There are a lot of social media terms thrown around these days, and sorting through all of the jargon can be tough. First, let’s differentiate between the “big three” social networks.

Facebook logo

Facebook is a social network site that connects friends, family, and businesses. People can share updated statuses, pictures, personal information, links, and more. With more than 250 million users in the world, 120 million of which log on daily, there is a large market to reach here.

Twitter logo

Twitter is another social network/micro-blog that allows users to to send and read messages (or “tweets”). Tweets can be up to 140 characters, and they are shared on your personal page and distributed to people who choose to “follow” you. In the last year, Twitter’s growth rate surpassed 1,000%. The potential here to reach customers is huge.

Wordpress logo

Wordpress is a personal publishing platform that works as a blogging service and as a web hosting service that is run on PHP code and a SQL data backend. Confused? Wordpress.com offers a free blog hosting service that requires no PHP code knowledge and a user friendly interface that allows easy updating, customization, and built in widgets to add to your blog. 77% of internet users actively follow and read blogs, so this platform also provides great opportunity to reach and engage potential customers. Wordpress isn’t the only blog hosting application out there; there is also Blogger, Vox, and more.

Now that we’ve covered some basics, let’s go into more depth…

Social Media Structure

This graph illustrates that every social media account you possess should link back to your homepage. This type of infrastructure is what the search engine spiders and real web surfers like.  There are even some applications, or tools, out there to help make interconnecting your sites simpler. Here are some ideas to get you started:

• Place a Twitter widget, or “badge,” on your Facebook page, blog, website, and any other web presence you deem appropriate. Creating this widget is easy:

1. Sign into your Twitter account and click on Settings.
2. Once you’re in Settings, make sure you’re in the Account tab.
3. Scroll down to the 5th field, “More Info URL”. Click on the link directly below it that says “(You can also add Twitter to your site here)”.
4. Select which social media site you want to create a flash/html widget to.

• Depending on your blog layout, you can also have your tweets feed into your blog, alongside your posts. Usually having either the Twitter icon or the feeds on your blog is enough, but not both. You don’t want to spam.
• Add an icon for your Facebook page onto your blog and website. You can create the HTML for your Facebook logo right in Facebook.
• Notify your followers automatically, with a tweet, every time you update your blog. This can be done in a number of ways, but applications like TwitterFeed make it very easy.
• Set up a feed that displays links to your blog posts (anytime you update) on the sidebar of your main website. This requires some coding knowledge, and often it is more helpful to get the help of a third party such as Union Street Media.

With a little handiwork, keeping content fresh on all of your social media channels can be as simple as posting to one.

Blogging can lead to other benefits for your business as well…

Another Hubspot study conducted in August of 2009 – viewed here – revealed that businesses that blog receive better marketing results in general. The study surveyed 795 businesses that blogged and 736 that didn’t. The results showed that business that blogged received:

• 55% more page visits
• 97% more inbound links
• 434% more indexed pages

It makes sense; you’re constantly expanding the online content associated with your business, which in turn draws more attention to your site, from both people and search engines. There are many distinct blogging benefits. A blog provides:

• An opportunity to expand keyword rich content;

• An interface that is highly tuned for search engines;

• An excellent way to earn inbound links;

• A forum for you, as a professional, to display your expertise.

With a blog RSS feed on your site, you also have an automatic way to produce dynamic content for your main site. Many blogging businesses find their websites easily zooming above competitors’ static-content websites in the search results.

For more information about how to effectively blog for business, click here.

Remember, just because you have a blog doesn’t mean your website traffic is going to shoot through the roof. You need to take care of your blog consistently, monitor the comments your posts generate, and make sure your content doesn’t get stale with regular posting. Blogging is also more effective in garnering leads as part of a complete internet marketing strategy. When combined with an optimized main site and active participation on social media sites, blogging will help deliver a higher volume of high quality website traffic and leads.

As the number of businesses using multiple social media platforms continues to grow, the question frequently comes up:  Which content should go where?

Is it Facebook content or blog content?

