At Instant E-Training we recently concluded our popular “Social Media for Business” WebConference and Certification event. We had over 23 live Social Media training sessions conducted by over 18 leading social media experts. Understandably, there were some pearls of wisdom thrown by all our experts over the course of 6 weeks. So we thought to compile what we thought were 12 key takeaways from our Social Media WebConference event. You can implement these for your business right away. So here are 12 key Social Media takeaways by 12 Social Media experts:

1.Act – If you aren’t getting pushback then you aren’t pioneering – Erik Qualman

Don’t be afraid to try new things and get reactions. Every pioneer makes a bold statement which not everyone always agrees to initially. Often people will hesitate to try new things, but don’t let that discourage you. Act, make bold choices and interact with your audience.

2. It’s not about creating accounts, It’s what you do with them – Krista Neher

There was once a time where companies and organizations created accounts just to say that they had them. Now, it is imperative to use them to connect well with your audience. Make your company one that can be personable and one that people can connect with.

3.Collaboration is necessary for Social Media success– Chris Barger

“No other business strategy executes independently; social shouldn’t either”.

All of your social media efforts should align themselves with the same purpose and remain consistent. Along with that, your whole team should also be on the same page with what their role is in order to work together effectively. Involve your legal team, build social media policies, and keep everyone in the know.

4. Life is not about being liked it’s about being effective – Chase McMichael

The goal with Facebook and social media is not just for people to merely nod their heads in agreement and throw a thumbs up, but to take action. It’s about getting your customer to be actively engaged with your product or organization through social media. You need to have the right content to facilitate the greatest interaction. Find the common interests that your brand’s audience shares and give them what they want. The goal is that through their engagement people would have a great sense of what your company is about and choose you when given the opportunity.

5. Content Isn’t Great Until It’s Shared – Lee Odden

Give your audience something worth talking about. Create content that is music to their ears. You can create this share worthy content via a blog and re-purpose it in many fashions. Participate in the conversations that form and engage the growing network to motivate your audience to share.

6. Twitter Golden rule – Give before you get – Hollis Thomases

You need to give your followers things of value to them. Don’t just ask for a sale – instead give them thoughts, ideas, and tweets worth re-tweeting. You want to give your audience information that is of value to them. It is then that they will pay closer attention to what you have to say. Just don’t expect to receive anything, and give, give, give. If it is done right, you will start to naturally get the attention you want.

7. Figure Out Your Customer’s Dream & Sell them – Brian Carter

Remember that the medium is the message. Something that you might share in an email might not be as well accepted as it would be on a Facebook wall. Whatever it is you share, you want it to be memorable. Selling the dream doesn’t mean the product itself, but rather what it represents for your audience. Sell them awe, connection, belonging, fun, happiness.

8. For small business owners, Word Of Mouth Starts With You– Sima Dahl

For a small business owner, no one is going to retweet for you or share your posts like it usually is the case with big brands. So the conversation starts with you ….Creating memorable moments starts with you. Select a social media channel, assess your content, start a conversation, and be creative. Be a real person with real honest opinions. Find people, engage them, and tell them what you are up to. Encourage the conversations that proceed.

9. Our networks are our most important assets – Neal Schaffer

Our personal and professional networks are the most important assets we have and so we should treat them as so. LinkedIn is a great way to access and form that network. Our network provides us with credibility and possible opportunities. On LinkedIn you can join groups, participate in events and even be introduced to new people that your friends and colleagues know. We have a platform to listen, engage, and connect. It’s simple and a great way to tap into one the most important assets you have.

10. Online Video can help captivate, engage, and stimulate your audience – Bob Tripathi

Videos are great because they captivate the viewer’s attention and stimulate their senses via sight and sound. They keep the viewer engaged. In most cases emotion is easily conveyed and thoughts are easily spread. It can be consumed on a variety of devices, making it also easily accessible. People are able to engage with this media by liking, sharing, and commenting, making this a valuable tool in persuasive efforts.

11. What can be found, can be optimized – Bob Tripathi

If there is any content found on the internet, there is a way to enhance its searchability via the web. Whether it be a blog post, video, or a website be sure to use the right keywords, tags, and phrases to ensure those who go searching will find you. Know what your audience is searching for and how they go about looking for it. There is always a way to enhance your content by way of optimization whether be it your web site, videos, images, or any other digital asset.

12. You cannot qualify a gain without the ability to measure it – Marshall Sponder

Not all social media marketing efforts lead to a ROI. You might need to examine your goals and modify them in order to measure your ROI. Figure out your goals and determine how you will measure progress. The ROI comes from tracking what was invested to execute your plan against the results as outlinedby way of Social Media Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s). Find a practical way to measure and qualify your gain.

These were just a few takeaways from selected speakers and by no means encapsulates the overall knowledge and insights shared by our awesome social media speakers. It’s your turn now, to decide which key takeaway do you identify with the most.

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I have to start by saying that Social Media did undergo major changes in 2011. We had major Facebook announcements, we had Google+, Twitter additions, and many other changes that is expected with the rapidly evolving social media space. As educators, we’re proud to be in the know of all these changes and have incorporated all of these new updates and changes for our upcoming Social Media series. Yes, we’re back at it again this year with our expanded, rebranded “Social Media for Business” WebConference series. This is truly a unique online event and definitely the biggest we have done.

