widgets.  I might want to see who he’s interacting with on Twitter and chooses to follow.  Or let’s say I’m doing promotion for the movie “New Moon” and might want to see who is following Peter Facinelli on Twitter since they probably would be interested in this Twitter account too.  This lets you do just that. Based on the targets you specified earlier, Mimic Following lets you follow the people you really could benefit from reaching out to.

Tweet Spinner: Mimic Follow

Location Filtering

Again, for local businesses and brick and mortar locations, Location Filtering might be an incredible godsend.  Tweet Spinner uses case insensitive search but requires that you fill out detailed information for best results.  The example that they use is that for Portland, OR, you should enter “Portland, Oregon”, “Beaverton, Oregon”, “Oregon”, “PDX, Oregon”, and “Portland, OR” to catch all variations.

Profile Rotator

Here’s another great feature of Tweet Spinner. You can save your profile (bio, URL avatar, background color scheme, and background graphic) to the server and upload a custom one at will. You can even test to see if one performs better than another.

Here’s how it works: you can’t upload to the Tweet Spinner backend likely because they want to avoid incompatibility with Twitter (such as size limitations). The idea is to upload the files to Twitter first and then import it to the Tweet Spinner back-end. At any time, you can choose to upload the desired profile just by clicking a button on the Tweet Spinner interface. Statistics (# of times the profile has been uploaded) show up in this section.

Tweet Spinner: Profile Rotator

You might choose to schedule your backgrounds to add some more flavor and personality to your account. What if, for example, Manny is working the day shift and wants to associate his profile with his Twitter corporate account when he’s on duty, but Nadia is doing the night shift and she, too, wants to have a profile that associates her information with the account when she’s up? That’s definitely possible with this functionality. When you schedule a profile rotation, the design is cycled and changes every few hours (as specified by you). It’s a great way to spruce up your account and keep it looking fresh.

Smart Tweets

Another great feature of Tweet Spinner is Smart Tweets. This is where you add and schedule tweets that will be cycled at a user-specified interval. This is different from HootSuite or other scheduled tweets in the sense that these are recurring tweets. If, for example, you want your followers to know that you have a special deal on a product, you can send a regular tweet every few hours to make sure it gets the most coverage.

Tweet Spinner: Smart Tweets

Smart Tweets gets even more complex via Tweet Spinner’s “tweetscript” coding functionality. This lets you specify dynamic tweets to be sent. For example, you can create a list called “action” and put an unlimited number of phrases on the list.  If you tweet “don’t tweet and [action],” a different message (“don’t tweet and drive,” “don’t tweet and tweet,” “don’t tweet and drink,” “don’t tweet and eat,” as illustrated below) will be tweeted every time so as to avoid duplication. Tweetscript is a “language” that the Tweet Spinner team is enhancing on a regular basis, but there are already some pretty powerful ways to use it.

Tweet Spinner: Smart Tweets List Example

Rule-Based Direct Messages

Another pretty nifty feature of Tweet Spinner is the DM outbox. These are rule-based outgoing DMs that you can send via Tweet Spinner. Tweet Spinner only sends DMs if certain criteria in rules you specify are set. Once you have some rules in place, you can go ahead and personalize these DMs. Currently, the personalization supported is full name, friend count, follower count, number of days that the account has been in existence, number of days since their last tweet, the URL in their bio, and the location of the user. A possible implementation of this is “Thanks, [{fullname}], for following me. I see you’ve been on Twitter since [{created}]. Cool!”

Summary of Tweet Spinner

As you can see, Tweet Spinner is pretty complex and pretty exhaustive, but the features offered are pretty amazing. I personally get excited about the follower capabilities the most, but I really like how profiles can be rotated and messages can be varied and personalized. Tweet Spinner would make a good addition to an agency or big brand needing to have a little more control over Twitter. It’s especially useful to have an opportunity to let Tweet Spinner run its magic and find targeted followers; I haven’t seen a single Twitter application that offers any comparable features.

All in all, Tweet Spinner is fantastic. Their help documentation is lengthier than this article but everything is clearly explained. Once you’re set up, you have immediate access to these fabulous features, and you’ll have a chance to interact with your followers and leave the grunt work up to Tweet Spinner, from following new users (and not just any new user but those who would actually be interested in what you have to say) to changing up your profile colors every few hours.

If you’re a business looking to get a little more control over Twitter, check out Tweet Spinner. The first account is free (but limited in functionality), and you can add up to 5 other accounts for $18/month. Tweet Spinner also has agency pricing (10, 20, or 50 accounts) but takes Twitter TOS very seriously; to be considered for more advanced pricing, you need to contact them directly and let them know exactly which accounts you plan to use so that they can hand-check them and make sure that you do not intend to run spam accounts on Tweet Spinner.

I highly recommend Tweet Spinner. Even if you’re a small company, the keyword following options are superior, and it’s a lot of fun to actually get statistical data to see how well you’re doing.

Disclosure: I was introduced to Tweet Spinner by business colleagues, and I took the initiative to request a full featured account for the purposes of this review. As Tweet Spinner runs an affiliate program, I am including affiliate links.

[ Tweet Spinner Review: A Powerful Application to Manage Your Tweets is a post written by Tamar Weinberg. ]

Read more about The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web, a primer to social media marketing. Or you can subscribe to the Techipedia RSS feed.

There are a fair number of excellent search engine optimization experts (SEOs) in the wild, but there are countless social media marketing experts, many of whom are self-proclaimed gurus in their field. However, the number of SEOs I’ve come across are much fewer and farther between than social media marketers. In fact, I hear the same SEO names every day; I learn of a new “social media expert” twice a day.  Despite this, social media marketing is much more difficult than search engine optimization. Here’s why.