The two platforms that provide the biggest source of confusion are blogs and Facebook. There is a purpose for both, and each is ideal for particular types of content. It is important to understand the intention of each of these channels.

So, should you put your next update in your blog or on your Facebook page?

The purpose of a Facebook business page is to:

• Connect with old customers, new customers, potential customers, and colleagues;
• Share content that is both relevant and interesting;
• Engage your fans with contests, business news, and other engaging content;
• Keep fans in the loop on upcoming events, conferences, or anything where your company will have a presence.

The purpose of a business blog is to:

• Display your expertise;
• Develop a depth of content that distinguishes your business;
• Bring readers up-to-date with the latest industry information;
• Keep momentum going in the search engines for important keywords and topics.

If your content is meant primarily to engage, or is something you want to quickly share with others, post it to your Facebook profile. Examples of Facebook-appropriate material include: announcing a limited- time offer, photos of a local event your business attended, videos, or anything with a more personal tone.

If you can distinguish your company by elaborating on business-related topic, make it a blog post. Blogs are an excellent forum for professional information, and can spark interesting dialogues as people post comments.   If your target market is local, take advantage of the opportunity to include relevant localized keywords and information. Like Facebook, blogs can be used for a variety of material, and may incorporate some of the pieces you put on your Facebook page (images, videos, etc.).

It’s not always clear-cut whether a post should go on Facebook or on your blog.  In some cases, writing a blog post and linking to it from your Facebook profile (and other web presences) is the best strategy. It is often a case by case situation.

Both platforms are important in establishing your online presence, and it’s important to properly link them together, as well as to your other sites—most importantly, your main website.

Tired of blogging? No Time?

Recently I came across this forum post by a beleaguered, blogging Realtor.

“when i first began blogging i was very excited i found out a way to reach the world and express my thoughts.My Real Estate blog began to be filled with content and awesome articles. As i continue to blog and expand my audience and continue to grow my business i have found myself exhausted and overwhelmed. I am exhausted every article requires time and thought something that i really dont have. i recently began looking for a ghost blogger but guess what i haven’t found one yet. Does any one have any suggestions?”

As the season gets busier for Realtors, a common issue is finding time to sit down and write a well written blog post with good content. It is wiser to keep a consistent output rather than flurries of activity, so if you only blog once a month that is preferable to a high frequency of blogs and then nothing at all for long periods. Readers will check in at regular intervals but if there is nothing there for ages you run the risk of losing them completely as they think the blog is dormant. Rather than leave your blog dormant until you find the time and energy to jump back in, consider this:

Microblogging

For example, Twitter. You only have to come up with a maximum of 140 characters and it’s becoming more and more popular. This is a great way to keep feeding new information while you formulate a more content-rich and keyword-focused blog. For double the benefit, set up an RSS feed of your “tweets” to your site so that your site gains a regular infusion of content.

Short posts that link out and keep your brand lively can be just as useful as ones that take an hour to write, so don’t damage your brand with poor, lazy posts just because you feel you have to crank something out. Just keep it short (literally a paragraph!) and link to something of interest in the local or national media or on a local web site that is of interest to your market. It could be a reminder of an upcoming “Green Up” day, beach cleanup, community-wide rummage sale, shred-fest, important school board meeting, music festival, property tax due date, you name it. Anything that is relevant to living in your community will take only a moment to write, can be keyword rich, and useful to your readers.

Ghost/Guest Blogging

This avenue is an acceptable route for SEO purposes as it can guarantee good content and add a fresh voice to your brand and blog. It also will provide great support for you in the busy season enabling you to focus on lead generation and getting out to meet your clients. Just make sure that the writer knows your business and your community. Hiring someone on another continent, therefore, would not help extend your brand or accurately represent your expertise in your local market.

Listen to your Analytics

If you are wondering how much effect your blog is having on traffic to your site and brand awareness then use Google Analytics to see if your efforts are furthering your business goals. You might discover what is working for you and help you to either trim the fat with certain content or provide motivation to expand more on ideas that are gaining traction.

Looking for Ideas?

