One of the odd things people seem to have a problem with is tracking their buzz on Twitter. So, I figured I will take all the guess work out of it and give you an easy way to do it. When it comes to marketing a brand on Twitter, this is something you must be able to do and its actually very easy. Just keep in mind that regardless of what results you end up with, you need to keep tweeting and building your account before real results are possible.

Lets take a look at this technique. All you need for this is Twitter’s own search engine at search.twitter.com. By using the Boolean search features mixed with a few of Twitter’s search operators we can construct a query to see all the tweets that mention your name, but keep out tweets that where made by you.

The Query: smmguru OR “tyler colwell” -from:smmguru

This will show me all of the tweets containing my username or real name on Twitter. Once you have the query set up to our liking you could even take your monitoring a step further and build some type of widget to aggregate the RSS feed from the Twitter search into… something like your WordPress dashboard. Over all this will just give you a much better idea of all the mentions you are missing in your regular usage.

Another great use for this technique is finding new people to build into your community. A lot of the people you find in your search could be those who are not yet followers. By replying to them and following those that you like they will most likely return the favor as they have already come into contact with your content (at least on Twitter.)

When it comes to social media, building a relationship with your users is the first step. Naturally CRM or Customer Relationship Management should be a part of your campaign if not a major part of it. A perfect example of the power a well managed social media campaign along with CRM is Obama becoming America’s 44th President.

The Obama camp took advantage of many social media outlets to increase their influence amongst the younger generations and obviously it worked. They developed relationships on networks including Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace, Facebook, and others. The Barack Obama website also played a large role in connecting people with Obama. While it is obvious that Barack himself does not manage, reply, and update these accounts on his own you can still see what a major role social media marketing can play. I think that without leveraging social media the way that the Obama camp has, their early victory may have been delayed or possibly never happened at all.

By focusing on creating a more one on one relationships with citizens, the Obama camp developed a highly scalable social media campaign that proves SMM is not just for bloggers and affiliate marketers. Their campaign was designed to:

• Get the message out, more importantly to the young people.
• Keep the message fresh.
• Stick to their story and let the truth be known.
• Track and stay in touch with interested visitors.
• Develop a worthwhile, engaging relationship with voters.

Non the less it was interesting to see what a major difference the online presence made. While social media played a large role in Barack’s win, I still think John Mccain would have won if he campaigned the way he did his concession speech. I think they went the wrong direction trying to make Mccain appeal to an audience he should not have and it cost him the election.

A lot of making something popular in social media is who you know. Exercising a few of these techniques and learning from your mistakes will allow you to create better content, and network with people who can make it more visible. If you want your content to go popular on social networks, it has to be good. People won’t just promote it because it’s there. They may promote it just because of the headline, but not just because its there.

The headline is not up to par.
Without a kick-ass headline your dead before your pretty much DOA. Headlines are a tip that I seem to stress over and over because even still people do not listen. I have seen great content that fails on social media sites because the writer decided to use a dumb ass title that had little or no bite to it. Take a few minuets to write up a list of other possible titles, and see if you find one that you like.

Who da’ fu©k is you?
One thing I have found that a lot of big bloggers hate, is when their content is submitted by a nobody on a given social network. Why does it bother them? Someone who spams and does not take the time to build an account often does not have the number of friends or likely visitors to promote content and make it popular. If you are not yet in a position to submit your own content, make sure whoever does is up to the task. Don’t waste your good content on nobodies.

Find your target.
Finding your target audience has also been covered about a billion times. Pretty much every type of marketing requires you have some idea of what your target audience is and social media is no different. Even if you are just trying to drive some traffic to a blog you will need to place your content in front of the right eyes. There are many ways to do this and its imperative you take advantage if you want you content to become more popular.

Why do you submit at dinner time?
Timing can be very important, especially on some social networks like Digg, Mixx, and Sphinn. Submitting your content in the evening and late at night seems to do no good so learn from other’s trials. If content performs better earlier in the day then why do you continue to submit your content at 5 PM? The topic can also come into play with the time. For instance business related news probably won’t perform well on the weekends considering most business takes place during the week. Think about what you are doing when you go to submit your content.

