Branded Matters

Additional resources from last week's ASI class on social media

Thanks to everyone who came to "Marketing in a Web 2.0 World" at ASI Chicago, following are the additional resources I mentioned, arranged so you can drill down by topic; I hope they are helpful:

Twitter:

• Twitter Search
• Twitter Local
• The Top 21 Twitter Applications from TechCrunch
• Follow these awesome Tweeple for best Twitter-use practices: PromoGirl360, JasonABlack, RosalieMarcus, ASICentral
• Twictionary: the dictionary for Twitters
• Five Must Ask Twitter Questions from Chief Marketer
• How to Use Twitter for Marketing and PR
• Twitter is My Help Desk from Duct Tape Marketing
• Seven Easy Steps to Make a Twitter Profile Page from Musings of a Housewife
• Power Twittering with Tweetdeck from Serve the Song
• How to Create Groups for Twitter from Mashable
• How to Speak Twitter from BusinessWeek
  

Blogging:

• Why Your Business Blog Is an Annuity via HubSpot
• Haste, Scorned: Blogging at a Snail's Pace from the NYT (I loved this!)
• 25 Tips to Make Blogging Work for Your Business from Conversation Agent
• Why Does My Business Need a Blog? from the Everything Typepad blog
• 13 Idea-Starters for Stuck Bloggers from Michael Hyatt
• Amazing Blogs: The 1-2-3 Plan Every Blogger Should Know from copyblogger
  

LinkedIn:

• LinkedIn Profile Extreme Makeover from Guy Kawasaki
• How LinkedIn helps me close deals and market myself better
• Here's how LinkedIn changed the way we do business
• Adding Anchor Text Links to LinkedIn Profiles from John Jantsch

Facebook:

• How to Use Facebook for Professional Networking from Aneta Hall
• Facebook Fail: How to Use Facebook Privacy Settings and Avoid Disaster from Mashable
• Improving Sharing Through Control, Simplicity and Connection from the Facebook blog

Misc:

• IBM's Social Computing Guidelines An excellent resource for larger companies needing to provide guidelines for their employees, (as representatives of the company), regarding the use of social media.
• Your Status Updates on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter: a Snapshot in Time from AriWriter
• An Executive Guide to Social Media from BusinessWeek
• Email Newsletters that Customers Actually Read from BusinessWeek
• A List of Social Media Marketing Examples from Being Peter Kim
• Great Examples of How Operations Can Become Marketing from the Head of Zeus Jones
• How to Filter and Manage Your Online Social Life from Lifehacker
• 5 Ways to Take Control of Your Personal Brand Today from Dan Schawbel
• Get Your Google Profile On!
• Search Engine Marketing and PR (an Edelman Digital White Paper)
• 5 Essential Steps to Make Your Site Search and Social Media Friendly from Lee Odden
•   Ifyou were in the class, you know we tried to show this video: Trunkslammers from RightSleeve

Quick note: I'm often asked, if you had to choose between online networking and offline networking (cold calling, clubs, organizations, etc.), what would you choose? My answer is always the same: it's not an either/or proposition. Determine who your primary target market is and just get after it, relentlessly, both online and offline.

Now, excuse me while I prepare for a full week of cold calling ...

ASI's Counselor Magazine recently conducted a poll of more than 230 distributors and their use of social networking sites. According to ASI, the results (at right) mirror national trends with continual increases in the utilization of these tools to help build and nurture a network of contacts. 

If you are in the Chicago area, I hope you can join me this Tuesday, July 21st from 1:30 to 3:30 at the ASI Show as we'll dig a little deeper into what distributors are doing online to help grow their businesses (details here). My presentation, entitled "Marketing in a Web 2.0 World: How Small Business Can Be Heard in a Big Way" will include industry highlights of viral video, Facebook, LinkedIn, the use of white papers, blogs, Twitter, and more.

Harvey Mackay wrote one of the quintessential business books on networking, "Dig Your Well Before Your Thirsty: The Only Networking Book You'll Ever Need". In it, Mackay's wisdom is as valuable today for online networking as it was when it was published in 1997 (when the term "social networking" referred to physical, not virtual, handshakes). Following are a few quotes from the book:

• For most people networking is a learned behavior, like learning to swim. It is a gradual - and often painful, even scary - process of trial and error, small incremental steps, and finally a few breakthroughs. Fortunately, there are several tried and true techniques for overcoming this Fear of Trying.
• The really big networking mistakes people make in their lives come from the risks they never take.
• There's a reason they call them "connections." You have to connect.
• Networking is not a numbers game. The idea is not to see how many people you can meet; the idea is to compile a list of people you can count on.
• I don't know what I'll be doing a year from now, but whatever it is, undoubtedly, will be based on the contacts I make today.