The word, "engage" is rapidly becoming a hackneyed and overused cliche lately in social media circles. People use engage to mean you can't just talk AT people on social media and you can't treat Twitter and Facebook like used car lot commercials on TV.

All well and good. Social media is a very different animal from traditional media. Marketers simply can't engage in one-way broadcasting of their messages like they have in the past.

"Engage" means to cultivate multiple conversations between a brand and its customers.

The first conversation is of course from the Brand to the customer. It will always be important to inform your customer base and send out messages. Broadcasting is not wrong, it is just not enough by itself anymore.

But that first one-way conversation is not engaging. It doesn't elicit a response from the people who hear it. It rarely gets them talking or excited about your brand. But the second conversation is engaging, it is a conversation from the customer back to the brand.

This is why listening is vital in social media. It was indicative of this one-way mentality to look at how Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton used social media during the 2008 presidential campaign. On the same day, just before the Democratic convention, Obama was following 46,252 people on Twitter, but Clinton was following exactly zero other Twitter users.

Note: That isn't the number of people that followed them, it was the number of people they were following.

If that statistic doesn't indicate the difference between a one-way broadcast mentality and a two-way conversation approach, I'm not sure what would. By not following a single person, Clinton was conveying the impression, if not the actual fact, that she wasn't listening.

Here's another example: This past summer I did a study of Showbiz Pizza, a nationally recognized chain headquartered here in the Dallas - Fort Worth area that includes the Chuck E. Cheese brand of pizza stores. I found that the brand name "Chuck E. Cheese" was mentioned approximately 6,000 times on Twitter in a 30 day period overlapping June and July, 2010.

But the company made not one single response to these Twitter users who mentioned their brand. This is the equivalent of someone handing you a six-figure check and not taking it to your bank until after it expired.

My friend Scott Stratton, who goes by the Twitter name @unmarketing, says that he tries to make 75% of his tweets replies to other people's tweets. That means that only 25% of his Twitter communications are broadcasts. And on the first month he started hitting that 75% mark, his number of followers grew by 10,000.

The fact is that people talk about brands, products, services and companies on social media. They discuss their good experiences and their bad. They mention plans to spend money on these brands. or they sometimes try to talk others out of spending money because of a bad experience they had with a brand.

If you are not responding to these mentions, if you are not acknowledging the people who are talking about you, you are acting like Hillary Clinton and you most certainly do not get social media.

A company that is not playing in the social media playground can never know what is being said about them. But a company that is listening can respond, clarify misinformation, can make a bad experience right and turn it around, and it can reward or recognize the brand's fans.

Yes I said fans. If have a very good product and deliver good service you will probably have fans. But if you make a practice of responding to comments and mentions of your brand, your fan base will grow exponentially.

Reward these people. Not with money, but by talking to them as real people, individuals, not "market segments." And act like a real person when you talk to them. People like to buy from people. Part of "engaging" is to have person to person conversations.

An additional reward you can gain from this second conversation is the most current and useful market data you could ever obtain. Social media is real time information. If you listen, and listen carefully, you can learn more than you could ever learn from a focus group or market survey.

Finally, the third conversation is customer to customer. If you tweet or post about quality content on social media, you will find some people telling their friends. The will "re-tweet" your messages to their friends and followers.

I just heard Paul Slack, a principal at Splashmedia speak this week, and he said several times that real success on social media comes when people start sharing your content (your videos, your blog posts, etc) to other people.

This is an excellent point. Social media is all about viral marketing, which is simply word of mouth on steroids. But the hard truth for many marketers is that word of mouth will never happen if they just engage in one-way conversations.

What experiences have you had with these multiple conversations? Can you share any stories you have about the impact of social media word of mouth?
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Wisdom from "Social Media Marketing Superstars" - Part One

Even though internet marketing is barely more than a decade and a half old, the game is changing for online marketers. Gradually the importance of search engine optimization is giving ground to social media optimization.

In other words, playing in Google's sandbox is not as important as playing in Facebook's playground.

But one thing that has not changed is the importance of creating and posting quality content on the web. Good content is just as important to social media as it is to search engines. With each year that goes by, the world will more and more belong to those who put a lot of (valuable) content on the web.

