MDC Group Inc’s Blog

Are You Blogging Yet?

What are Blogs?

Blogs are websites with content management systems that allow visitors to the site to add content. They are forums for organizations and individuals to exchange ideas and communicate with their partners, customers, employees, etc. You can create pages relevant for your business, post articles on different subjects, and offer a platform for others to write their comments or opinions on that post.

Blog Glossary
As a first step towards understanding blogs, its important to get familiarized with some key terms used in the blog world.

• Blogosphere – Community of bloggers
• Posts – Post is an article or a comment written on a blog.
• Trackback – A method for Web authors to request notification when somebody links to one of their documents. Trackbacks enable authors to keep track of who they are linking to, or referring to their articles.
• RSS – Real Simple Syndication
• Web Syndication - Refers to making Web feeds available from a site in order to provide other people with a summary of the website’s recently added content
• Content Syndication – Ability for others to subscribe to the content on your site (using RSS feeds)
• Socializing the blog – Promoting your blog by asking relevant bloggers to review your site by posting, commenting and linking.

Why Blog?

Due of the interactive nature and ability for readers to write their reactions and comments, blogs offers a solid platform for writer and readers to interact and develop a mutual understanding of the opinions of the either party. This allows managers in organizations to get a closer look at what their employees feel or for companies to understand what their customers think of their products.

In the business environment, we believe that blogs offer a solid interaction forum that can be used by companies to read into their customers’ minds, resulting in a better understanding of customer requirements. This information can be used effectively by companies to tailor their product offerings to best meet the needs of those customers. Blogs can be used effectively by companies to establish credibility and trust, and provide insight into the company’s “philosophy and personality.”

Blogs and Search Engines

For an online marketer, blogs offer a powerful marketing platform. Not only do blogs enable marketers to gain a better understanding of their customers, but the content posted on blogs is much easier to find on search engines as well. Search engines love blogs because they love fresh content. Every time new content is posted on a blog, the blog site pings the search engines. This results in frequent search engine spider visits and hence much higher optimization and ranking.

Blogs also have RSS (Real Simple Syndicate) functionality, which means as soon as your article/post is posted on your blog, people signed up to receive your RSS automatically receive information about your post. They come to your blog to read the post or read it in their RSS reader. It all happens in real time on your site. The more you write, the more people will read and comment. Bloggers link to each others blogs while commenting on the post. So, every time a blog has fresh content, whether you wrote a post or readers of the blog commented on your post, search engines get pinged and visit your site.

Blogs help in securing quality links from relevant blogs by trackbacks and comments, which in the blogging world is also called “socializing the blog.” This helps in gaining link popularity and link relevancy, and helps drive relevant traffic very quickly.

Blogs for the Lodging Industry

The lodging industry can utilize blog technology very effectively as a marketing tool. Blogs can be used effectively by hotels and brands to communicate with their customers and to develop an understanding of their needs. In our opinion, one of the best forms of blogs for the hotel/lodging industry is focused on information about the hotel’s local market. Hotels can successfully utilze blogs to communicate about the attractions and places of interest in their local market. A significant amount of people visit hotels because of local events, attractions, things to do, etc. Therefore, blogs showcasing local destinations can be highly successful for hotel marketing.

There are several categories and functionalities to consider while developing lodging industry blogs. An example of a hotel industry blog can be found at http://blog.rivernorthhotel.com and http://www.experiencewashingtonstate.com/. In these examples, blogs discuss the destination and top attractions in the hotels’ local market. It also has information about restaurants in the area and provides reader the ability to post comments and opinions. You can discuss the features and amenities that your lodging offers by creating a section for featured properties.

5 Tips For Making Your Lodging Blog Successful

1. Talk about your destination – Local area attractions and exciting information – rather than about your hotel.
2. Commit time to manage your blog – Unlike your website, your blog does require commitment of your time. Moderate your blog carefully on a weekly basis. Socialize with bloggers who are blogging about your area and request that they review your blog.
3. Convert readers by offering time sensitive offers, discount tickets to attractions, and information about local deals, etc.
4. Offer local videos and podcasts about your area on your blog.
5. Under a dining category, add a post about your hotel’s restaurant and add a personal touch by offering a great recipe from your hotel chef.

