Trying to measure results the old fashion way was relatively easy, or mabye we just forgot what it took to do it, and to really "get it". The problem is....You can’t equate “Clicks” or “Impressions” with “Conversation”.  Social Media is about what people are talking about and where.  The trick is to be able to track these conversations and actively influence them.  Another word for Social media marketing is “Word of Mouth” Marketing.  

The future of social media marketing will be in the power of a single person to persuade another person, or 10, 100, or 1,000 people.  Web 2.0 then allows those people to “share” their experience in a similar way, thereby creating a viral effect as well.

Cluttery ads, sitting in social networks have very little influence.  But if someone in that social network told you about this great new product and told you where to find it, that is the power of social marketing.

It’s happening, and the tools to make it happen more seamlessly are being developed.

I don’t know if any of this makes sense, but when we meet again, I can go over it step by step, how with the right strategy, social media marketing will blow away search engine optimization or SEM.

 Online Communities are viral. 

• Build Brand Loyalty.
• Can eventually replace the need for online advertising. 
• Online communities are valuable online assets.
• You can broadcast your messages to the entire community.

 What’s the process for getting started?

 We like to build what we call hub and spoke networks for our customers.  The “hub” is the online community.  The “spoke” is a fully optimized blog.  Moguling.com Blogs rise quickly on the search engines, and when the blogs start generating traffic, we then link each blog to an online community.  Over time, the community grows and pretty soon, you’ll be able to reduce and eventually eliminate all other types of advertising, including expensive pay per click.  

Step 1:  Launch blog marketing campaigns that are targeted toward the interests of your customers.  Our packages include keyword research and optimization.

Step 2:  Launch an online community.

Step 3:  Link your existing web sites to both

Step 4:  Create Social Network Accounts in all the major social networks. 

Contact Social Media Expert from Moguling.com at (602) 314-8078 , ask for Dale

Now that I've got your attention, let's talk about you being the star.   Through an organization named Moguling.com, you can be the star of your own news blog by becoming an iReporter™.   What is an iReporter™, you may ask?   Well, it's pretty much anything you want to be, but the key word here is reporter.

You can start a free blog at Moguling.com and you can be in charge of the content.   You can embed videos or your own live webcast.   You can host a live chat or a web event.   You can report the news that you see fit to report and at a depth you choose.   You can even syndicate your news and sell advertising if you like.   It's your site so you call the shots.

Moguling.com has many dedicated iReporters™ doing any or all of the above.   You can even choose your favorite hobby or some other burning interest.   You can generate a nice income be getting creative with the advertising on your site.   The more popular your site is; the more advertisers will want to have a banner on it.   I'll let you in on a little inside secret; Moguling.com has a tool that can help you get quickly to the top of the search engines and that means more hits.

You could become a paid iReporter™ and report on a number of different and interesting topics.   If you really get your writing chops together, you'll get to do special assignments for a bit more of that good old green incentive.

With all of the attention being paid to the various social media platforms out there, I'd like to draw some attention to the excellent iReporter social media platform. I've been posting to iReporter since the middle of last year, and I love the way it gathers up all of the posts that I've made on various sites so if I want to direct someone to read my work as a blogger, all I have to do is give them the web address and they can read my work. Because of the way the Internet is trending these days, social networking and social media marketing will become powerful forces in the worlds of commerce and marketing. That is, if the bloggers striving for social media optimization can avoid some of the main social media marketing pitfalls. You can create buzz around a product or a trend, but you have to be really subtle about it. Most people involved in social networking regard it as their "thing" and resent any attempts to commercialize it. But I think that the iReporter system amply serves my needs. I love being able to blog about various topics, from celebrity gossip to cars to politics and interesting new products. It's also really easy to use, very flexible, and allows you to post video and even set up streaming from a web cam if that's the way you like to blog. You can find iReporter on the Mogulling site (http://admin.moguling.com/), where all your questions about using it and getting started will be answered. It's a fun, easy, and supremely satisfying way to get into social media marketing.

1. It is totally free to use—unlike the days of AOL or CompuServe; you do not have to pay to use the awesome features of this social networking web site.

2. You can share your pictures, life story and blogs with all of your friends and others.

3. Many people report finding the person of their dreams on this social networking site, and furthermore many people report actually marrying that person—unlike the dating sites which require you to pay a monthly fee!

4. This is a great site for bands to network and meet people who actually want to listen to their music and support their band—all for free nonetheless.

5. With more than 100,000,000 members' world wide, and constantly growing, you will be able to find just about anyone you know and also meet tons of other people in the process.