Check out some of our Real Estate client’s blogs that perform well and have great content:

Bryan Bomba – Chicago
Brad Dinsmore – New Hampshire
Lomenzo Properties – Cape Cod
Wright Realty – New Hampshire

In addition here are some great tips at ProBlogger.com

I receive daily emails from ActiveRain, these cover all kinds of topics. Usually I don’t have a lot of time to read through them; so I skim over the newsletter titles and see if anything catches my eye. Well today one did: “Survey Says… REALTORS Suck”. Wow! I certainly clicked on that one.

The first thing that struck me was that this is a great example of an attention grabbing blog title. It will get your readers to click and read. It is controversial, and let’s face it, people love controversy. As a former real estate agent and the daughter and sibling of two REALTORS I couldn’t resist reading on.

I found the article interesting. I think it is a good reminder to ANY agent, new, old or otherwise, about what your consumer is looking for and what is important to them.  A professional in any field should always be keeping up on the needs of their clients.

Two of the most interesting points for me where:

1. That the most important thing to the consumer is lowest commission and knowledge is the least. My reaction to that was, “No wonder you think REALTORS suck.” In my experience the lower the commission, the less attention paid to the client.

Maybe that’s not true in all cases, but I have a feeling it doesn’t help! So how does the average REALTOR put this information to use? Should they all be slashing their commissions?  Well it turns out that 95% of consumers are still using Agents. Even though the consumer feels they can get just as much knowledge by doing their own legwork, they are still relaying on real estate professionals when all is said and done.

I don’t think this is a free pass and should be counted on, especially in this market. I think it’s important to be the best at what you do and the most knowledgeable about technology, your area, the state of the market, etc. Those are the agents that will get the business and keep it.

2. The example photos Jeff Corbett uses, got me giggling. He could not be more dead on with this point. If all you can fit in the bathroom shot is the toilet, leave it off the listing! Nobody needs to see the toilet. Okay, so the owner did a great job redoing the bathroom, but it is too small to photograph. How about taking close-up shots of some of the details? BUT, please spare us the toilet shot.

The other one that always gets me is the tiny bedroom, that just shows the bed or maybe a corner of the bed and a window. In those cases, how about a video of the property? We can help guide you through this process and you’ll be better off for it!

Just to hammer the point home, here are a few examples of photos you should skip!

Are they selling the bed or the house?

Ahh the lovely toilet… So homey!

Overall its a great article so give it a read! “Survey Says… Realtors Suck!” By Jeff Corbett, Active Rain Staff Writer. You’ll probably find one or two take aways.

• On the human side of things blogs, offer a way for a business to show their clientele a more personal side with minimal time commitment. When writing copy for a business website, the author needs to think about maintaining professional voice and assuring that the piece that they are writing is consistent with the subject of the page they are posting it. The beauty of a blog is that by their very nature people expect blogs to be more informal and cover a variety of subjects. On a blog you can have two posts one after the other about completely opposite subjects and it is completely acceptable.
• As with everything on the Internet, you are writing for two audiences: people and search engines. There is lots of fancy language involved in Search Engine Optimization, but the keystone of SEO is “the keyword”. If, as you blog, you do so with an eye to your site’s primary keywords, you can turn your blog into a treasure trove of unique, keyword-rich content for search engines. The SEO value of blogs does not stop there, however. Because of the nature of blog software, every time you write a post, the software notifies Google that it has new content and the blog is re-indexed. The more frequently the site is indexed the better your placement in Google will be.

These are pretty standard, as long as you blog frequently on you own domain you will reap these benefits. Quality of writing and pertinence of subject also can provide their own benefits. Take for example our client, Brad Dinsmore, a Southern New Hampshire Realtor. Brad had us build him an on-site blog a few months ago and started blogging about subjects effecting his market area in and around Windham, NH. He was doing a great job, titling his posts with keyword rich language, blogging frequently and linking to the rest of his site. Because of this, he was receiving the benefits listed in the bullet points above. Because of the quality and originality of his posts, a reporter from a local paper called the Eagle Tribune came into his office last week with a copy of one of his blog posts titled Southern NH Home Sales: 1st Quarter 2009 the reporter wanted to write a feature article for the Sunday Edition based on Brad’s post. The end result of this was that on the front page of the Sunday edition of the Eagle Tribune were two large color photos of one of his office’s agents Debbie St Jean and two, first time-home buyers as part of an article entitled First-time buyers a ray of sunshine in dismal N.H. housing market. This is publicity that you cannot buy and a perfect example that when you put your expertise out there you will reap the benefits. If you know your market better than anyone else then let people know. Add content to your site and blog regularly. You may not get a featured article out of it but you will start to gain the recognition that you deserve.

