While everyone knows that Facebook is the default choice for any business-to-consumer (B2C) social media marketing, what social media channels are important for businesses hoping to engage with other businesses (B2B)?  How can these types of businesses use social media to engage with their potential clients, gain mindshare and be perceived as a thought leader in their industry, and increase potential clients visiting their website?  Here are the six that I would recommend to most businesses.  Note that, in order to create a sound social media strategy, you should not limit yourself to these 6 B2B social media channels and should also make sure that each site is appropriate for your particular industry.  Creating a social media strategy is about strategic relevance and focus, not comprehensiveness.

1) Your Website & Blog

What most people forget is that social media does not exist in a corporate vacuum and it is only an extension of your marketing, not a replacement.  You will still be doing email marketing as well as other types of traditional marketing, although I do know some start-ups who are putting their marketing budgets solely into social media.  Regardless, you need to lead people somewhere from the conversations in social media to acquaint them with your business and start engaging in a conversation that will hopefully lead to a conversion in the future.  This is why your website is even more important with the advent of social media, and you need to make sure that your website is “social media optimized” to lead others to your social media profiles as well as to help others share your information throughout their social media channels.  Finally, another important part of social media is sharing content, and creating a blog is the best way to achieve this.  Make sure your blog is active and website optimized before engaging in social media.  So before you get active on the other sites listed below, get your own house in order.

2) LinkedIn – Your Hub for B2B Social Media Marketing

If there is one site where decision makers at your potential customers are it is LinkedIn.  Need I say more?  And if you signed up for LinkedIn and nothing happened, make sure you check out the book I wrote to help all professionals maximize your LinkedIn presence.  You can also read my previous blog post on how to get more leads from your LinkedIn presence by avoiding the mistakes that a lot of small businesses make.  Don’t wait for LinkedIn to happen…make it happen!

3) Twitter – The Potential Viral Spread of Tweets Cannot Be Ignored

There are enough business leaders and decision makers from virtually any industry on Twitter to warrant its attention.  Twitter membership is now 50% greater than LinkedIn.  Add in the facts that a Twitter Profile is now almost becoming a default part of a LinkedIn Profile as well as understanding the viral way in which tweets on Twitter get spread and you soon start to see the potential of utilizing Twitter as part of a B2B social media marketing strategy.  I am currently working on my 2nd book which will help you and your business maximize your Twitter presence, but until that’s published, check out my Twitter case study of how NOT to use Twitter.  Stay tuned for more good Twitter blog posts for business in the near future!  And remember, Twitter is not just about tweeting…it’s about engaging, striking up and joining conversations, and respecting others.  But if you engage wisely, Twitter may lead your next customer your way.

4) StumbleUpon – Traffic Generating Community

Part of utilizing social media is to help your company and website to get found.  If you are a consumer brand this is easier to do, but niche B2B businesses can be challenged just to drive any traffic to their website.  StumbleUpon is actually a lesser known social bookmarking site, but because of its algorithm and 10+ million users who like to “stumble” or navigate through several sites at at time, some studies have shown that StumbleUpon actually attracts more traffic to your website than any other social media site outside of Facebook.  My personal experience with StumbleUpon has been the same, even surpassing Facebook.  It is important to note, however, that StumbleUpon should not be used just for SEO and it is a social networking platform in its own.  In addition, because you will need to be sharing content as part of your social media strategy, think of StumbleUpon as your company’s content recommendation engine.  You may not find your Fortune 500 customers on StumbleUpon yet, but I do see an increase in small businesses joining the platform…and there are other compelling reasons listed above that should convince you of SU’s value.  Once you get set up on StumbleUpon, make sure to subscribe to my stumbles for recommend reads on social media strategy.

5) SlideShare – Present Your Business to the World

My newest fave is SlideShare, which in essence is a site of professionals and businesses uploading their PowerPoint presentations.  SlideShare in itself is one of the top 1,000 most visited sites on the Internet according to Compete.com, and it’s traffic is equivalent to more famous sites such as the social bookmarking site Delicious.com.  SlideShare is significant for businesses because this is where other businesses are putting up their presentations, so just as you Google the Internet for information, many businesses and decision makers are coming straight to SlideShare to look for relevant information to help them solve their business problems.  Business usage of SlideShare is increasing to the point where SlideShare rolled out advertising services to allow businesses to get more views of their presentations as well as generate actual lead data from views.  Start with your corporate presentation and then upload your marketing presentations and see what happens.  You may be in for a pleasant surprise!