Promoting Blogs

The journey of blog promotion is never ending. Here are 10 steps you can take to promote your blog. The more action steps you will take, the more successful you will be and the more ROI you will gain.

1. Create a step by step marketing plan for promoting your blog.
2. Enroll your blog in to blog search engines.
3. Enroll your blog RSS in to RSS search engines.
4. Inform your customers about your blog and the flexibility of adding comments. Make sure to moderate your comments.
5. Offer online functionality for surveys and polls, etc.
6. Offer time sensitive offers, such as coupons, local specials, etc. at least two to three times a month. Send an email campaign to let people know that they can find offers only on your blog.
7. Let your visiting hotel guests know about the blog and ask them to post comments about their experiences with your hotel and the destination. You may want to check first that the guests had a great time.
8. Socialize your blog – this is a very important step towards promoting your blog. You have to seek out bloggers who are blogging about your area and your topics. It is easy to find bloggers specific to your industry by using blog search engines such as Technorati. Make a list of relevant bloggers and write about their blog on your blog. Ask these bloggers to review your blog. If they find your blog relevant and informational, they will post positive reviews on their blog about your blog and will give your blog a very qualitative link.
9. Offer periodic podcasts about local events, attractions, and things to do, etc.
10. Inform and train your employees to be aware of the blog and be a part of the promotional strategy. When they answer a call, they should be able to provide additional information about the blog.

Tracking Your Blog’s ROI

Blogs give businesses indirect, long-term ROI. The best return on investment from a blog comes from gaining a better understanding of your customer. From the customer point of view, people do business with people they know. When people read your blog and comment on your blog, they feel they know you and your business. They might not have an immediate need for your services, but eventually, when they have a need or their friends have need, they will call you.

You can track your blog’s ROI by:

- Enrolling/submitting your feed using Feedburner, software that gives you the flexibility to manage RSS feeds and track usage of subscribers.
- Adding online tracking software such as Urchin and Webtrend to track unique visitors, page views, and referrals, etc.
- Phone Tracking – add phone tracking on your blog to find out what people are asking when they call after reviewing your blog.

Examples of Lodging Industry Blogs

Your blog can focus on delivering news, establishing you as a leader, or can be niche, destination or company specific. Here are few blogs established for the lodging industry.

Leader Blogs - Lodging industry leaders or franchise companies can create a blog to communicate their corporate initiatives, news and history, or add a personal touch by adding voice casts. Bill Marriott has done a great job of this, showcasing Marriott policy, personal achievements, and the Marriott family. Check out his active blog at http://www.blogs.marriott.com/.

Niche Specific Blogs – The lodging industry can create niche specific blogs. Examples of such blogs include those catering to luxury travelers and travelers looking for great deals or travel videos such as Upgrade Travel Blogs. Other travel blog feature tips, news, and commentary for business and leisure travelers looking for comfort, style, and convenience while getting great deals. Check out http://www.aluxurytravelblog.com/.

Destination Specific Blogs – These blogs showcase a destination, featuring top attractions, tours, dining, etc., and offer featured hotels. Destination blogs can feature one hotel or can be used by several hotels. Essentially they are not focusing on the hotel, but rather they are talking about a destination that brings people to the hotel. Once readers decide to try a destination and things to do, they can choose to stay at one of the featured hotels. Check out http://blog.rivernorthhotel.com and Experience Washington blog.

Company Specific Blogs – Companies marketing to a specific industry can create a blog focused on that industry. Blog categories highlight the main products the company is offering. For example, on Milestone’s blog we talk about emerging trends, email marketing tips, local search, blogs, podcasts and information relevant to internet marketing.

FAQS about Blogging

Here are some of the questions I get asked about blogs. I tried to summarize my point of view in the answer.

Q: What if people write negative comments about me or my business because of personal rivalry on my blog?

A: You can moderate all the comments posted on your blog. That means, only allow the comments you want or delete the comments which are motivated by personal rivalries.

