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.

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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Maybe you are like me and are always looking for great resources on the web to help your business. Information is what runs my business and my social networking efforts.

Not only do I soak great information up like a sponge, it is at the core of the service I offer my followers on Twitter and Facebook. When I find good "stuff" I like to tweet about it and provide my followers with links to these great resources.

With that in mind, I am beginning an occasional series of blog posts on some of these great resources. I hope you enjoy them and find these sites to be as valuable as I do.

1. Copyblogger: I bookmark a lot of articles as I surf, but I have bookmarked more articles on Copyblogger than I have from any other source. Brian Clark, a fellow former lawyer, has quite simply produced one of the most valuable pieces of virtual real estate on the web.
   
   I have gained a tremendous amount of knowledge from Copyblogger, and it is usually practical, useful knowledge that I can use and right away.
   
   For example, he has turned writing blog headlines into a science. Search his site and you will find tons of headline formulas that will pull readers into your articles.
   
   Check out Copyblogger and dig through the archived articles, which are conveniently indexed by dates and subject categories. You will find a lot of "buried treasure" on this site.
   
   
2. Then there is Patsi Krakoff's Writing on the Web blog. Patsi is all about creating content and business blogging, and she really delivers the goods.
   
   She encourages business bloggers with useful tips and ideas that just can't be beat. She has a knack for putting our vague problems into the right words and providing very helpful solutions to those problems.
   
   I also like how her personality comes through in her writing. It is just more fun to read something written with humanity than sterile "business speak."
   
   
3. Alltop.com calls itself a "magazine rack" on a large variety of topics. This site searches the blogoshpere for interesting articles and blog posts on almost any subject you can think of.
   
   You would be hard pressed not to find something on whatever topic you are interested in.
   
   
4. Dosh Dosh may just be the most well-written blogs on the internet. Maki doesn't write a lot, in fact he may go weeks between articles, but what he does put up is quality.
   
   Each article is well-researched and very insightful. I have learned things on this blog that I have never encountered anywhere else. This is another blog that I encourage you to dig into its archives for treasure. I challenge you to find a single article that is just average in quality and content.
   
   
5. And finally, to finish up this little collection, there is Content Marketing Today by Newt Barrett.
   
   Barrett brings together ideas and solutions on how to promote business by delivering quality content. I do, however, think this site should come with a warning label that resembles the old potato chip ad, "you can't read just one."
   
   I often find myself on this site reading five or six of his great articles at a time. Never mind my pressing work schedule and the fact that I have a looming deadline. This site is a college course on content marketing all contained on one blog.
   
   Check it out, but don't blame me if you blow an entire hour there.

Okay, that's it for now. If I get lots of fan mail (heck, you can just leave a comment) to tell me you like this, I will follow up with a part two ...sometime. Hope you enjoy these resources.

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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I've had several people ask me about the services I offer and thought it was about time for me to post a self-serving plug for myself. Hopefully, however, you will still find it oriented toward you, the reader of this blog, and how I might be able to help your business grow.

Sometime back, I was introduced to speak for a business group as "An expert on how to become an expert." I liked that intro quite a bit and have since adopted it as my "elevator pitch" or tag line.

I specialize in helping professionals and professional services organizations market themselves with social media. As a former lawyer myself, I know how difficult it is to market or "brand" oneself.

To this end, I offer several services:

• One-on-one coaching sessions by telephone and email on how to market yourself better by becoming an expert in your field.
  
• One-on-one coaching for professionals who are seeking to make a career change and want to use social media marketing to gain an edge in the job market and become known as an expert.
  
• Training sessions for professional services firms or association groups.
  
• Professional "ghost" blogging services for lawyers and law firms. (This means that if you do not have the time to write your own blog, you can hire me to do it for you).
  
• Speaking engagements and workshops for groups whose members would benefit from becoming recognized authorities in their fields.
  
• Reviews of your current marketing efforts. This means I will analyze your advertising, websites and other marketing materials and give you review with suggested ideas to improve what you are already doing.
  
• Consultation on improving your Google and other search engine rankings and how to get more traffic to your website.
  
• Consultation on how your firm can become a "thought leader" in your industry.
  
• Consultation on how to use non-spam, permission-based email marketing to build your practice.
  

I hope you find this list helpful. I you would like to discuss how I might help you further, please feel free to call me at 817-501-6892 or by email at chbrown/at/webmarketing-coach/dot/com.

If you like this article, follow me on Twitter.
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For some time now I have been asking the question, "why would anyone choose to have a static website over a blog?"

The short answer, I suspect, is that the cost of a static site is money, whereas the cost of a blog is time.

A static site is rarely changed and very little new information is ever added. In fact most business owners I know have so little hands on connection to their own sites, that they have to call their web designer anytime they want to change or update anything.