The hot buzzword in Internet Marketing schools is social media marketing. Practically every big media corporation and Internet marketing company is now highly attuned to the benefits of social media optimization. Right now, the Internet is experiencing another period of explosive growth. According to one study, the content on the Internet is expected to grow six times larger from 161 billion gigabytes of information to 998 billion gigabytes in the next two years. Astoundingly, the amount of information diseminated on the Internet was around 3 million times the amount of information published in all of the books throughout history. Much of that information will be put out on a social media platform, through social networking sites, individual blogs, and, increasingly, corporate or marketing blogs, wikis, folksonomies that enable businesses to extend their intended image to every corner of the Internet by sharing content, publishing articles, streaming videos, and online video chat rooms. If you can master social media optimization and avoid the major social media marketing pitfalls, you can become a marketing master of the Internet! 

While I think social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook have many benefits, I wouldn't attempt to use them to promote services or products if I were a business person.

I'm a member of both MySpace and Facebook. I use these social networking sites to keep up with friends and chat to like-minded people who share my interests. Most of the people who use these social networking sites do so for similar reasons. Social networking sites are predominantly about socializing via the internet. Although I have a MySpace blog, I do not use it to create a buzz around advertisers. Instead, I use it to write short, humorous articles about life and people with the sole intention of making my friends laugh.

Since I've been a MySpace memeber for quite a while, I know that many of the individuals who use this site do not appreciate it when people use blogs, bulletins or forums to create a buzz around advertisers. In fact, most people find it very annoying.

If you wish to promote your business, use a company that specializes in social media optimization. Social networking sites are meant for socializing with friends, not promoting various business ventures. Let's keep them that way.

Myspace.com quickly ascended the ranks of web sites, started by a college student in Silicone Valley as a pet-project and very rapidly becoming the largest social networking web site in the world. With more than 60-million user accounts, including bands, actors, artists, movie producers, celebrities and more, MySpace is now a common day household name.

Facebook.com is the newest of the social networking juggernauts, and while it differs in format and theme from MySpace, it has offered frustrated MySpace users with a differing platform that has fewer errors. Since Face Book was created, the site has quickly climbed the staircases and now sits right next to MySpace as the next great social networking web site.

Of all the marketing tools currently being used on the Internet, social media marketing is one of the most important and effective. But if you're serious about achieving social media optimization, then you need to read on and use some of the tips that I'm going to share with you here, courtesy of some expert advice from Glen Allsopp, writing for the SearchEngineLand.com website. According to Allsopp, "You must get involved in the top social media sites to understand them thoroughly. My thought process behind this was that the only way to start understanding the type of content that works is by being exposed to the stories, titles and content on a daily basis. Therefore this mainly involved using Digg, Reddit and StumbleUpon on a regular basis." This makes sense to me. You can't use a medium like social media marketing effectively, unless you know how to use it. Next, "You must be a real user. When getting staff to start using these sites I encouraged them to forget about the client side of things. I simply asked that they vote for what they found interesting whether it be fashion, cars or music and then add content submitters as friends if they wanted to read articles on the same subjects." So whatever social media platform you intend to use, become familiar with social media marketing, and be aware off the social media marketing pitfalls that are out there.

Many people with Internet based businesses are now utilizing companies that offer social media optimization. Efficient social media platforms generate genuine interest in the products you are trying to promote. Simply relying on your business site alone isn't enough any more. After all, potential clients need to know why they should choose you as opposed to your competitors.

Unfortunately, some companies that specialize in social media optimization are not nearly selective enough about the people they employ to promote their clients. They don't particularly care who provides the content as long as they can form a half-coherent sentence. It is very important to choose a social media optimization company that employs articulate people. Novice writers who don't provide good content can easily do your business reputation more harm than good.

Squidoo is a social media optimization tool. On the home page of the Squidoo site is the caption, "Everyone's an expert on something!" This slogan is clearly meant to entice unskilled people, which is ludicrous. First, not everybody has a field of expertise. Some people are truly ignorant. Second, just because somebody knows a great deal about a certain subject, that doesn't mean their command of the English language is proficient. My husband is well-informed, but he freely admits that couldn't write an eloquent blog post if his life depended on it. The Squidoo site also has a section entitled "How to Write a Powerful Article that Gets People to Read It." No decent social media optimization company should be employing people that need such advice.

To conclude, it is possible to avoid social media marketing pitfalls, but only if you use a good company with talented writers.

Votigo is an online social media platform company. It claims to help business owners connect to their customers via the use of user-generated content, branded social-networking communities like MySpace, competitions, and campaigns. This social media platform company does business with advertising agencies, PR firms and other clients. However, this online social media platform does not use a team of their own reporters to add content to the domain of the client. Instead, their focus is on promoting competitions on various social networking sites on behalf of the client. Why does this site use competitions? Because they think they're fun. Some of the current contests at this site include "the cutest dog," and "the funniest video." Votigo community members compete with each other to win these competitions by adding social media such as videos from YouTube. There doesn't seem to be any prize offered for winning these competitions, so there is no real incentive to enter other than being able to say "I won." Votigo doesn't appear to be very user friendly. In fact, their objectives are somewhat unclear. Additionally, the more bells and whistles the client adds, the greater Votigo's monthly fee. This online social media platform tries to be innovative and clever. Instead, it is just complicated.