How does it look?
Make your content easy to read, easy to navigate, quick, and to the point. Remember you are online and people move fast. Dragging out every bit of information will not get you anywhere, and most likely create more people who don’t like your site than those that do. Make sure some part of the content is above the fold and the font is easy to read. Another fun tactic is to insert an eye catching image or graphic to go along with your content. Also take into account your ad spaces and whether or not there may be to many, if I go to a site and the first thing I notice are three giant AdSense blocks that tab will be closed in seconds.

Content with no audience.
Lets face it, people like what they like and chances are that more popular topics will be easier to create a website around. If you are creating content for crap flavored soda you might have a hard time getting people to read about it. In order to have something become popular, you will need a large amount of people interested in that topic or niche. Even if your niche is not that popular, learn to go outside of it and draw traffic with the use of other niches.

Tag and categorize correctly.
This is very important on sites like Mixx, and more importantly StumbleUpon where your tags and categories will play a heavy role in the content’s visibility on that network. Use big broad keywords that describe your content and appeal to large groups of people. For instance instead of tagging your post about Dog food with the keyword “dog food,” you can use terms such as “pets”, “animals”, “food”, and others. Broad categories receive more traffic which means more possible eyes for your content.

Be prepared for failure as it is inevitbale. Not every piece of content will become viral and bring you all kinds of traffic, comments, and backlinks. That’s why its important to know where you can go wrong, and capitalize on those making the same mistakes. Practice using these tips and I can assure you that your content will get better and better. I find that most of the people who fail are those thinking strictly about monetary gains. There is nothing wrong with this but most of the time people have a tendency to overlook some of the easiest ways to make the content more valuable.

When it comes to social media there is more to it then building backlinks, and getting some pages indexed in Google. Its about building authority, visibility, and a brand for your company. To use social media effectively (especially as a business) you need to make more valuable connections with your audience and then you can really reap the benefits of a social media campaign.

1. Pitch to your audience not everyone. You think this would be an obvious factor, certainly when it comes to marketing but a lot of the time people do not focus on their audience. In order for your content to go hot it needs to be submitted to the right network, and be written for the right audience. You will see certain patterns of content that performs better on various sites than it would on others. Take note of these things and use them in the future.

2. Research your market. If you go in shooting blind, you may get a hit or you might get hit. Submitting your content to a social media site without doing any research will most likely not work, and possibly do more damage than it does good. Find some social networks that fit your niche and then start building an account there (power user status) before you start to submit your own content to the masses.

3. Make the selling transparent. Another beginner mistake is acting as the snake oil salesman. Constantly trying to push your services or affiliate products will not get you anywhere if you have not developed a brand yet. You need to first build an audience that has some level of respect and activity within the social network itself. Stop submitting car insurance links and promoting products, and instead contribute content that others can use and share and you will see the reward is much greater.

4. Be a member of the community. Ignoring a social media community will do nothing but work against you. Face it, your the new kid on the block and you need to show people what you are about to build your credibility. In order to do this you need to become active in your social network’s community. Start to build a following, and go outside of the network as well. Leave comments on submissions, and on relevant blogs from your network. The more friends you make, the better you chances of obtaining success become.

5. Remain relevant in your niche. If you have not figured out yet, relevance is possibly the big secret most people don’t think of. If your site revolves around Halloween candy and you post a page about shaving razors people will not only be sketched out by the combination of the two, but chances are the content will not perform or do anything for your site. Break news in your industry or niche and give your unique insight, also make sure you are submitting your content to the right places.

6. Design-age. Regardless of how well put together your content is, people need to read it. Visuals are almost as important as the content itself as a web user will take less than a second to decide whether or not they like your website based on the layout alone. Finding free WordPress templates or creating your own really is not that hard, and adds a lot to your website.