Sometimes news breaks that is very interesting to your target audience (usually something that has an impact on their wallet). When the news breaks, there may be a lot of stories and reports about the topic in general but often there is very little useful reporting on how that bit of news effects your local market or how people can make the best use of the information.

Adding local context and use to a time-sensitive news event is different from writing about a seasonal or recurring event (4th of July Fireworks, for example, happen every year). With a time-sensitive news event you want to publish quickly and get right to the point with your useful, localized tidbits; all the big news brands will handle the general context for you.

What makes for a good time-sensitive blog topic?

Writing a post about a time-sensitive topic means you have to stop what you’re doing, understand the issue and then figure out how your audience can use the information about that topic. Since it isn’t a recurring event, the post may have limited long-term value. So you want to pick the right time-sensitive topics to blog about. Here are some characteristics to look for:

• There’s something in the topic that has a direct impact on the lives of your audience
• Other news outlets are providing the general overview information (so you can focus on how your audience can use the information)
• You can afford to take the time to write your post before the news cools down

Once you have your topic, pound away on the keyboard and get your post out there.

An Example: February 2009 Stimulus Package

As I write this blog post, there’s a new stimulus package going through Congress. This stimulus package will likely have some impact on housing markets across the nation. If you are marketing real estate, I bet there’s something in that bill that will be of interest to your audience. Here is the search data from Google Insights about the stimulus bill:

Looks like a rising trend, something you can perhaps use for your internet marketing.

Since stimulus bill is a national topic other news organizations are doing the heavy lifting for explaining what’s happening:

• Michigan Business Review is rehashing an AP story
• Forbes is running Reuters’ story on Obama’s support of the bill
• The New York Times is discussing how the bill got smaller before passing

There’s probably more, those are just the ones that I found at 3pm on the day the news is breaking. Somewhere in that bill is likely some information that real estate agents could find that might be helpful for home buyers or home sellers.

If you can find that information and, ideally, put it together with actionable local resources for readers, then you’d have a blog post to help insert your name and brand into the national conversation about real estate and the stimulus bill.

So go write your post and be sure to do the following:

1. Insert local context wherever possible
2. Include some step-by-step ways to make use of the information wherever possible
3. Get the post live as quickly as possible

Guess which post I wrote, in order to capitalize on the current time-sensitive topic of the housing stimulus?

You’ve probably seen the little orange icons and “subscribe to my feed” buttons on sites you’ve visited (you can see some over to the left of this blog post, in fact). You might even have read articles where people argue about things like RSS and Atom and so on. Maybe you’ve heard of things like Google Reader. This is an article written to help you start using RSS feeds to help your online marketing efforts.

What’s an RSS Feed anyway?

RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication. It’s simple for web geeks. Don’t feel bad if it doesn’t sound simple to you. Here’s how it works:

Contemporary websites hold all of their text and other content in a database. When a program called a web browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox or Safari, for example) goes to a web page address the website software (sometimes referred to as a Content Management System or CMS) takes that text out of the database and formats the text into a web page.

There’s content: the information in the database. And there’s presentation: the formatting and design that shows the content, font choices, colors and so on. Sort of like the separation of church and state.

RSS feeds just give you access to the content without the presentation formatting. An RSS feed is just a way to get at the content without all the formatting and design. Keep your church and pick any state (or keep your state and pick any church, if you prefer).

So why would you want just the content, without the formatting?