People frequently ask me how Twitter, for example, can make much of an impact since you are limited to 140 characters. The answer is not much unless your tweets include links to your blog, your website, your videos, your photos, your slide shows, your podcasts or other content you may create and upload to the web.

Content is still king, even as the "game" shifts away from search engines to social media.

• Content can solve problems for your ideal clients,
  
• Good content establishes trust and credibility with them,
  
• Good content entertains them, educate them,
  
• or it can help them become better, more-informed, consumers of whatever it is that you sell (which is no small achievement, since it helps them distinguish between your products and your competitors' products on factors other than mere price differences).

Additionally - since search engine optimization is still important to any online marketing campaign - content can be optimized with the appropriate keywords to help people find you and all your wonderful solutions online.

Which leads me to a brilliant piece written by my friend Anne Handley of Marketing Profs. I found this in a book called, Success Secrets of Social Media Marketing Superstars.

This book is a collective effort compiled by Mitch Meyerson. It includes chapters written by Anne, Gary Vaynerchuk, Brian Clark, Shama Kabani, Julie Perry, Mike Stelzner and many others. In other words, the superstars.

Anne's chapter is called, "Creating Content People Care About: The Cornerstone of Social Media."

Now let me start by saying that Anne Handley is a genius. She really "gets" the how, why and what about creating marketing content for the web.

Anne, points out that today's customers have changed. They are no longer easily swayed by bombarding them with advertising. Instead they seek out information before making a buying decision. They Google various brands and they ask their friends on Facebook what their experiences with various brands have been.

Think of how you behave when you take off your marketing hat and put on your customer hat.

No doubt you are far more proactive when you are shopping for a new car or even looking for medical care. Possibly you also read reviews and ratings by actual customers of these products on Amazon, Angies List, Yelp or Foursquare. Why then, do you expect your own customers to behave differently when they are buying your products?

So how do you create content that can attract these changing customers? Anne gives us a list of 11 Rules of Compelling Content, with several examples and short case studies. I won't re-list them all here, but I will higlight a few of her insights for you:

• "Compelling content is vendor-agnostic." In other words, your content is not about you, your company, your products or your brands. It puts the spotlight on what the customer wants to learn and becomes a publisher of information that meets these needs.
  
  Nothing will turn off your customers/readers faster than lot of self-serving commentary. Keep your brand mentions to a minimum. This is a medium from which people value objectivity, not salesmanship.
  
  
• Build trust by become a resource. Nothing builds trust faster and more reliably than educating customers. Anne uses Rubbermaid as an example. Their blog "does not focus on injected molded plastics but on space-saving and organizing, as well as on the consumers interested in, and the industry build up around these issues. Consider these recent posts: 'How to Sell Clothing at a Yard Sale,' and 'Save Money Packing Your Lunch.'"
  
  
• Compelling content allows for interaction or dialog. Create content that serves a specific community and allow them a voice.
  
  
• Great content does not create barriers. Anne gives an example of a General Mills "community" site Psst General Mills. Instead of finding a community, she found barriers in the form of pages of qualifying questions designed to compile their database.
  
  
• Compelling content starts a conversation.
  Build in ways for readers to share you information with their friends (or fans, followers or blog readers). Don't force them to sign in order to link to your content, but encourage them to share with easy to use widgets.

What kinds of content appeal to you as a customer or potential customer? How have your decisions been impacted by commercial information that educated you and offered solutions to specific problems? And how did you feel toward the brand that took the time and effort to educate you more without an over-powering sales message?

You definitely want to check out the book, Success Secrets of Social Media Marketing Superstars. It is full of a lot of useful ideas from some of the best minds in the field of social media marketing.

For those of you who have already read this book, what were your favorite insights? I plan to write an occasional series of articles based on the chapters and lessons in Social Media Marketing Superstars, so I will greatly appreciate your feedback.

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Below is a Google Sidewiki comment I posted to a great article on Mashable called 6 Challenges to Managing a Brand on the Social Web.

I really urge you to check this article out because it is a roundup with six social media experts who each highlight a challenge marketers face when bringing a brand to the social web.

