Social Media Marketing Diva Blogs

So, why did I pick these blogs?  No, it wasn’t based on any Alexa ranking or some algorithm that my team put together it was based on their innovative content, serious social media and online marketing expertise, and their ability to simply get it.  You see, there is a HUGE difference in claiming expertise and having expertise.  These divas got it.  Period.  I would highly suggest you subscribe to each of their feeds and learn from the real pros

Shama Hyder of After The Launch Blog

http://www.afterthelaunch.com/blog/

What makes Shama so darn good is her ability to tie social media marketing into the entire strategy of an internet marketing plan.  She actually works with companies and solo-practices to leverage the power of social media.

B.L. Ochman’s What’s Next Blog

http://www.whatsnextblog.com/

Talk about a real social media and blogging superstar.  B.L. Ochman is the woman the big guys call in when they need to get it and get it right.  She’s in the trenches and always ahead of the curve when it comes to the real pulse of social media marketing.

Church of the Customer with Jackie Huba

http://customerevangelists.typepad.com/blog/

Ok, she has a partner, but this lady is one of the most brilliant minds in marketing, social media, word of mouth, and so much more - it’s truly unbelievable.  Along with these other ladies, she is one of the few that I read every chance I get.

ClickNewz with Lynn Terry

http://www.clicknewz.com/

If you don’t know who Lynn Terry is, you haven’t been in the game for very long.  Lynn is not only a social media rockstar, but she’s built a successful internet marketing empire that rivals most of them.  Again, her expertise is amazing and she’s a tactical genius when it comes to using not only social media, but the entire Internet profitably.

Ann Handley of Marketing Profs Daily Fix

http://www.mpdailyfix.com/

What can I say, this woman is a true powerhouse of information.  She’s intelligent, real, and knows her stuff — and it’s a lot of stuff.  Ann is always ahead of the curve and is usually teaching me things that I never even realized existed.  A definite must subscribe.

Media Mojito with Angel McClinton

http://www.mediamojito.com/

You’re not going to find a better expert in viral marketing, video marketing and tying it all together with social media.  Not only that, this diva kicks butt in SEO and any other form of optimization you can imagine.  I’ve learned so much from her and read everything she produces.

Social Desire with Shana Albert

http://www.socialdesire.com/

Without a doubt one of the brightest social media marketing techies out there.  Shana has an amazing way of breaking the complexity and overwhelm of social media down to real tactics and real results.  She’s also a fun writer!

Liz Strauss’s Successful Blog

http://www.successful-blog.com/

Liz is a community building, relationship diva to the core.  Her blog is always thought provoking and informative like no other — because she delves into the deeper questions in social media… way beyond the top ten lists and snippets other so-called experts do.  Liz rocks!

Nancy Marmolejo’s Viva Visibility Blog

http://www.vivavisibilityblog.com/

You won’t find a smarter social networking and online visibility expert, anywhere!  Nancy is known for her ability to come up with creative ideas and she’s using social media like no one else is.  She’s been a mentor and teacher to me and truly knows her stuff!

Why Facebook with Mari Smith

http://www.whyfacebook.com/

Mari is not only the diva of Facebook, but she’s one of the few diva’s online that actually understands the power of relationship and word of mouth marketing.  Mari is practical and her expertise actually gets measurable results for her clients.

True experts work in the trenches!

Each of these Diva blogs are a must subscribe.  Not because I’m “partnering” with them and not because they are women… But, because they are truly the experts in the trenches, paving the way for the rest of us in learning how to successfully build our businesses.

Here’s the original post on Blogs.com:

Top 10 Sinfully Good Social Media Marketing Diva Blogs

Enjoy!

Photo Credit: Web Success Diva and Blogs.com

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Important Decisions and Research Before You Build an Online Community

Making the decision to build an online community, should really start before you even consider an online community a viable option.  In other words, if you’ve set your mind that an online community is the direction you’re going to take — then you’re on the wrong track.

The decision starts with your company and your company goals. Knowing and understanding the needs of your company, should happen WAY before you even consider building an online community.  Ultimately, everything you do online, every strategy, every peice of content you publish — should be tied directly to your company goals.

The decision starts with understanding your target audience. Again, as important as your company goals, understanding your audience is extremely important to understand before considering an online community.  There is a ton of research and analysis that goes along with this, but the ultimate question is — will my audience participate and can they be impacted by building an online community?