6) Business Exchange – Network with Industry Leaders and Become the Thought Leader

Business Exchange is literally the Business Week of Social Networking.  What I like about it is that it is similar to LinkedIn in terms of demographic but it gives you the ability to network with and share/learn information with/from other professionals in pre-defined categories and industries.  For instance, for the topic of social media alone there are actually categories covering analytics, branding, business failures and successes, design, social media in the workplace, social media innovation, job hunting, marketing, operations, privacy, training, and social media vs. old media.  Find your industry’s category(s), start sharing information that would interest decision makers in your industry, and build out relationships as you would on LinkedIn.  And, once again, after you sign up please follow me on Business Exchange for the latest in social media strategy.

B2B social media marketing is like anything else social media-related: new tools, old rules.  Business has always been social.  You just need to find where your audience is and get used to a new paradigm where you professionally network with others and try to gain mindshare in a virtual, online world.  That is, in a nutshell, B2B social media marketing.

Any other sites that you would recommend to add to this list?  Please chime in!

And if you’re confused with all of the choices out there and unsure as to how to go about strategizing for your company’s specific B2B social media marketing needs, contact Windmills Marketing for a free initial consultation.

There is no doubt that the current recession continues to have an impact on the growth of social media.  Job seekers are now looking for networking opportunities by embracing social media and joining and then becoming active on sites like LinkedIn as part of their job search strategy.  This make sense because social media is also where recruiters may find you and where companies may perform background checks on you and your personality.  Don’t you want to put your best food forward in your job search and show off your talents to the best of your ability since everybody’s watching?

Unfortunately, I don’t see enough of this happening.  Just like many Internet marketers, who only see social media as another “channel” to start broadcasting their advertisements and self-promoting messages, I see some job seekers doing the same thing by blasting the message that they are unemployed in their LinkedIn profile name and status update or mass sending of their resumes to everyone in their network.  The most important concept behind social media is about sharing, and job seekers can also share their experiences with others and actually start contributing and providing value to the community. In doing so, not only will your expertise be publicly displayed for all of those recruiters to see and help establish a stronger personal brand, effective networking with other professionals can now be done on a scale that reaches far beyond your own network.

Here’s another way to look at it: You can’t force recruiters and companies to look at your LinkedIn profile, but you can use social media in becoming more active in a pool of talent so that you can stand out.  You have to be “productively active”—share your knowledge, expertise and experience to the world and don’t boil the ocean with your resumes.

Here’s how to use social media as part of your job search strategy:

Start Blogging

Blogging is the best way to share your expertise the world, and your blog posts now become things that you can share through social media.  You need to build out the business of company YOU, and a completely customizable blog can now become your “company” website instead of your static LinkedIn profile.  Because you’re sharing knowledge and experience for all to learn by, you are not broadcasting nor blatantly self-promoting.  More people will start visiting your social media profiles because they are interested in you for your ideas.  They will start to seek you out!

Still not convinced?  Here are 7 more reasons why you should start blogging, and here’s advice on what you should blog about if you are looking for a job.

Get Active on LinkedIn Answers

Providing one answer a day in your category of expertise is all it takes to share your knowledge with those who need it most.  Find your category, “own” it, and make it  a part of your daily routine.  You never know what may come out of it!  Here’s some etiquette advice on utilizing LinkedIn Answers.

Contribute to LinkedIn Groups

Join LinkedIn Groups for your industry and profession, engage in discussion, and share your expertise for all to see.  Just by spending a few minutes a day looking for relevant discussions to participate on and engaging in them, you are displaying your expertise for a lot of people to see and truly Windmill Networking.  Here’s some additional advice on what LinkedIn Groups are and their value, which LinkedIn Groups to join and the etiquette of LinkedIn Group participation.

Upload Your Work to SlideShare

SlideShare is quickly becoming the preferred destination for professionals to seek out information that is in a PowerPoint or presentation format.  If you’ve done professional presentations, all you need to do is upload them for everyone to see.  If you have expertise to share, all you need to do is create a PowerPoint and now it’s there for the world to see.  There are many stories of small businesses who have found business from SlideShare…it wouldn’t surprise me to hear of a job seeker who landed because they utilized SlideShare as part of their job search strategy.

I will be honest that I am still a relatively newbie at SlideShare, but I plan to start uploading presentations in the near future.  Please follow me on SlideShare to get my updates!

Create a You Tube Channel

Social media provides a lot of opportunities to learn because many companies and professionals are sharing lots of information.  Many people prefer the video format over a written one, so why not take out that Flip Camera or your iPhone 4 and take a video of yourself speaking about your experiences and sharing your expertise?  If you have a chance to speak at an association or meeting, bring your video camera to capture yourself and upload highlights of it to YouTube.  By creating a YouTube channel and simply favoriting the videos that you recommend to others in your industry or profession, you are curating content and displaying your expertise.  Become the “channel,” literally, on YouTube!  Here are 5 more reasons why every professional should have a YouTube channel.