So I thought I would make it easy for you to follow and here are 7 reasons why you should be part of this series:

1. 16+ Leading Social Media Leaders:

We take great pride in programming our event content from the inside out. We are even prouder of that fact that top social media authors and expert speakers will be partaking in this year’s Social Media for Business WebConference. Our speakers represent big brands, agencies, consultants, corporate social media marketers but above all they all have a tremendous body of work to back up their claims.

Here are few of our speakers:

•    Erik Qualman is the author of Socialnomics and his new book Digital Leader
•    Lee Odden is the CEO of TopRank Online Marketing
•    Christopher Barger is author of The Social Media Strategist,
•    Hollis Thomases, Author of Twitter Marketing: An Hour a Day
•    Brian Carter, Author of Two Facebook marketing books
•    Krista Neher, Author of Social Media Field Guide
•    Neal Schaffer, Author of Two LinkedIn books
•    Eric Enge, Author of The Art of SEO
•    Megan Berry, Senior Manager of Klout.com
•    Chase McMichael is the CEO and co-founder of InfiniGrap
•    Lisa Buyer, PR & Social Media guru of The Buyer Group
•    Mark W. Schaefer, Author of “Return on Influence”
•    Marshall Sponder, Author of “Social Media Analytics”
•    Murray Newlands, Blogger & CEO of Influence People

Check out our complete list of Social Media for Business speakers

2.    23 Live Social Media Sessions
Thanks to our top notch content we are very excited that all our sessions will be delivered live online through video streaming. Our live video streaming and excellent interactive tools will give you a in-person classroom feel. Our 23 sessions covers a wide array of social media topics that are critical for any business success. Our Social Media WebConference starts with a keynote by Erik Qualman on Friday, March 9th. Here is a sampling of other sessions:
•    Building Your Social Media Program In-House from Inside Out
•    Social Media Listening for Marketing Intelligence
•    Creating Content Marketing Strategy for Social Media
•    20 Ways Twitter Can Help Grow Your Business
•    Top Facebook Marketing Strategies that Drives Results
•    Combining the Power of PR and Social Media
•    Google+ – 10 Reasons Google+ Should be Part of Your Social Strategy
Visit our site for complete Social Media for Business Agenda
3.    Topics that you can Learn, Implement, and Monetize right out of the gate!
Social Media playtime is over! Businesses are starting to see the ROI on Social Media campaigns and there is more to Social Media than scheduling a tweet or writing a post. Our program traverses the social media landscape to help attendees not just learn social media strategies but to also implement and monetize social media efforts.

  Our WebConference starts with strategy sessions like Social Media Strategy in 8 steps, Building Your Social Media Program and then dives deeper into social media platforms like Facebook marketing, Twitter marketing, Google+, YouTube optimization and so on. We also take a closer look at social media topics that help measure and monetize your efforts. Some of the scheduled sessions include: Social Listening for Marketing Intelligence, Measuring Social Media Influence, and Measuring Social Media ROI. But we don’t stop there: Attendees also get exposed to our “hands-on” sessions where we demonstrate how to use our featured social media platform.

4.    Hundreds of Dollars of Free Bonus Materials
At Instant E-Training, we like to provide learning resources to attendees that can help them speed up their learning time. Our free bonuses in itself are worth over $1000 in value. Few of the free resources that each attendee will receive this time are:
•    Science of Social Media by Dan Zarrella of HubSpot – An Hour Long training video
•    10 Free Training Videos – Our collection of customized training videos on social media
•    Social Media Strategy in Action – An Hour Long Presentation by Ramon De Leon of Domino’s Pizza
•    How to Audit Your Social Media Program ebook – Specially created ebook for all attendees

5.    Hands-on Social Media Certification track
With Social Media there is a greater emphasis on “doing” and the best way to learn anything is to start working on it. That’s where our unique Hands-on, Project based Social Media Certification comes in. Our certification track runs concurrently with WebConference sessions but of course with a more hands-on, mentoring experience. Simply put, you will learn to implement all that you learn during our live WebConference sessions with expert mentors to guide you along.

Here is what Certification Track attendees can expect:
•    Hands-on Social Media Project
•    Weekly Assignments & Quizzes
•    Weekly Progress Mentoring Calls
•    Final Project Dissertation
•    Social Media Certification

6.    Strategy + How-to Sessions
One of the constant feedback we hear from our attendees is for our how-to sessions. These sessions are unique as this goes into the weeds of social media either at a platform level or ad settings level like with Facebook ads.

I am sure we have all attended social media conferences where the speakers heads are up in the clouds and talking about social media rainbows and unicorns (as our speaker Dan Zarrella likes to call it) and dishing out advice like hug your customer today! Well, somehow the reality is different and top level theories & strategies sometimes just don’t cut it. This is why we have designed this 5 week training workshop that blends Strategy sessions with How to sessions to help you execute your social media programs smoothly.

7.    Interactive Training Platform with 6 Months Access
We place a high value on attendee experience and their learning needs. We also believe that just because it is online it doesn’t have to be dull & boring. I mean we have all been to those online webinars where we hear a voice and see some powerpoint slides that literally puts us to sleep. This is why we you will love attending our Social Media online event as through our unique interactive platform our attendees can see trainers in a live streaming video and also use other interactive features like live chat, polling, Q&A, and more.