Contrast that with a blog. Blogs are made to be easily updated. In fact, both owners and readers of a blog expect to see fresh, new content on a regular basis.

And as a blog owner, you have an easy place to post new information and ideas. A blog cries out for new content like a blank white board.

And because a good blog is regularly updated, it attracts not only visitors but also search engines as well. It has been proven over and over again that Google consistently ranks a blog with fresh content over a static site even when they both contain similar information.

This came to mind earlier today when I read an article called, How Can 10 Simple Articles Change Your Life? by Chris Pearson. Although he doesn't talk about blogs specifically, Pearson makes an excellent case for why content is so valuable for any site.

The point he makes is this: A friend who was doing well selling baseball cards on eBay, came to him about setting up a website so he could increase his business. In answering this problem, Chris makes a very strong case for writing articles.

He talks about how content adds "equity" value to a site. If his friend simply writes 10 short articles on collecting baseball cards or buying and selling baseball cards on eBay, he will have something none of his competitors have.

If, over the course of a year, he increases that number to 100 articles, he would not only probably have a high Google ranking, it would be a very tough job for any competitor to take his ranking away.

This is where my advice to his friend would be to choose a blog. To the average business owner, 100 articles in a year sounds like a huge task, but fortunately a blog does not always require that you personally write all of your own content.

Last week, for example, I was busy with some other projects and merely posted some YouTube videos that I liked and added my own short commentaries to them. Nevertheless I still added content that kept this blog on Google's radar. At the same time, I feel I added value to my readers because these were very good and informative videos.

While I still argue that you should post mostly your own articles on a blog, few of us have so much control over our work schedules that we can blog every day. But we can always add new, useful content that meets the needs of our readers.

In fact, if you read a lot of blogs, you may notice that there are a lot of excellent blog posts that are not entirely original content. In some cases these bloggers have drawn from other sources and added their own commentary. In other cases they have cited other articles and added their own spin (in fact this article would be an example of that - I had no idea what I was going to write about until I read Chris' article). You can even, occasionally, use articles that are posted on article banks like ezinearticles.com, but don't over do this, as it may diminish your standing as an expert in your own field.

There is one other compelling reason for adding new content. If you are using Twitter, Facebook or other social media platforms, new content gives you something to point links to. People will follow you on social media sites if you are a giver of good, quality content.

Fresh, informative content is the heart and sole of creating a personal brand online. It is what inspires people to read your blog and get you noticed by search engines. And what is more, having a sufficient amount of quality content makes it almost impossible for your competition to take your place.

If you like this article, follow me on Twitter.
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The more I look at the results my business and others are getting from social networking, the more convinced I become that SN is a far better way to get traffic than search engine optimization, or SEO.

I think this is because SEO is, at its heart, an attempt to manipulate Google’s algorithms. But since Google does not publish or reveal their algorithms, it is impossible to know for sure what the rules of the game are.

I’ve seen companies work for months to get their site listed at the top of Google’s search results, only to fall to page 14 the very next day – for no apparent reason.

It’s like going into a casino, thumping your life savings onto the table without even knowing what the game is.

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t engage in SEO by emphasizing quality keywords, but you should remember that the real focus is on posting quality content. Too often I read (and I confess I have written content this way myself) stuff on websites that were clearly written for Google’s spiders rather than human readers.

(For examples of someone who got to the top of Google’s search results the RIGHT way, see Blogging to Dominate Keywords and Google and Blogging to Dominate Keywords and Google - Part 2).

If you write for human readers, write quality content and of course emphasize your targeted keywords without repeating these keywords to the point of distraction, search engine results will most often take care of themselves.

With apologize to John Lennon, search engine rankings are what happen when you are busy doing something else.

Which brings me back to social networking. I am coming to see social networks as business assets. Juliette Powell, author of the book 33 Million People in the Room, refers to your network as your “social capital.”

A search engine ranking, and all the hard work that went into achieving it, can be lost in a single day. But a large social network is an asset that can produce dividends in ways you never foresaw when you began building it. This is why business valuation experts take such things as “good will” and customer lists into account when putting a number to the worth of a business.

With every new follower I gain on Twitter, every new friend I gain on Facebook, and every new connection I make on LinkedIn, my social capital grows. But it also grows whenever I meet someone at a coffee shop and discuss ways we can contribute to each others’ business. Online and offline social networks are not exclusive, they should actually cross pollinate each other.

The old rules of offline networking still hold true. People will do business with other people they like, trust and feel confident in. The mission of my online networking is simple: give them good, helpful, informative content that solves their problems, and they will come.

Which is why people who send me tweets that are merely sales pitches for whatever they are promoting right now, are missing the whole point. They may possess a large list of contacts (for now), but they are doing nothing to build good will.