By doing any or all of the above, not only will you have reached many more people as part of your job search than through your traditional broadcasting of your message, people will also see you as a person with expertise, not someone who is merely using social media as part of their job search.  This social media strategy for your job search is bound to lead to greater opportunities and attract more people who respect your knowledge and will be there to help you on your journey.

Any additional advice or experience in using social media as part of your job search strategy?  Please share!

Whenever I speak about social media and the job search to those that are unemployed, I always have a few attendees who “see the light” and get excited about blogging.  They see the advantages of blogging to start sharing information through social media and establishing their personal brand as part of their job search strategy.  The problem is that they don’t know what to blog about!

If you are unemployed or soon to be in career transition, there are lots of things that you can be blogging about.  I don’t mean blogging about your job search experience, either.  I’m speaking of things that will help you strengthen your personal brand, appear more attractive to potential hiring managers, and help you get found in social media.

Before I even talk about what to blog about for the unemployed, let’s review the 7 benefits of blogging:

• Blogging is the best way to build and showcase your personal brand
• Blogging helps differentiate you from everyone else
• Blogging brings you new opportunities
• Blogging is the ultimate Pay It Forward
• You’re Already Tweeting…Why Not Add Your Own Original Views in More Depth?
• You Can Start to Monetize Your Knowledge
• Because You Can

By now you are hopefully bought in to the fact that blogging is beneficial not just to those in a job search but to any professional.

Next we should talk about my Golden rule of Blogging: Blog about topics that your target audience is interested in.

If you are looking for a job, your target audience will naturally be the hiring managers at your target companies within a particular industry or profession.  What use is your blog, no matter how useful it may actually be to someone, if it does not stimulate your target audience?   By blogging about your expertise, hiring managers who find your blog will have a solid hold of who you are, what you can do, and how important you can be when part of their company.

So what exactly do you blog about?  If you’re targeting hiring managers, your most natural blogging content should come from your own expertise and experience:

1) Blog About Your Work Experience

The best thing that you can do if you are unemployed is to show off your expertise.  You have probably already prepared for interviews and created SAR (Situation-Action-Result) paragraphs in your resume and LinkedIn profile.  If this is the case, why not use a SAR and create a blog post around it?  Or maybe talk about some of your career accomplishments and takeaways that other professionals can learn from?  Offer insight that will help other professionals in the same situation.  But remember that because of NDAs with previous employers, make sure you do not reveal any information that would violate agreements that you have already concluded with past companies you have worked for!

2) Blog About The Latest News

Another strategy is to blog reactively to news about your industry and/or profession.  If you don’t know them by now, get to know the websites and blogs which feature news and current events about your field of expertise.  More than just offering your own insights to all of these happenings and giving the public your own opinion, why not take it a step further and back up your claims with projects you have done in the past?  This way, you hit two birds with one post: providing your own views and opinions on the matter while leveraging your expertise.  Just like that, you’ll be able to create thought-leadership blog posts that are authentic because you can back it up with your actual experience.  It will also show that you are up-to-date on the latest trends in your industry.

3) Book Reviews

What are the latest must-read books for your industry and/or profession?  Why not talk about the most popular books in your industry or profession, not only showing that you are keeping ahead of the curve but also sharing information and displaying your expertise?  There is nothing as compelling as a convincing book review about your line of profession.  Not many can even find the time to start or even finish reading a book these days (blame it on social media, right? .  Being able to have finished one, understand it and share a certain degree of directed information towards your target audience will obviously help you be seen in a positive light.

4) Industry Exhibitions or Professional Association Meeting Reports

You are still attending these despite your job search, right?  Then write about them and share your experiences and expertise to those that were not able to attend!

If you remember the golden rule of blogging, you can see that there really is never a lack of things to blog about, even for those that are in a job search.   The Internet itself provides a huge pool of opportunities for you to find something to reactively blog about.  That being said, if you run out of things to blog about, you may want to start slow.  I suggest starting to blog once a week, and if you run out of content to blog about, then that may be a sign that you need to be reading more books or attending more professional events!!!