I love this comment by Scott Monty about consistently "showing up" on social media to engage in these conversations. It is vital to participate in as many conversations as possible. Check out my ebook, "101 Ways to Promote Your Brand With Social Media Marketing" at http://webmarketing-coach.com/101SMM.pdf.

in reference to:

"Monty noted that half the battle is simply showing up. “It’s not just about running an online promotion or campaign and expecting results. You need to be there consistently and reliably every day, so that over time, a community will grow — and that’s when the magic begins to happen.”"
- 6 Challenges to Managing a Brand on the Social Web (view on Google Sidewiki)

Lately, I have been researching the social media efforts of a number of companies here in the Dallas - Fort Worth area.

I've read their Facebook pages, if they have one. I've read their Twitter streams, if they are using Twitter. I've read their blogs, if they are blogging. And I've also visited their YouTube channels, their Flikr accounts and their MySpace pages, if they are on those platforms as well.

The results have left me scratching my head.

I'm left with the thought that these social media campaigns are being run by people who don't really "get" social media. A lot of these activities seem to be run out of the various firms' public relations departments, who are using Twitter and Facebook as merely distribution channels to pump out press releases or announcements.

In other words, all one-way communications.

Hardly a conversation in the bunch. I've gone through page after page of Twitter messages and not seen a single "RE-Tweet," or a single @ symbol indicating that a message was sent in reply to something someone else said.

• No #hashtags to make their messages easier to find on keyword searches.
  
  
• No responses to good or bad experiences with their brands.
  
  
• No asking for feedback. No asking questions at all.
  
  
• No following other people back. The number of people who follow them vs. the number of people they follow is way out of whack. (This sends the signal that they couldn't care less what other people are saying).
  
  
• No comments on YouTube videos showing customers using their products or enjoying a gathering at their place of business.

All these companies seem to be doing is carpet bombing Twitter, Facebook, et. al, with media releases.

I really felt like handing out copies of David Meerman Scott's book, The New Rules of Marketing and PR directly to every executive with every one of these companies. (Sorry David, that just wasn't in the budget for now).

I kept hoping I would find one shining example of a company using social media as a way to reach out to individuals, like this example of 1-800-FLOWERS.

What happened was this:

Lena West ordered a Mother's Day flower arrangement for her mother through FTD, but what was delivered was not what she paid for. Her complaints repeatedly fell on deaf ears, even when she sent a certified, return receipt letter to the CEO of FTD.

In the mean time she was Tweeting about her growing frustration with FTD's awful service. 1-800-FLOWERS, a competitor of FTD, picked up on her Twitter fit and offered her a 15% off coupon without expiration date or restriction. They even offered to send her mother flowers on her behalf.

What FTD did not know, and did not care to know, is that Ms. West had influence. She was a Twitter user, although she did not have a huge following in her personal Twitter account.

But here's the point: If a company will not have a conversation with its customers, they will have conversations with one another. We ALL have influence these days. Practically everyone you know is either a regular Facebook user or has a family member who is.

1-800-FLOWERS appreciated this fact and stepped in to help a disgruntled customer of its main rival. To pull this off, they must have had keyword searches in place with not only their own keywords and brand names, but also the brand names of its competitors. They were not just listening, but they had also empowered their social media professionals to act with something tangible like a flower arrangement to correct a problem they weren't responsible for.

As I was researching these companies, I noticed that a lot of people were talking about their brand names. People were saying both good and bad things about them, but these companies were completely unaware.

If you do a Google search of the top brands in the United States, you will find that the top listings for these brand names generally are occurring on social media sites, not the companies' own websites.

As I mentioned in an earlier article, The Importance of Being Human: How to Achieve Real Success With Social Media Marketing, old-school marketing, advertising and, to a lesser degree, public relations, was often an exercise in throwing a lot of spaghetti against the wall to see if some of it sticks.

Spaghetti-throwing is not a conversation. There is nothing two-way about it. There is no engagement, no gradual building of trust and credibility, and no "humanization" of one's brand or organization.

Social media marketing is all about conversations. Two-way conversations. That means listening and responding to individual people, one at a time.