The decision starts with understanding exactly how building an online community fits into your current and future online marketing activities. Too often solopreneurs, bloggers, and small businesses treat online marketing activities as separate islands just floating around.  The true power in your marketing plan comes when you’ve realized that each component can have tremendous affect on the others and each can leverage the power of the others.  They should all work together and so should your online community, should you make the decision to build one.

Important Things to Understand About Building an Online Community

Building a community is not as simple as “built it and they will come.” Not even close.  Building a community takes time and a considerable amount of effort.  It’s a much more complex proposition, but the return will exceed the investment if you’ve taken the time to make the right decision, with the right information.

Building a community does not have to be expensive. There are several ways to build an online community — and many of those alternatives are very inexpensive.  The days of requiring seed investment to get started are over.  Alternatives range from open-source software like Joomla, to excellent custom built alternatives like Hollis Carter’s Social Networking Empire.  You can even invest in large-scale solutions.  Regardless of the solution you choose, it’s all about the “fit” for your community objectives, NOT the amount of money you spend.

Building a community is not a end-all quick fix. Because of the time and investment involved in building a community, realize, it’s not going to happen over-night and it’s not a fix if you’re not already profitable or at least, sustainable during the build and launch phases.

Online Community Resources to Review Before You Make the Decision to Build

Rich Gordon’s Online Community Cookbook is an excellent resource that can be downloaded chapter by chapter and includes a very good discussion of what you need to consider before and during the build of an online community.

Jeremiah Owyang has an excellent slide presentation regarding Online Community Best Practices.  It has a ticket price, as it’s offered through Forrester Research - but well worth the price if you’re serious about considering an online community as part of your online business.

Full Circle Associates has an Online Community Toolkit that is a must read before and during the build of an online community of any nature.  Great information.

ScoreChicago has an excellent blog post with super resources (including the three above) that will help guide you in your decision to build an online community.

Community Spark has excellent resources for helping with building a new online community, as well as resources for marketing and monetization of online communities.

Photo Credit:  JoeShlabonik on Flickr

P.S. For the record, Hollis Carter’s Social Networking Empire is the only social networking building program that the Web Success Diva team endorses.  It’s cost effective and goes far beyond just building to marketing and profitability.

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5. Social Media is About Communities Not Technology

Yes, you can build a group on Facebook and possibly influence 200 to 1500 people at a time (that’s given all factors good).  Yes, you can even build a pseudo-niche social networking site on Ning, that is incredibly difficult to brand and market.  You can do all these thins to dip your feet into the power of social networking.  But in the end, there is a huge difference between social networking and leveraging it’s power — and building communities.  A real world example would be the difference between sub-leasing an apartment and actually owning the apartment building. Yes, you may build a minimum level of profits from sub-leasing, but what would your profitability be if you actually owned the building?

Beyond Niche Social Network Marketing to Profitable Community Building

There comes a point in every business’s life where a decision has to be made, do you continue to only leverage the power of third-party tools or do you create, build, and innovate to become the master of your own domain online?  It’s a thought provoking question, one that can not be taken lightly indeed.  But, it’s definitely one that should be one the mind of the online entrepreneur and business at some point in the game.

Social Networking Versus Community Building

Social networking is the art of influence, with very little level of impact on people’s daily lives or their human condition.  Community is the art of impact, whereby you’re able to affect the very core of someone’s being by providing something that connects them with others of the same “condition.”  Impact is powerful.

It’s the difference between influence and impact. And, friends, there is a difference.  Influence is the art of persuasion — it’s a process that is affected by many variables in a very complex equation (contrary to what the experts advise).  Influence works, and it can work well.  Impact works on a different, much more profitable level.

Influence builds revenues, impact builds multiple streams of profitable incomes. Impacting with community has much more potential (given other factors good) to build a business mutlipte streams of income (and other benefits coming shortly).  It’s the difference between participating under someone else’s terms and policies and actually creating them yourself.

Influence can be achieved easily, but impact is only achieved when you affect the “condition” of a human being. As you can imagine, impact is much more powerful than any other form of “marketing.”  It’s not easy to achieve, but the profitability rewards behind it are off the charts.