Google vs Microsoft: A Guide to the Battle

Last night, Google jumped directly into Microsoft’s home turf by announcing Google Chrome OS, its new operating system for PCs and netbooks. And while we’re still debating whether it will take down Windows or flop like a fish on land, we tend to forget that this isn’t the first time Google’s challenged Microsoft. In fact, it’s become almost routine. Whether its operating systems, documents, search, communication, or mobile, the two behemoths have been increasingly butting heads in a war for tech supremacy. Now with Google Chrome OS making headlines, we thought it would be appropriate to perform a straight-up comparison of where the competition between Google and Microsoft stands. So who’s winning the war? And how will Google Chrome OS affect this longstanding battle? Here’s an overview:

1. Search

Google: What is there to say, really? Search is to Google as Windows is to Microsoft. They dominate the search market by a wide margin, despite Microsoft’s best efforts (including the company’s failed attempt to buy Yahoo).

Microsoft: They had to do something drastic to compete in search, and they did with their recent launch of Bing. It’s received a lot of press, a lot of positive reviews, and has clearly caught Google’s attention. But does anyone seriously think it will overtake Google’s dominance in search anytime soon?

Advantage: Google. By light years.

2. Documents

Microsoft: Microsoft Office, with Word, Powerpoint, and Excel have been the leading way to create and edit documents for years, and for good reason – they’re widely used, widely known, and feature-rich. There’s also now Microsoft Office Live, which while not as collaborative as Google Docs, isn’t a bad solution and has the benefit of being connected to the desktop apps.

Google: Google Docs have been growing in features and users. They provide a level of collaboration that Microsoft documents simply don’t offer. But they don’t provide as many options as Microsoft Office and they just don’t have nearly as many users. This is one area where the majority of users still prefer the desktop to the web.

Advantage: Microsoft

3. Communication, Email, and IM

Microsoft: While Google’s probably more revered for Gmail and its communication suite, Hotmail is still bigger, and Live Messenger is heavily used. Microsoft also produces the popular Outlook software and has software in a variety of arenas, such as Windows Live Meeting, giving the company an edge in the enterprise.

Google: The search giant has a suite of very popular communication products – Gmail and Gtalk being the best known. The X factor in this debate though, is the upcoming Google Wave communication platform, which has impressed us so far. There’s also the intriguing Google Voice offering to consider.

Advantage: Push

4. Mobile

Google: Google’s has good traction with its Android mobile OS given it’s relatively new to the space. It runs on more than one million T Mobile phones and has a strong app platform. Many of Google’s apps also run well on mobile phones, especially Google Maps and YouTube .

Microsoft: Windows Mobile still shipped tens of millions of units last year, far outpacing Android. It also has apps to run Office, Outlook, and Windows Media Player. We think the long-term trend favors Google, but as of right now Microsoft is the leader.

Advantage: Microsoft, but perhaps not for long.

5. Operating System

Microsoft: This is Microsoft’s bread and butter. Windows is the reason Microsoft makes $60+ billion in revenue every year and has stayed on top for so long. Its stranglehold is legendary. Yet Windows Vista proved that it is not invincible.

Google: Let’s say this: we can’t wait to see what Google has in store for Google Chrome OS. We’re skeptical that it could ever kill Windows, but Google will be Microsoft’s most powerful challenger yet.

Conclusion: We look forward to the upcoming war.

What to Do When Your Postcard Mailing Campaign Doesn’t Produce Results

by Rachelle Lim (Copyright 2008)

Postcard mailing has become one of the most preferred ways to advertise a company or a product. Its versatility allows it to be useful to companies with different products and services. However, because of the sheer number of postcards people receive in their mail, it is very easy for your postcard to be disregarded and very hard to get noticed.

Most articles and tips around the web will tell you to just keep on resending your postcards and eventually your postcards will produce results. The problem with this kind of thinking is not taking into account the fact that if the campaign failed during the first few tries, what keeps it from failing again?

Remember that without analyzing what went wrong, you’d only end up doing the same thing again and again wasting your efforts and resources.

So, when you feel that your postcard campaign is not producing the results that you want, you should consider some of these tips:

1. Re-send but re-evaluate your target audience. Take a second look at your target list of potential clients. Weed out people or businesses that have no use for what you do. You can enlist the help of a professional data company or credit reporting agencies who can give you a list of business addresses and residential names.