The Quest for Knowledge

What exactly does it take to become a search engine optimization expert or a social media marketing expert? In both of these aspects of search engine marketing, you begin by learning.  As the ideal marketer, you gets your hands on every single search engine optimization and social media marketing book or blog you can possibly find, and then you absorb the information presented within like a sponge. You begin following the experts (you know, the real ones) online. After awhile, you’ll be book smart. You’ll know what to do and what not to do. Hopefully, if you’ve followed the right books, blogs, and people, you’ll be armed with pretty decent case studies and pretty decent material to embark on your own journey.

The SEO Angle

If you’re a brand new student in the school of thought of SEO, after you’ve learned about improving your web presence via search engines, there are countless opportunities to prove to yourself that you know what you’re doing. For you, this means practice and true application of acquired skill. It’s not that costly to buy a few domain names (brand new or aged), invest in web hosting, and start applying that knowledge you’ve learned to websites. You can build a website from scratch or set up something quickly via a WordPress installation. You can purchase neglected websites through auctions. At the end of the day, you have websites — your subjects — upon which to test. When it relates to SEO, you can start right away. And you should. After all, you can’t learn SEO just by reading about it.

Wait, Maybe SEO Isn’t So Easy Then

SEO is an art and a science and one that is extremely difficult to understand and perfect. In fact, “perfection” in SEO is an impossibility since SEO is an ongoing process. Why, then, is SEO really easier? The issue is that the assets for performing SEO are right in front of you. To become a successful SEO, it will be necessary for you to get off your butt and begin testing and retesting, tweaking and optimizing, working hard to improve performance and rankings over time. But the sites are there. The access is there. That’s the easy part. They just need you to apply your knowledge to them.

The Challenge for the Social Media Consultant

In social media marketing, you can easily become book smart.  The problem begins when it actually relates to your street smarts.

See, it’ll take an incredible amount of time to engage in the education, but when it relates to social media marketing versus SEO, there’s something missing in the equation: experience. No, building your personal brand in social media does not count.

Social media marketing is a tremendous challenge, especially now that the market has become saturated with experts who clearly think that bringing their Digg front page success means that they’ve just launched a successful consulting business and can immediately sell their services to the highest (lowest?) bidder.  In social media marketing, the assets are missing.  The subjects are not there for you to test. You need clients. You need to be presented with a problem, one that you can actually analyze. You need to determine what kind of strategy you’ll implement. You then need to start executing. That’s not something you can easily do by just buying a few domain names and building up a real website presence.  But that’s easy to do where SEO is concerned.

Just because your wonderful piece of linkbait that drove 30,000 visitors to via Digg succeeded once (or maybe twice) doesn’t mean that you’re ready to go at having those clients alone. You’re not yet a social media marketing expert, not unless you’re consistently applying your skills to different and unique campaigns and initiatives. Much like SEO. Except that in SEO, you’re lucky because you can get started immediately. In social media marketing, you need to start hunting for people who are willing to take the risk to have you promote content or to push a marketing agenda online in front of the right people. Or they need to find you.  But when they do, they need to know that you have a proven track record of doing this on a regular basis and case studies to back that up.

Not All Experiences Are Treated Equal, Either

I do my own fair share of consulting by myself, but those who know me well know that I have been vocal about the fact that it’s great to work alone, but it’s even better to work with an agency where you can brainstorm with others and get access to some high level experiences not otherwise accessible as a sole consultant.  Real experience with a wide array of clients opens doors of opportunities and gives you the ammunition you need to say you really do understand what social media marketing is all about. That’s why I am working as a consultant on some amazing projects at a social media agency too. There’s only enough I can do as a one woman show.

Learning is the easy part. Applying the knowledge is the hard part. When it relates to SEO, the ability to apply that knowledge is easy since you can either create or buy a website that lets you begin applying the skills you need to become an expert. When it comes to social media marketing, you need to build up a presence by obtaining clients of some sort. And you’ll soon learn that it’s not that easy to find them.

[ Why SEO is Easier than Social Media Marketing is a post written by Tamar Weinberg. ]

Read more about The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web, a primer to social media marketing. Or you can subscribe to the Techipedia RSS feed.

In my social media etiquette handbook, which is easily my most referenced post of the past year, I allude to a problem that has become increasingly more prominent in social media circles and on social media networks and sites. In the post, I shared my don’ts of social networks, and to that point, I added the following rule for LinkedIn:

Gathering all the email addresses of users you are connected to — even locating email addresses of LinkedIn Group managers — and utilizing this mailing list to promote your own company or service off-site. In a specific case, I manage a few LinkedIn groups so my email address is far more visible on the site than I’d like. I’m not connected to the LinkedIn individual who spammed me, but he still took the liberty to use my email address for his personal gain in a completely unsolicited fashion. Perhaps this individual lost sight that LinkedIn is a professional network and not a spam facilitator. Even so, recipients should still be required to opt in.

With regards to LinkedIn, their legal team and customer support staff must have anticipated the demand too, as there is a clause in its user agreement prohibiting this behavior (see #11, “DO NOT … upload, post, email, transmit or otherwise make available or initiate any content that … includes any unsolicited or unauthorized advertising, promotional materials, “junk mail,” “spam,” “chain letters,” “pyramid schemes,” or any other form of solicitation.”)