There are a couple reasons why you’d want to have access to the content of a website without all the formatting. Here are a few:

• Display a list of headlines from another site on your site
• Access the content from something that isn’t a web browser (like an iPhone app)
• View content from your favorite websites from one place without having to surf to each website individually

To start with, it’s the last item on the list that matters most: view content from your favorite websites in one place. If you are staying up to date on the topics that matter to you via online resources, then you probably have three or more websites that you visit every day. A piece of software called a “feed reader” will load all of the content you choose into one interface.

Without a feed reader, you have to load up each page (along with the images, ads and other things which slow down the page loading time) then find the new articles and then maybe read some of the new articles. With a feed reader, you open the feed reader and all the headlines and articles are in one place for easy reading. It even lets you know if you’ve read it before.

Ok, you know everything you need to know about feed readers. Let’s use RSS to improve your internet marketing.

Internet Marketing Basics: Use a Feed Reader to Listen

Listening is probably the easiest and most important marketing activity you can perform online. You can listen to potential clients, your industry peers, critics, competitors anyone who publishes online. Let’s go step-by-step and set up a feed reader.

1. Go to the Google Reader page (http://reader.google.com) (yeah, there are other feed readers and you could try them all out, but today let’s just get started).
2. Log in if you already have a Google Account. If not, follow instructions to sign up.
3. Awesome, you have a feed reader. Bookmark the page your feed reader is on.

Now you need to put something in the reader. Go to three of your favorite sites and click on the add to reader buttons. Don’t forget to add the Internet Marketing for Real Estate Feed. Have you added a couple sites to your feed reader? Now go check what it looks like. You’ll see the headlines and if you click the headline, the article expands.

Internet Marketing Basics: Use a feed reader to participate

It’s good to participate in conversations surrounding the topics related to your business. It helps people become familiar with you and your company. More importantly, if you are commenting on stories and articles that your audience would find useful, the readers who find you are pre-qualified in that they have already exhibited interest in your topic.

Do one of the following at least a couple times a week, to help increase your participation:

• Leave a thoughtful, useful and on-topic comment on a blog post you find via your feed reader
• Add at least one more site to your feed reader
• Find three different articles on different sites about a related topic, mention them on your own blog or site

Using a Feed Reader to improve your internet marketing

If you’ve made it this far, you have a feed reader bookmarked and you’re using it to make meaningful connections online. There’s a lot more you can do, but you’ve gotten started and that’s what matters.

Business Blogging in Context

I started writing in this blog consistently around February of last year. I’d just come back from my first Inman Connect and figured I had some perspectives of value to share. When I’m blogging I’m getting paid, so it’s important for me to be able to articulate the business objectives for blogging to the guys that sign the paycheck. Here’s what they are:

1. Blogging is something that we recommend to clients for their own marketing efforts. I wanted to be sure that Union Street Media is walking the talk and actively engaging and utilizing this medium. Even though I had been blogging before doing this blog, this is was a learning objective.
2. Our team has a wide variety of skills and experiences to draw upon that we can share with a larger audience. Having an outlet to practice sharing this is an immense opportunity (anyone see Gary Vaynerchuk at this year’s Inman Connect?). This is a staff development objective.
3. There are several questions that the sales and support staff get asked on a regular basis. This blog has helped to share knowledge with our clients as well as help prospective clients understand what we offer. This is a support objective.
4. By using analytics to see what people find interesting, I’m able to further inform product development decisions and make our core products more interesting/valuable to our customers. This is a business intelligence objective.
5. This blog links to other blogs and information sources frequently. This is a conscious decision to help insert our brand/thinking into conversations where we might be relevant. The blog is only a piece of the “participate in the conversation” strategy (along with social network participation, commenting on other blogs, etc). But it’s an important piece. This objective is aimed at increasing brand awareness and exposure.
6. If all of the above objectives are being met, then Jonny and Spencer in sales should be having “warmer” conversations with people. This is a sales objective.

If I had to give a narrative version of the bullet list above I’d say something like: We blog to increase client satisfaction to the point where people feel comfortable and happy recommending us as a resource for online marketing in the real estate space and beyond.