Also, there are a lot of printing companies online who are offering free mailing list service to customers as an added incentive to their printing services. This serves as a convenient method for you to order the your postcards and have it immediately sent on its way without thinking too much about it.

2. Limit your subject. Since you only have a few seconds to make an impact with your postcards, you should keep your messages as simple and as direct to the point as possible. Do this by highlighting your text or creating a stunning design that says it all for you.

3. Do not assume. One of the most common mistakes in marketing is assuming that your audience already knows about your product. After making your potential customers interested enough to read the rest of your copy, they should be able to read and understand your product or service within one reading. Remember that when your audience doesn’t understand your message in the first go, there is rarely a chance that they’ll spend any more time with it. .

4. Keep the next step simple. You should provide people with a quick and easy way to contact you and avail of your services. Most postcard mailing campaigns fail not because of lack of design or bad prints. They fail because they give people a hard time to respond to their advertising campaign.

Do not put in long and complicated steps on how to avail of your services. Instead, leave a toll free number or your company’s site for quick access.

5. Be on the lookout. Scout around and see what other companies are doing with their direct mailing campaigns. Consider both successful and failed campaigns. You should keep in mind that the same campaign strategy yield different results for different products or services. Try to experiment and see what works best for your company or product. Do these and more for your postcard mailing and observe the response you get the next time around.

The author is a very energetic person. She loves to play badminton and volleyball. She likes taking care of dogs. She is an outgoing person. She always wants to have fun in everything she does.

How Social Media Is Changing Travel

Social media is changing the way travelers relate to big companies like airlines and hotel chains; calling the 800 number and sitting on hold for 45 minutes waiting for your complaint to be heard isn’t your only option anymore.

By Ed Hewitt

It’s undeniable that social media tools like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube can seem like nothing but a sea of banalities — vacation photos, mundane status updates, birthday wishes, comments on what you had for lunch — but every once in a while, a voice in the wilderness breaks through with a post or tweet heard around the world.

This very thing happened twice in the travel industry recently when a couple of more or less ordinary (but very well-crafted) complaints about air travel turned into extraordinary Internet sensations — and forced the airlines in question to respond.

Social media is changing the way travelers relate to big companies like airlines and hotel chains; calling the 800 number and sitting on hold for 45 minutes waiting for your complaint to be heard isn’t your only option anymore. Even as we are standing in line waiting for bad news, being treated about the same as our luggage, and enduring countless slights and indignities, you and I alike can get the attention of big travel companies, forcing them to listen and respond. With the explosion of social media, we are seeing it happen more and more.

Case study No 1: United Breaks perfectly good guitars

Country singer Dave Carroll of the band Sons of Maxwell has become the poster child for this phenomenon (and for our frustrations as travelers) with his song and video United Breaks Guitars.

When I first started compiling notes for this article, the United Breaks Guitars video was known mostly to musicians, having made the rounds of guitar Web sites and message boards. But as I finish the article this afternoon, the video has been watched over 3.4 million times. Singer Dave Carroll has been on “The Early Show,” and news of the video has showed up on CNN and earned full articles in newspapers like USA Today, the Los Angeles Times and the Sydney Morning Herald (yes, that’s Sydney, Australia). A search for “United breaks guitars” on Google News produces nearly 500 news articles worldwide, and that’s in just the first two search results.

It’s been all over Twitter, and was a steady subject even on United’s own Twitter feed (albeit in a somewhat weak and muted fashion — nine tweets is hardly the rock to smash the scissors of 3.4 million YouTube views).

Like a lot of stories that go viral, this one struck a nerve by touching on on pent-up frustrations within the larger public; musicians (and guitarists in particular) have been lobbying and boycotting airlines off and on for the past five years. In 2007, the American Federation of Musicians AFL-CIO organized a boycott of Delta Airlines, and won concessions that allowed many musical instruments to qualify as carry-ons. So when Carroll’s video hit, there were already a lot of interested pro and hobbyist musicians — but the real audience was much wider than that. Anyone who’s ever had their suitcases lost or damaged, been stuck on a grounded plane without food or water, or spent fruitless hours on the phone with an airline (only to hear their complaint denied yet again) could see their own experience reflected in Carroll’s story.