I believe that as I build my social network, I will someday benefit from it in ways I cannot envision right now. I may be offered a speaking engagement for a topic I have not yet developed, I may sell an instructional CD that I haven’t even recorded yet, or I may make meet someone who writes about me in his or her blog. (I may even be offered a job as V.P of Marketing for a Fortune 500 Corporation, but I’m not holding my breath).

All these possibilities are things I cannot foresee now, but my emphasis is squarely on building a network of people who like me, respect, me and regard me as good at what I do, i.e. building good will. That’s an asset that cannot be lost as easily, or quickly, as a search engine ranking.

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Do you have the “Right Stuff” to be an expert in your field? Probably ... even if you don’t think you do.

When I talk to people about personal branding, social networking and thought leadership, and advise them that they can become recognized authorities in their fields, I usually get a perplexed, “who me?” type of response.

When it comes to having an honest, realistic perspective of our own value and expertise, most of us suffer from an undue sense of humility. Blame it on some awful high school teacher who belittled us for not knowing the right math answer (most of my humiliating high school experiences were math-class related).

The fact is, aside from professions that require a professional license to practice, expertise is gained by reading and study. Give me the practitioner who keeps up to date on his subject matter over the person who has ten more years of experience any day. The person who is a student of his field is far more an expert than the person who simply recycles the same knowledge he gained in his first year over and over again.

So read, read, read:

• In order to become a thought leader in any field, you first have to study and keep up on everything that is current within that field.
  
  
• Read books by going to Amazon.com and finding the top five books on any subject.
  
  
• Read blogs by going to alltop.com to find the highest regarded blogs on any topic.
  
  
• Subscribe to Google Alerts by setting up a daily email of new information found on the web on any topic you can think of.
  
  
• Follow Twitterers who Tweet about certain topics by going to Twellow.com.
  
  
• Find print publications and trade magazines that cater to the people you want to reach.

I just listened to a very interesting mp3 interview of Perry Belcher, who summed this whole idea of being an expert very succinctly. He said, you are actually being paid to read for people who don’t want to do it for themselves. If you are willing to do the reading for them, you can reap the benefits of positioning yourself as an expert.

Find a Niche

But reading is not enough, you must find and provide solutions to a niche in order to be an expert. No lawyer is an expert on every legal issue, no physician is an expert in every specialty. And you cannot expect to master all areas of your chosen profession.

But you must also be a problem solver. Niches are not built around mere demographics, they are also built on solution building:

• Define your niche around problems. Ask yourself what problems you are very good at solving.
  
• Then find the people who have these problems.
  
• Next, find out if these people with these problems are part of certain groups or organizations.
  
• Then find out what other problems (even problems unrelated to what you do) these people have.
  
• Find out what value these people place on finding a solution. In other words, how much does this problem cost them?
  
• Finally, create material or content that solves these problems. This is called “Thought Leadership” because if you are in the forefront of the problem-solving thinking of a field, you are its leader.

Is reading and finding a niche all there is? Of course not. You still have to be good. Hence the focus on solving actual problems.

But if you read about your topic and target a niche you can solve problems for, you can legitimately pass yourself off as an expert.

And still sleep at night.

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This week I will be consulting with two friends who are being impacted by the economic upheaval. In both cases, I will probably recommend that they start developing a personal brand online.

The first person is my brother who was downsized after working nearly two decades for a major corporation. He has a very good resume, great references and excellent work experience.

The other person is a self-employed freelancer who wants to get more traffic to her website and convert more of those visitors into clients.

Both are finding that the old rules of marketing oneself, either in the form of a job search or marketing one’s services, have changed dramatically. Yet even though the goals of both are different, both efforts can be viewed through the lens of establishing a personal brand.

Adam Singer, in an excellent article called The Rise of Personal Branding, poses the question of who would you rather hire?

• Person A, who has an excellent resume, work history and references, or
  
• Person B, who has all of the above, plus a blog that has gathered an audience of readers because she has produced a body of work on her field. When you Google this person, it is easy to find links and references that demonstrate this person has established a noteworthy online presence.

The answer, of course, is obvious. Person B is a thought leader and has established a personal brand within his or her industry. This person has demonstrated an interest in her industry that does not cease when she goes home for the day.

One of the coaching services I offer is to work with professionals who want to establish themselves as experts in their fields. In every case, we begin with a blog and why creating a blog is an essential tool for anyone wanting to create a personal brand identity.

But also in every case, I hear the same resistance that my client either hates to write, does not have time to write or doesn’t know what to write about.

To which I reply, “horse feathers” (or something along those lines).

You can create a very useful blog simply by becoming a “news gatherer.”

Think of Paul Harvey, who passed away this weekend. He was not a journalist in the classic sense of the word, he was a news gatherer who sought out news items and brought them to the attention of his audience.

You can do the same thing. Simply find useful information on the web that would be of interest to your target audience, and post links to that material on your blog. Then you can write a brief, one-paragraph comment on the material you are linking to just to add your own thoughts and personality to the piece.