Expanding on the Power of Impact and Community Building

All this week, I’ll be covering how solopreneurs and small businesses can grab hold of creating impact, through community building.  It’s not easy, by any means.  But the return on investment, can hardly be achieved by any other form of marketing available.  And, it’s not about having a large pocket book either.  It’s more about what you do with the resources readily available to you, that can often times create the most impact.  And… it’s NOT your typical social media marketing strategy either.  Creating impact and building a community goes far beyond anything most so-called social media experts can even fathom.

Impact and Community Building Resources

First and foremost, check out these interviews held by Hollis Carter (co-creator of the Social Networking Empire) of top social networking CEO’s.  These are people who have created impact by building communities and have built significantly profitable empires going beyond just merely participating.

Then check out this video, the possibilities in creating your own impactful social networking empire.  Large or small, every business needs to cross this bridge and take a look at where they really want to go and how they really want to impact their business and their industry.

In case you missed it yesterday, check out my post on the power of influence in social networking and how you should be, AT LEAST, digger past the typical social media expert’s idea of social networking and digging deep into the power of influence in niche social networking.  It’s really about taking your social networking strategy to a whole new, profitable level.

And, check out our favorite picks for valuable information from across the Net regarding community and it’s impact on your bottom line.

Influence, Impact, and Outcome from CyTrap Labs

10 Ways to Make Money from Online Communities from Community Spark

Niche Social Networks Versus Networking in Social Networks from Three Minds

Considerations in Building a Social Network for small businesses and entrepreneurs from Peg Corwin

5 Ways to Attract Members to a Social Networking Site from Community Spark

Amex harnesses the power of community building with life changing ideas from AdWeek

Photo Credit:  JoeShlabonick on Flickr

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The Raw Power of Social Networking

In case you live in a cave or don’t get out much, here’s a re-cap of just how powerful social networking really is — as a participant and as a powerful tool in internet marketing:

Social Networking is great for connecting with industry and audience influencers. Influencers are the ultimate in social proof.  Influencers are an amazing resource in connecting with your audience at deeper level than your competition.  And, influencers can help you understand your audience better.

Social Networking is great for connecting directly with your target audience. Unlike any other avenue of connection, social networking allows you to be just “one of the guys” with your audience.  You can watch their conversations and gain valuable insight that can help you market better.

Social Networking is the ultimate in Word of Mouth Marketing. When your social networking shares your content and your message, it’s a direct hit in word of mouth marketing because they are likely sharing with people they are connected to.  This can also be a bad thing, so be sure to monitor your brand and identity online closely.

Social Networking can be in integral part of your Social Optimization strategies, including SEO. Social networking, when leveraged right, can contribute to your SEO linking strategies as well as help your visibility, because Wordpress and many social network platforms go hand in hand on the technical side.

Social Networking in Overdrive

Obviously there are a ton of benefits to participating in social networks.  Many of them, when integrated with your other online marketing activities — produce some serious results.  But, there’s nothing like social networking where you control the environment and you reap all the benefits for your company. Now hear me out.

Social networking, as many online marketers know (whether you’re a blogger or small business), is limited to Facebook, MySpace, and Plaxo… to name a few.  My friend, that is such a small segment of the power of social networking — there really is an entire world of social networking communities all across the Net. Each has a specific audience with a specific theme and a specific purpose and each is reaping huge rewards for the owner.

Participating in alternative social networking communities can be extremely beneficial to your online marketing strategies. Why would you want to do that?  My friend, it’s all about quality over quantity.  Here’s our favorite reasons for participating on the Net’s wide range of alternative social networks — as tested and proven in our clients and our own activities:

Targeted social networking brings in better traffic. Because you’re networking on sites with targeted content/community focuses, you’re targeting a specific audience in a specific area.  For example, if you’re a mom’s coach — find social networking sites just for moms.  Quality is much better than quantity, especially if you’re a small business or solopreneur.

Niche social networking can help you better understand your audience. Rather than shifting through all the noise in the larger social networks like Facebook and Myspace, you’ll be able to monitor and participate in specific topic-oriented conversations — getting to know your audience at a deeper level than your competition who is focusing on massive traffic with little results.

Niche social networking can help you test with quality. Every serious business owner and internet marketer knows, testing the resulting data is critical to making profitable decisions.  Niche social networking sites can bring you important data that can help you target your testing better, leading to better results.  You’re getting down to the nitty gritty in niche data, creating an ability to really understand what works and what doesn’t work.

