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.

Having focus is very important to a successful social media campaign. There is a lot of advice floating around and its easy to take the wrong advice and up wasting a lot of time, and possibly money. Social media is not a shortcut to success like most people want it be, its a marketing tools that requires attention and a plan. Here are seven tips to keep your social media strategy focused:

1. What Are Your Assets - Before you get started know that this type of marketing requires time, knowledge, and ability to really work. It’s not a one-time bang it out deal that you can zip through. If these aspects are a problem you can always go the route of a consultant. Obviously this most likely won’t be free but you need a constant presence in social media to survive and that’s the main plus when using a consultant.

2. Define You Audience - Know what demographic you want to hit before you try to hit. Creating a presence in your niche is more important than marketing to everyone you can. Always put your target demographic first, then worry about the stragglers. There’s no point in wasting your time and energy in an audience that will never convert to business. Most services have search functions, use them! It’s incredibly easy to penetrate your niche with all of the advanced search features you can find around the web.

3. Target Niche Specific Social Media Sites - Major social media sites can bring a lot of visitors. I would say that a good starting point would be 2-3 niche networks, and all the big players like Digg, StumbleUpon, Twitter, etc. Keep in mind that you want to constructively build profiles on these networks. You can branch out to the thousands of social networks but if you only have a picture and a link in your profile you won’t get far. If you like a girl and you never call her what do you expect to happen? See where the focus comes into play? Focus on your key networks and develop a stronger following.

4. You Got Your Niche, Now Target Your Content - Quality will always pay off in the end. Social media users are not looking for content that’s forced on them but instead something they can use, or content that’s easily shared. Even if you have to pay someone to develop content or widgets for you, its worth it. The amount of traffic and buzz that a major response in social media brings is massive. Create your content geared specifically to your audience and try not to stray to far from your niche. People are there for information on your niche, so give it to them.

5. Do You Have A Conversion Plan - Once you get to the point of masses of traffic, you need to start leveraging it. This all depends on your goals but the first and most basic is converting new users to RSS subscribers. Chances are you have some sort of RSS going for your content so make sure to push it on all of your new visitors. Also think about how you can convert large amounts of traffic into product sales, affiliate sales, leads, and content shares to develop backlinks. The possibilities for conversions is endless, once you have an audience you will learn how to shape and mold content that can bring desired results.

6. Stay Hyped - Once you start to achive your sucess and become a part of the community, you have to work extra hard. Stopping after getting a little success is putting water on the fire. Visit your targeted sites daily and stay active. Vote for others, submit content, add friends, leave comments, etc. When people notice you are submitting and voting for only your content, they have an obvious tendency to dislike you. Use your dam noggin, social media users are another bread and most of them are smart enough to tell a spammer from a member of the community. Keep pushing out content and making yourself known.

7. Learn, Rinse, Repeat - After you have substantial information you can start to evaluate what’s working and what isn’t. Get rid of time wasters and try to put a value on each traffic source. Its much easier to see whats working when you have a criteria. This is why it’s important to have a structured goal. Continue to do what works and tweak your proccess for effciantacy. The nice thing about social media is that as your audience grows, the workload becomes much easier. Your following will do much of your marketing and promotion for you through blog posts and other sharing outlets if you can develop the right content for the job. Also remember to keep tabs on what your community is saying about you. Take advice from your readers, and learn to deal with haters because they are an inevitable waste product of success. No matter how well you do and how much people like you, there are always a handful of unhappy people that envy you. I personally like to take it as a compliment when people go out of their way to try and undermine me. Remember: If they’re hatin’, your doin something right.

Now that you can see how focusing in instead of shooting blind can mean the difference between a failed social media campaign and a successful one. Its about staying in it and developing experience. I have had my share of failures but I have learned more from those than anything else. Create a dynamite plan to outline your site, and you can take a lot of work out of being successful.

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.

Over the last few days I have made some changes to the layout of SmmGuru.com and added some new ways for people to find me. What I found was a super easy way to increase the amount of people who follow you on Twitter and other networks.

All I did was add links to various social media profiles in the footer of the site. While I can’t definitively prove that the new followers came from the footer link, there was defiantly been an increase in followers since I added it. Just a simple tip to those looking to increase their followers on various outlets. I have also seen increases on SocialBrowse, and StumbleUpon as well.