To succeed with social media, a company must first understand that it is more important to listen than to tell. To this day, I wonder if FTD is still oblivious about Lena West and her experience with 1-800-FLOWERS.

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Listen to my latest radio show on how major brands are getting high ROIs on their social media marketing campaigns.

• Why Pepsi declined to advertise on the 2010 Super Bowl, and chose to put $20 million on social media marketing.
  
• Why you must have a presence on Facebook.
  
• How to learn how to do social media marketing by following one Twitter account and learning by what this lady does during the course of her day.

Listen to internet radio with Social Media Cafe on Blog Talk Radio

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If I do say so myself, I think this is the best advice I've ever given anyone on how to engage with customers on social media:

Come to your social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc. every day with the intention to do good, to help someone, to add value, or to just be a nice, helpful person.

Sounds touchy feely doesn't it?

But the fact is that social media is a "place" where being a good person matters. More than matter, it is the key to success.

And that does not mean being manipulative. This is one of those times when the things we learned in kindergarten applies big time. Make friends and watch out for each other. Maybe even hold hands when you go out.

Ok it sounds nice, but isn't marketing about the real world of business? Yes it is, and just like the real world, people want to do business with other people they like and trust.

Your job on social media is not to tell the world about your company's newest widget. It is to make individual connections with one person at a time. If you do this, you will unleash online word of mouth activities that will tell more people your message than you could ever have reached merely by carpet bombing Twitter with spam messages.

So how do you do all this?

Assuming you have your Tweetdeck or Hootsuite account set to monitor your primary keywords in real time, the moment you spot someone talking about your subject matter, give that person a dose of encouragement.

Retweet their excellent article. If the article is not excellent, at least thank them for letting you know about it.

What else?

• Promote someone who shares or writes good information.
  
• Encourage your followers to connect with certain quality people.
  
• Give advice, if asked, when someone is having a problem.
  
• When someone shares something about their personal life, give encouragement.
  
• Share great resources you find on the web.
  
• Support a community, cause or even a good product.

What does all this have to do with building your business or marketing your widgets? I can't tell you how often I look at someone's profile or website after I see them doing something uplifting and generous on a social media site.

Seeing them as quality human beings makes me want to look them up. If I'm not already following this person, I follow her. I will spread the news that this is a generous social networker. I read articles on their sites and send out tweets about the good ones.

Being a good person on social media will attract a lot more interest in your website, business or widget than if you just try to sell it. (Which is another reason to give attention to you profile page.)

Being human is how business is done on social media. It's not only business, it is good business.

If I do say so myself.

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One of the great case studies or success stories on social media is Dell Outlet.

Dell attributes over $3 million in sales to one Twitter account, @delloutlet, over a two-year period of time. Their cost? The salary of one very capable employee, Stefanie Nelson, aka @stefanieatdell, who manages the @delloutlet Twitter account.

If you spend a little time reading her Twitter stream, you will notice how often she talks (er, tweets) directly with individuals. Sure she sends out product announcements a lot, but she never forgets it is individuals who follow her and read her tweets.

Back in November 2009, John Moore interviewed her and she shared this insight from her experience:

When we first started posting on Twitter as @DellOutlet in 2007, we intended to only post offers. We didn’t really understand the potential until customers started replying and asking questions. When we responded, the Twitter audience seemed very surprised and got really excited. It was clear that they really wanted to engage with us, and we were encouraged by the reaction, so we expanded our Dell Outlet social media objectives to include “improving customer experience”. We’ve been using Twitter to answer questions ever since.

Contrast that to most of the clumsy attempts to use social media marketing. I've seen business after business just use Twitter and Facebook to machine-gun out their product announcements and sales pitches to the masses.

Stefanie (by the way, I would love to interview you sometime if you are available) is friendly, helpful and informative.

It is obvious that she has a variety of keyword searches set up on software programs like Tweetdeck or Hootsuite so she can become aware of any mention of certain keywords and respond immediately. I was noticing one of her tweets in which she responded to a product complaint by someone and asked if the person had contacted @dellcares, Dell's Twitter account dedicated to customer service.

A similar experience occurred to me about two years ago. I had mentioned wanting to attend an event scheduled at the City of Grapevine, Texas, a nearby community known for hosting all kinds of really fun events.