Locate Your Niche Social Networking Sites

Locating your niche social networking sites can be a challenge, especially if you’re not even sure they exist.  Here are some quick ways our team helps clients locate all the niche social networks that exist online:

Search Google. Yep, this seems like a no brainer, but in some cases it just needs to be stated.  The only problem here is if you’re niche is large, you’ll have a hard time sifting through all the results you’ll get.  Including words like “social network,” “community,” and the like will help in the sifting.

Set-Up Google Alerts. Again, you may get more information that you wanted, but keeping Google Alerts active for locating niche communities and social networks will also help you stay on top of the pulse in your niche.  Plus, you can now add Google Alerts to your Google Reader, making it even easier.

Stalk Your Competitors. No, not really… But, find out where they are and if they are using this strategy.  Add their blogs and RSS Feeds to your Google Reader and stay on top of where they are at.  You may want to be where they are at for visibility.

Check Our Your Audience Profiles. Often times you can gather where your audience is by checking out what they are doing on the larger social networking sites.  They will add groups related to where they are in alternative social networking, they’ll provide links, they’ll have applications created by those networks, and more.  Pay attention to what they are doing.

Do Quantcast Research. If you’ve pinpointed your demographics and the major social networks they have joined, often times you can get good information from Quantcast on other sites most popular by those same people.  You can also keep digging deeper by always making note of the “other sites” people visit for the site your researching.  (A screenshot is below, for clarification).  Check out Quantcast!

Niche Social Networking Online Resources

BusinessWeek has a great article on how social networking is going niche.  Good information to understand.

Read Write Web has a great post, done months ago on niche social networking.  Good stuff, as usual.

Venture Beat has a great post on how Niche Social Networks are thriving and will continue to.

Online Networking Goes Small and Sponsors Follow, a great information packed article from the Washington Post.

Four Business Lessons from Niche Social Networks, from CIO (one of my favorites to read).

Photo Credit:  JoeShlabonick of Flickr Lego Community

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Blogging and Blog Marketing Resources

3 Tips to Make Writing Less of a Struggle Great tips from CopyBlogger that actually work.  If you do blogging for any amount of time, it does become a struggle to keep writing.

PureBlogger:  Amping Up Your Blog Productivity, every blogger needs to learn these tricks.  Productivity is important in playing with the big boys if your a single author blog

Balkhlis shares the ultimate guide to using Digg for bloggers.  It’s a pretty over-written topic, but there’s actually some good stuff here.  Especially for newbies

Daily Blog Tips has an awesome list of 50 ways to increase your RSS subscribers.  Great stuff here.

16 Essential PC Applications for Bloggers from ProBlogger.

Remarkablogger, Michael Martine shares good information about How Not to Blog Posts.

Guest blogger on LouisGray.com shared an excellent post on discovery new content.  Really important as you progress down your blogging career

ProBlogger answers the question, are RSS Subscribers worth anything if they don’t visit your blog.  Great answer here.

Social Media Marketing Resources

Christian Affiliate Marketing shared a great link to How Not to Market on Squidoo.  Good stuff, Squidoo is a must!

Duct Tape Marketing started giving access to their Social Media for Business eBook, worth the download.

Marketing Charts shared Top Ten Social Networking and Forums Sites, good stuff to investigate the need for your presence.

Center Networks reflects on the future of social media.  It’s always good to keep a measure on what’s coming next.

Liz Strauss, as usual, provides an excellent thought provoking post, Are You Listening?  Influence and Participation Above the Noise.

Brains of Fire blog (I love that name) shares why Word of Mouth Marketing is NOT, I repeat, not about being popular.

Internet Marketing and Online Business Resources

Honest thoughts on the recession and small business, from The Bold Approach Method.  I couldn’t have said it better myself.

CopyBlogger covers why you have to collaborate strategically to achieve success in any business, especially online.

Influence and Persuasion Expert Ron Hudson shares how to think like an ethical persuasion expert.

Internet marketing top blogs is a great list to find some good RSS subscriptions to learn more.

Daily SEO Work is a great list of tips for small business and others.

Photo Credit:  DuneChaser on Flickr Lego Yosemite Sam

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5. Social Networking as Part of Your Social Media Optimization Strategies