Another thing I am noticing is that once people become avid readers of your blog they want to connect with you on other services as well. Listing your profiles on other social networks is a great way to increase your brand viability, and give your readers new ways to remain updated. If you have not done so, I recommend putting up some links to your profiles now and see what you have been missing.

Building a strong StumbleUpon account can lead you to large success in building an audience. Here are 36 different articles and tips on how to build the best StumbleUpon account possible.

Don’t forget to subscribe to SMMGuru.com!

StumbleUpon 101

• StumbleUpon Official FAQ The O.G. version.
• How To Stumble – Pretty straight forward, they will tech you how to stumble.
• Unoffical StumbleUpon FAQ – Again… Pretty self-explanatory
• Beginners Guide to StumbleUpon
• StumbleUpon Help Forum – StumbleUpon’s official help forums.

Become A StumbleUpon Celebrity

• StumbleRank – Ranks the top StumbleUpon users.
• How to Become a Top StumbleUpon User (or Why You Really Shouldn’t Bother)
• StumbleUpon – How to make yourself a good stumbler
• stumbleGods – Learn StumbleUpon from those with the most powerful thumbs on the service.
• How to Use StumbleUpon Like a Pro
• How do you become a StumbleUpon power user? Ask a 16 year old.
• Making a Power Account on StumbleUpon

The StumbleUpon Network

• Whiteboard Friday – “How to Win Friends & Influence People” – SEOMOZ video on establishing yourself on these networks.
• Building Your Blog with StumbleUpon
• Share Your Stuff: Effectively and Ethically Submitting Pages to StumbleUpon & Stumblers
• stumbleXchange – Use at your own risk!
• Are you banned by StumbleUpon? What is the consequence?
• Organic Stumbling Tip

Use StumbleUpon For Traffic

• A Comprehensive Guide to StumbleUpon: How to Build Massive Traffic to Your Website – A great article at Dosh Dosh on how to create a powerful StumbleUpon account.
• How to Draw StumbleUpon Users Into Your Blog – A nice ProBlogger.net post on retaining your StumbleUpon traffic.
• How to Use StumbleUpon to Promote – Information on using StumbleUpon as a promotional tool.
• StumbleUpon Optimization: Leveraging Photo Stumbles for More Web Traffic – Learn how pictures in your content can induce traffic from StumbleUpon.
• The Why, How and Who of Marketing in StumbleUpon – Combining StumbleUpon with marketing.
• 5 Tactics for Driving Traffic From StumbleUpon – Five more ways to drive traffic with StumbleUpon.
• The Ultimate Guide to Leveraging StumbleUpon – An article on leveraging StumbleUpon with stats included.
• How Important is StumbleUpon? – A thorough look at StumbleUpon.

Business Use of StumbleUpon

• Run a StumbleUpon Advertising Campaign For Your Blog – Use StumbleUpon’s advertising to drive traffic to your blog.
• Stumbleupon can get your AdSense Account Banned for Invalid Impressions Fraud – An important read for anyone who makes most of their money from AdSense.
• How to Use StumbleUpon for Your Business: The Definitive Guide – A break down of StumbleUpon for Business users.

Advanced Topics

• Advanced Stumbling – A wiki page with some advanced Stumbling tactics discussed.
• Using StumbleUpon PhotoBlog It!
• Stumbleupon mathematics for stumblers – Learn how StumbleUpon decides where to send its users.

Third Party StumbleUpon Tools

• StumbleCrumble WordPress Plugin – Show your latest Stumbles.
• StumbleUpon Facebook Application – Same as the above, but for Facebook.
• Del.icio.us Stumble – Convert your del.icio.us bookmarks into stumbles.
• StumbleUpon WYSIWYG Editor

And there you have it. Using these great articles and tools you should be able to take over the web (or maby just your niche ) in no time. The great advantage to building strong accounts on sites like these is that later on when you are starting a new project for example you have some leverage. Once it’s built, you have a powerful user base at your fingertips.

Social media optimization is possibly one of the most helpful tools to build traffic. The amount of people who use social networks on a daily basis is already huge, and continues to grow daily. To leverage the power of social media, you need to start at the source and have your website up to par before you push it to the masses.