I said that I wanted to attend the event but was worried about rain. Within minutes I got a tweet from someone at their Chamber of Commerce or Business Development office assuring me that they had worked out a deal with Mother Nature not to rain on that day.

It was cute and timely and told me that actual human beings were monitoring any keywords having to do with their events. More importantly, the person responded to me as a single individual, not part of a mass audience.

Any business getting involved in social media marketing needs to understand this. Social media is a way to connect to one person at a time with a personal touch. But because they are active on social media, these are highly-connected individuals, so these one-on-one contacts can ripple out to many other individuals.

This is the concept of 1000 True Fans. If you are not familiar with the concept of 1000 True Fans, it simply means that more is gained by focusing on a core group of targeted people and building relationships with them, than by mass marketing.

The problem with mass marketing is this:

There is always a tendency to buy into the "spaghetti principle" that says if you throw enough spaghetti against the wall, some of it will stick.

While this is sometimes true, it is becoming prohibitively expensive and less efficient to reach these masses by traditional media. Marketers have to pay more and more to throw all that spaghetti, and they are seeing that less and less of it is sticking. This is an ROI heading in the wrong direction.

So what happens when these same marketers decide to venture into the world of social media and try the same techniques? They use Twitter and Facebook as vehicles to continue throwing spaghetti. And that really doesn't work on social media.

It's kind of like being the guy who shows up at a party with a stack of business cards and backs people into corners to tell them about his hot new product or service. Sooner or later, that guy will be asked to leave. In social media we can "ask someone to leave" when we block or unfollow people who act this way, so throwing spaghetti is a short-term proposition at best.

Social media is all about building "social capital," which means adding real value and building real relationships with individuals, not masses. This is the importance of being human on social media. I often make the statement that the best book on social networking was written in 1936, when Dale Carnagie wrote "How to Win Friends and Influence People."

Social Capital is about making friends and being a friend. It is about listening more than talking. It is about talking about things that interest the other person rather than things we want to sell to them. It is about allowing the best of our human natures to come forward, while our sales and marketing tendencies step back.

I used to tell my sons about Mary Kay Ash, the founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics. She was known for the way she treated people and built trusting relationships with them. But her secret was that whenever she met someone, she visualized a sign on them that said, "Make Me Feel Important." Not a bad ritual to adopt with social media.

Back to Stefanie at @delloutlet. When someone tweets her about a problem, or when she spots a tweet with one of her targeted keywords, she responds as a person to another person. This doesn't mean she doesn't send out product information, or tell about the latest specials or coupons. But she never seems to get around to throwing spaghetti against the wall. She never seems to forget that she is a human being talking to other human beings, one at a time.

If you would like to read more about how "being human" is the real key to success with social media marketing, check out my latest ebook, "101 Ways to Promote Your Brand With Social Media Marketing." If you like the ebook, please consider forwarding it to others who might benefit from the information.

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I have been very interested in how Gatorade and its parent, Pepsi, have been engaging in social media marketing.

Pepsi, for the first time in my memory, decided NOT to advertise in the Super Bowl this year. Instead, they put $20 million into social media marketing.

But Pepsi is only one company that is seeing their marketing ROIs climb through the roof as they engage with their customers on social media. Dell has also found gold in social media marketing. Over a two-year stretch, Dell attributes over $3 million in sales to one Twitter account (@delloutlet) and one employee running that account.

The key is that social media is not just another way to machine-gun your product announcements out to the public. Notice how this Dell empoyee (her name is Stefanie) has actual conversations with other people on Twitter. She is friendly, informative, helpful, gets off message a lot, and talks to individuals not masses.

In other words, she acts like she is meeting people at a social event (which she is), not the showroom floor of a used car dealership.

This reminds me of a great quote from Shama Hyder in her new book, The Zen of Social Media Marketing:

“Social media sites are where the people are. Let‟s say there was an expo happening with 250 million attendees, and I offered you a free booth. Would you take it? I sure hope you would. That‟s how many people are using Facebook.”

Let me take her thought a step further. If I did give you this free booth, would you show up? If this expo ran 365 days a year, would you show up to man the booth at least an hour every day?