The social media etiquette article, which was written in December 2008, is still quite relevant. In fact, the problem is expanding to all corners of the social media world. The problem that I’m experiencing more often, and one that my colleagues are beginning to see more frequently, is that an opt-in for a relationship or connection online does not actually grant permission to market. In other words, if I connect with you on LinkedIn, I didn’t invite you to send me spam. If I know you face to face, that doesn’t authorize me to throw my story pitch in your face. If I’ve been to your house once before, that doesn’t authorize me to slide promotional flyers under your door. If I’ve spoken to you on the phone, that doesn’t authorize me to play telemarketer and get you to sign up for my program.

Why do people think it’s appropriate for the same kinds of behavior, which are shunned in real life, to occur online? Wouldn’t it be safer, for the sake of maintaining the integrity of your business name or your personal brand, to ask permission first? Why should you do now, apologize later? By crossing the line, you’ve already violated someone’s trust. What makes you think they’ll be receptive to your apology and open to forgiveness?

Know an “Expert” from a Con-Man

There are a lot of ethical social media enthusiasts in my midst. They understand that the boundaries of the “human world” have not disappeared in the virtual world. They understand that you still need to build trust first, and explicit opt-ins for communication is absolutely mandatory. They understand that if you say you’re not interested that it’s not a good idea to pursue it further. Chance are if you’re reading this, you’re one of these people. Hopefully.

But while you’re likely part of the small group of professionals who understand that the rules of engagement do not change when we cross over to the virtual world, there’s an ocean of people who easily think that access to an email address or a “send message” form is an opportunity. They see dollar signs. “Maybe I can sell the product to her,” they think. Maybe I can hump his leg and get him to understand my new service! After all, he’s just so nice online and he clearly comes off as approachable.

Approachability is Not an Invitation

There are some people who are incredibly approachable. That’s because they actually show they care. Truth be told, perhaps they do. However, there are still boundaries that should never be crossed, no matter how approachable someone seems. (Of course, if you know them and can actually have lengthy conversations with the person day after day, that obviously means your relationship has made it to the next level.) But in general, there is no implicit invitation. Just because I choose to reach out to you, comment on your blog post, follow you on Twitter, become your Facebook friend, or join your LinkedIn group, it was a desire for me to possibly get to know you in the future. After all, most of these relationships, for some, are open doors into future opportunities to collaborate and to get to know each other, to build a network that is clearly social.

Did You Think Before You Sent That?

This kind of outreach is often done without regard for consequence. I have the ability, if I so choose, to call you out on this behavior. And then it’s not an issue of apologizing to me; you’ll publicly have to apologize to everyone who I’ve shared my dismay with. And those people have the potential to share it with their followers. Your small one-on-many-without-any-care-in-the-world messaging is now a public relations issue that you brought upon yourself because it was too much work for you to actually get permission to contact someone.

Relationships Matter, Online or Offline

Every social media interaction you have with someone is part of a bigger picture: a relationship. And in real life, these relationships would get burned as quickly as that match that you just lit. Worse yet, there’s a lot less trust when real expressions are lacking and the one thing you have in the way of making relationships seem real is a monitor. Despite this, people lose sight of the fact that monitors (and a little bit of technology) are the only things that are really getting in the way of a real face-to-face relationship, one that you’d probably value more if it weren’t for that obstacle.

With relationships comes responsibility. Your responsibility as a marketer is to understand that permission marketing might actually take work, but the other extreme is to choose an easy way out that will likely have a cost that may be hard (or impossible) to recover from. What do you choose?

[ Building Trust: A Relationship is Not a Newsletter Opt-In is a post written by Tamar Weinberg. ]

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Apple, the company behind aesthetically pleasing hardware that keeps fanboys drooling, has recently joined Twitter. If you take a look at any one of their four accounts, you’ll notice one thing: they’re not using Twitter to converse but to broadcast. Effectively, they’re porting their press release information to the wide open, and perhaps going a little more granular by featuring content specific to elements of iTunes.

First, I’m going to say kudos to Apple for trying involve themselves in the world of social media. I’m going to stop there, though. Unfortunately, they still don’t quite “get it.” Let’s envision this scenario: a user has a support issue about an Apple product. If it was a Comcast product, you’d get a near immediate response from Frank Eliason, the company’s Director of Digital Care. Apple has no such protocol in place, and at this point, there is no engagement. If you used Twitter to direct a complaint to iTunes, if and only if they bother to monitor and respond to their replies, they would send you to their faceless and non-responsive customer support channel.

I don’t expect Apple to port their customer service wholly over to Twitter, but Apple does little in terms of customer service issues altogether. They have discussion forums that are visited by moderators who merely police the content itself, but change never comes from suggestions offered in the forum itself or in the posts, even if hundreds of users contribute the same identical observations. Members are encouraged by other members (not moderators, and certainly not Apple) to submit product feedback, though if you take a look at that page, there are a lot of items. And once you’ve sent the email off, that’s all. No acknowledgment. In fact, of the many issues I’ve submitted over the years (and I know countless others have had problems with as well), nothing has been addressed. It makes me wonder if I’m sending my requests to a wall (or for your tech geeks, /dev/null) or if people really work for Apple (outside their marketing and engineering departments).

Apple’s approach toward using Twitter is likely motivated by a desire to connect with their customers. But connecting should be a two-way street. Social media is exactly that: “social.” At this point, it might as well be that these iTunes accounts are managed and maintained by interns who have no power to effectuate change. Yet listening is incredibly important. It can help boost your “ratings” among the crowd, turning a casual fanboy into a die-hard fanboy. It can turn a prospective buyer into a customer. It can instill faith that your customers have in your company. If not for your customers, you’d be nowhere, right?