Optimize Your Site or Blog
Before you get yourself on the bandwagon, you will need to make sure your website is ready. You have to create content that’s not only interesting, but intriguing and informative. Fill your content with details, links, videos, images, and other collaborative tools that allow visitors to get involved on your site. Offer something appealing, something they cannot get elsewhere. This will ensure they come back to you for their fix. Stressing the quality content again, don’t just post stuff for the sake of putting it up. If its not quality, it will reflect poorly on yourself and visitors may not come back.

Get Buttons!
Pretty much every social media site has some kind of button or widget that allows your visitors to take action right from your website. Make sure to include these buttons from the outlets you use most. Adding Digg and Stumble buttons for instance (if it fits your type of content) can make it much easier to gain a front page Digg sumission or a top Stumble. These buttons also make it much easier to share content, which builds links (SERPS) and traffic. You also want to make sure that if you offer RSS, that every person knows about it. Make your subscription offers so that no one can miss them.

SMO For Link Building
One of the great side effects of social media is it creates many backlinks to you when done right. This ensures that when the initial surge dies down, your search engine standings are in it for the long term. Join every possible social site you can and start to flesh out your online identity. As it grows, you will become more and more linked. Content will be spread faster, and to more people which again provides more chances for links. This is really a no-brainer, it’s easy to see how social media optimization can build links.

Stay Active Online
This will be a tipping point for your SMO campaign. Going out and registering yourself, throwing up a link on your profile, and calling it a day won’t do. Update your social media profile daily and become a part of the community. You can not leverage social media until you are a part of it. While this may seem time consuming, good things come to those who wait. But if you don’t have the time to do it yourself, there are plenty of consultants out there. This may be something to take advantage of especially if you are trying to market your business.

One of the great things about social media optimization is that it allows you to go guerrilla. Instead of investing large amounts of time and money on advertising campaigns, you can go out and use yourself for the marketing. Leveraging social media comes down to how well you can create content, how fast you can network, and how well you can network.

I’m tired of seeing these social media “consultants” online, marketing social media as if it where a “Get Your Traffic Now!” kind of deal. This is my first warning if you are looking for someone to do consulting for you. Social media is not about “if you build it they will come”, but build it and solidify your presence and brand online. It’s about creating visibility beyond the search engines, and inside large social networks. Look for a consultant that can tell you the difference between a personal campaign, and a professional one. I cant tell you how often I see businesses spend big money on a SMM campaign and walk away with nothing but a sexy Facebook profile and a handful of Tweets. Later they find out that the $1,500 they paid in consulting got them nothing but college guys looking to hook up lol. Building a targeted and beneficial social media profile is they key.

Anyways, look out for those saying they will send you dope amounts of trafficz because it’s most likely B.S. Anyone who knows social media marketing knows the traffic comes second to the branding aspect regardless of how large or small the amount of traffic is.

Like many social media sites, everyone is working to be the first one to submit something new. While all of that duplicate content starts to pile in, there will only be one winner who ends up with the story that everyone across the social network sees. However, taking focus off of the story itself and creating a different type of content around this breaking news item, can be much more viral and a lot easier to get to the front page of Digg for instance. Being able to spin breaking news is key.

For this example I will use an event that got a ton of coverage, the 2008 summer Olympics. Take a look at this page of Digg search results. Using all of the buzz the Olympics were generating, a lot of these people created content tottaly unrelated to the events themselves. Instead you see images and articles making fun of George Bush, top 10 lists for everything under the sun, and of course the most embarrassing moments.

Here are some ideas you can apply to other current events. Ask yourself these questions and within your answer you will find ideas for content that works well across social media networks.

1. Competition - Did Apple just release a new product? What does this mean for the industry and their competition? Did Microsoft have a response?

2. Best of the Worst - Top 10 worst players in the NFL, most embarrassing moments of the 2008 MLB highlight reals… Creating content that showcases the best of the worst always does well.

3. Dead People - Were they famous? What amazing things did they do with their life? Was this an avoidable tragedy or was there foul play involved?

4. Shock and Awe - Effects of nuclear weapons testing. Is the internet doomed by [insert new service here]. Will there be an aftershock to the earthquake that just struck California?

