Digital Marketing Specialist, Social Media Consultant,
and Tech Geek at Heart

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How to Spice up Your Social Media Strategy in 2011

December 15, 2010

This is a guest post by Jennifer Mattern.

Is your company’s social media strategy really working? Could it stand for some improvement? Whether you feel that you’ve maxed out the potential of your current social media efforts or you feel like nothing you do is really helping, it’s time to step up your game.

Now is the perfect time to make changes for the New Year. So why not spice up your social media strategy and make it work even harder for you? Here are five ways you can do just that.

Get Real

Having a company presence in social media is all well and good but it isn’t enough. Your company doesn’t have a personality. You do. Your staff members do. Your customers certainly do. If you really want your customers or other target audience to get (and stay) involved with your business through social media, get real. Show them that there are real people, and real personalities, behind the corporate façade.

Most people don’t just want to talk to a brand image. They want to feel like they’re talking to real people. More importantly, they want to know real people are listening. If you can’t be the public face of your business personally, find someone who can. You might find your audience more willing to pay attention and get involved.

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13 Characteristics Of Successful Digital Schmoozers

December 7, 2010

This is a guest post by David Siteman Garland, author of newly released book Smarter, Faster, Cheaper: Non-Boring, Fluff-free Strategies for Marketing and Promoting Your Business.

Digital schomoozers. You know the type. They have REALLY engaged social networks. It seems no matter what they post, their readers and followers respond and engage with them as a result. And in many cases, it could literally be anything ranging from a new product to asking how everyone is doing to some TMI information about how their cat ate the wrong kind of food and threw up everywhere.

To the outside eye, this looks a little ridiculous. Why are these schmoozers so popular? What are the top 1% of these digital schmoozers doing that the other 99% of online citizens seems to be missing out on? How are they able to build quality relationships and a large following for their brand with seemingly little effort?

More importantly, how can YOU (if you choose) leverage those same principles to become an influential leader in your niche?

Over the past two years, I’ve been on a quest to answer the questions above through:

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7 Truths About Social Media Marketing

April 8, 2010

Even though social media isn’t new to many of us, the world is waking up to this new shiny toy. Thanks to books like The New Community Rules, written by yours truly, Engage, Social Media 101, and others, social media marketing is, for the time being, going to still be on people’s minds as they discover this bright and sunny marketing opportunity.

But despite the vastness of opportunities that social media affords, it’s just one channel in a series of many. We should still tackle some realities about social media marketing before you get too excited about its potential.

Social Media is Not a Silver Bullet

Social media is currently all the rage because it’s new. But let’s be honest here. It’s really not that new. In fact, I’ve been offering social media services for 4 years now, well before most even knew about the potential of social media or believed in the promise of the technologies. In other words, if you’re diving in right now, you’re out of luck — you’re a late adopter. Do you know what that means? Without creativity in your marketing plan, its will be a lot harder to make a splash.

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The Blogger and Marketer’s Cheat Sheet to Getting High Profile Jobs and Blog Mentions

August 18, 2009

Sometimes you can’t tell the difference between a marketer and a blogger. A blogger might say that he wants to write for a specific publication, sending emails and instant messages asking, “Hey, I really like that you write for this publication. Can you get me a job too?” Marketing type folk, especially those representing a company’s service or product offerings, turn to blogs and ask to be mentioned in the blog. In both cases, the blogger and marketer will approach you when the timing is right for them and take advantage of these channels when they need to.

I don’t expect marketers or bloggers to have been reading specific blogs forever, but they should know about the blog’s culture before promoting themselves. There’s a pervasive theme that resonates with 99% of these email or IM requests: I expect marketers and bloggers to do a little more due diligence before they come pitching their product or themselves to a specific blog. In a nutshell, they should show that they know what the blog is about, and if they’re really looking for coverage or acknowledgments, they should be visible.

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The Importance of Networking on the Internet

July 27, 2009

This post is a little personal in nature, but I’m sure if you read through the end, you’ll enjoy reading this story as much as I enjoyed telling it. In fact, I’ve been meaning to tell this story for nearly two years.

In the last few years, I’ve taken the liberty of doing more than just blogging — I’ve been trying to get to know the people who have inspired me most (and that list isn’t cumulative!). I don’t necessarily expect to meet with those folks immediately; often, these powerful relationships are formed online, and I then try to learn what I can about the blogger himself/herself and follow up, normally at a conference or industry event. I do my best to put a face to a name — a face that I can see beyond just a digital format.

But sometimes there are surprises in every single meeting.

I decided one day to read more about self-improvement and marketing blogger, Jonathan Fields (and author of Career Renegade). The date was December 12, 2007, and I was excited to hear that Jonathan was a New Yorker like me. According to his blog’s “About” page at the time, you could find him simply by screaming his name in the very large Bryant Park in Manhattan. You know, with 8 million people living in NYC, you’d think this is no big deal, but there’s more to the story.

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