If you’re going to dive in the social media world, you need to understand what it means to be “social.” That is, to promote your customers and not just your own agenda. Empower them. At the minimum, let them know that they are being heard (and yes, bring their concerns to those who actually can do something).

If you’re a company looking to dive into social media, you should be doing more than just broadcasting and taking advantage of your followers. Show them why you deserve to be followed by letting them voice their concerns — and by taking those back to the people who really can make a difference. Don’t wait until there’s a PR firestorm before you actually take action, Phil Schiller. Be proactive and not reactive. (To that end, the fact that apps are killing music is still an issue voiced by many of your customers on the proper channels — your forums and via the feedback portal — but yet you refuse to acknowledge the issue. Perhaps a PR firestorm is what is needed to get Apple to fix that problem. I’m sure there are other similar concerns.) Clearly, it seems that Apple responds when it needs to put out fires despite wanting to make its customers happy. And that’s never a good business practice to follow.

If you’re considering social media marketing for your business, no matter what size your company is, listening and engagement is key. Letting your customers know that they matter is priceless. Being human isn’t such a difficult task. If you need help at a bank and speak to the teller but the teller remains silent, is that good business practice? Is that even professional?

Think about redoing your Twitter strategy if all you plan on doing is broadcasting. I’m sure that if iTunes actually included the customer in its feed, and if other Apple departments followed suit, there would be a whole lot more followers and satisfied customers. It can make all the difference in nurturing a positive perception of your company.

[ Apple Gets More Serious About Using Twitter, but Why it Doesn’t Matter is a post written by Tamar Weinberg. ]

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If you’ve been abreast of the strides and developments in the marketing space in the last few years, you’d know about both Chris Brogan and Gary Vaynerchuk. Both are incredibly popular public facing success stories with very strong brands, traveling often to make public appearances at a variety of conferences and venues. But while that’s a common trait about both marketers, that’s only the end result. It’s in the way that both Chris and Gary got there that is important. Let’s explore their characteristics and see how you can apply them to build your business or personal brand.

They are human. The brands of Chris Brogan and Gary Vaynerchuk are extremely well known. Both have incredible followings, and they often get cornered when making public appearances. It’s no surprise that both are asked to speak at events on a very regular basis. Clearly, both are celebrities in their own right. Their success, though, is contributed by the fact that they are down to earth individuals who are very personable. They are real people, and they make it known that they are more than just celebs. They are not afraid of being human despite the fact that they are in possession of incredible knowledge, which likely made them famous.

They have passion. Both Chris and Gary are extremely passionate about what they do, day in and day out. If you’ve ever seen Gary speak at an event or even just on his Wine Library TV appearances, you can see the exuberance of gusto in his presentations. There is not a single person I know who is more passionate about what he does while speaking in public. Similarly, Chris takes this passion in his writings, which are posted to his blog at least once a day. He gets up when it’s dark. He is extremely devoted to empowering individuals and companies about marketing, networking, reciprocity, and social media. And to lead into the next point, this passion emanates to who they are in real life.

They care about their followers. I started poring through the “list” of people I’ve met over the past 3 years at industry trade shows and events in my mind to see if anyone else really came close to the level of caring that Chris and Gary exhibited when they met with people face-to-face. I could not think of a single person who was on the same level with either. When I first came face-to-face with both, they genuinely seemed to care about who I was and what I was about. And they’d do it to you if you approached them for the first time too. They want to know about you. They want to learn from you. They celebrate the people around them. It’s about you also.

To that end, Chris often talks about how he rewards his followers by retweeting them, because this small act of reciprocation really resonates. And have you recently seen Gary’s Twitter stream? I don’t think I have ever seen that many @ symbols in my life. It appears that Gary responds to each and every single tweet directed to him, a task which is probably rather difficult for a man of his caliber. Yet he does not hesitate to show appreciation for his fans and peers and to develop relationships with each and every single one of them.

The Lesson

We’re all professionals, but expectations have changed of “professionals,” and putting a face — a human face — on an interaction is now expected of us. In fact, simply making ourselves seem human, just like everyone else, is a tactic that makes us appear more approachable and respected. Your customers want to hear from people who are just like them, so why not be a little more open about who you are?

Chris and Gary are devoted and extremely hard workers, but they make the work seem easy. That’s because this is fun for them and they live and breathe their work everyday. The passion for what they do is obvious in their interactions with individuals, their public appearances, their videos, and their writings. It’s clear that they belong where they are, doing what they love to do. If your work is not fun for you, it might be time for you to explore alternative possibilities.

When I was a young kid, I had a favorite teacher in every grade. Either they were knowledgeable about the subject matter or they cared about me as a student. I used to lump the knowledgeable and caring teacher together as a “favorite.” I remember having a discussion about favorite teachers with an older student who once said, “XYZ teacher is a great teacher, but is not a good person” and “ABC teacher is an excellent person, but she’s an awful teacher.” I realized that I’ve had nary a teacher who really excelled in both areas.

Little did I know that once I stepped out into the real world that I’d meet teachers that were both knowledgeable and caring, and Chris and Gary are examples of both. If you are looking to succeed, you need to know your stuff, preach it, but also reward your students and celebrate their importance. The bottom line is that both Chris and Gary are really nice guys.

I understand now that many teachers work merely to collect a paycheck. Few work to honor the achievements of their students. Few took the opportunity to look beyond the textbook and make the educational experience an enriching one. But these two web celebrities are doing this and more. The big question here: are you passionate about what you do? Do you live it every day?