Without giving away the magic numbers and secret sauce, it’s fair to say that in the past year the Union Street Media blog has accomplished the majority of these goals:

• We can train our clients on successful blogging practices based on our own experience
• Several members of our staff have contributed posts or insights to the blog in the past year
• Existing clients have commented and sent me thank yous for posts that have appeared here
• Several product development ideas have been refined/initiated based on analytics data
• This year at Inman Connect far more people knew who we were than last year (I was a presenter and panelist this year, for example) and we were also given an entrepreneurial award by our local Chamber of Commerce that cited our growing national exposure
• I don’t have hard numbers on blogging influencing sales, but I have often overheard the sales guys referring potential clients to various blog posts during calls

What brought people in last year?

At the end of the day, a blog is just a pile of content; posts and pictures and pages. Which pages landed new visitors? Excluding the home page (which always brings in the most) here is what attracted people to Real Estate Internet Marketing by Union Street Media last year:

• A post I wrote early on that examined changes to Craigslist’s HTML policies and Criagslist user sentiment on those changes.
• An article about tying web analytics to print advertising.
• The Twitter for Business resource.

That Craigslist article was written months ago. But it still gets regular traffic. It’s an example of a content asset: something I wrote once which continues to draw in visitors without me doing anything further. Granted, those visitors aren’t as likely to convert into sales as other visitors. But they do help spread the brand to a relevant audience and provide a ready illustration about content as an asset.

What topics were popular?

I’ve done quite a bit of tinkering with the blog categories this year. But they do vaguely map to a content description that helps me understand what my visitors find broadly interesting. The categories that had the most views were:

• Data
• Technology
• Internet Marketing

Granted, this is swayed somewhat by the number of articles in each category. But it’s still useful information and I can dig deeper if I need to and make a views per post per category table to help level the playing field. I’m probably going to break up the “internet marketing” category this year as well. I mean, everything on this blog should relate to internet marketing, right?

What did people say?

As many of you know, I run a survey on the Union Street Media properties. The survey is provided by the folks at iPerceptions and is called 4q. I don’t separate out the blog from our main real estate web design site (maybe I should, but we need goals for this year right?). But I can look at data for people who indicated that they came to the site to read the blog. I got a lot of comments about what you all found valuable. Things like:

just came upon you as i was visiting other inman connect material. i enjoyed your content and found it valuable. thank you.

I found lots of detailed information that will help me upgrade my social media marketing strategy.

It always offers helpful information and it’s clear you have a good grasp of your topic. My problem is always finding the time to implement your suggestions!! [note: You can always talk to my friends in the sales department. ]

amalgamates information for me so I do not have to go looking for the latest and greatest…

Looks like we’re doing a pretty good job on this front. Those are some of the many complimentary comments of folks who were able to do what they came to the site to do. But some of people weren’t able to accomplish their task. These people tended to be shy and not give me much feedback. The only one related to the site itself that we got all year was “Couldn’t find it.”

It’s true that if you arrive at our main site getting to the blog is a little trickier. I have to confess some evil marketeering here. If someone is on the main site, where I want them looking at ways to hire us or have us build a website… I’d rather they stayed there and picked up the phone. But this coming year, based on this person’s feedback, I’m going to experiment with being a little less evil and A/B test promoting the blog on the main website to see what happens. Using feedback to take action. Yeeha!

In raw numbers from the 4q survey, the blog has an 87% satisfaction rate. That’s pretty great with room for improvement. My favorite place to be. Which brings me to….

How do we do better in 2009?

The goals of the blog this year are pretty much the same as they were last year. And there are some changes in store. In particular I’m hoping to feature more voices from the Union Street Media team (do a better job at objective #2). I’m using some of the deeper analytics on content from last year to help set up a more formalized editorial calendar for the coming year as well.

But you can help me out, too. If you read this far down the page I’m guessing you care enough about this blog to take part in its direction. Leave a comment to tell us about the best thing we published this year. Or if you’re shy, send us an email. What worked and what didn’t? What topics do you want to know more about? What topics do you want to know less about?

I hope you found this little review useful and wish you the best of luck in 2009!