Here is a little peek into what you can expect:

Still on the fence? With such great social media learning and speaker line-up you can hardly go wrong.

Here is your next step: Social Media for Business WebConference & Certification Program

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It is that time of the year where many of us like to look into our crystal ball and predict what’s going to happen in the year ahead. I am not a big fan of “prediction” so I am going to refrain from using “prediction” and instead focus on social media trends that will shape up in 2012. Some of the trends that are listed below are currently adopted by only a handful of companies but what we see is these trends will be adopted widely by organizations across all sizes.
You will find that these trends are already adopted but will gain strength in the coming year.

1.    Google+ – Wide Adoption
Google will be making a big push into its Google+ platform. The biggest advantage Google has is its integrating with other Google properties like in its Search Engine Results Pages (SEO), in Paid Search ads, Google Reader, YouTube. Google has also given a great internal focus on social with restructuring its employee bonus and salary structure based on Google’s success on Social. This internal focus ensures that everyone inside the famed Googleplex thinks of Social all the time. So, this internal focus with external push to consumers could make 2012 a year of Google+.  As our speaker Eric Enge pointed out in our last Free Social Media Educational webinar that with Google+ that it’s all “Pedal to the Metal.”

2.    Facebook – Focus on Profitability
With Facebook’s user base now over one Billion playtime is really over on Facebook. Companies had in the past put lot of emphasis on the somewhat superficial numbers like number of Facebook fans. What we see instead is companies heading more towards profitability and ROI focused Facebook campaigns involving contests, Facebook ads, and other Facebook only promotion. The other area we see is lot of Facebook ad integration with driving offline traffic. Retailers being a classic example where lot of buzz and Facebook only promotions will be done to drive foot traffic into their retail stores. In 2012, advertisers will start measuring their Facebook Ads campaigns based on profitability that either helps generate revenues or supports in some kind of cost savings.

3.    Content – Publish Quality Content
It’s 2012 and everyone understands the importance of content. Over the past few years, we had seen this mad rush from companies to create content for better SEO rankings. But we all know what happened to that with Google’s Panda update! What we see in 2012 is a more structured push by companies to create content that focuses on engaging their community members. In essence, not creating junk, meaningless pieces of articles for search engines but instead creating new videos, images, writing meaningful content pieces for their community members. We see more budgets being allocated to videos and creating meaningful content in general in 2012.

4.    Community Building – People, Content, & Consistency
In 2012 we will also see lot of businesses paying close attention to their existing community. This means they community managers would not just energize their community members but engage members more for a variety of things like product development, market research, special product discounts and to name a few. Allison Johnson of Cisco said it well during our Social Media for Business Training that community building and management is all about People, Content, & Consistency. We think this tactic will be widely adopted in 2012 and will become a part of doing business.

5.    Social, Local and Mobile – SoLoMo here to stay

Also called as SoLoMo – The social, local, and mobile triumvirate will get a strong hold in 2012 with more integrated campaigns combining social media with local offers involving mobile devices. Essentially, socially advocated mobile content has the potential to boost brand loyalty, and this can boost sales among nearby on-the-go shoppers. Top daily deals sites like Groupon and LivingSocial are perfect examples of this where they using deals to drive local sales. FourSquare is perfectly positioned for this trend in 2012 and we will see more local merchants signing up with Foursquare.

I am sure there are many other trends worth watching in 2012 but the ones above have been proven in the past year and will be adopted widely this year. At Instant E-Training, we are betting on these trends as we have included them in our upcoming “Social Media for Business” WebConference 2012.

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Link buildiplays a huge part in SEO and by some industry surveys more than 50% of Google’s ranking algorithm is based on links. That means link building is one of the most important activity on any SEO’s list. Link building is time consuming but if done right can boost your SEO authority and help you rank better. To discuss this and put link building in perspective, we’ve got noted link building expert who is known for innovative link building tactics and thought leadership in the SEO community Ross Hudgens. Ross Hudgens’ insights can also be found on his popular blog Link Building – Theories and Practice and is also part of Instant E-Training’s SEO Training Workshop. We’re pleased to welcome Ross Hudgens with whom we got a chance to catch up and ask more on you guessed it…link building.

Bob Tripathi: Hi, I’m Bob Tripathi with Instant E-Training and today we’ve got a great guest with us, Ross Hudgens. Ross, great to have you here.

Ross Hudgens: Hi. No problem.

Bob Tripathi: Ross is an expert in SEO, especially with link building. Ross, can you tell us about link building? Where is it, and where have you seen it evolve?

Ross Hudgens: Yeah, definitely. Link building, in general, has gone from something that was a lot of very manual outreach to other companies, where a lot of times you would go to websites and manually contact the webmasters one on one. As time has gone by, there’s been more of an effort to do viral link building. Those kinds of things mean socially promoting your content and finding ways to distribute that so it spreads socially. Not only will you get traffic back to your website, but you also get a lot of good links. Basically, link building has turned something that wasn’t as scalable before, and now with all of these cool viral channels like Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, all those things, has become more of a viral, pick up a lot of steam, a lot of links pushing through these channels, rather than on a one and one basis.

Bob Tripathi: Interesting. Are you suggesting that traditional link building is dead? And should you not email any webmaster asking for links anymore?

