“Just in the last year and a half, social media has become not just a component of our product marketing plan, but really the core component,” said Hession, currently senior manager of Autodesk’s AutoCAD product marketing.

“Pretty much for everything we do, we’re looking at, ‘How can we make this work for social?’”

Millions of people worldwide use AutoCAD software to design everything from sunglasses to skyscrapers. If there’s any question that a B2B software company can market effectively with Facebook, look no further than the AutoCAD team.

The firm Nikken Sekkei used AutoCAD to design the Tokyo Sky Tree.

The AutoCAD Facebook page has become a new media channel of sorts, with largely live and on-demand video keeping fans very actively engaged.

Every day the AutoCAD group connects directly with its audience on Facebook, bringing them high-value educational video, tech tips, fun quizzes and reality TV–style segments. At the start of 2011, the company had 120,000 fans. Now it has reached 652,000.

But beyond those “Likes,” the company garners an impressive level of engagement. On average, fans spend more than 20 minutes watching AutoCAD “Facecasts.”

“In Internet time, that’s an eternity,” Hession said.

Here’s how the AutoCAD team attracts and keeps fans with interactive, two-way content.

Facebook: The Perfect Medium

For those who design physical structures and objects, AutoCAD is an undisputed leader worldwide. Chances are something you touched today—from your car to the road you drove on—was designed using their software.

Though not every B2B organization is a fit for Facebook, two traits of the software’s target audience make Facebook just the right marketing medium for AutoCAD.

1. 18- to 24-year-olds, in design school or in their first jobs, are overwhelmingly on Facebook.
2. Facebook provides a place to connect directly with this young audience across the globe. AutoCAD is used by designers in hundreds of countries.

Two years ago, the AutoCAD team created a fan page and started populating it with informative and entertaining content designed to encourage two-way interaction.

Fans answered a recent tech quiz for the chance to win sunglasses.

A Sense of Family With Facecasts

The company started what they call Facecasts, live presentations on Facebook by AutoCAD product specialists on different aspects of the software. Using the Livestream plugin, product specialists spend about 15 minutes on a different topic each time and take questions afterward.

Unlike YouTube posting, Facecasts enable valuable back-and-forth with the audience.

“The nice thing about Livestream is you can actually have a discussion,” Hession said. “For our Facebook fans, we’ve found it to be something that helps them feel part of the family.”

Facecasts, streamed live with Livestream, draw big attendance.

Since last spring, the AutoCAD team has run 15-20 Facecasts, drawing around 25,000 viewers so far to the live and then recorded sessions. In their book, that’s hugely successful.

Autodesk University—250 Sessions on Facebook

Every year, about 8,000 designers from around the world descend on Las Vegas for the annual user group conference, called Autodesk University. But not all of the company’s global audience can make it to Vegas.

This year, the company brought 250 sessions—about one-third of all presentations—straight from the event to its Facebook fans. Autodesk used a custom-built app to allow customers to access the sessions on its fan page, while eight sessions were broadcast live.

“Our goal was to bring the energy, excitement and inspirational aspects of Autodesk University to our Facebook friends,” Hession said.

Autodesk also set up a broadcast booth in the middle of the show floor with a backdrop that made guests feel as if they were stepping into Facebook. Over the three days, broadcasts featured customer stories and insight from Autodesk executives.

The broadcast booth at Autodesk University brought video via Facebook to the company's thousands of fans unable to attend the live event.

A Big Step: First Software Launch on Facebook

With Facebook firmly planted as a major marketing staple, the AutoCAD team took a big step this past summer. The group officially launched its new AutoCAD for Mac software right on its Facebook page.

But ahead of the launch, the company spent half a year building the fan base through engaging broadcasts and other content, and with very targeted Facebook advertising. By launch time, the AutoCAD group had added a few hundred thousand new fans, many from developing markets like the Philippines and India.

“Some of the folks in those countries, they’re starved for some good AutoCAD tutorials, training and access to folks on the AutoCAD team,” Hession said. “Facebook marketing gives us a direct connection with these folks.”

Also prior to the launch, the AutoCAD team engaged fans to help crowdsource details of the launch, asking them to co-design the launch announcement and to help decide the when, who and how of the event.

Fans voted on the AutoCAD person they wanted to host the Mac launch.

An event-specific AutoCAD profile image brought awareness of the launch.

On August 16, the actual announcement was broadcast live on Facebook with a Q and A session following. About 850 people attended the live announcement with another 2,200 catching the recording, just on the first day.

Hession, far right, and the production team direct the Mac launch.

The format also allowed customers (for the first time in a launch event) to interact directly with the launch team through Facebook comments. In the past, Autodesk launches were via traditional webinar.

Beyond fan engagement, the software gained widespread exposure from 76 blog posts, with nearly all of those bloggers watching the Livestream.

“We were thrilled at the reaction to this social launch,” Hession said. “We can do this fairly inexpensively. We didn’t have a big budget, so it worked out great.”

Fun questions caught fans' attention and brought in 235 comments.