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• 4 Ways to “Pay it Forward” with Social Media (thebloggersbulletin.org)

What is #JobChat?  JobChat was created by Perri Gorman (@BeTheButterfly) and Neal Schaffer (@NealSchaffer) to serve the need of professionals and job seekers looking for advice on professional networking as well as how professionals can better utilize social media as part of their career management, personal branding and job search. Perri and Neal bring a unique combination of contrasting yet similar skills to the table to host the live chat sessions on Twitter: Perri is a former financial services recruiter and Neal a former technology sales and business development executive who also played the role of a hiring manager. Both are currently social media consultants helping both professionals and businesses on their strategies and implementation of marketing activities through social media channels. Perri is organizer of the Hong Kong Twestival and is known in Hong Kong for her Twitter workshops. Neal is the author of the award-winning and best-selling book on LinkedIn, “Windmill Networking: Understanding, Leveraging & Maximizing LinkedIn.” The two bring a wealth of diverse and rich experiences to the table to help facilitate real-time conversations through Twitter to help answer questions and generate discussions between professionals, including job seeker participants and thought leaders in the world of recruitment, personal branding, job seeking, and social media.

Part of what I preach about Windmill Networking is Paying It Forward to others in the belief that something, some piece of very trivial information or experience to you could be a godsend to others.  It is also about connecting with others and helping them because you never know when you may be able to help each other out in the future.  Even though my business takes me down the road of working more with businesses and helping them utilize social media, I always try to find time to help others in transition through blogging and speaking to local churches, groups and associations.  How can I help more people in transition that want to use social media as part of their job search strategy?

Meet Perri Gorman, also known as Be The Butterfly on Twitter.  I met her over Twitter, the way I have met many incredible people that have enriched my life, and although she was living in Hong Kong at the time we had a chance to meet recently in Orange County, California.  We realized that we both had similar views on the importance of social media in our lives and set out to collaborate to do something that would provide value to people on a global basis.  Our answer: #JobChat!

Perri is not only extremely active on the social media scene on Twitter and blogging, she is also the organizer of the Hong Kong Twestival as well as the creator of many Twitter workshops for professionals.  She is also a former recruiter, so she can see things from the recruiting side.  I bring a lot of experience of using sites like LinkedIn and blogging and speaking about social media as a strategic tool for your job search.  Why don’t we come together and offer a weekly chat on Twitter to help as many people as we can with their job search?  And so #JobChat was born!

If you are unfamiliar with Twitter and #s (called “hashtags”), by placing “#JobChat” somewhere in a tweet, it will be trackable by those searching for #JobChat.  So long as we are all on Twitter at the same time and include “#JobChat” in all of our tweets, an open and global chat room has been formed!  If you haven’t started using Twitter, please read my post on getting started on Twitter.  If you’re already on Twitter and have never joined a #Chat, do not fear!  It is really easy to do, and I plan to create a video to show you soon.  In the meantime, check out TweetGrid, a service that allows you to create a grid of tweets to follow and also provides a way for you to tweet directly from the site.  If you create a 1×2 grid, placing “@yourname” as a search term on one column and “#JobChat” as the search term on the second column, you will be able to keep track of all public and private conversations.  It’s that simple!

JobChat, hosted by Perri Gorman and Neal Schaffer, will be held every Tuesday from 5 to 6 P.M. PST or 8 to 9 P.M. EST.  The first JobChat will be held on Tuesday, June 22 in coordination with the Gravity Summit Social Media for Executives summit at UCLA.  If you’d like to be a special guest on a future #JobChat, please contact Neal or Perri on Twitter.  If you have any questions that you’d like us to cover on future #JobChats, please list them in the comments below!  If you are a career expert, recruiter, or have other advice for job seekers, I hope that you will also join us and help in the conversation.  We want to make JobChat as inclusive as possible for everyone to share their expertise and help as many as possible!

Looking forward to seeing you on #JobChat!

If you’ve followed my Windmill Networking blog for awhile or read my LinkedIn book, you’ll know that I’m a huge fan of the LinkedIn Events Application.  Seriously.  I wrote an April Fools’s post back in 2009 complaining why Events wasn’t considered an application with a blog post rhetorically entitled, “What are LinkedIn Applications?”  I was the first one to ask “What Happened to LinkedIn Events?” when they mysteriously disappeared for a day in October of 2009.  So you can say that I have a personal relationship with Events, and when all of the “social media gurus” talk about Facebook Events, Eventbrite, and Plancast, which are all also great platforms for events, I still think they misunderstand or under appreciate the potential for using the LinkedIn Events application.

I’ve been traveling a lot the last few weeks, speaking on social media as well as attending award ceremonies for my social media book.  As I am an avid Windmill Networker, meaning that I see the value of social networking to be of networking outside of my present network, I am always open to connecting with others on LinkedIn.  There is value in plugging our windmills into the grid that is social media and virtually connecting.  But the deep value and trust that comes out of relationships are when they are developed offline in the real world.  That is why, whenever I travel outside of my native Orange County, California, I try to create a LinkedIn Event and use it as an avenue to not only bring together people that I am connected to on LinkedIn but have never met, but also an opportunity to meet new people that may have similar interests.