Ross Hudgens:  No, not at all actually. Pretty much, link building is always going to be hard, so really, any way you can obtain a link, obtain a link. Really, I think a lot of the science of link building is not what method you choose. It’s scaling it in the most affordable fashion, so you can get a lot of links in different methods. Also, viral promotion with Facebook and Twitter and things like that don’t necessarily work on insurance websites, where people are not going to want to spread that to their friends. You won’t be able to get links to those kinds of websites in the same way.

Bob Tripathi: What would you suggest would be some good link baiting tips for someone who is starting out? (Link bait is any content or feature, within a website, designed specifically to gain attention or encourage others to link to the website. -Wikipedia)

Ross Hudgens: I’d do a lot of ground work. It takes a lot of research. I would suggest looking at a lot of details, to make sure that you don’t waste your effort, because with a lot of viral link building, a lot of the resources go upfront. For example, building an info graphic. That takes paying a designer, doing good research, knowing that it’s going to be good for your community, right? So for a beginner, I would suggest doing things that aren’t as expensive. For example, maybe creating a widget for your community. If you’re in health, maybe, or some kind of family-oriented, you’d say ‘Great Family Website’, and you’d create a badge, and you’d embed it on your website, so they could just grab the code, and they have the link back to their website, and that would be a good way for them to start out in a more affordable way. You’d just create a very small design, and it would be a lot cheaper than, say, an info graphic.

Bob Tripathi: People can now spot a link baiting campaign. Any ideas on how to do a smart link baiting campaign without making it look like a link baiting campaign?

Ross Hudgens: Yes, people are definitely more aware now. It’s not as easy as saying to do it this way or the other. A lot of the main fundamentals are still there, but in a good link bait campaign, you don’t realize it’s a link bait campaign. For example, in this recent Panda update, someone released information of all the top websites that got hit by the update. No one really thought it was link bait. They just linked to it, because this was a great resource of all the sites that got hit. A bad link bait, for example, is if a car insurance website puts up some Bat Man info graphic. It might still get you a lot of links, but that is super obvious that it was for that sole intention. Therefore, it’s less likely to get spread virally.

Bob Tripathi: So make it valuable and less obvious?

Ross Hudgens: Yeah. It should never be apparent that you’re doing it for links. If you could show it to an SEO, and it be obvious that you got their impression, and they said, ‘Oh. This is fairly obvious.’ You do want to get links to the casual users, and not be so upfront.

Bob Tripathi: How about Social Bookmarking sites like Digg, Stumbleupon, Reddit, and others? Is it still value in going after them?

Ross Hudgens: There is definitely value to be had there, but I would recommend that you know how to do it. A lot of it takes knowing the community and seeing what they like, because a lot of the time, certain content won’t work on Reddit, for example, that will work on Digg, so I would recommend that if you want do to it yourself, hang out in those communities for a long time. You’ll get to know them, and eventually you’ll know what kind of content you can integrate to spread to that community. If not, find someone who’s good at it, and they can do the pushing for you, because they’ve already figured those things out, and they know what works. It’s not as easy as just going to the site and knowing automatically that this will work, or not.

Bob Tripathi: It’s not like you can just print a campaign, and the links will come.

Ross Hudgens: Right. That would probably end up in a negative ROI. I would say that for sure.

Bob Tripathi: Is there any link threshold wherein after a certain number of links it does make any difference to your SEO rankings?

Ross Hudgens: You can get more and more links. There’s never a spot where you could not get enough links. If you’re number one for all your key terms that you’re going to convert, there’s diminishing returns in getting more links. You’ll hang around longer, which will be the benefit, but no. There’s not necessarily a point. In certain verticals, it’s less important than others. Google has been thinking more about brands now, and if you’re a brand and you send other signals, other than links, like mentions on Facebook, Twitter, et cetera. With all these things, there’s a lot of different signals people have been thinking about. Those things can cause the link equation to drop.

Bob Tripathi: Any thoughts on the JC Penney situation, where they were exposed for buying links by New York Times?

Ross Hudgens: What they did wrong? I think they’re such a public brand, that they got to the point where they’re ranking number one. When you’re number one, you’re very visible, and you’re a target. That, combined with being a big brand, means that they were doing things that were shady, and they were eventually going to get caught. It’s not that they shouldn’t have gone out and paid SEO to do link building. It was more the kind of link building that they were doing, which was BlackHat. Because of all of the targets on their back, and because of their brand and ranking number one, that was going to get them caught. I’m fairly certain that even if they were even rank three or four, they would never have gotten penalized for what they did, because they would not have had the target on their back for their techniques.

Bob Tripathi: How do you measure ROI on Link Building?

Ross Hudgens: Normally, I think about how many links it’s going to take us to get to a position where we get x percentage of the traffic. For example, if we know that maybe we need 100 links to get to position number one for the term, hypothetically, ‘insurance’. We know it gets 1,000 hits, or something like that, and we know it converts at 20%. It’s a pure math equation, where you know you have an expectation, that based on the competitiveness of the vertical, how many links it’s going to take to get to a position where you will convert based on Google. Adword Tool is pretty accurate most of the time. You figure out where a position is, what you think that many links will get. Always lean on the side of caution, because it’s just always the best route to go. Always underwhelm whoever you’re reporting to. That’s the best bet.

Bob Tripathi: What would you recommend for folks starting out in link building?