If you are looking to become successful, love what you do. Reward your customers and followers by appreciating them, honoring them, and highlighting them in the work that you do. And don’t be afraid to show who you are behind the corporate face. Your customers — and you — deserve it.

[ What Chris Brogan and Gary Vaynerchuk Have in Common, and What You Can Learn from it is a post written by Tamar Weinberg. ]

Read more about The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web, a primer to social media marketing. Or you can subscribe to the Techipedia RSS feed.

This is a guest post from Josh Schnell, founder of Macgasm.net and web developer.

Somewhere down the line, an exploitation has to occur in order for a financial profit to be realized. This is no less true for the world of social networks. Networks like Digg, FriendFeed, and Facebook are seeing huge growths in value, but the little guys, the ones actually providing the meat and potatoes for those operations, rarely see a nickel.

Let’s be honest for a second here. The major “Web 2.0″ and social networking technologies that have been created in the last several years have been a major boon for consumers and web users. They’ve aggregated the entire Internet into what’s cool and what’s not so cool. When searching for new and interesting websites, it is much preferable to visit a website on a friend’s recommendation than it is to use classic search engines. I’m not disputing the relevancy or success of these technologies to the average internet user. The problem as I see it is from a content creator paradigm, where the content creators are the ones footing the bills for bandwidth usage, paying the writers, and putting tears and sweat into their content so that it becomes sellable.

Unfortunately, it’s hard to maintain an environment where a high level of quality can be continued when some social networks are taking in content, verbatim, from multiple outside sources and passing it around their networks, without ever returning those interested in the information to the source. FriendFeed acts as a prime case in point when one considers the interest of the users on FriendFeed and then compares that to local statistics from the source article showing the rate of click throughs that the article received. It isn’t uncommon to see people sharing articles on FriendFeed, including all the images from the post, and then copying the entirety of the text into the comments section. Just like it’s not uncommon for someone to click the “Digg” button on Digg without ever visiting the site. It’s certainly not unthinkable that someone will import your RSS feed into another website without ever gaining any permission to do so. Some of those tactics may seem more vile than others, but a dangerous reality exists that no one is talking about — with social networks comes theft, and very little pay off for content creators.

Where is the incentive to click through? Why would anyone click through to a source when they are no longer required to click the link to finish getting the information from an interesting article? It starts looking a little bit less like “sharing” and “discussing” articles and a lot more like theft when put in this manner, doesn’t it? When contrasted with the StumbleUpon model, the FriendFeeds and Diggs of the world seem to have the process backwards. Why is it that these web applications allow users to rate an article before they’re even forwarded to it? Wouldn’t the most logical approach be creating a metric that counts a resources popularity by the number of people who actually click on the link, as opposed to click a “like” button?

Since these Javascript toolbars that follow you to the source article now seem to be an acceptable practice on some of these web applications, it makes a lot more sense to take away a user’s ability to like something, until they’re on that page or article that’s being referenced. The numbers would be a lot more representative if this approach was implemented, and the incentive to have users gaming these systems would be substantially diminished.

While the problem doesn’t solely lie on the shoulders of the developers who have been implementing the tools in these web applications, the responsibility for accurately monitoring true interest in submissions does.

With no incentive to click through to the source, we’re ridding content creators of their hard-earned payoffs. Advertisers aren’t going to pay a content producer if they aren’t getting traffic to their site, and certainly other revenue streams and models will be affected in the same manner. If content creators can’t make a living creating content, then the FriendFeeds of the world will cease to exist, and there will be nothing left to share, since their primary resource will have dried up. Resources aren’t limitless, and content will disappear if social services continue to exploit the hard work of the people who matter the most — the writers.

[ Content Aggregators are Killing Content Creators is a post written by Tamar Weinberg. ]

Read more about The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web, a primer to social media marketing. Or you can subscribe to the Techipedia RSS feed.

My husband Brian, who knows firsthand how much I eat, drink, and sleep social media, pointed me to an interesting critique by ExpertCruiser on a 2007 social media marketing campaign by Royal Caribbean.  That year, the cruise line launched a brand ambassador program.  Using market intelligence, Royal Caribbean identified supporters of the cruise line via social networking sites and took the opportunity to give fifty of the most ardent supporters, called Royal Champions, special privileges, including free paid cruises and invitations to special events with company executives.

In my upcoming book, The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web (Amazon link), which is slated to be released in late Spring, I talk about the importance of brand evangelism as part of an effective community management strategy. Individuals who are passionate and who have never been previously incentivized to promote your product are already talking positively about you on the web. If they’re already raving about your awesome product and promoting your service for free, why not show them that you appreciate all they are doing and offer them additional perks? Why not encourage the spread of goodwill?

This is exactly the process of the Royal Caribbean marketing team, a move that in 2007 was seen as virtually unheard of. Only recently, however, this story has become widely critiqued, with bloggers calling the practice a “vicious … royal mess” that “crossed the line.” In fact, ExpertCruiser made a scathing comment at the end of the article that suggests that this is a filthy manipulative practice:

Like them or not, online cruise message boards are now part of the pool of intelligence gathering and rumor swapping used (and manipulated) by travel agents, cruise line employees, rabid cruise fans, investors, media and the curious to track the performance of a cruise line.