I guarantee some of your competitors are at their booths every day, all day. Look at Gatorade.

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Whenever I hear someone say that social media has no value as a marketing tool, or that Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flikr, etc. are a waste of time, I suspect these are the same people who, ten years ago, were saying there was no reason their business needed a website.

Yeah, this internet thing is just a passing fad.

But when it comes to social media, I have to admit that a lot of people are not getting results, and for them it IS a waste of time ... so far.

The problem is that a lot of people are acting like party crashers on social media. They butt in on conversations and pitch their business, regardless of whether the listener is interested in hearing about it.

Contrast this to the person who gets on Twitter and other sites to make friends, to build name recognition, to add value or to build trust and credibility.

These people understand that they can form relationships that can lead to business down the road, but they aren't out to spam anyone and everyone who comes within "tweet shot" of their messages.

The fact is that social media tools CAN be monetized and can produce business, but it is above all else a form of relationship marketing.

Take a look at the diagram I created at the top of this article. It is a funnel in which social media activities gently lead contacts to Opt-In to an email list.

Forming relationships on social media that then progresses to a form of Permission Marketing is the key to doing business on social media. Once someone opts in to receive your email newsletter, they have given you permission to market to them. They have "raised their hands." as Seth Godin puts it, to indicate that they have at least some level of interest in receiving information about your product or service.

In order for this to work, you must build social capital at every step of the process. You build social capital by adding value, by offering free information that solves problems, by being generous, and by making friends along the way.

And occasionally (very, occasionally) you offer them something of value in exchange for opting into your email autoresponder system. This allows you to build a list of interested people, who trust you and with whom you have a relationship.

From that point on, you continue to build social capital and add value. Become a valued resource to them. I suggest to my clients that their emails come in some sort of "tip of the week" format that offers valuable information each week.

A weekly, informative email contact system adds to subscribers' view that you are someone who knows a great deal about your topic and it builds both trust and credibility.

This last ingredient of this "Permission Marketing Funnel" - offering something of value to induce your contacts to subscribe to your emails - is often in the form of ebooks, white papers, videos or list articles. It can be anything as long as it has a high perceived value. Whenever an email marketing campaign fails, I suggest you look first to your free offer. If it is not attractive enough, it will not pull in subscribers.

Getting back to the party analogy, social media sites like Twitter, Facebook and others are a place to mingle, form new contacts and make friends. But you never want to be the guy who incessantly talks about business at social gatherings.

That said, there is everything right about moving relationships you form at social functions to another location that can result in business. It's done all the time at country clubs, golf courses and social clubs of every sort. Just take care to build social capital at every step, and you will be very pleased with the results.

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One of my ongoing challenges when explaining how social media can be used as a business tool, is how to demonstrate a strategy that will deliver real results.

There are still a lot of business people who suspect that social media is a waste of time or a distraction from doing real business. And there is something to be said for this suspicion - especially if social media is is pitched as a "magic pill" for all manner of business problems.

To help me better explain social networking (which is the human behavior rather than simply the technology of social media), I put together the flow chart below:

1. Step one is to Follow. I am practically a broken record on the subject of following strategically. The eventual makeup of the people who follow you will largely be based on the people you follow.
   
   Many of the people you follow will, in turn, follow you back. For example: my most recent Twitter stats indicate that around 25 to 33% of the people I follow, will follow me back within seven days.
   
   But by following certain people based on the subject matter of what they write about, you learn more about that topic. You may also re-tweet much of the content these people send out, and will then show up on their radar.
   
   Strategic following can be done by looking for keywords in the Twitter stream, keywords on blogs, or by simply following the people who follow certain "gurus" on your subject of interest.
   
   
2. The next step is Listening. Not spamming. Not telling. Just listening.
   
   Follow certain blogs in your field of interest. Read Faceboook walls of the people you are interested in. Set up keyword search columns on Tweetdeck.
   
   Read what the people you are strategically following tweet about, or make videos about, blog about or post on Facebook and LinkedIn.
   
   Not only will you learn more about your subject area, you will also be better able to contribute meaningful information and insights in a conversation with these people.
   