Ross Hudgens: I would suggest  guest posting. It’s one good way to go for link building. If you go to myblogguest.com, there’s a good form where you can find a lot of places to guest post. You can also search for ‘guest post’ with your vertical and keyword. That’s an easy way to naturally get links. Otherwise, every new website should be submitted to Yahoo, Best of the Web, JoeAnt. Those are the good link directories. The next thing I would do is go to Yahoo Site Explorer and look at what your competitors are doing. Find out who’s ranking one, two, and three, and see what kind of content and links they’re getting. Figure out how they went about doing that, and then plan your strategy accordingly.

Bob Tripathi: What link building tools do you recommend?

Ross Hudgens: I really like SEOmoz’s toolset, Open Site Explorer. It’s great. Yahoo Site Explorer is similar. It will show you all the links of your competitors, and basically give you a grade, Open Site Explorer will, of where your website is at. Ontolo is a good tool. If you put in your keywords, it will give you all kinds of Google Search’s defined websites that are relevant for your vertical. It’s a good way to find link sources. SEO for Firefox is on SEO Book, and that’s a good tool. It will overlay on the surfs, and show you how many links each website has gotten, their page rank, and all kinds of different metrics, so you can figure out why they’re ranking where they are more easily when you search.

Bob Tripathi: Thank you, Ross.

About Ross Hudgens:

Ross Hudgens is the Head of SEO for Full Beaker, a lead generation and management company. Ross is a recognized thought leader in the industry for his strategies on link building and overall SEO theory. His SEO blog, Authentic Marketing, is one of the most popular in the space and is frequently cited as one of the top blogs for link building and SEO information in the industry. Ross speaks regularly at industry events and contributes monthly to the “Link Week” column for the premier news site in SEO, Search Engine Land. Ross’ work has also been featured on AOL, Sphinn, SEOMoz, Hacker News, Search Engine Journal, Search Engine Watch and many other top media outlets in the world of search. He graduated from Chapman University with a degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in Marketing.

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Thank you for participating in our “Social Media for Business” training workshop giveaway contest. Over the past few weeks, we received a ton of entries from all of you looking to learn more about Social Media. Without any further adieu, we’d like to announce the winner of the free seat to our “Social Media for Business” training workshop, worth $499. Drum roll please!

Congratulations Donna Lord of Southmills!

For those of you that participated in the contest, it is not too late to sign up. Our comprehensive social media program begins on October 5^th and covers all major social media topics including:

• Crafting social media strategy for business
• Facebook  Marketing strategies and tactics
• Twitter Tips & Tricks
• LinkedIn Power Strategies for Business
• Social Video Marketing
• Social Media Measurement
• SEO for Social Media Pros

Our “Social Media for Business” training workshop is designed from the ground up with a combination of strategy sessions as well as “hands-on” workshops to get your social media program off the ground.

Here is a testimonial from one of our earlier attendee:

• Dan Zarrella, Social Media scientist Hubspot and author of Social Media Marketing Book and The Facebook Marketing Book
• Hollis Thomases, Author of “Twitter Marketing: An Hour a Day”
• Dave Kerpen, Author of “Likeable Social Media”
• Krista Neher, Author of “Social Media Field Guide” and top rated SXSW speaker
• Barbara Rozgonyi, Founder Social Media Club Chicago
• Allison Johnson, Social Media Community Manager – CISCO
• Alan K’necht, Author of The Last Original Idea and Social Media Measurement Guru
• Fionn Downhill, CEO of Elixir Interactive
• Bob Tripathi, Founder Instant E-Training & Industry Speaker
• Nicole Duhoski, Social Media Manager – Instant E-Training & Consultant

Even if you know a lot about social media already, you will find this comprehensive program highly valuable. Social media best practices are continually evolving and our experts are well versed and keep you in-the-know of the latest changes.

So why wait? Social Media for Business training workshop starts October 5th! Reserve your seat today!

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The following guest post is written by Phillip Dodd, currently enrolled in Facebook Intensive Program training workshop. What you read below are some of his key takeaways from our training session titled “Creating Great Facebook Fan Pages” by Dave Kerpen of Likeable Media.

Phillip is also a social media manager and can be reached on Twitter @phillipdodd or through LinkedIn http://www.linkedin.com/in/phillipdodd

Dave Kerpen, the author of Likeable and CEO of LikeableMedia, delivered an excellent Facebook training presentation today for the third session of Instant E-Training’s Facebook Intensive Program. The topic was “Creating Great Facebook Pages”, and much was discussed about optimizing pages and their content to deliver the best results. Among the points discussed, the one that stood out most to me was this:

Be authentic.

Actor Vin Diesel along with his 21 million fans were used as an example of brand authenticity. It was pointed out that he has was not the most famous, talented, or best-looking actor in the world, but he still is the most-liked. Why? Because he is authentic, “sharing family, videos, and inner thoughts.” (Source: http://mashable.com/2011/05/10/facebook-marketing-strategies/)

The reason that social media is now being considered as a real and legitimate marketing option by large players in the world of marketing is because the old-school methods of outbound marketing through billboards, radio spots, television commercials, etc. are beginning to lose their hold on customer’s limited attention. If the tools of marketing have changed, then why should we operate them with the same mentality as we used with the old tools?