Perhaps this is a “take heed” call to community participants who engage on the social web, but while ExpertCruiser warns its readers that this is a scummy practice, in reality, scouring social sites for mentions of your product, service, and even your competitors is nothing new. The effective practice of social media marketing requires monitoring all channels, from online cruise message boards to social networking sites like Facebook or LinkedIn. If you are not tapping into the online message boards for your own industry or niche, you’re not doing a thorough job at monitoring the successes or failures of your product.  You are missing out on tremendous opportunity for growth and performance of competitive analysis.  If a forum exists for your industry, you should very well be active: you should participate and follow the discussion closely to know exactly what is being said and what kind of feedback you can take back to your executive and development team to enhance your product and to make it better than your competition.

Touching upon the original concern as expressed by the ExperCruiser bloggers, the sheer existence of brand evangelism and the utilization of related programs do not cross the line.  In Royal Caribbean’s case, they simply  tapped into the minds of individuals who already loved the cruise line and expressed themselves as supporters on social networking forums.  Using the same individuals who were already respected in these communities to speak of how much they enjoyed their cruise experience and subsequently by following up with free rewards is not a deceptive practice.  Loyalty programs such as the Royal Champions encourage people to maintain a positive outlook about the company and may further influence them to talk more positively about the same company in the future.  These individuals didn’t have to be paid to do it before, after all, but the nice unexpected perks are certainly not unappreciated.

Because this critical post of Royal Caribbean disappointed me, I polled my Twitter followers for feedback.  I asked to see if anyone disagreed with this promotional tactic, and if not, what kind of incentives they’d offer to their constituents if they chose to engage in a brand ambassador program.  Responses from participants were unanimously in favor of brand evangelism and encouraged offering small perks such as free customer service and a nice dinner to large rewards such as in the case of Royal Caribbean’s free cruise.

@dudester (Mark Patterson) says:
@tamar Brand evangelism is a good thing, as long as the brand is worth evangelizing. You need to live up to the brand.

@zaifmand (Dror Zaifman) says:
@tamar In my opinion brand evangelism is not a bad thing at all. If anything it makes your brand sound different and stand out.

@AdamBroitman (Adam Broitman) says:
@tamar why would brand evangelism be a bad thing? Bribery=bad; but there is a fine line

@skinner (skinner) says:
@tamar Maybe you’d offer a brand ambassador free customer service, free promotion in return, things like that.

@TimMoore (Tim Moore) says:
@tamar dinner certificate? For top advocates, 3 day cruises?

@amabaie (David Leonhardt) says:
@tamar Any type of evangelism is a bad thing if it’s too pushy; it’s a good thing if it is “helpful”…just like a salesperson.

@vangogh (Steven Bradley) says:
@tamar Ideally nothing more than a good brand experience

@deirdrereid (Deirdre Reid) says:
@tamar Brand evang is a great thing. Incentives depend on brand type – how can u satisfy evang’s wants/needs, stroke their ego, incr recog?

@chiropractic (Planet Chiropractic) says:
@tamar I think it’s a good thing. Offer pre-release access to new products/services. Send free stuff. Say thank you a lot.

@dmasocialmedia (Social Media Smarts) says:
@tamar Sometimes all people want or need is recognition & acknowledgment to be good brand ambassadors

@ronhekier (Ron Hekier) says:
@tamar While others disagree I would support brand evangelists financially were I the vendor. But they usually will do it for schwag

The right kind of brand ambassador program does not necessarily demand forum participation thereafter, though they encourage it with a full disclosure of the participation.  However, chances are in many cases that you were already saying such nice things about that company and you’re likely to continue.  Because of your past participation, the company wanted to give a token of thanks to show their gratitude for your support.  A brand evangelism program encourages the commentary to be kept positive in the future.  Any company employing such an incentive program is certainly not participating in anything that is manipulative, questionable, or immoral in nature.

Do you think that Royal Caribbean crossed the line?  Or were they just smart enough to start something brilliant that aroused jealousy among those who were not picked for the program?  I’m compelled to suggest that Royal Caribbean has been on the right track throughout this entire ordeal in their innovative marketing tactic that they launched two years ago.  In fact, I recommend that other companies follow suit to encourage positive discourse and interactions.  They, too, should consider instituting a loyalty program that positively reinforces really good feedback about their own products and services.  What do you say, and how would you execute the program?

[ When is Brand Evangelism a Crime? Exploring the Royal Caribbean Promotional Marketing Strategy is a post written by Tamar Weinberg. ]

Read more about The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web, a primer to social media marketing. Or you can subscribe to the Techipedia RSS feed.

Social media mimics real relationships — in many cases. Would you do the following within real face-to-face relationships?

• Jump on the friendship bandwagon without properly introducing yourself?
• Consistently talk about yourself and promote only yourself without regard for those around you?
• Randomly approach a friend you barely talk to and simply ask for favors — repeatedly?
• Introduce yourself to another person as “Pink House Gardening?”

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you may need a refresher course on social media etiquette — and perhaps real-life etiquette also. Here are some egregious sins that you must not perform on social media sites. Avoid these violations and learn how to manage and maintain online relationships on a variety of popular social media sites.