Case study No. 2: “World’s best passenger complaint letter?”

You don’t necessarily need to take your story to YouTube to get heard. A man traveling from Mumbai to Heathrow was apparently appalled at the quality of meals offered en route, and crafted this multimedia complaint letter to Richard Branson of Virgin Atlantic.

If you ask me, the fact that the letter was about bad meals (some in-flight custard wasn’t great, and we’re surprised?) diminishes somewhat the claim to the best traveler complaint letter ever; people have been complaining about bad aircraft meals since JFK airport was called Idlewild. The destruction of a $3,500 guitar, and especially getting the run-around for a year or more: now that is something to complain about. But it’s the humor and presentation of the letter that are the lure; like Carroll’s video, it is the individual’s creativity that got attention, not the nature of the complaint.

Richard Branson, a master of media manipulation, naturally used the episode to his advantage when he made winking jokes about the episode, called the author directly and then offered the guy a job. End of story, with another happy ending for Branson the impish hero. (When these things break out, everyone tries to get on the train — check out the Taylor Guitar Web site —Taylor was the brand of guitar Carroll watched United destroy).

So we have two case studies that went truly viral, to the extent that the folks involved got on the morning TV shows and received calls from Richard Branson. And they got heard in very different ways — one sent an old-fashioned letter using a new-fangled approach; another sent an old-fashioned song using decidedly new media. That’s great if your complaint goes big — but what about the little guys?

Many travel companies are using Twitter and other social media to head off problems before they start. Southwest and JetBlue have both shown extremely quick response times to tweets by travelers en route and in trouble. A Southwest passenger recently tweeted about losing a boarding pass and was contacted by the airline immediately; meanwhile, a JetBlue passenger was unable to be seated with his infant child until he tweeted his predicament, which was picked up while he was still in the boarding area.

These didn’t go viral, so why did the airlines respond so quickly? Because an immediate response solves the problem and eliminates storylines before they have a chance to go viral. In fact, there’s a good chance that the airline’s responsiveness will be the piece that makes the news — much like Branson’s phone call and subsequent job offer. Southwest and JetBlue (not surprisingly, two fairly progressive airlines) actively participate in the medium so as not to get blindsided by that medium.

The buck stops at YouTube

Carroll’s story in particular underscores an issue facing travelers and the travel industry that often goes unaddressed: namely, that of buck-passing. Dave Carroll’s prose retelling of his experience calls attention to the fact that buck-passing is conducted at a state-of-the-art level by airlines.

The customer service agents’ responses to Carroll are all too familiar — you did not complain in time, you have to report it to someone else, we don’t cover that — and Carroll also heard some really good ones that you don’t always hear: we don’t fly from/have a “presence” in Halifax (despite the fact that United’s name was on the side of the plane), you will have to go to the Chicago airport in person to make your complaint … wow. That Carroll smiles all the way through the video shows an Olympian sense of humor; you’d think he would be smashing things himself.

And it doesn’t really stop there. The fact is that United did not hire that baggage handler; the airport did. United merely contracts with the airport baggage handlers to load and unload bags. So really the problem should be addressed to the airport. But this speaks to one of the great problems of airline customer service failures — it’s never anyone’s fault. The airlines can’t control the weather, they can’t control mechanical problems, they can’t control baggage handlers, they can’t accept complaints for codeshare airlines, they can’t accept complaints over the phone, they can’t accept complaints after the fact, they can’t accept complaints because they are too busy, etc.

The disturbing thing is that all of the stories that do reach the media sound exactly like those of so many other travelers who never got any satisfaction whatsoever. If you can write a catchy song, you’re on television; otherwise, you’re on the phone, and on hold. The trick is not getting yourself heard by the airlines, but by other people — which worries airlines enough that they’ll take care of you.

So I should just Tweet my next travel problem?

The simple answer: yes.

There was a time when only the most widely followed bloggers and travel experts could have their voices heard when slighted or abused by travel service providers. If you had a big readership, the airlines gave an ear to your problems; otherwise, you were like Dave Carroll, spending hours upon hours of your life recounting your plight to folks who either didn’t care or couldn’t do anything about it.