Technology Makeover—Office Edition

Facebook continues inspiring creative video content. In December, Autodesk and Lenovo aired the first “Technology Makeover,” a series of five short episodes where the firm Alan Mascord Design Associates received a full tech makeover.

The segments took an HGTV-style approach with a show host, “prize van” and surprise visit to the design firm.

Each episode runs 2 to 5 minutes, and is also available on the AutoCAD YouTube page. Facebook fans loved the series, with the first episode drawing 1,944 likes, 94 comments and 326 shares.

The first episode of the Technology Makeovers was a success.

With the success of the first makeover series, Autodesk plans to roll out a Facebook contest to find the next candidate, using a voting app from Votigo.

Engaging Posts, Every Day

Facebook broadcast segments are the anchor content for the software’s fans, but the AutoCAD team peppers in regular text-based tips, quizzes and polls that keep customers involved. The key: be interesting, relevant and regular with content.

Well-crafted customer stories educate and entertain.

While the AutoCAD team does count engagement levels in the form of Likes, comments, shares, views and questions, Hession and the company mainly see their efforts as critical brand-building that’s tough to truly measure. For them, talking directly to customers is gold.

“For me, it’s ‘How can we have a direct communication with our customers?’” Hession said.

“Our little tagline internally is, ‘personal communication on a volume scale.’ People are seeing their updates from AutoCAD between updates from Aunt Jenny and their best friend. It brings a sense of the personal to your communications and marketing.”

What do you think? How has Facebook “broadcasting” affected your marketing? Do you plan to do more in 2012? Leave your questions and comments in the box below.

Looking for some ideas to simplify your content creation process?

What follows are 26 tips, from A-Z, to help you create optimal blog posts every time you sit down to write.

#1: Anatomically Correct

A blog post contains several areas that require our attention and care. Pamela Seiple refers to six parts of the anatomy of a lead-generating blog post:

• Eye-catching title
• In-text links to landing pages
• Sidebar/banner calls to action
• Social sharing buttons
• Call to action at the bottom
• Relevancy—making sure the post is relevant from top to bottom

Parts of the blog anatomy.

Example of more anatomical parts to include in your blog posts.

#2: Blogging Platform

By knowing the ins and outs of your blogging platform, you’ll ensure that your posts look as good as they can. Take the time to master the visual editor (or raw HTML, if you prefer) so that you know how to format a post, insert an image and embed a video or podcast.

Whether you’re working in platforms such as WordPress, Tumblr or Posterous, it’s good to stay up to date on the features and new versions.

If you’re not comfortable with the more technical aspects of blogging, try to find someone who can be a resource for you to answer questions as they arise.

WordPress' editor where you can toggle between visual and HTML editing functions.

#3: Categories

Whether your new blog post is a stand-alone article or part of a series you’re writing, it should fit into your blog categories as well as your overall corporate content strategy. Meaning that you want to stay on topic and have your posts fit into the categories you’ve established.

For example, HubSpot has nine categories on their blog. Posts are written to fit in with each of these categories. Writing about category topics such as analytics, blogging, email marketing, HubSpot TV, etc., allows both readers and writers to stay focused on what they can expect to see on HubSpot’s blog.

When you choose your categories, ask yourself, do they make sense, and do they fit into the objectives of my business? Having clearly defined blog categories will help you continue generating meaningful content and topics for your blog.

Write posts that fit into your categories.

#4: Description

Most search engines will use a maximum of 160 characters for your post description on their results pages. If you don’t create a meta-description (defined as a “…concise summary of your page’s content”), a search engine will often take the first 160 characters it finds on your page instead.

Note too, that when you create a meta-description that is fewer than 160 characters, you’ll see the full description in the search engine. Otherwise it will be cut off.

An example of a meta-description created within the All-In-One SEO Pack plugin in WordPress.

An example of how a post's description appears in Google search results with and without the meta-description.

#5: Editorial Calendar

Bloggers find editorial calendars helpful for scheduling and organizing topics for posts. Some people use their calendars to track more elaborate details.

Michele Linn suggests using specific tabs in a spreadsheet to track info for each post such as: post date, author, tentative title, keywords, categories, tags, call to action and status. She says “By tracking more than topic and date it will help to make sure the key elements you need for SEO, digital optimization and conversion are accounted for.”

Download a sample editorial calendar worksheet.

An example of a template for a master editorial calendar as shown by Michele Linn.

#6: Fine-Tune and Revise

Like other forms of writing, a blog post is rarely completed in one draft. Many writers find it helpful to take a post through several revisions and fine-tune the post as you go along. Check grammar, spelling and punctuation, and make certain that all of your links are working.

#7: Guidelines for Writing for Search Engines

By following a few tips and best practices, you can increase the chance that your blog post will be found by search engines—by Google in particular.

The State University of New York at Plattsburgh offers these helpful writing tips:

• Google likes text
• Google likes formatting
• Google likes freshness
• Google likes accessibility
• Google likes outbound hyperlinks
• Googlebot isn’t psychic, so remember to link your pages
• Google likes you to tell it where you are
• Google likes experts

#8: Headings

Joost de Valk offers some good suggestions regarding blog headings. He writes, “The heading structure of your pages is one of the very important aspects of on-page SEO. It defines which parts of your content are important, and how they’re interconnected. Because they have different goals, a single post needs another heading structure than your blog’s homepage or your category archives.”