7. Give back to others. By promoting content that’s not yours you will be seen in a brighter light on many social networks. If you are blogging, this includes linking to relevant blog posts and actively commenting on other blogs. When it comes to social media marketing, if you are new then you are only going to get back what you put in. If you want to be an asshole, promote your own content, and never link to anyone you have to wait until you have some success and experience under your belt.

8. Posting in trilogy. Very often you will find that a piece of content can become wildly popular even though you never thought it would. Learn from these types of situations and learn how you can spin new content from them. Try to write a popular post that follows after the original content and ride the wave as long as you can.

9. Headline creation does matter. Without a great title you have nothing. Even when you think that you have something amazing on the first try, take that headline and find five new ways to write it. I bet you will find one that is way better than what you had originally. You do not need to be a genius to write titles, just stop being lazy and you will see what you have been missing out on.

10. Stop boring people. Most people have a tendency to scan the page when they are reading online. If you can create easy to follow content that can be scanned through just as quick you will be in good standings. Do this by using bold headings for important points, and numbers/bullets for lists. the more people can take in over a short period of time, the better your chances are they will like the content and share it.

Now that you know the secrets you know the truth. There is no magic or smoke and mirrors involved with social media marketing. It takes practice, time, and work to find out what works. Once you learn what works you find ways to push this knowledge to the limit and find new ways to benefit off of it.

A new survey of data from the Opinion Research Coproration (1,092 consumers) found that 85% of social media users thought companies should interact with them through social media. For those trying their hand in social media marketing to gain traction this is a good thing to hear. The trend is becoming apparent and web users are becoming more fickle. They are tired of being bombarded with ads, and instead are looking for interactive and well managed social media marketing campaigns.

Out of all the people in the study, only 5% of them felt companies should not be in social media at all. On the other hand 8% of the subjects felt it would be ok for companies to have a presence in social media but not interact while 51% felt that social media marketing was ok if the interaction was somewhat limited. The remaining 34% of the study group felt companies should go full throttle with their social media strategies.

As always looking through the charts will show that online retailers are early to the game. With an ever competitively growing market, looking for new ways to connect with consumers has been priority number one for most companies lately and that’s exactly what social media marketing allows them to engage in. While there are tons of social media sites to network on, companies seem to be sticking to the big boys like Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube.

While the line between interaction and advertising becomes more grey it should be interesting to see how spam plays a role. Many users often feel like online ads are intrusive but when you think about it social media marketing is even more intrusive but the key is making it transparent and credible. These people have accepted brands and business into their online social network and now those companies have their foot in the door.

Most likely you know by now that commenting on other blogs can bring you decent traffic to start with. What most don’t know is that you can easily begin to use the tactic against yourself and hurt your blog or brand. Here’s seven ways you may be shooting yourself in the foot:

1. To Much Self Linking - Nobody likes a spammer and your not working with bots here. People can tell your a spammer when they see 3 links to your various blogs in every comment. This includes just dropping links with no comment, or irrelevant links and comments alike. A link here or there pointing to a resource or article related to the post is the way to go when it comes to link dropping. You will find people respond much better to the latter.

2. “That’s Great!” Comments - People can also tell your just baiting when all of your comments are 2-4 words in length. Combine this practice with dropping links and your sure to wreak havoc on your brand or blog. You could be placed on spam lists, blacklists, and people may realize what your doing and publicize it. Make your comments count and don’t go for quantity over quality because sooner or later it will bite you in the ass.

3. First! - Now that people are using comments for traffic, people have begun to post comments just to be first. There’s two ways to look at this one. First off, if you are posting a quality comment its not a big deal and can actually be a useful tactic. When you start to write two word comments just to snipe the first position you will annoy everyone on that blog quickly. Take a break and let someone else get the space for a while as well, people will respond better if it seems more organic than forced.

4. Spammy User Names - With the addition of the Top Commentator widgets on many websites, people did not miss a beat on filling their names with keywords. While this is not really a big deal, you can take it to far. If your name is 4 – 7 words long you are pushing your luck. Not only will it look unnatural but all of the keywords will make it appear spammy. This can again hurt your brand or blog and get you blacklisted on your niche sites.