This has all changed, for now. It still helps if you have a fair number of readers on your blog, Twitter feed or YouTube channel, but with an increasing number of service providers now monitoring these outlets in real time, you can get heard not only by the right person, but in time for them to do something about it as well.

I said this has changed “for now” — why the qualifier? I believe that this is Twitter’s great moment, and as more and more people flood to the service, and more and more complaints get posted in hopes of immediate gratification, the resources of many travel providers will be taxed to the extent that they will be forced to return to listening only to the loudest and most widely heard voices. At the moment, they’re still enthusiastic about helping their relatively small Twitter families — but when this group numbers as many as they have on their planes every day and is swarming with small complaints, I predict some compassion fatigue, as well as resource overload, for the social media staffs at many of these companies.

But if you can write a good country complaint song and sing it well with a smile on your face, and 3.4 million people like it, you probably won’t need a Twitter account — you’ll need an agent.

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Email Open Rates: What Marketers Need To Know

By Patrick Knight

Whether or not emails are opened consistently is largely based on sender reputation, relevancy, and other factors. Although open rates render inconsistencies, email is very much about building a relationship with your subscribers. As you achieve this through relevant content, setting and honoring expectations, creating trust with your brand, and following best practices, email open rates tend to increase.

An increasing email open rate is indicative of a campaign’s success, even if it’s not absolute. A number of factors can increase open rates, which are the starting point of determining the true impact of your campaign. Increasing email open rates can depend on a variety of factors. For example, open rates only account for HTML emails, not plain text.

Other things to consider: Is the origin of your list in-house or not? Have you emailed these people before? Are you sure this is the content they want to receive? The more you follow best practices and keep up list hygiene, so too will open rates be more optimal. At mobileStorm, we have experienced professionals who can provide guidance on best practices and offer strategic services to ensure that you stay whitelisted as a sender. With our constant monitoring of deliverability statistics and relationships with ESPs like Google, AOL, and Yahoo!, you have the best chance of getting delivered.

Four of the most important factors a marketer can control in terms of increasing open rates are:

• To build ongoing relationships.

• To develop a trusted “from address.”

• To create relevant subject lines and content.

• To encourage recipients to add you to their safe senders list.

True, by itself an open rate can’t serve as a complete gauge of the impact of the campaign. It is only a starting point, because an “opened email” doesn’t necessarily equate to a “read email.” Moreover, it doesn’t tell you whether or not the recipient completed the marketer’s desired action. Other metrics such as the render rate can help create a more complete picture, with data such as click-through information, delivery failures, conversion data, etc. Having said all that, however, it’s important to know that along with other metrics, the open rate gives you a starting point to determine how your campaign performed.

Social Media Marketing Beginner’s Guide

By Jon Rognerud

Quick!

What is the hottest social media tool to emerge on the scene this year? It’s ‘Twitter’, and you may get hooked too…

SMX Social MediaI recently came back from a fully packed conference on social media marketing, the Danny Sullivan SMX show in Long Beach, CA, and all-the-rage was Twitter, a micro-blogging platform that many at first (typically) considered a ‘joke’ or maybe just a temporary fad. They (we) were all wrong, but most agreed that using any tool or technique without a reasonable strategy was a missed opportunity.

But, let’s not be too quick – learn how to research & leverage the social media space with planning and execution along the way.

I’ll show you that micro blogging and the other tools and platforms in this short SMM guide are things you might consider for your important social media marketing.

Furthermore, SMM can provide quality traffic, you can minimize the often laborious time by a little planning and it is possible to market into B2B marketplaces. It’s not just for kids anymore.

What is it?

“Social media marketing (SMM) is a form of internet marketing which seeks to achieve branding and marketing communication goals through the participation in various social media networks”. Social Media is a shorter top level term that describes the space overall, and covers the activities around social interaction, content, videos, images and audio exposure.

Where to start?

Many of us are so excited about the technology and web (hence my somewhat trite opening), that we forget key pieces to success: definition of business goals, objectives and overall process for execution. The old “fail to plan, plan to fail” comes to mind. While you need to create the roadmap for your online business – you must certainly decide on what goals and resulting metrics you want to attain.