Through the advice that I present below, I have been able to meet with between 10 and 30 people apiece at networking events that I created in Portland, Oregon, Jacksonville, Florida, and New York City in the past few weeks…and I had never previously met any of these people!  Once you meet new people at a networking events, there are countless opportunities to learn from others, share information, help others, and maybe find a new business partner or even get a new lead either directly or indirectly from your new contact.  Rather than spending time in your hotel room by yourself, it is a way to enrich your professional life and make new friends.  You never know when your connecting with that person will help you or them out in the future.

So the next time you are on a business trip, follow this procedure to create a way for people to meet you through the LinkedIn Events Application and Windmill Network!

1. You first need to create a LinkedIn Event. This is not difficult to do, and step-by-step instructions of how to do so are in my LinkedIn book.  The important things that you need to prepare are a title (“networking event” makes sense), a description which should want to bring people out to meet and network, and you need to find a location.  I do this by going to Google Maps, figuring out both where I plan to be on business as well as where my hotel is, and then find an ideal area which makes logistical sense for the time that I plan to hold the event (late afternoons/early evenings seem to be the best time).  I then go to Yelp and find a location that has a bar/large party atmosphere located in the ideal area.  You can find these by using “large party restaurant” or “large group restaurant” in the search terms so that you can be assured that there won’t be an issue if a lot of people come!  Check out the reviews and take your pick of location.
2. After creating the LinkedIn Event, inform your network. As a LinkedIn Open Networker or LION, I have acquired a lot of LinkedIn connections over time.  When I did a search through my contacts of connections living in Portland, Oregon, I found that I already had more than 130 connections living there that I had never met!  Obviously the larger your network, the more connections you are bound to have in any given city.  Using the InBox feature, send out a blast with a link to the LinkedIn Event to your connections.  You can add 50 connections to the same message for efficiency’s sake.  If your network is smaller…
3. Invite those who are members of similar LinkedIn Groups. You joined a Group for a reason: you want to obtain or share information with others that have a similar interest.  Why not do an Advanced People Search using a keyword (I used “social media”) and look for people in Groups that you belong to that you may want to meet up with?  If you are a member of the same Group, chances are you will be able to send them a LinkedIn Message regardless of your connectivity status.  Go for it, contact them, but be clear as to why you want to meet with them in the first place.  And, remember, it is a pain, but every Message to a common Group member that you are not connected to must be done separately, one-by-one…
4. Send out a reminder to those that RSVP to your LinkedIn Event. This is something that I originally did not do, and I regret not doing it because I think that attendance to my networking events could have been greater had I sent out a friendly reminder to all of those that RSVPed “Attending” and “Interested” on the Event page a few days before the event.
5. Prepare for the LinkedIn Event by checking out the Profiles of those that RSVPed. Better yet, print out their profiles for airplane reading!
6. Enjoy your time with new friends!  You’re Windmill Networking!

You never know how one of these events turn out until you try it yourself.  My event in Portland was particularly interesting, as I met one of the Twitter Rockstars of Portland, @Thubten, someone who is famous in not only the social media circles of Portland but also Denver!  That led to another discussion where I learned a great deal about the LinkedIn Rockstar, Mike O’Neil!  See this video for the details…and should you create your own Event based on this advice, please tell us how it went by commenting below!

If you haven’t noticed yet, Facebook “Like” buttons are starting to appear on many websites throughout the Web.  These are part of the new Facebook “Social Plugin” options.  For bloggers and businesses running websites, adding this “Like” button should be a no-brainer in that it adds the following benefits to your website:

1. If someone “Likes” your website, a message is passed on through that person’s News Feed on Facebook that they liked your website, complete with a link to entice one of their friend’s to check out your website.
2. For new visitors to your website, from Google or Bing web searches for example,displaying a number of people that already “Like” your site shows that your site has already been confirmed by many people to be a trustworthy source of information.

Today I recorded my first screencast to show you how to actually implement this on your WordPress powered blog or website.  Even if you are not technical nor have your own WordPress blog, I hope you’ll see my video because it illustrates how truly easy it is to integrate social media features into your website.  I consult with many companies who need to pay a lot of money to integrate social features into their website.  While WordPress may not be the most ideal e-commerce platform nor appropriate for large enterprises, if you use it as the engine for your small business website, you will be able to see how non-technical people like myself can implement the latest social media features.  If you’ve ever thought about blogging, I hope this screencast illustrates how truly easy it is to customize your blog, should you wish to begin blogging.