5. Personal Attacks - There’s a fine line between ball busting, debating, and attacking someone. Aside from walking away with an altered ego, you can really do some damage to your reputation here. Whether a comment was misinterpreted or not be the bigger man. If you disagree with something and respond to it shooting from the hip, expect things to escalate. Unless you want a reputation for poppin’ off at the mount… Don’t do it.

6. Did You Read The Post - Always read the FULL post before submitting a comment. There’s nothing like feeling the impulse to write a comment and then realize you now look like an idiot because your way off base. If you do, it’s going to remain there and you cant do much about it. Developing a reputation for eating your words is sure to damage your brand, and credibility. Take a moment to look things over before getting into comments.

7. Comments Have No Value – While its a no-brainer it apparently needs to be reinforced. If you are adding comments to a blog that have no value you will quickly see a chain reaction with the end result being a damaged reputation for your brand. The easiest way to add value is by helping other commentors, posting relevant information or news, or in other words act as an authority. While it’s okay to crack a joke or two at other’s expenses you don’t want to be a bully so take it easy.

Bottom line: Remember that everything you post in a comment will be public and most of the time you cant edit or delete whats said. If you think something has the potential to damage you rep or your brand then don’t post it, its that simple.

Before you can use Twitter to brand yourself or your company, you need to create an audience. In order to do that, you have to get some freinds especially if your account is new. In order to seed your account you will need to find some people to follow. These people should be people you would actually like to see tweets from, that are releated to your niche. Heres 6 sites to help you do that.

1. Twits Like Me
One of the better Twitter apps I have seen, Twits Like Me helps you find other users who share your interests. All you have to do is enter your username and it will search for people… “like you”. You can also toggle an option to exclude people who are already your friends. Its also another fast, and accurate tool.

2. Twitter Search
Did you know Twitter has its own search engine that is actually really useful? They don’t really advertise the search feature but it’s there. Twitter Search has some powerfull advanced features to search with and also has options for local Twitter searches.

3. TwitterWho
TwitterWho uses Twitter’s people search form found at http://twitter.com/invitations. This tool lets you enter multiple queries at once so you can find people more efficiently. The service has been lightning fast as far as my tests went and it seems to be acurate too.

4. TwitDir
Once you break into Twitter and get some friends, you should move twoards the leaders in your niche at the time. TwitDir can help you locate some of the top Twitter users in the following categories:
The Top 100 Followed
The Top 100 “Updaters”
The Top 100 “Favoriters”
and The Top 100 Followers
The “TOPs” section can also show you what kind of numbers you would need to make it on one of these lists.

5. Twubble
Another Twitter app called “Twubble” helps you find interesting people to follow by searching your social graph. Simply go to Twubble and click “find some friends.” Twubble is hooked up so as long as you are logged into Twitter, you won’t need any credentials. The friends Twubble finds are by how many of your friends are following them. Another cool feature is the ability to follow people that you find with one click, just like being on Twitter.

6. Twitter Local
Twitter Local is another speedy service that helps you find Twitter users in a given area. You can search by zip, city, or state and select the search radius by miles. The app then gives you options for RSS and XML versions or you can view the lastes tweets in that area live. Twitter Local has an Adobe AIR version for download as well.

I don’t think people are realizing the power of personal branding. I think a lot of people still believe it does not work, or is not effective. Well, I have the perfect example of personal branding for these people.

That example is Jeremy Schoemaker. Hate him or love him the strength of his “Shoemoney” brand cannot be denied. He has become one of the most recognizable bloggers, not only by his logo but his face and name. He built this brand simply through blogging and using social media outlets. Something you can learn here on SmmGuru is that the information im giving you does work. Schoemaker has launched a number of services over the last year or two including AuctionAds (now ShoppingAds) and his ShoemoneyTools program. AuctionAds was bought by Media Whiz for an undisclosed price and ShoemoneyTools seems to be doing well also.

