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.

When you first start blogging, getting new comments can be an exciting development. Not only does it let you know people are reading, but people are feeling the need to comment. Most importantly, the chance to build a brand and reputation is there. Building comments can be slow, and its not exactly an easy task for a new blog. Now that you know how to convice people to subscribe, its time to get some comments.

Be Direct And Ask For Comments
You can be direct as you want… For the most part people will actually respond as well. Ask our readers what they think, do they have something to add, or is there something you forgot to mention? Simple, but can be extremely effective.

Be Controversial
Controversial content can be a great way to get a reaction from people. And, if it becomes viral you can see a massive response of hundreds of comments. Naturally there will be some more aggressive comments but that’s part of the game, its up to you to decide whether or not censoring certain comments is necessary. I personally don’t censor anything unless it contains a lot of swearing, or anything explicitly adult. The idea is to have a debate going with both sides present.

Before I changed the focus of my blog I had done some posts about a Microsoft Xbox 360 contest called “X Marks The Spot.” Basically they would give you clues as to where you can find the green X’s and you had to find the word containing the green X. These words where spread across numerous websites. I thought it was to much of a pain in the ass so I built a SOAP protocol for the site. Microsoft for some reason did not feel the need to encrypt the list of answers so every night at midnight I would hop on and get the list within seconds then post it to my blog. The contest was like 60 days I think and within the first week I had over 1,300 comments on the 7 posts. By the end of the two months I had over 30,000 comments on my blog.

Offer Something For Comments
If can be frustrating having a large readership but no commenting. Contests are basically the bread and butter of incentivized commenting. Randomly selecting a comment very day, week, etc. for a prize can be very effective. You can offer cash, advertising, review services, tool access, eBooks, etc. A word of caution though: If your not careful on how often people can win you will most likely see an increase of useless + spammy comments.

Comment On Other Blogs
This seems to be a tip that I give in a lot of posts. It’s incredibly easy and it works so use it. Finding relevant blogs is easy as using Google or Technorati search. After you find some blogs make sure they will be easy to dominate comment wise. You want to make it to the top commentor position on blogs that have substantial traffic. Most people now have the Top Commentators plugin installed so this should not be a problem.

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.

Once you start to grow, you will inevitably come to a point where traffic slows and you need to take things to the next level. In order to break into the next tier of success you must find new ways to bring readers and traffic to your site. Here are some tips to do so:

1. Get Around The Blogosphere
Pick blogs that are not overloaded… Once you find them start to really read and leave valuable comments behind. You will see that people will have a much better reaction to your blog and a nice chunk of traffic will develop if you branch out to enough blogs. Keep in mind that you don’t want to spam, and the blogs you find should be within your niche or topic.

2. Submit Guest Posts
Develop quality posts for other blogs in your niche. Chances are the visibility will come much quicker when your post is on high traffic blogs. Pick blogs that have a tendency for high backlinking, commenting, and spreading of content. Not only is it good for the blog owner for your content to perform, but you will reap traffic rewards as well.

3. Free eBook = Crack
People love to get free eBooks that are usable. Develop an eBook around your niche and then come up with a way to give it away. Such as signing up for a newsletter, commenting, or whatever. I would sway to the side of getting more readers in return of giving the eBook away.

4. Create Better Content
Once you have a large amount of content you will easily be able to tell what type of content performs well for your site. Most of the time you will find that posts that took time, and have a lot of details do the best. Not every post you write is going to perform as well as you thought, and some may perform way beyond expectation. Learn what quality content is for your site, and focus on creating it.

5. Keep Your Popular Posts Updated
This one really applies to lists and other resource like posts. After some time you may notice that you still get a lot of traffic to certain content and people are really using it. This is an example of content you should update. Keeping things current will draw even more traffic and use as the resource grows and becomes more popular around your niche.

6. Give People A Reason To Come Back
While not everyone will like your blog, a lot will need a reason before they return. Contests always do well but sometimes you nubs are not able to hold them. Simply give away your free eBook to everyone or create valuable content. If you convert people into subscribers and bookmarks, you have a much better chance of seeing them come back.

7. Get On Some Forums
Start up some nice forum posts, and get discussions going on various forums. After you have build up a large post base, put a link in your signature. Another quick and easy way to get some starting traffic. This method will not bring you 100K a day, but it will quickly get your blog or website started.

Do you know how much of your traffic is returning traffic? If you don’t, you should! This can be an important metric when trying to increase your conversion rate. There are blogs that get thousands of hits a day but have 5 subscribers because they fall victim to some of these common mistakes:

1. Welcome Your Readers
Welcoming your readers can be the difference to them subscribing, or possibly leaving. Greeting your readers can make your blog more attractive and give your readers a sense of value. This by all means should be a simple one or two sentence greeting. After all, they are looking for the content. You could also take this a step further and track your incoming referral headers to display custom messages for sites like Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon and others.

2. Stay On Topic
If your blog is supposed to be about cars and you are posting information on baking cookies, you have an obvious problem. You would think this goes without saying but many people tend to mix to much of their personal life in with their niche blog. Once and a while it’s all good, but when you post about yourself all day instead of your topic people will get annoyed. Narrowing down the content you give will draw targeted traffic that is much more likely to become social on your blog.