Don’t view your target audience as unknown and foreign objects that exist only to collect in the form of “Likes”! Each one of them is a real person with real feelings and real problems just like you are. They take the time to create their profile and painstakingly fill it with their likes and interests because each piece of information is something dear to them that they want to share. These Facebook profiles of people in your target audience are not automatically generated blips of code without faces or feeling, and neither should your engagement with them if you want to have a relationship with them.

Food for thought and discussion:

1. Where is the line between being “authentic” and being “unprofessional” or “inappropriate”?
2. Consider your current Facebook Page: would you personally “Like” it if you were a customer?
3. Consider the last five things you’ve posted to your Facebook Page: would you personally have interacted with them if you were a customer?
4. Try to write a story about your business. If you can’t, then why should you expect anyone else to?

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The following guest post is written by Phillip Dodd, a current student enrolled in Facebook Intensive Program. Phillip is Social Media Manager for The Children’s Wear Outlet (www.thechildrenswearoutlet.com) and Timeless Settings (www.timeless-settings.com). Over to Phillip now….

Zeno, the Greek philosopher is attributed with a fantastic quote that was shared by Jennifer Polk (@jenpolk1) this morning at the 2nd session of the “Facebook Intensive Program” Training Workshop concerning digital strategy and policy guidelines. The quote is this: “The reason that we have two ears and one mouth is to listen more and speak less.”

This quote is perhaps the best advice that could be offered to someone who is just starting down the road of marketing on social platforms. Social platforms provide an opportunity that brands have previously never had: the ability to listen on an intimate and personal level to what current and prospective customers say, like, dislike, think, and are interested in. Such a powerful ability cannot be ignored.

It can, however, be worthless if improperly utilized. As I learned from Jennifer Polk this morning, having a detailed policy and guidelines set in place is imperative for the success of a social media campaign.  Social media, when approached without clearly defined intentions, can very easily leave you empty handed in exchange for your valuable time. It is a large and confusing place that is filled with things to distract and confuse those that do not have a clearly defined pathway to a clearly defined goal.

I challenge you to review your own company’s social media efforts and gauge whether or not they are being as effectively implemented as they could be. Create a clearly defined general digital policy and strategy defined along with the goals you want to reach. Once completed, create more specific policies and strategies for the social platforms that you choose to be involved in based on what benefit they offer your brand.

I would highly recommend checking out Social Media Governance’s library of social media policies (http://socialmediagovernance.com/policies.php) whether you have created a clearly defined policy or not. Be sure to sign up for Email updates, and you will receive and email offering review and assistance with your own policy.

I hope that you’ve found my small article helpful, and I wish the greatest of luck to all of you. Please don’t hesitate to connect with me, as I am always seeking new contacts to share information with and discuss business and marketing.

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We had a great start to our 6 week “Facebook Intensive Program” Training workshop with noted Facebook thought leader Clara Shih delivering the opening keynote. When Clara wrote the book “The Facebook Era” the social networking site was just getting big. But no one expected that Facebook would have such a mass adoption that it would be commonplace for everyone from 13 to 100(and beyond in some cases!) to have a Facebook profile. Back then her book was groundbreaking and was even adopted by Harvard Business School as their text book! Today, with over 750+ Million users we can safely say that 1 out of 6 people on this planet have a Facebook account! As Clara mentioned that it is not just Facebook but across all of social media including Twitter and LinkedIN that adoption rate has been growing. Social Media today is at the same place where internet was about 15 years back.

With that kind of growth in Facebook, businesses of all sizes have become serious from “Should our company create a Facebook page” to “How can we monetize on Facebook” and that is why Clara so aptly calls 2011 the year of social media execution.

The growth of Facebook certainly cannot be attributed to first mover advantage since there was Friendster, MySpace before them. Facebook’s growth can be attributed to two critical factors. They are:

1)  Facebook encouraged and enforced true identities of people – Earlier, in order to open an account on Facebook you needed to sign-up using your work email or school email id to easily verify user identity. This created a set of norms that encourages people share their true identities. When you have more strangers as your friends then you stop sharing.

2)  Facebook opened their app platform to developers – Third party developers can now create great apps for users. This engages users and enhances the overall functionality of the site. Facebook has created widgets like Facebook connect, comments that you can implement on your site. This allows you to easily port your community to your site.

Buyer Psychology

It is amazing how technology or technology platforms can quickly change consumer behavior. Some years back a search engine with a colorful logo on a plain white background changed the way we look for information on the web. Of course that was Google and they quickly changed the way we look for information, buy products, and even monitor how our business or personal reputation looks like online. Social media took this a step further and suddenly anonymous users now can be identified with the help of profiles. All social media sites including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn has a personal profile associated with a user. As Clara said “At the heart of this change in consumer behavior is Facebook profiles where it has become a template for our social media identity.”

What it means is that now we share all kinds of personal and professional information on our profiles like our spouses or partners, birthdays, companies we work at, places we travel, anniversaries, and so on. This in turn has become new cultural norm. From a sociological perspective relationships on the net are accelerating. Once we friend someone we decide up to what extent we want to pursue the relationship at both professional as well as at personal level.

For marketers this presents a goldmine of opportunity as now we can decide whom we want to target. Never before in the history of marketing did marketers have this control. Many old-timers would agree with me.

Clara also brought up two important points that as marketers we should think;

• Facebook page opens a communication channel: When Facebook users like your page, they consent to receive updates from you as the page owner.

• The power of trust: this is the word-of mouth phenomenon where a friend recommends a product or service to someone in their network.