Social media marketing can help you increase the activity around these top goals:

* Website traffic and user behavior (external and internal tracking)
* Conversion and sales tracking
* Page views, ad exposure
* Growing brand awareness (a softer value, takes longer to build)
* Creating a positive brand association and keeping it there (see also reputation management)
* Business development and a broader customer reach

How can you create and convert all this activity with social media?

Since the social web allows you to interact with others, create and promote content that can get links and viral attraction, you can – with the right strategy – reach key influencers using this medium. We all know what blogs alone can do, and they are pretty search engine friendly out of the box.

Social media expansion is important because this provides foundations for broader / faster mindshare, along with supporting your search engine marketing objectives. You *can* convert traffic if you target appropriately (research needed), and do not spam. Read each point below to get a deeper understanding.

Tip #1 – Assistance:
Limit talking about yourself, at least initially – provide ways to help others instead. This is probably the most important tip in the social media workplace. Say you are building your new del.icio.us profile, make sure to bookmark other useful resources and sprinkle yourself lightly. It’s about “them”, not “you”. Don’t forget this important rule!

Tip #2 – Process:
Don’t become a “me too” – establish a process and goals for how to get there. I recommend reading 5 pillars for one, and much like SEO programs that have a process (keyword research, competitive review, content analysis, etc), build out a similar map. Too many companies dive in too fast, with no real plan and they are simply peeing in the pool, and no good results come from that.

Tip #3 – Contribute:
Be the one to create (quality) content. While community is Queen in Social Media, quality content is still King, and always will be. Studies show that people are reading much online, but a much smaller group is contributing content. This can mean good opportunities for you.

Tip #4 – Connect:
Reach out to the influencers in your niche, be polite, honest, sincere, and you’d be amazed what brand advocates can do for you.

Tip #5 – Position:
Position yourself in front of consumers’ passions. It can and will create a powerful outcome for your brand.

Tip #6 – Blog:
Make sure you have setup a blog. These numbers are not to be overlooked. I think Technorati is tracking over 110 million blogs now, and growing at a furious pace, even excluding splogs (spam blogs).

Tip #7 – Links:
Don’t be afraid to link out to other blogs and websites in general. Links are what search engines and users make good use of – and search engines would not survive without them. Give others the love too.

Tip #8 – Videos:
Video consumption is growing fast. Create a “how to…” or “top tips…” videos and submit to YouTube. It has wide reach, and you could have millions of people see it. For even wider distribution, you should try tubemogul.com or vidmetrix.com, tools to help automate. In generating all content, make sure to keep #1 rule in check. It’s fine to brand with a URL at the end of the video, but no direct selling. Humor, controversy and weird stuff works very well, keep that in mind – don’t be afraid to test.

Tip #9 – Technorati:
You said you have a blog, right? Claim your blog at Technorati. This will ensure you are indexed in their search engines for blogs and updates are broadcast across the network, along with your own blog network updates. This happens behind the scenes from automatic “pings”.

Tip #10 – Analytics:
Open an account from list below, use your brand name as identifier. This will establish your brand or company name, and not let anybody else assume or steal your personality so easily. Then, work with one or two from the list below to start, and don’t go too fast. Look at your web analytics and track referring domains and review traffic movements daily, weekly.

Tip #11 – Feeds/Research:
Subscribe to feeds, and use iGoogle, My Yahoo Web or other favorite RSS readers. Watch for changes (use Google.com/alerts also), and be the first to comment and engage in your topic. First commenters often get more visibility and traction.

Tip #12 – MicroCommunities:
Locate and join microcommunities – they are social communities that are relevant to your business. Some examples are education.com, nowpublic.com, travbuddy.com, gardenweb.com, shoetube.com, yelp.com and care2.com (non profits). It is much easier to have your voice heard in these and similar markets, than trying a post to Digg that may go nowhere. Those are the perfect places for the “big fish in a small pond” rule. Create highly relevant and linkworthy content, research what others are writing about, and connect with the top players and influencers.