   
3. The next step is to Gather relevant content. The purpose is to find subject-specific information you can deliver to your own followers that solves certain problems, informs, starts conversations or helps achieve goals related to your field of interest.
   
   Social networking is all about giving others useful and valuable information. You cannot possibly produce enough of your own content to build a reputation as an expert in your field. But you can become an information resource to those who are interested in your subject.
   
   How do you find all this useful information?
   
   Set up Google Alerts to have new web content emailed to you each day whenever new information on your keywords is picked up by Google.
   
   Find blogs devoted to your subject on Alltop.com. Put the really good bloggers on your list to check on each day. Or better yet, sign up for their RSS feeds so their newest posts will be sent to you directly.
   
   You can also search social bookmarking sites like Digg, Stumbleupon, and many others. Just do a regular search for certain keywords and you will likely find a ton of great new articles and videos on these topics.
   
   Finally, search YouTube for great videos related to your field. You will be surprised at how many great tutorials are posted on YouTube.
   
   Whenever you find quality content, tweet about it. Write about it on your Facebook or LinkedIn site or mention it on your blog. In other words, share this content with the people who follow you on your various social media platforms.
   
   Why send out links to other business' websites? Because it will build your own brand as a provider of quality information on your topic. This is almost (notice that I said, "almost") as valuable as being a creator of quality information.
   
   Your goal is to position yourself as a resource, and gathered content works just as well as created content to achieve this goal. Your name will be associated with the quality of information you deliver, regardless of whether it is original to you or not.
   
   That being said, it is still important to create your own content. As important as positioning yourself as a resource is, it is also vital to position yourself as a thought leader. The next section will show how to do this.
   
   
4. Create content. Yes you should also create your own original content. As beneficial as it is to be known as a valuable resource, becoming a thought leader on your subject is the next step to gaining credibility and trust.
   
   Thought leadership need not be difficult. In most cases, creating your own original content can be just a matter of adding your own thoughts and insights to gathered resources.
   
   Some of your original pieces can begin with quotes or references to gathered content, but then you will add your own commentary. What insights can you add to a pieces created by someone else? What do you disagree with? What new direction does this information take you? How can you apply this information.
   
   By all means, make it simple. Create list articles on your blog. What tips or solutions can you offer people trying to solve certain problems.
   
   Create a list of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) that answer questions you have either heard or know from your own experience that people should be asking.
   
   How can you help people become better consumers of the type of service or product you offer? Give them quality information that will help them do this.
   
   Don't like to write? Create audio podcasts instead of articles. Record short videos (2 to 3 minute videos work best). Or just compile lists of links as resources for your readers.
   
   Once you have your own created content, do the same thing you do with the content you gather. Tweet about it, blog about it, write it on your Facebook or LinkedIn page.
   
   A good rule of thumb is that you will only send out one of your own created pieces for every ten or so links you send out that were created by others. Even occasional original content can help to establish you as a thought leader.
   
   
5. The final step is to Engage. Create conversations with others who are discussing your subject matter. Comment on blogs, retweet good articles, comment on Facebook entries, comment on YouTube videos, etc.
   
   If you find someone to be a valuable resource or thought leader on your topic, tell your own followers about this person. Compliment that person. Compliment a particularly valuable piece that person created.
   
   Use your social media platforms to ask questions or add your own insights about the things others have posted.
   
   If you have a blog, write trackback articles about another blogger's post that excites you. Don't feel shy about disagreeing, as long as you can do it without becoming disagreeable.
   
   Sometimes people ask questions on Twitter or LinkedIn that you can answer. By all means jump in and give that person your best shot. Send them links that will help them further.

The point here is that social networking really centers around sharing ideas, information and solutions. Add to the conversation but gather or create quality content so you will have something valuable to say.

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I want to update you of some important dates coming up:

1. First, a new Rainmakers' Roundtable marketing mastermind group will be forming here in the Dallas - Fort Worth area.
   
   Candidates must be highly-qualified individuals who are willing to committ to 24 meetings over the next year and must be willing to give and receive help to the other members of the group. For more information, click here.
   