Finally, Clara left us with a step-by-step method for creating a marketing gameplan:

1)      Always Hyper target your marketing message on Facebook

2)      Know when to use which medium – Facebook tab Vs. Your web site.

3)      Be human, be authentic

4)      Invest Your Time in Creating Killer Content

5)      Always Evolve your Marketing Metrics

6)      Have Fun and Keep Learning – Social Media and Facebook marketing is still new so lot’s to learn

Would love to hear from you. What was your key takeaway? Join in….

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YouTube has changed the video landscape with user generated video content and it grew so fast that it prompted Google to pay $1.5 billion to acquire the company. Google has taken YouTube to the next level and as a result generates huge volume of searches that if it were a search engine then it would be the 2nd biggest search engine after you guessed it, Google. OnYouTube, a video can go viral almost instantaneously, if optimized correctly, and generate huge amount of video views. One man who knows how to get videos on top and who has written a widely read book on YouTube and Video Marketing: An Hour a Day is none other than Greg Jarboe. I took this opportunity to speak with Greg on video seo and marketing in general and how it all started for him and his insights on optimizing video content. As always, Greg shared some great stories and we were lucky to capture it all on video for you. As an reminder: Greg Jarboe will be training YouTube & Video Marketing as part of Social Media for Business Training Workshop starting May 25, 2011

[See post to watch Flash video]

Bob Tripathi:  You have done a lot of video marketing and also written a big, highly acclaimed book on YouTube& Video Marketing: An Hour a day.  What are the trends you’re seeing in YouTube?  And how did you apply, if you did, your journalistic background and your SEO background with YouTube?

Greg Jarboe:  I’ll tell you how we got into YouTube, which is also by accident.  We were doing a project for the Christian Science Monitor, a newspaper.  But they had a reporter, Jill Carroll, who had been held hostage in Iraq and held for 82 days.  She was freed, unharmed, and she was going to write an 11 part series on what it was like being a hostage.  In the process of putting the campaign together to promote this 11 part series, we wanted for people to read the story, one of the things they had leftover was some video outtakes.  She’d been interviewed for ABC News and again, it was embargoed until this story launched in August of 2006, but we had some video outtakes.  At the time, it was like, “What do you do with them?”  We did a couple of things with them.  One of them which was we uploaded to a funky little start up site called, YouTube.  Why not?  It was free.  But we also took the video and embedded it in a press release.

It was a way of letting people know the story was coming, it was really compelling, and here’s a clip that will give you a feel for what Jill Carroll is likely to say in the story.  We were stunned at the number of views we were getting on YouTube.  When it became a like, “Uhhh, that works.  It’s not a press release, but it got the story out.  So, who cares what we call it.  We should do more of that.”  Again, what we discovered was YouTube has a different algorithm, just like Google News has a different algorithm than Google.  Although search is a common element, each of the different entities; whether it’s Google, Google News, YouTube, or Google Image Search, they each have separate algorithms.  To the extent that you can understand them, you get your photos, your videos, your news stories, or your web pages discovered.

Bob Tripathi:  If you look at YouTube, it’s what, the second largest search engine right?  So, people talk about how you can do a lot of video optimization on YouTube.  What are some of the common steps you recommend people take?

Greg Jarboe:  The first thing you do is the same thing you’d do if you were doing a web search:  you’d do keyword research.  But, most of the tools that are out there are keyword research tools to tell you what people are searching for on Google, not YouTube.  There are very few tools that specialize in telling you what the search terms are on YouTube.  The good news is, when YouTube rolled out promoted videos, they also rolled out a free tool that lets you do YouTube keyword research.  First step is: don’t assume everything people look for on Google, they’re also looking for on YouTube.  It’s actually different, so find the right keywords.  Then you need to put them in key places.  The key places in the video turn out to be the title, the description, and the tags.  In some respects, the basics are there, they’re just applied in a different way.

Bob Tripathi:  Ranking high on YouTube used to be pretty easy, right?  I’m talking two or three years back.  Suddenly, it’s not just writing title, tags and keywords.  I think they’re also factoring the views and the comments, etc.

Greg Jarboe:  That is true.  So, the other part of the ranking algorithm is how many views did the video get, and what ratings did it get.  If everyone gives you a thumbs down because, “that was corporate propaganda, why would I ever want to share that with my friends?”  Then you’re hurting your rankings.

Bob Tripathi:  So, that is part of the algorithm.  Now, I see you wearing a lab coat here, what’s going on with this?

Greg Jarboe:  The lab coat is part of the video labs.  We held video labs at SES San Francisco.  We invited the audience to do, is instead of coming in and getting the typical site clinic where you show me your video and I critique it.  Okay, fine, that can be fun, but it can also be kind of destructive.  What we said is, “Why don’t you come and let’s talk about what the issues are.”  Today was an agenda setting process, and tomorrow we’re going to take the issues that came out of today’s primer, and we’re going to dig into them a little deeper.  Frankly, we’re going to involve the audience in the problem solving because they are complex problems.  It’s no longer, “put your keyword in your title.”  It’s now, “What kind of content should I be using to launch a new product, or to market my small business.”  So we’ll solve a real problem.

Bob Tripathi:  Are there any good tidbits that came out of that lab that you may want to share?

