Happy, happy Cinco De Mayo! In honor of this fabulous day in history, I’d like to share my top fave 5 social marketing people, things, and more…
[Please note, this is not a hidden affiliate link post... I love this stuff and share it with you freely, isn't that how it's supposed to be? 
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Fave 5 Social Marketing Expert Blogs
There are very few experts that are listed under “SM Experts” in my Google Reader, these people are 5 out of 10 that I read whenever something is posted. Each is an amazing expert in their own right and contribute to the thought leadership of social marketing.
Danny Brown – Social Media, PR, and Marketing for the Conversation Age: ALWAYS good stuff, and one of the few bloggers who makes me think and re-think and re-think again. (@dannybrown)
Dan Schawbel – Personal Branding Blog: Man this guy kills me, he’s one of the hardest working people in branding… heck, on the Internet. EVERYDAY, is a good day to read his blog, for personal and business branding. Brilliant. (@danschawbel)
Ron Hudson - Social Media Influence Blog: Ron is brilliant and truly understands how influence and persuasion play into social media and the social web. Great stuff all the time. (@Ron_Hudson)
Valeria Maltoni – Conversation Agent: Valeria is still one of the sharpest and thought-provoking bloggers on the planet. She goes deep into the why and what, making every business owner who reads her blog better for it. (@conversationage)
John Haydon – Corporate Dollar Blog: John’s take on social media and it’s tools is refreshing, honest, and brilliant. He’ll go against the “social media crowd” and tell it like it is. Focus is on non-profits, but everyone can benefit from his posts. (@johnhaydon)
Fave 5 Social Marketing Related Must-Read Books
World Wide Rave by David Meerman Scott: I’ve done a video review of this amazing book, and I can’t speak highly enough about it. It’s a must read, whether your an individual or organization looking to leverage the social web and beyond.
Me 2.0 by Dan Schawbel: Great book, that highlights all the ways you can leverage personal branding strategies. Much of what this book talks about applies to individuals and small businesses (entrepreneurs). Great stuff. I’ve also done a video review of Me 2.0.
Marketing to the Social Web by Larry Weber: I haven’t reviewed this yet, but just finished it up. Excellent, excellent social marketing book for everyone.
Word of Mouth Marketing by Andy Sernovitz: This book is so amazing, talking about the reality of word of mouth marketing, with great tie-ins to marketing on the social web. Good stuff, whether you’re a local small business or huge online empire.
Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne: Thanks to my fave lady @sarahnewton, I came across this book – which published in 2005, is still applicable today – especially in social marketing theory and strategy development.
Fave 5 Social Marketing Tools for Bloggers
Google Friend Connect: I know there are a ton of people who despise the recommendation of Google, but their Friend Connect tools are tremendously powerful for bloggers, particularly for the DIY crowd.
(Hint: GFC has many widgets and even custom widgets you can create to make your blog more social.)
BackType: I loooooooove this service, here’s a recent post about it. Not only is the tool built by bloggers for bloggers, their support rocks, and the tool is absolutely amazing at integrating blog conversations into one place, your blog. (Hint: Use the Wordpress BackType Connect Plugin, it rocks!)
FriendFeed: I know, many think it’s a complicated Twitter, but there is so much more to this tool that allows bloggers to easily integrate a major part of their social media presence seemlessly into their blog and throughout the web.
(Hint: I use their embeddable widget to show updates and RSS to market my social media presence.) — mark my words, aggregation and sites like FriendFeed have not even scratched the surface of usefulness
Ping.FM and TwitterFeed.com: Combined, these two social media tools are tremendously powerful in helping you update your social media presence… and beyond. When set-up right, you literally take one-click to share resources (and your blog) across mutliple platforms.
(Hint: Tie these in with Google Reader Shared Items and you’ve got a resource sharing machine!)
Google Reader: Yep, it’s my RSS reader of choice. It’s features are not as social as they could be, but for online marketing and social monitoring, it’s fabulous. It’s also the easiest way to broadcast your fave RSS items… across the Net.
Fave 5 Twitter Related Tools
TwitterFeed: Mentioned above, this service is truly top notch. Tied with Ping.FM and Google Reader, TwitterFeed becomes an excellent Twitter tool that saves you tons of time.