As this is the first in hopefully many screencasts to come, please do comment if there is a screencast or tutorial on any of the social media sites that you would like to see me cover!  Thanks!

Following up on my “Top 15 Social Media Books of 2009” blog post as well as my recent review of “A Survival Guide to Social Media and Web 2.0 Optimization by Deltina Hay,” I want to cover another book which I thought was one of the best social media-related books of 2009: “The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web” by Tamar Weinberg.

The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web Summary

This book begins with handholding the reader from an introduction to social media marketing to helping you formulate goals, strategize, and participate in the social web. From there the conversation turns to reviewing the standard blogging, Twitter, and social networking sites Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn. There is a chapter that provides some unique content on using Q&A sites and wikis that is thrown in before the book concludes with chapters on social bookmarking, social news (think Digg), and photo/video/podcasting before the final and concluding chapter of the book. The scope is what one would expect from a social media marketing book, and at 300+ pages there is a lot of content covered. The differentiator of this book is, as the titles suggests, the focus on “community.” Furthermore, while the mechanics of what you need to do to succeed in marketing on the social web are also covered, many different and insightful aspects of social media marketing are discussed throughout the book.

Tamar Weinberg Author Summary

Tamar is an Internet marketing consultant who clearly understands social media. She is an avid blogger herself, is very active on most of the social web platforms that she describes, and is experienced in social media consulting as displayed through case studies of her own experiences that she shares in the book. As someone who has hands-on experience with social media marketing functions such as blogger outreach and viral marketing, Tamar gives us a convincing read on the ins and outs of marketing on the social web. And the fact that she is the Community and Marketing Manager for Mashable is a reminder of her credentials to be a reliable and trusted source.

My Top Ten Takeaways from This Book

1) Setting Social Media Goals

I appreciate how Tamar goes through various goals of a social media campaign in the beginning of the book to give the reader some ideas of how social media marketing can be utilized in their company. These potential goals include increased traffic, increased brand awareness, improved search engine rankings, reputation management, increased sales, and established thought leadership. Furthermore, Tamar follows up these goals with example social media marketing scenarios to further help the reader paint a picture of how they could utilize social media. Any reader who wasn’t sure how they could use social media will have a great idea after reading these sections.

2) Participation is Marketing

I enjoyed this chapter, which begins with a look at “The Cluetrain Manifesto” and the theory of markets being conversations that was created well before the birth of the major social networking sites that we use today. Tamar includes a plethora of case studies from companies like Graco and Home Depot here to drive home her point. If you haven’t read The Cluetrain Manifesto, you will definitely want to buy a copy after reading this chapter!

3) The History of Blogs

We often talk about the power of blogs, but understanding the history of blogs as Tamar paints the picture gives the reader a more convincing understanding of the power of blogs as well as why they are influential.  Insightful read.

4) Content Strategies for Bloggers

As a blogger myself, I appreciated the advice that Tamar gave on how to find inspirational content from a variety of sources. Everything from Google Alerts, other blogs, blog searching, social bookmarking, new stories, and Google Trends and Insights is covered here. No more excuses for lack of content to blog about after reading this chapter!!!!

5) How Blogs are Discovered

Sure, Google will find your blog once you create and submit an XML sitemap, but how can your blog get more easily discovered by others? Tamar provides us with a good list of blog directories as well as some other ideas for us to consider including blog carnivals and memes. Basic content, but surprisingly these topics are not covered that often in the blogosphere.

6) Tools of the Twitter Trade

As you know from my recent blog post on “Stop Fondling the Hammer,” I try not to dwell too much on the huge variety of social media tools that exist out there. That being said, I was extremely impressed with the through listing and description of tens of Twitter tools that Tamar includes in her book. These tools include those to spot Twitter trends, personal statistics, finding new people to follow, follower management, and searching. I am certain that there are a few Twitter tools in here that you might have never heard of before!

7) The Ins & Outs of Social Bookmarking

Tamar has some great advice and tips for using both StumbleUpon as well as Delicious as part of your social media marketing strategy. The tag-centric approach that Tamar presents was insightful, and her description of how Delicious aids in understanding your brand was the best post on Delicious that I have ever read. Just as I wrote that StumbleUpon was not just for SEO, Tamar gives us some compelling arguments of the why and how we should be using Delicious.

Everything You Need to Know about Flickr

Photo sharing can be a powerful form of social media marketing that can help build awareness for your product. Tamar’s chapter dealing with the most popular photo sharing site, Flickr, is quite comprehensive, dealing with everything from tagging your photos, community forums, a good explanation of Creative Commons, and some advice on “marketing” your photos on Flickr.   Not only is the information comprehensive, Tamar writes in a way that handholds the reader beginning with the actual uploading of your first photo.