Image by luc legay via Flickr

When I first started writing on the Real Estate Internet Marketing Blog I wrote a weekly review roundup post every Friday. I’m going to revise this practice for a couple (of selfish) reasons:

1. It’s fairly easy to do, I’m reading these things anyway.
2. I think you’ll find something useful in the links provided and remember this blog as a place that points you towards something useful.
3. I’m hoping you engage in the topics represented and as a result your business, life or both improve.
4. I the trackbacks/pingbacks on the articles listed bring relevant and useful traffic to this blog.
5. I want you to know what sort of things I read so you can tell me about other things I might like.

For what it’s worth, these five reasons are good for you to link to others as well. It isn’t about “linklove” or helping to promote someone or any of that stuff.

At Inman Connect New York, Jeff Turner had a great presentation about understanding and using the concept of engagement to help your website perform better. One of the charts he used is from Logic + Emotion, a blog by David Armano. This week’s outbound post features several of Armano’s great charts about social media marketing.

Are you creating, providing or receiving unexpected value?

In the short, text-only post Unexpected Value, Armano describes some thinking that occured as a result of a small bit of text at the end of a friend’s email. It was about “the little things.” But that’s a little too simplistic perhaps. He describes the hand written notes and personal touches and, related to social media marketing, the “unexpected value I recieved from the millions of micro-interactions I have with people online—most whom I’ve never met before.” (I think I might be responsible for one of these) For those of us engaged in social media marketing, there are all sorts of small things that we learn and share in a casual and offhand manner which may have significant impact on someone else. Here’s what Armano has to say to those who get too focused on defining “value.”

Value, is subjective—but the way we respond to it isn’t. We save things of value, we recommend them to others, sometimes we can’t even put a price on it.  When it’s unexpected, it’s even better.

I try to provide unexpected value by writing on this blog and trying to stay focused on useful things you can do to improve your business. I also try to route ideas and thoughts to people who can use them in other ways. Watching interesting information sources, putting it all in context and then disseminating it is something we all can do to provide unexpected value all the time.

Becoming a social media believer

Next up on the Armano-train is his graphic + essay on the Social Media Conversion Scale. It describes the phases people go through as they adopt social media. For anyone just getting started, it’s good to see what you’ll go through. It also helps you understand the people who are pushing some new technology just a little too hard. Does this describe anyone you know?

“When becoming immersed so deeply in something, you begin to lose perspective on how things look from the outside—you become so intent on enlightening others that your zeal can actually turn them off creating un-belief.”

Luckily, he goes on to describe all the phases and helps you get through them and get on with your work.

The social media scale

An auxilliary graphic to the previous article, perhaps, the OMG-WTF spectrum is just a simple graphic. Once you’ve actually started to use social media, it might be worthwhile to look at this graphic and determine where you belong.

Blogging for community

Moving on from Armano’s conceptual work, let’s talk about blogging. Even though Twitter is all the rage (follow me) and Facebook is very sexy, your blog is probably your best and most important hub in a social media strategy. You can talk and chatter all day long using various tools and networks but sooner or later you’re going to want to bring people home. Your blog is that home. Chris Brogan has 27 tips for blogging that help you get the most out of your blog.

A tool to consolidate to your social media presence

I was fortunate enough to have lunch one day at #ICNY with Jeff Turner, Stacey Harmon, Ines Hegedus-Garcia, Jay Thompson and Pat Kitano. During our conversation the topic of where to keep all these different fragments of our online content together. Once you have a LinkedIn profile, Twitter stream, blog, Facebook profile and on and on. And ongoing. It can get far too distributed in a hurry. Jeff was very much in favor of a dot-info domain name. Some were in favor of using FriendFeed. I’m sort of into my Netvibes thing but not super-committed to it.

Someone who wasn’t at that lunch but I admire a great deal is Joseph Ferrara from Sellsius. He has an article about using Extendr (web 2.0 requires such poor spelling). Myself, I like the dot-info more. But I have the tools and skills necessary to do that sort of thing. Extendr might be a best option for those who don’t want to get muddled in web-hosting and DNS issues.