Facebook

• Adding users as friends without proper introductions. If you’re looking to make friends, tell people who you are. Don’t assume they know you — especially if they, well, don’t.
• Abuse application invites and consistently invite friends to participate in vampire games. Many call this spam.
• Abusing group invites. If your friends are interested, they’ll likely join without your “encouragement.” And if they don’t accept, don’t send the group request more than once by asking them to join via email, wall post, or Facebook message.
• Turning your Facebook profile photo into a pitch so that you can gather leads through your Facebook connections. Thanks, but no thanks. Facebook is about real friendships and not about business — at least not to me.
• Using a fake name as your Facebook name. I can’t tell you how many people have added me and their last name is “Com” or “Seo.”? I’m not adding you unless you can be honest about who you are. Once upon a time, Facebook deleted all of the accounts that portrayed people as business entities or things. I wish Facebook would employ the same tactics yet again, because I’m not adding a fake identity as a friend.
• Publicizing a private conversation on a wall post. In case it isn’t obvious, Facebook wall posts are completely public to all your friends (unless you tweak your privacy settings). Private matters should be handled privately: via email or even in Facebook private messages.
• Tagging individuals in unflattering pictures that may end up costing your friends their jobs. Avoid the unnecessary commentary also, especially on your childhood pictures that portray your tagged friends as chubby and not so popular. Further, if your friends request to be untagged, don’t make a stink of it.

The image above was taken last night and represents the number of pending requests I have on Facebook. If you’re one of the pending friends, you may have violated one of the above rules. Otherwise, see this post.

That said, there’s one other rule that some individuals follow. I know this isn’t the case for all individuals, so your mileage may vary:

• Forgetting that some individuals won’t network with you on a “personal” space like Facebook without knowing who you are, even with the proper introduction. If you’re looking to establish a professional relationship with someone, consider LinkedIn. Otherwise, consider building up a rapport with an individual before randomly adding them as your friend. Some people require face-to-face meetings before they invite you into their private lives. After all, Facebook was a tool that college students were using before it was open to the public, and some still use it as a purely personal and not a professional tool. LinkedIn is still seen as the more professional of the two.

Considering the above example, I pose a question on Facebook etiquette: Is it appropriate to let these requests sit in pending mode or to reject the friends outright?? In many instances, these requests are probably better off sitting indefinitely (and it’s healthier than the rejection). Plus, in the future, you may want to end up responding to that friend request positively.

Twitter

• Following a user and then unfollowing them before they have a chance to follow back. Or unfollowing them as soon as they follow you.
• Mass-following everyone so that you can artificially inflate your numbers. Then, you use that number as a success metric for influence. And maybe then you submit a press release about it.
• Consistently using your Twitter stream for nothing but self-promotion and ego. Profy highlights this phenomenon quite well.
• Requesting that your friends Retweet your Tweets on a consistent basis. This is much more bothersome when the request comes via IM or email and not on Twitter itself. The bottom line: If your content is good enough to stand on its own, it will be Retweeted. There is no reason to make a personal request. (And if it doesn’t stand on its own, it usually doesn’t need to be retweeted.)
• Not humanizing your profile. Twitter is also about real relationships. Add an avatar and a bio at the minimum. Let people know who you are. To take it a step further, make it easy for people to contact you outside Twitter if necessary. This is especially important if someone on Twitter needs to reach you but can’t direct message you since you’re not following them!? If they’re making the effort, it’s probably because they really want to talk to you. (Was it something you said? Usually.)
• Streaming only your blog’s RSS feed on Twitter. (If you’re following anyone like this, feel free to take my advice and unfollow them right now. They won’t engage with you, so why engage with their narcissistic self-promotion?)
• Using Twitter to repeat personal and confidential correspondence. If you’re not happy with the way an email communication progressed about a private matter, take it up with the person who you were emailing to square things away. Certainly, don’t broadcast your dissatisfaction with the turnout to your entire Twitter audience. It looks unprofessional for you and makes you appear untrustworthy.
• Leverage your Twitter connections to send spam via direct messages to those who follow you. Two days later, you may wonder why they don’t follow you anymore.
• Abusing Twitter hashtags during a crisis. It’s a shame that Mumbai happened, but this was not the opportunity to capitalize on your CRM software.
• Using your Twitter feed as a chat room for conversations that are exclusive in nature and not as a broadcast medium. It’s nice that Twitter empowers you to use the @ symbol to talk directly to individuals, and that’s fine in moderation. As a friend recently said to me, “I’m tired of my Twitter feed being a [private] conversation between person X, person Y, and person Z.” Why don’t the three of you get a room? [Update: Since this particular tidbit had some follow-up discussion, I summarize this point from @cheapsuits: "The tweeps that talk everyday to each other about banalities gets old."? The emphasis here is on "chat rooms" that exclude other individuals in conversations that do not provide value. At all. Ever. I think we all would agree about that point! I also added some new points in italics to clarify.]
  

LinkedIn

• Gathering all the email addresses of users you are connected to — even locating email addresses of LinkedIn Group managers — and utilizing this mailing list to promote your own company or service off-site. In a specific case, I manage a few LinkedIn groups so my email address is far more visible on the site than I’d like. I’m not connected to the LinkedIn individual who spammed me, but he still took the liberty to use my email address for his personal gain in a completely unsolicited fashion. Perhaps this individual lost sight that LinkedIn is a professional network and not a spam facilitator. Even so, recipients should still be required to opt in.
• Asking for endorsements from individuals you don’t know or that didn’t do a good job in your employ.
• Writing a recommendation for someone and then firing them just a few days later.