3. Your Content Should Be Valuable
The easiest way to do this is to create content that helps others. Before you publish, look for tips and information you can improve on. Add inside information, or information from your experiences that cannot be found on any other blog. You cannot expect to get back if you don’t give anything at all. Helping your readers will also build trust, which can be very important when you start to grow.

4. Connect With Your Audience
Taking a few minuets to reply to comments and e-mails can be much more beneficial than you think. This doesn’t mean you have to stock your readers and reply to every single comment but letting your readers know you are listening is important. It builds a stronger community and people are much more apt to continue reading. Also, show people where to find you on services like Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon, and others.

5. Hold er’ Steady
Most important is to post regularly. Set your own goals, even if it’s just two posts a week you want people to know they can expect two posts every week. Humans love regularity by nature and when somethings out of whack people may respond adversely. Let them know that regardless of whats going on, they can count on seeing two posts a week on your blog. Some people find id hard to believe that people really follow blogs like this but it’s true. After some time on the web you will also find some blogs that you come to read regularly.

Don’t be afraid to comment with any ideas you have on converting visitors to subscribers. Although traffic is good, regular readers are even better.

If you want to make stacks of money, dominating your niche is a sure fire way to get there. One of the most basic, fundamental elements of Social Media is the ability to create dialog… most likely through comments of some sort. Developing a community on your site not only strengthens your site, but provides for a quickly growing organic (free) user base. Essentially what this gives you is power. The power to post something on your blog or company’s news feed and instantly put that message out to your audience. Websites like TechCrunch have at times had 1 million plus RSS subscribers. In a way this gives them a lot of power and influence over their niche. If you are a small business looking to dominate your niche an online presence with a strong community can put you in that position.

People Will Come To You
With an online community people will come directly to your looking for what you provide. All of the time and money spent on advertising can be greatly decreased over time. Creating a strong online community will also put you in a good position to network and build relationships with various online authorities. Content is so easily shared across the internet that your audience will be able to share it with others in many ways. This insures that as you grow, your reputation and brand have a much further reach than your competition’s.

In-House Solutions
Another benefit to building a community is the ability to do all of your news publishing with a direct path to your target market. Outside PR is always important but why not tap in to social media and establish your company or website as the go-to spot for your niche. Being able to develop an idea and publish it online to your community takes no more time than it does to write it with one click publishing.

Just an interesting look at how effective social media marketing can be. I can easily see this becoming popular for certain niche based small businesses. The ability to build a massive online community around your brand can bring a lot of power and dominance to you in your niche. It’s not going to happen overnight but once it starts to grow, all you need is fuel for the fire.

Becoming top dog in your niche can bring you the power, authority, and reach to generate large amounts of traffic and revenue. If you try and try but continue to fail you could be falling victim to some of the follow situations.

You Serve No Purpose
Many authorities not only create there own quality content, they act as a central filter for their niche. Being able to provide all of the best content in your niche and act as a filter for the recycled mess that has become most of some niches (SEO anyone?) You want to be the go-to spot so you need to provide the best of everything or people will not have any reason to come back, especially in a crowded niche.

You Don’t Know Whats Going On In Your Niche
If you are not following what’s breaking in your niche it will be dam hard to become an authority. Being an authority is not just a title you get, it’s more work and only the people who can work for it will get it . Know what services are popping up in your industry, who got bought out on Monday, who may be selling etc. Staying current can provide you with a strong platform to build content, and a reputation for knowing everything in your niche.

You Don’t Have Anything O.G.
Being able to provide content that’s highly original and contains more details will set you apart. Being able to do it first, and more informative, will send you even higher. Coming back to knowing your niche, researched content will build a much better reputation.

You Don’t Have a Community
Building a strong community on your website can become quite rewarding. Some blogs have almost cult followings now which should tell you that they can no doubt drive a message effectively. Once a community is developed, it won’t take long before it’s blazing if you work at it. That community can then be used to generate large amounts of traffic, useful for generating revenue and buzz to new projects.

You Don’t Sell Yourself
In order to become the authority people have to first know what your about. Post on relevant sites, social media outlets, and submit guest posts on relevant blogs. “Well, why would an authority promote themselves?” At first, you are starting with nothing. The idea in this stage is to get as many people as you can to see what you got. If you have developed content suitable to the above tips, people will most likely realize that you are a better source of information. This will then lead to you becoming more of an authority and you will grow organically without having to promote yourself.

You Don’t Work For It
In order to be an authority you have to work at it. Develop a plan for how you will create a constant flow of content and ideas. Being able to provide the most up to date information and new ideas first will make you an authority. Sitting back and recycling content is not going to take you to the level of an authority. Set daily goals to establish your online presence and continue to follow through.

I think you get the idea now, making money online can be easy if you are willing to invest time in the beginning. Playing the authority role can also prove as a viable way to buzz another project. Lets say you decide to launch a web service, leveraging your community you can move high volumes of targeted traffic. If blogs are not your bag, you can always use forums.