Tip #13 – Submit:
Review the resources below, and consider building out profiles over time. If you submit content, make sure it’s useful, unique and that the title of your post stands out. Pick one or two resources to start, and don’t overextend yourself. Some of the top social marketers in the industry spend 10-12 hours a day, 6-7 days a week. This is a lot of manual (social) labor, but you don’t have to go at it that hard. Make sure to ask friends to vote or comment on your postings, befriend others, but no spam. Make intelligent posts and do not have your company employees post from the same location (IP Address). The submission(s) will most likely be rejected, and worst case, your account blocked or suspended.

Tip #14 – Hosting:
Have a good hosting provider. If traffic spikes come, and your server instrastructure cannot handle it, you are toast. You don’t want a Digg server melt-down (fun pic). Here’s a first hand story and how to deal with it.

Tip #15 – Monitoring:
If you want to save time monitoring across many resources within the social networks, try the new Yahoo Pipes, it’s a social monitoring desktop in a browser.

Tip #16 – Advertising:
If you are an advertiser, you might want to check out socialspark.com and socialmedia.com – they both are showing promise from what I can see.

Your Top Social Media Starter Resources (not necessarily in order of importance):

1. Twitter *See more below – specific for twitter
2. Facebook (download toolbar)
3. YouTube (toolbar exists, but have not tried)
4. Del.icio.us (download toolbar)
5. StumbleUpon (download toolbar)
6. LinkedIn (tip: use the Q/A section to gain readership and clients)
7. Flickr
8. Digg
9. Reddit
10. Technorati
11. Secondlife (3D)
12. Meneame (spanish, translate title and synopsis before posting)
13. Newsvine
14. Tip: Subscribe (RSS) to Techcrunch!

Twitter bonus: (Thanks GrayWolf)

Web Browser Plugin: twitterfox
Desktop: twhirl, alertthingy
Blog Tools: loud twitter
Email: twittermail ((abc…@twittermail) – cool tip: schedule to post when you are not online)
Phones: twitterberry (BlackBerry), itweet (iPhone)
Other: tweetscan (alerts, keyword, user search)
Competitor: Pownce.com – check it out along with friendfeed.com

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Easy To Implement Strategies For Surviving In These Trying Economic Times

First and foremost - take stock of where you stand. The most important thing to do right now is look inward at your business model and really make sure you only focus on the parts of your business that are tried and true and delivering value.

It’s about finding the 20 to 30 percent of your business that drives 80 percent of the value and focusing on that and being very careful in where you expand to less-tested areas, whether it’s new products, services or geography. Focus on the key customers and relationships that deliver value to your business.

It’s not just about cutting costs, it’s about reevaluating your resources. Ask yourself:

* How can I do things differently to better serve my business?
* How can I streamline operations and improve efficiencies?
* How can I retrain people to be more valuable?
* How can I use my staff in other ways?

By being as lean as possible, experts say you’ll have a better chance of not only weathering this economic storm, but also coming out of it in a stronger position. Everyone is re-evaluating relationships right now to make sure that they have what they need to weather this storm.

Some key strategies to consider:

* Make sure you’re leveraging your partners and service providers to get all you can in these challenging times.
* Look at new ways to do more business - whether it’s deploying skills in a different way or adding incentives or services to better meet current demands.
* Identify a niche or make yourself more competitive, this is a good time to do it.
* Be proactive and reach out to your customers and suppliers, recognizing that this is affecting everyone.
* It’s the out of the box thinking and strategic rethinking that experts say can help save a business - even businesses in the sectors that are the hardest hit right now.
* You need to be very clear on what your strengths and weaknesses are in this business environment and then find new ways to capitalize on your strengths.

Today, using a low-cost incentive to draw consumers’ attention to your business is the best way to grab market share. If you believe you’re that much better than the other guy, you should be able to pick up their business.

As companies make the shift from mass-marketing to target-marketing, they will ultimately turn to incentive programs as a primary solution rather than a secondary or complementary tool. Each time an organization replaces a mass marketing technique with a one-to-one strategy, such as a vacation incentive program, it will realize a ripple effect of benefits, engagement, satisfaction, and behavioral changes that will last over time.

Click here to learn more about the incentive programs we have to offer.