9) YouTube Marketing and Beyond

In a similar vein to the information on Flickr, there is generous information included in the book on not just the mechanics of YouTube but also excellent advice on how to get the most out of YouTube, including vital information on promoting your YouTube videos. Tamar also doesn’t stop with just YouTube and gives suggestions for other video-sharing sites that the reader might be interested in.

10) Return on Social Media Investment

Tamar begins her book speaking to how the reader should start thinking about return on investment of social media activity. She cleverly returns to this topic at the end to finish her book, taking a closer look at metrics such as reach, frequency and traffic, influence, conversions and transactions, and sustainability. But she doesn’t stop there. Reminding the reader that social media requires a commitment, Tamar concludes the book with powerful reminders about community, face-to-face interactions, and fostering creativity.

Conclusion

The New Community Rules provides an excellent combination of hands-on instruction combined with putting social media marketing in the context of the community. The breadth and depth is what one would expect from a book on social media marketing, and the advice given by someone who is a veteran of the scene backed-up by many real-life examples makes this book both a powerful and convincing read. Whether you are just starting out in marketing on the social web or you’re looking to get to the next level, this book is a highly recommended read and filled with a plethora of helpful tips and advice.

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In the world of blogging, mommy bloggers are the talk of the town.  You hear stories about how corporations want them to blog about their products.  PR professionals want to know how to engage with them.  And if you haven’t thought about it before, there are some compelling statistics on mommy bloggers which reveal why they are so important:

• Women influence 85% of all consumer purchases in the US
• Mothers who blog have undoubtedly emerged as a trusted source of information for women
• Of the 42 million women taking part in social media, 1/2 of them have children and more than 1/4 of them are active in the blogosphere

Recently, my local freebie community magazine, OC Family, which rarely has much to say about social media, did a cover story on the mommy bloggers of Orange County.  After I saw this I thought, “If these women were so numerous, who exactly were they and why did I never have the chance to meet one?”  I must be hanging out with the wrong crowd!

At a recent local ConnectOC social media event, I had the chance to finally physically meet one of these bloggers who I had been tweeting with for a while: Marcie Taylor aka @SuburbanMama.  I wanted to know more about who mommy bloggers were, why they blogged, and what they really wanted out of companies who were engaging with them.  Are they in it for the money or products?  And from a social media marketing perspective, how should companies best engage with mommy bloggers?

Below is the 6-minute interview I had with Marcie, where she answered all of my questions leaving no doubt about who these women were and what they were about.  Enjoy!

Do you feel that Marcie represents the average demographic of mothers who blog?  Anything new that you learned from the video?  Please share!

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I have given many presentations on social media and your job search.  Everybody is finally “getting” LinkedIn, but few are looking at Twitter or even Facebook as platforms which could aid those in transition in their job search.  Today I want to talk about one strategy that I discuss on Twitter and your job search, and a story of how one Windmill Networker found success through thinking outside of the box and integrating the people he meets on Twitter with LinkedIn with real-life!

Personal branding is important in your job search to help differentiate yourself from all the other job seekers. But in social media, personal branding is more than just a differentiator: it can help you be perceived as a thought leader and get found by more relevant people sooner.  And Twitter is the perfect platform for this: just by tweeting about interesting reads from your industry that you’re already perusing anyway, you start building up your personal brand and people start to follow you.  Opportunities appear.

Rather than my speaking more about this, I am going to hand the pen over to today’s guest, Ken Nicholas. Ken Nicholas is a dynamic Sales leader and powerful Sales talent, with acclaimed successes in Social Media, Digital & Print. He has been the driving sales force behind leading ad programs that have resulted in winning Print Media Plan of the Year from AdWeek as well as creating a core part of the social media ad program that recently won the “Best in Social Media” Catalyst Award from JD Power & Associates. He writes an Industry blog, MindOnMedia[Sales] that has been linked on the AOL Autos blog family to date. He has also recently consulted with a Top-15 Ad Network and a WebTV/Video trade site, as he continues his look at new opportunities in 2010. Please feel free to reach out to Ken by connecting with him on LinkedIn.

Ken Nicholas

[This Post is dedicated to Neal Schaffer, visionary leader of SoCal Sushi Lunch events & social media expert/author of Windmill Networking.]

Almost by accident recently, I came across [yet] another way to utilize Twitter, one that I personally had not seen or heard of anywhere else until I inadvertently, well, used it. The technique is actually quite simple, can create new Interview/Job Lead oppty’s for each of us, AND demonstrate your expertise in the Career area you are pursuing…all at the same time. Really.