TwiTips Blog: Not necessarily a technology tool, but anything and everything related to Twitter is here. You’ll find all the cool Twitter gadgets and it’s frequently guest posted, so it’s not just one perspective but many. Great blog for serious Twitter peeps.
SocialToo: Simple, effective tool that I use to automatically follow those who follow me. I do not use any of their other features for automation (not a big fan of automating your entire presence online), but when you get hundreds of new followers a day, the auto-follow feature is fabulous. I also use their auto-unfollow feature — when I get social media “experts” who follow and unfollow to inflate their follower numbers (see my post here on how I despise that).
FriendFilter for Twitter: Brian Solis’s new service that adds meaningful data in deciding when and if you follow someone back. Unless you’re a social media “expert” who needs to inflate your followers – and you’re looking for quality over quantity, you’ll want to filter who you add to your followers list (at least you should). I have a review of FriendFilter and I use the service to locate spammers and sm “experts” who I try to avoid.
Seesmic Desktop: If you’ve been around, you know I used to be a big fan of TweetDeck. I recently saw one of my fave Twitter peeps (@dannybrown) posting from Seesmic and knew if Danny was using it, I needed to check it out. Sure enough, I’m in love. Seesmic just seems much more intuitive to me than TweetDeck – without all the glitches, I can finally have groups that actually work.
Fave 5 Wordpress Plugins for Bloggers
All In One SEO Pack: Great plugin to set-up your blog in a very SEO friendly way. Easy to install and set-up.
Photo Dropper Plugin: Allows you to easily and quickly insert Flickr photos and give credit all in one swoop.
Sociable Plugin: One of the few share plugins that include nofollow links and let’s you fully customize the pictures, sizing, and more with a little css coding.
Odiogo Audio Plugin: An easy way to turn your blog posts into audio and podcasts. Most readers suck, Odiogo works very well — as long as your posts are grammatically correct and structured (which they should be anyway). You can see the Listen buttons on my posts.
Pretty Links: Let’s you shorten and track URLs on your own domain (works well if you have a short domain name), right from your Wordpress admin section. I use this when publishing/sharing links across the web.
Fave 5 Wordpress Design Templates
Thesis Theme from Chris Pearson: There’s a reason the biggest bloggers on the Net are using it. Super easy to customize with no coding experience and super, duper SEO friendly.
Revolution Themes, Now StudioPress: Brian Gardner caught my eye when he came out with the Revolution themes a while back. Now StudioPress, these themes are seriously awesome, SEO friendly, and easily customizable.
Woo Themes: Amazing, amazing visually and super unique designs. Woo Themes are also very SEO friendly and made for the social web.
Proximity Themes with Nathan Rice: Nathan totally rocks and his themes are so user friendly, when set-up, people will swear you had a professional design it. These are some of the best magazine themes on the Net.
Press 75 with Jason Schuller: These themes are not only graphically beautiful, they are fully functional. He has some of the best video blog themes available on the Net.
5 Fave Social Media Icons Collections
IconsPedia: I love this site, easy to navigate and they have icons of all kinds.
MySocialButtons: Great icons from the most important social media sites you need to have on your blog.
10e20’s Ultimate Collection: Great list of resources for social media buttons to add on your blog.
My Cool Button: An online Web 2.0 button creator, so that you can easily create buttons that are unique to your blog. Any kind of button you need, you can create here.
Mashable’s Button and Badge Maker List: Great list of button and badge makers that take the design out of designing very cool buttons. Social buttons and more can all be done.
What’s Your Fave 5 Social Marketing Related Stuff?
Post a comment and let us know what you’re digging on! Love to hear your thoughts 
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… looking forward to connecting with you!
Maria
About the Author...
Maria Reyes-McDavis is a colossal geek brainiac, certified genius IQ with university degrees in Finance, Economics, Business Management and an MBA. Maria has served over 300 pro-level, digital marketing clients as founder of online marketing firm Digital Peas & Carrots. Maria is Founder and Editor of Hyphenated Americans, a conservative politics blog and Proverbs 31 Project an online women's ministry. Most importantly, Maria is a wife to her king, mother of 3, lover of basketball (Go Lakers & Clippers!), classic cars and is currently training for professional women's roller derby!