Social News (Digg, Sphinn, Mixx, Reddit, Tip’d, and a whole load of related sites)

• Submitting only your own articles and posts to social media sites.
• Consistently “taking” (asking for votes) but never giving back. Social news is about reciprocal relationships. Even if the people you are asking votes of will never actually ask you for votes, a random IM that pops up that says “Digg this for me” is far more obtrusive than saying “hey, how’s it going?” and having a real conversation first.
• Shouting the same story repeatedly to your friends. Can we say spam? (And if you are still being shouted at repeatedly, why haven’t you unfriended the offenders?)
• Submitting a story to a social news site that is completely off-topic. It’s important to understand the communities you contribute to and to understand the rules of the sites that you target. Your story about celebrity cell phones simply does not belong on financial social news site Tipd, no matter how you try to spin it. And when I, as a moderator, tell you that that the submission is not appropriate for the audience especially as it has no relevancy to the subject matter of the site, don’t argue with the decision.
• Using the comments field to drop links, especially to related submissions that were made after the fact.
• On social sites where buries are public (though professional in nature), assume that it’s personal. In a recent instance, a “bury” on a popular social site upset the submitter so much that he resorted to an unprofessional attack on the person who buried the story by blogging about her. Sadly enough, the bury reason (which was public for all to see) was not at all about the writer of the post but was about the content itself. In social media and in relationships in general, you should be disagreeing with the statement. That means that you shouldn’t be assuming they’re talking about you as the person who made the statement and that the statement is a reflection of a character flaw. They didn’t like what you said and disagreed. Grow from it. Don’t turn it into something personal when it clearly isn’t.

FriendFeed

• Using the service completely for self-promotion. If you’re going to claim your social media profile on that totally awesome service, either don’t share your feeds at all or interact on a semi-consistent basis. Please? FriendFeed is a service but it’s also a community.
• Cross-post on all social sites using a site like ping.fm. I don’t need to see the same message from you on Twitter, FriendFeed, your Google Talk status, your Facebook feed, and on your dog’s scrolling LED collar. Keep the spam broadcasts to a minimum. It’s obvious on FriendFeed when this facility is abused.

YouTube

• Asking someone repeatedly to watch your crummy video, subscribe to your channel, and give you a 5-star rating.
• Force people to subscribe to your YouTube channel by applying an iFrame exploit.

StumbleUpon

• Sending more than one story to your network daily. The key to success is moderation. Excess converts to spam.
• Submitting and reviewing only your own articles. Do you self-promote this often in real life?
• Submitting a story from another social news site to StumbleUpon for more visibility and eyeballs. Once upon a time, I stumbled upon a Digg submission of a Sphinn submission of a blog post. Seriously? Why don’t you just submit the blog post directly instead of using the other sites as conduits? (This infraction goes for all social sites that accept submissions, and not just StumbleUpon.)

Blogging and Commenting

• Commenting on other articles and using the name “Yellow Brick Plumbing.” Isn’t your name actually Alan? There’s no SEO value to these comments (they’re nofollowed by default), and all this approach does is makes you lose credibility in the eyes of the blogger. This isn’t the way to network!
• Using content from another blog without attribution. Sometimes a specific blog will get an exclusive. Then, another blog will write on the story using the original blog post as its “source” without attribution. Even popular blogs will rip off stories from lesser known blogs in their space. Don’t let greed get in the way of your own blogging habits and make sure to link out where appropriate.
• Sending a pitch to a blogger requesting a link exchange even though your site has no relevancy at all to their content. I write about social media, people, not about beer bongs. And well, they say that social media is the new link exchange, so instead of asking for an old-fashioned link (which might have worked in 2002), consider using a more viable strategy for this modern time period.
• Turning a blog into a flame war against someone you don’t like. Scott Hendison recounts how forum spam not only turned into a bitter heated battle that may end up going to the courts but how the individual responsible for the abuse is not slowing down. If you’re wrong, acknowledge the wrongdoing and don’t use other blogs to tarnish someone else’s image.

Other Social Sites

• Join a new social network and then invite everyone you’ve ever emailed in your lifetime to the service by submitting your entire Gmail address book when the service requests it. Reading the fine print is a wonderful — and you should never volunteer your email account’s password to the social site anyway. (It’s also helpful to keep in mind that your email account password should not be the same as your social profiles, and that’s not a question of etiquette — it’s common sense!)

Finally, a word on social media etiquette in general:

You’re leaving your digital signature on the Internet right now. Think about the consequences of your engagement on any social site. Racial slurs, criticisms without warrant, and blatant abuse don’t work in real life, and they really have no place in the social media channels simply because you are far more anonymous on these sites. If you were living in New York and you walked up to a stranger with the same foul-mouthed comments that are rampant on many social media sites, you may never make it home. Consider how your comments would be perceived before you actually post them, and think about logic above emotion at all times. Above all, think about maintaining a certain level of professionalism, since people can use whatever you make “permanent” on these sites against you. Not all blogs will remove a comment after you’ve requested that they do so simply because you were angry when you wrote the comment. Before you hit “post,” realize that this will be a permanent reflection of your identity and that it may never be erased. It may even be used against you.

Conclusion

Remember that social media communities are real relationships, real conversations, and as such, they should be treated like they are real. It’s not about a me, myself, and I mentality. It’s about the collective, the community, and the common good.

Do you find that there are other social media violations that are committed on any of the above social sites — or perhaps on sites that I haven’t yet shared?? If so, please share these infractions in the comments.

(Thanks to Twitter users trontastic, jillwhalen, BrettFromTibet, digiphile, ezrabutler, hakerem, debramastaler, aviw, seofactor, danielthepoet, Stuartcfoster, RuudHein, papei, lunaroja, gingie822, rafaelmarquez, susqhb, chrisgarrett, brokerkathy, DavidWallace, rogerdooley, WayneLiew, JasonPeck, and BarbaraKB their insights!)

[ The Ultimate Social Media Etiquette Handbook is a post written by Tamar Weinberg. ]

Read more about The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web, a primer to social media marketing. Or you can subscribe to the Techipedia RSS feed.