Why does this work… Because the Shoemoney brand has an audience. Jeremy is able to build massive amounts of press and traffic for whatever it is he’s promoting. Using the people he knows and his position in the blogging community, his blog has also been a go to place for launching related products and services. Once you have a name to brand, all you need to do is build your image online. If you can make your face as recognizable as a logo, chances are you will succeed.

And you should now understand that personal branding does work. Jeremy has mentioned that he makes over $300K a month on his blog and it’s all due to his brand name. Just like your favorite cereal, he has become a product of the internet with the ability to sell himself.

As we know, Twitter can be used to brand yourself or your company with some great success. The key however is to make sure you are prominent in your target audience. Obviously you can spread as wide across the network as you want but make sure to hit your target audience hard.

This is actually quite easy, possibly easier than you thought if you didn’t know about their advanced search engine: http://search.twitter.com/advanced. Using this tool alone you can easily plant a seed in your target audience. Let’s say you are a shoe store working your way into social media. This search could help you find people interested in shoes who also blog, comment, share content, etc. What that means, is that possible customer then has the tendency to spread the word and really do your marketing for you. Or you could go even deeper and do a search for local users. Real Estate anyone? Why not use Twitter’s search to help you draw from people in your area looking for what you provide?

Simple, quick, to the point… you can see there are some dam useful features on Twitter when it comes to branding. The ability to go local is huge and can help you dominate in your niche. Establishing a strong social media presence can increase your business in many ways.

You have yourself a well built website, filled it with content, and you’ve been online for months but not much seems to be happening. Your blog is an important tool especially if you are a business. It can cut large amounts of work and save money by providing a place for up to date information. Here’s the top 7 reasons your blog may fail to perform.

1. You Have No Blueprint - Be sure to have a sole purpose when you create your blog. If you still don’t have one months in then its time to reevaluate what you what the website to do for you. After setting goals for the website, move into keeping on track. A steady work flow will ensure that people can count on the website to produce.

2. No Use Of Social Media - Branch out to various outlets to make your site known. If you have a defined market you will find that relevant websites drive much better traffic, consistently. I would take 350 primed users compared to 1,000 random hits any day. Get involved on Twitter, Digg, FaceBook, and the millions of others to start branding yourself or your company. Social media marketing is powerful already and it will continue to grow as the online world becomes more prevalent.

3. You Need The Right Audience - Before you worry about what an audience will like, you need to get one. Demographics have been used forever for a reason, they work. Being able to know how old, what gender, location, and much more can be very useful when marketing your brand. Once you have built this audience, you have an army of targeted traffic to play with.

4. Site Performance - People on the internet are whinny babies. With today’s high speed internet people don’t want to wait for crap, not even pictures of what you ate for dinner. They want everything literally at their fingertips and in an easy to follow fashion. Another bad idea is to have more ads than content on your pages… just another rule of thumb. Try to keep your page loads snappy and install WP Super Cache if your on WordPress. If you don’t use WordPress, quit blogging.

5. Features Are Not Up To Date - Stay up to date on certain trends within web design. Keep your website looking fresh with new features that take advantage of advanced scripting and browser capabilities. They can not only add functionality, but cut down load times. Keep in mind that people like to think they have something exclusive.

6. Your Not In It To Win It - Your website is going to require commitment to sustain growth. For real, your website is never, ever going to be finished. And if you are thinking of doing a website full time for your source of income, this rule goes doubly for you. This does not mean that you need to post 40 pieces a week to your site. Not giving anything new back to your visitors will leave them feeling either two ways: 1) They leave feeling like there’s no point in returning as the website has not been updated in months. 2) You have built a large audience and your content flow is normally consistent and high in quality. Your readers could be the addictive type that visits daily if not hourly (lol) to see if there is anything new. While this is a great feat, you need to be careful. If you wait to long people may think you are going dorment.

7. Your Not Benefitting From Your Competition - Your competition is a great source of information! Lets be real people, you don’t think anyone looks at your site for ideas? So, why not look around the web and see whats up in your industry. Your all preaching to the same crowd so don’t let your competition become more appealing.