How? Over the holidays, I did a Tweet about a certain topic in the field I am in [and hope to find my next job in], Media Sales. In so doing, a firm that I had never heard of apparently does an ongoing ‘Auto-Search’ for keywords on Twitter that were exactly on the topic I had written about, and a day or so later, they started to Follow me.

Curious [as I had never heard of this firm], I clicked from the Notify email that they were now following me, through to their Website. Obviously, they were following me for a reason [the Tweet on that topic], so why not check them out? I did…and then clicked their ‘Careers’ button.

It turns out, this firm that I had never heard of…that found me from a Tweet that I had done…had a job opening; a Sales spot at the exact level I was looking for.

So, I of course applied. But I wasn’t done. I then went to LinkedIn [here is where I thank Neal Schaffer for his tireless evangelizing], found the C-Level person that I needed to find, sent HIM a note, and told him that I had applied, and they basically would be crazy not to look at me…since they were already following ME on Twitter! The logic works: they can’t question your expertise [they searched by keywords that YOU used], and can’t question your relevance [they are following YOU on Twitter.]

And, in my case on the Sales side, they can’t question my Sales skills, as my effort describes here, including asking the C-Level guy ‘for the order’; in this case, an interview.

Does this work? Well, I created a Job Lead from a company I had never heard of. And I have the first phone interview with them next week. I’ll take it! As I am my own Sales Mgr here, I am adding this to my own sales Career ‘pipeline’.

This is just one more example of how Social Media is & will be used, that could never have been predicted, or really created, in any other way. If you want to find out more about how I did this, get in touch~! Good Luck & Good Selling.

Have you had similar experiences in gaining new job leads from Twitter or social media?  Please do share for all of us to learn from!  Thanks!

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Hey, it’s 2010, so it’s time to shake things up a bit.  You’ve seen me blog a lot about LinkedIn and Twitter, but yesterday I let you know that I wanted to add more Facebook content to my blog.  Today I continue to expand my horizons, and hopefully yours, by talking about YouTube.  No, I don’t intend to talk about funny commercials or old TV shows that are popular on the video sharing website.  I want to talk about YouTube as a Personal Branding tool.  As a supplement to your blog.  As a way to help you get found.  I want to talk about the 5 reasons why you should start your own YouTube Channel.

Personal Branding in a Web 2.0 World is about proactively managing your online identity so that 1) you can be found, and 2) when you are found, you are being perceived in alignment with your brand.  The first step for professionals in social media has been to have a branded presence on LinkedIn, followed by Twitter and/or Facebook (although many people are not as cognizant about their personal brand on Facebook, they should be).

Over the last several months I have seen a lot of professionals rightfully start blogging.  Why you should start blogging is the subject for an earlier blog post of mine, but let me simplify by it saying that blogging can be a powerful personal branding tool in that you can share your expertise with the world on any subject you so desire.  If you have expertise, why not share it for the world to see?  You become a better Windmill Networker, and it becomes easier to find you with all of the content that you add to the Internet.

YouTube can serve as a powerful extension to your personal branding for the following five reasons:

You Can Share Your Expertise in a More Effective Format: Video

You have a lot of expertise to share with the world from your own unique experiences.  By showing off your expertise in a video format, you can be showing off your entire package, not just your writing skills.  Do people say that you present well in front of others or have a knack for speaking?  Is your profession naturally outward-facing?  If so, video may be a better personal branding platform for you when compared to the written world of a normal blog.

Get Found More Easily: YouTube is the 2nd Most Popular Search Engine After Google

Enough said.  If you want to be found on Google, why wouldn’t you want to be found on YouTube?

It’s Easy: You Don’t Even Need Your Own Content to Start!

Buy a Flip Mino for $200.  Record video.  Upload to YouTube via the Flip software after connecting it to your USB port.  DONE!  You have just created your first YouTube video!  Easier way to start?  Just favorite another video that aligns with your brand and it will show it up in your channel.  You can see how this works by visiting my new Windmill Networking YouTube Channel…notice the “Uploads” and “Favorites” on the right.

Helps Further Differentiate Your Brand…Especially if You are in Transition

VisualCV was the first platform for jobseekers to introduce the power of video to us all.  So using video as part of your job search strategy, while not being new, is still considered cutting-edge for a lot of professionals.  Taking this one step further by creating compelling videos on a YouTube channel can only help further differentiate yourself from the crowd…and the people that are competing for the same job that you are!

People Love to Watch and Share Videos!

If there’s one reason why YouTube became as big as it is now, it is because people love to watch and share videos!  Don’t you want this power to work in favor of your personal brand?

I plan to blog more on this in the future, but was I successful in selling you on creating your own Channel?  Any other reasons that I missed?  Let us know your thoughts!