And that’s it.

Yes, you can also write at length on certain topics if you feel like it. In fact I encourage you to do so because your whole purpose in blogging is to establish yourself as an expert.

Where do you find material to blog about and link to? Here are a few sources to try:

• Google, of course. Look up your topic and you will no doubt find thousands of pages full of material.
  
• Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia that covers most topics and provides you with many links to other sources.
  
• ezinearticles.com is an article bank that permits you to reprint thousands of articles as long as you give proper attribution to the author.
  
• Social bookmarking sites like Digg.com or Stumbleupon.com.
  
• Google Alerts. As I’ve mentioned in previous articles, with Google Alerts, you can do a one-time search for a topic and anytime new results appear on the web, they are sent to you by email. This is a very good way to stay on top of breaking news that may impact your field and keep you current on the latest developments. Of course the purpose here is to keep your readers up to date on these developments by blogging about them.

So don’t be intimidated by the thought of creating a blog. If your mission is to establish a personal brand, either to get a job or to attract business, nothing could help you more than to become a recognized authority in your field.

I firmly believe that a blog is the engine that runs any modern personal branding effort. It is a place to showcase your knowledge, your ability to solve problems and to transcend the normal, “hey look at me” approach to job searching or marketing.

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If you like this article, follow me on Twitter.

Content is king on the internet. The more quality content you produce and put up on the web, the more notice you will garner. Google will bless you with higher search engine juice, visitors will find your website in droves, other people on the web will Tweat or blog about your content, and before long you will find yourself basking in the light of being a “micro celebrity” within your field.

Or … at least that’s how it’s supposed to work.

In the real world, fame and fortune seldom come easily. Content may be king, but it’s still a game of king of the hill. Your latest article may put you on top of that hill today, but tomorrow, someone else’s content may push you off. In journalism, this is referred to as a “news cycle.” The next news item is constantly pushing the last one off of page one.

So what is an internet marketer to do? The answer is to continue to produce quality content. Write great blog articles, write great articles for article submission sites like ezinearticles.com, create great videos for YouTube, and record great podcasts.

But don’t let the king of the hill game make your great content grow stale.

Focus most of your efforts on creating “evergreen content” that is always timely. Solve problems that will always need to be solved. Discuss goals people always want to achieve.

If your content is of long term or continuing relevance, it need not grow stale on the web. At least not with a tool like Twitter available.

I’ve noticed that there are two categories of people using Twitter. The first group are the cheesy salespeople who have little care about engaging others. They just want to sell their wares and view Twitter as just another venue to get the word out about how awesome they are and how awesome their product is.

The second group are the problem solvers. These are the people who are in business to solve certain problems and they use Twitter to point their followers to solutions.

You can tell who these problem solvers are by what they Tweat about. They are just as likely to tell you about a great article written by someone else as they are their own content. They are the people you constantly learn from, the people who give you lots of those “aha” moments.

But these people also Tweat about their own content as well. When their content solves problems, they can legitimately send their followers to that stuff as well.

Let me give you an example: An old friend of mine from high school (ok I'm old, but she is extremely young) is now a relationship coach named Kathy Dawson, who helps couples nurture and grow their marriages, solve communication problems, and manage the pressures that come with raising children - while still trying to have a fulfilling relationship together.

In other words, Kathy solves problems that have always, and will always, need to be solved by couples in committed relationships. Her articles will always be timely because relationships will always need work.

Because Kathy has accumulated a wealth of great content, she has a lot to Tweat about. She can not only Tweat about her latest articles or her upcoming speaking engagements, she can also Tweat about articles she wrote two or three years ago because those articles are still timely.

And each time she Tweats, she can add one more link to her old article, gain more visitors to her website, help one more person solve a problem, and move up one more notch on the Google ladder.

This is because Google gives much more credence (and higher search rankings) to links that point to varieties of content within a website rather than when links all point to the home page. Links that point to articles within the site tell Google that the site is rich in content and is a valuable piece of internet real estate.

If some of Kathy's Twitter followers like her article, they may Tweat about it or mention it in their blogs, creating a viral marketing effect, compounding the number of links pointing to her site.

In so doing, she can conquer the hill once and for all. Her content will not grow stale, and will not get shoved off every time newer content is posted by someone else.

Twitter enables all of us who produce content to keep that content working. Rather than allowing an old blog article to get lost deep in your blog’s achieves, Twitter gives you a chance to take it out, dust it off and show it to new people who may benefit from it.

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NOT USING NON-SPAM EMAIL MARKETING FOR YOUR BUSINESS YET? Learn why email marketing is the easiest, most effective and most affordable way to get new clients. Download my free ebook and receive tips, ideas and case studies to help you get more new customers at http://www.trafficwave.net/lcp/chbrown/emailmarketing/6604.
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