   
2. Next, I will be interviewed by my friend Roland Desjardins on Blog Talk Radio. The broadcast will be aired at 10am on Wednesday September 2, 2009. Afterwards, the interview will available on podcast. This show will be called, Social Media: Fact or Fiction?
   
   For more information, click here.
   
   
3. On September 4, 2009, I will be speaking to the Colleyville (Texas) Chamber of Commerce on How to Use Social Media For Your Business. For more information, click here.
   
   
4. Finally, I will be conducting a new Twitter For Business Workshop at the Fort Worth Business Assistance Center. The date is tentatively scheduled for September 26, 2009 at 7pm.
   
   I will provide more information when we get the date firmed up.

If you like this article:

• Follow me on Twitter.
  
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• Join Me on LinkedIn
  
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Facebook has grown on me.

It took a while for me to "get" Facebook and understand how I can use it to grow a business. But as time has passed, I have come to appreciate it as a truly awesome marketing tool with application for any organization and any movement.

Part of my growing understanding is the recognition that social media is all about creating or engaging with groups.

Groups are THE secret to creating success with social media. Instead of the old style approach of sending a message to an audience, group marketing involves energizing others to work with you to spread the word. (Notice I didn't say "your word" because a group adopts the message and makes it its own.)

A group can be your fans who tell others about you, or it can be people you lead on a mission to achieve a goal.

Seth Godin has a marvelous quote in his book Tribes that says it all:

In Permission Marketing, years ago, I wrote about how marketers must earn the right to deliver anticipated, personal and relevant messages to people who want to get them. And that's still correct, as far as it goes.

But tribes go much further. That's because in addition to the messages that go from the marketer or the leader to the tribe, there are the messages that go sideways, from member to member, and back to the leader as well.

Groups exist because people want to belong and do. They want to get involved with your message and help spread it (but remember, along the way it becomes their message).

Facebook is the ultimate tool for engaging, cultivating, nurturing and empowering tribes or groups online.

With that said, here are seven great resources for using Facebook as a business building tool by empowering tribes:

1. Top Ten Tips For Creating BUZZ With Facebook Events. Tribes need events and this piece by Mari Smith shows how to create buzz for an event. Even if you are not the sponsor of this event, and EVEN if you cannot attend this event.
   
   
2. How To Manage Your Facebook Relationships With Friend Lists. Nick O'Neil has written this very helpful article on how to organize your friends on Facebook. Just a very helpful piece.
   
   
3. Attraction Marketing Facebook Strategy. This is a very effective video about how to use Facebook groups to generate leads and build relationships with the people who "friend" you.
   
   Note: This video is designed for building an MLM business, but frankly the approaches is so brilliant that I believe ANY business can benefit from it. So if you can overlook any prejudices you may have about network marketing, you will still get a lot of benefit from this video.
   
   
4. The Facebook Marketing Toolbox: 100 Tools and Tips to Tap the Facebook Customer Base. This is just a wealth of information about the many business applications of Facebook. It is practically a library of articles and tools that you can use.
   
   I especially like the section of links entitled, "Free Marketing Opportunities."
   
   
5. Share Your Favorite Marketing Tips and Ideas. This is a group that I started designed for marketers to share their ideas and tips with one another. It's a new group, so it's still getting started (but this is my blog, so I wanted to include it).
   
   I encourage you to join and participate by sharing your favorite marketing ideas. I'd like to see this become a vital tribe built on helping one another.
   
   
6. 32 Ways to Use Facebook for Business. Meryl Evans has compiled a very helpful list of ways a Facebook beginner (or someone just starting to use Facebook for business) can benefit from using it.
   
   
7. Top Ten Tips For Promoting An Event On Facebook. Another great article by Mari Smith, that takes you by the hand and shows you how to set up an event on Facebook and then how to promote your event. I just keep wondering how Mari keeps coming up with all these great ideas.
   

Bonus Article: How To Create and Promote Your Facebook Fan Page. This is yet ANOTHER Mari Smith article about creating and promoting fan pages (not personal accounts) for your business. (Maybe I should have just dedicate this whole piece to Mari).

If you like this article:

• Follow me on Twitter.
  
• Facebook me!
  
• Join Me on LinkedIn
  
• Visit me at Charles Brown on Google Profiles

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