Creating social media content whether its for a blog, or for marketing requires that you think outside the box. Your chances of being first to cover a breaking news story are slim so why not increase your odds and create content thats possibly more interesting than the original news item or current event. There will always be relevant news to your niche so find a way to spin it. Hopefully this will allow you to see current events in a different light because when it comes to SMM, they can be your best friend.

Lets face it… Digg and StumbleUpon could possibly be the hardest traffic sources to monetize. Their users are notoriously ad shy and conventional methods must be highly targeted for them to work. Becuase SU can send such large amounts of traffic and have a more steady tail, its important to realize the potential money that can be made from it.

1. Push affiliate links. If you have a lot of affiliate options availbile, why not plug them were relevant. This is one of the best ways to make money on social media traffic as it should fit perfectly in to your content. Just make sure you somehow cloak your URLs so you don’t scare anyone away.

2. Convert them into RSS subscribers. If you can get them to come back, chances are you will make money sooner or later. Another bonus of getting them to subsribe is the ability to put ads in your RSS feed. This method allows you to retain the user, and possibly make some money.

3. CPM Method. This one is more or less like fishing with dynamite. Where all other strategies fail, this one almost never looses. Just make sure you have enough traffic and a good CPM rate or your just wasting your ad space. If you have accounts with various advertisers (you should…) make sure to shop around for the best rates.

4. Private ad sales. If you manage to build up enough exposure, you shouldn’t have a problem getting someone to buy ad space. Have your traffic and or demographics availbile and make it known that you have ad space up for grabs. However, you may want to use some judgement with the ads you get back becuase you also want to keep them relevant or you might end up allienting users due to over saturation of ads.

Four more ways to make money on SU. Quite simple really, you can either go very broad with the CPM or very targeted with private ad sales and affiliate links. Make sure you have stumble worthy content however before you worry about making money off it. Theres nothing worse than a brand new site with Adsense blocks the size of your head plastered everywhere.

The main difference between StumbleUpon and other social media sites such as Digg is that SU is much more targeted. While it may not be as targeted as you like, its still much more niche friendly than Digg would be. Even though it takes no time at all to thumbs up a page or stumble away from it, the content can make a big difference to what action the user will take.

Green Thumbs

These examples will give you an idea of content that will perform well with StumbleUpon’s user base.

1. Lists and effort. People on StumbleUpon love lists, it’s no secret. If the SU users notice that you took the time to create content worthy of reading, most of them will give you the thumbs up.

2. Use the strange and bizarre to your benefit. Found someone selling something crazy on eBay? Why not write up a post relating it to social media and submit it to StumbleUpon. You will be surprised at how many SU users like to read this type of content.

3. Something new and informative. The best way to possibly captivate SU users is by giving them something they have not seen yet. A good “How-To” on something that hasn’t been covered a thousand times is most likely going to perform well. Give useful advice and users will reward your effort to share.

4. Above the fold link bait. Throw in a catchy title with a flashy image and most of SU will take a gander. If the content is worthy, you’ll be seeing green thumbs in no time! BONUS: Hot chicks work awesome on sites like StumbleUpon.

We’re Not Worthy!

While these types of content may not totally suck, its best to stray away from them and use these types in a hail marry situation were you are low on ideas.

1. Irrelevant or overly personal posts. Most people on StumbleUpon are not going to care what you had for dinner last night. Sometimes its best to only submit content to StumbleUpon that works well with your niche and try not to alienate your possible new users.

2. Link dumps. Throwing together a list of links with a couple sentences explaining them will not do much for SU traffic. Think logically here, you may be low on ideas but these are people already sorting through random content. When they stumble to your page and find a bunch of links to other content sources chances are they won’t give your page the time of day unless its crafted extremely well and includes plenty of information.

3. No substance included. Your eight sentence post on why tying shoes is fun will be skipped over faster than the fat kid in dodge ball. Your content must include not only a topic, but tips and advice. An easy way to make sure you include this in every post is to develop your own template for creating content or make a theme prevalent in the post.

There you have it folks. Like most social media the key idea to success is creating real content. Many “SEOs” have a problem with this because they are used to creating automated traffic through the use of SERPS. Practice writing content in different ways using these tips to see what works best for you.