Greg Jarboe:  Nobody threw fruit.  I felt validated.  Nobody went ballistic on us.  But yeah, it engaged people in a new dimension, in a new way.

Bob Tripathi:  You wrote a book, can you give us some excerpts and tell us why we should read the book?

Greg Jarboe:  First of all, it’s 500 pages long, so if it’s that thick, it must have something in it that’s good.  Actually, one of the interesting things about “YouTube and Video Marketing in Our Day”, which is the title of our book, is that it steps people through a series of complex steps.  When people get into video, they know its complex, but they also don’t know what step three is and how it relates to step four.  In fact, is there a step four?  One of the tings we tried to do in the book is to break everything down, so each chapter takes an aspect of what a successful video marketing campaign needs to entail, and it walks you through it.  It gives you some illustrations of other people who have done it that way, and it gives you case studies to say, “This is what worked.”

Bob Tripathi:  So, you’ve got theory as well as case study.

Greg Jarboe:  Yeah.

Bob Tripathi:  Well, this was great.  Thank you so much for doing this, Greg, I’m glad to have you.  And thank you for being with us.

Greg Jarboe:  Thank you.

Learn more about YouTube & Video Marketing by attending Greg Jarboe’s Training Workshop on June 10th as part of Social Media for Business Training Workshop

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It’s been an exciting 2011 for us here at Instant E-Training with all the great learning we have conducted so far starting with our SEO Training Workshop and now announcing our “Social Media for Business” training workshop starting on May 25. We have designed the program from the ground up keeping the learners in mind. As a result we designed the training workshop agenda first and then invited subject matters experts that can deliver top notch training on a specific topic. As we like to call it here:
This is not an online seminar; this is not an online conference or “summit” but a structured Social Media training workshop!

Topics that you can learn & monetize:
As I said we have designed this Social Media training workshop keeping the social media learner in mind. As such, our sessions start with Social Media Strategy in 8 steps and dive deeper into social media platforms from there on. Other social media topics we would be covering are managing your online reputation, Facebook marketing strategy for business, Twitter Marketing, LinkedIn power user tips, Youtube & Video marketing, Location based social media marketing, and finally SEO & Social Media. As you can see with these topics we cover the whole gamut of social media marketing. But that’s not all as we have some super bonus sessions planned and will be announced soon.

Strategy + How-to = Execution
I am sure we have all attended social media conferences where the speakers heads are up in the clouds and talking about social media rainbows and unicorns (as our expert Dan Zarrella likes to call it) and dishing out advice like hug your customer today! Well, somehow the reality is different and top level theories sometimes just don’t cut it. This is why we have designed this 5 week training workshop that blends Strategy sessions with How to sessions to help you execute your social media programs smoothly.

Top-Notch Social Media Authors & Experts
We designed this program from the ground up and then chose the best thought leader and expert that would do justice to the topic. As such we have the leading social media thought leaders on board who are experts based on the extensive body of work and real-world experience. Here is what each each of our expert will lead:

• Dan Zarrella, Author and Social Media “scientist” will lead Facebook Marketing for Business session on June 3rd, 2011
• Hollis Thomases, Author of Twitter Marketing: An Hour a Day, will be leading our Twitter Marketing session on June 8th, 2011
• Greg Jarboe, Author of YouTube & Video Marketing: An Hour a Day, will surely blow us away with his workshop on June 10th 2011
• Krista Neher, Author of Social Media Field Guide and a top rated SXSW speaker will be starting us off with Social Media Strategy in 8 Steps on May 25th, 2011
• Fionn Downhill, CEO of Elixir Interactive with her wide array of in-the-trenches experience will be guiding us on the Managing Your Online Reputation session on June 1st, 2011
• Simon Salt, Author of Social Location Marketing, will be helping us stay on top with all that is buzzing with location based marketing on June 18th, 2011
• Barbara Rozgonyi, Founder of Social Media Club Chicago, will be mesmerizing us with new ways to use LinkedIn on June 15th, 2011
• Last but certainly not the least, Author of the widely read “The Art of SEO” book Eric Enge will be training us on SEO for Social Media on June 22nd, 2011.

Certification
After completing our Social Media training workshop all attendees will receive a certificate of completion. Even though certification is a topic of intense debate in the industry but certification proves that you have completed a level of coursework and were trained by leading social media experts. If you are out in the job market then we are sure that the hiring manager would recognize our social media experts and that in itself lends credibility.

Interactive Platform
We agree that online training can get quite boring at times as you cannot see the trainer and with little to no interactivity. This is why we have chosen a platform where our attendees can see our trainers in a live streaming video and also make use of live chat, live audio features for interactivity. Here is a little peek into what you can expect:

Student Support
We understand that there are always lots of questions when learning new skills especially Social Media. To go along with formal workshop sessions, we have also created a special member’s area on our site where attendees can ask any question related to our training. This Q & A support fast tracks learning and our past workshop attendees have found this a very helpful.
Bonus Goodies

To supplement our training workshop we have also created a special access to our library of training videos. These training videos will train you in other cross-functional fields like SEO, Web Usability, Link Building. These training videos are valued at over $899.
For a limited time, we are also offering Simon Salt’s Social Location Marketing free to early registrations.
All in all you get all the above listed benefits and not to mention great training at a great low price.

Still on the fence?

Well, we have an early-bird price of $299 just for you.Get started today with “Social Media for Business” Training Workshop

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