He offers five basic principles about heading structure:

• The most important heading on the page should be the H1
• There is usually only one H1 on any page
• Subheadings should be H2s, sub-subheadings should be H3s, etc.
• Each heading should contain valuable keywords; if not, it’s a wasted heading
• For longer pieces of content, a heading is what helps a reader skip to the parts that he/she finds interesting

Headings should contain valuable keywords.

#9: Images

Blog posts are made up of more than words and headings.

Judy Dunn recommends five ways the right photo can increase readership and blog views:

• Convey the overall feeling or emotion of your post
• Illustrate a metaphor or analogy that is part of your main idea
• Evoke surprise or curiosity
• Complement your headline
• Make your reader smile

Judy points out too that readers are visual learners and images can help people take in and retain information better.

#10: Journalistic Approach

Bloggers can learn a lot from traditional journalists and the ways that they approach their news stories.

Mickie Kennedy offers five things that bloggers can learn from journalists:

• Get your facts straight
• Trust has to be earned
• Give credit to your sources
• The inverted pyramid works (basic overview in first paragraph and then delve into more details in subsequent paragraphs)
• Editing and proofreading are essential

As shown on Wikipedia.org

#11: Killer SEO and Blog Design

Cyrus Shepard makes an important case for having a beautiful blog. He says, “…the overall design of your site is the first thing visitors see and it significantly influences bounce rate, page views and conversions.”

Cyrus suggests that certain elements on the page will add to a blog’s success:

• Search box
• RSS feed
• Breadcrumbs (helping users navigate),
• Flat site architecture by minimizing the number of clicks it takes to reach your content
• Images
• Keep your best content above the fold
• Link to your best content
• Don’t overdo links
• Watch ad space
• Encourage comments
• Add sharing buttons
• Test the blog for speed
• Check your blog in different browsers
• Pick a powerhouse blogging platform (e.g., WordPress, Posterous, Tumblr)

For a resource that will help remind you of these killer SEO suggestions, check out Cyrus’ infographic, Blog Design for Killer Search Engine Optimization.

#12: Lists

Lists have become a very popular type of blog post.

Nate Riggs offers three types for bloggers to consider: brief, detailed and hybrid lists.

The brief list has little description but can entice readers to bookmark the post to use the list as a resource down the road or to share it across their own networks.

In a detailed list, each bullet is a complete thought and serves as a good way to communicate complex information.

The hybrid list combines the elements of short and detailed lists, often with descriptive narratives or explanations in paragraphs between the actual lists.

Nate’s post has a lot of useful information about lists as a powerful content marketing tactic and is a good example of a hybrid list.

#13: Metrics for Blogging

Magdalena Georgieva identifies five metrics to keep an eye on to know how your blogging is going: visitors, leads, subscribers, inbound links and social media shares.

As Magdalena says, “Measure the performance of your business blog regularly to identify weaknesses in the content you’re producing, what topics your audience truly cares about, and what blogging tactics work for you.”

When you find topics and approaches that work particularly well, try to replicate those efforts and be willing to let go of features that aren’t performing well. Magdalena recommends looking at your five most successful blog posts and asking, “What do they have in common?”

#14: Names, Titles and Bio

Not only are readers interested in the content in your blog post, they also want to know who wrote the post and their role at your organization.

Sometimes you’ll come across a thoroughly researched and well-written post only to find an attribution of “admin.” Even if the blog is only written by you and you’re the administrator of the blog, be sure to include your name, title and a way for readers to contact you.

#15: Original vs. Curated Content

The type of post you write can contain completely original content or can consist of content that you’ve curated.

Pamela Seiple addresses the issue of curated content and makes an important point when she says, “There’s a misconception among marketers that curated content is lazy and unoriginal, but we think it’s the complete opposite. It takes time and careful evaluation to create quality curated content and the result is oftentimes a very valuable piece of content that helps people seeking information on a given topic to cut through the clutter on the web and save time.”

The 26 tips series here on Social Media Examiner is an example of curated posts, pulling in the expertise of others who have written on the topic. As a curator of this kind of post, I love the journey of the research and find it especially rewarding to see the content pulled together in a way that hadn’t been previously available. Curated posts can be incredibly gratifying!

#16: Publish and Promote

Kristi Hines speaks about the publishing and promoting stages of creating a successful blog post. Kristi says that one thing you want to do during the publishing stage is to ensure that your post has some kind of call to action. “Think about what you want people to do once they’ve read the post….”

Promoting a blog post can involve a fair amount of thought and strategy, as you’ll see from Kristi’s approach. She has a different plan in place for “averagely awesome posts, awesome posts and killer awesome posts.”

What differs for the three types of posts is how many social networks she shares the posts with, whether she includes the post in her writing portfolio and whether it’s included in her custom RSS feed or utilizes blog commenting promotion and direct messaging partners in social media to see if they’ll help spread the word.

Kristi describes promotion as taking from a few minutes to a few hours, and recommends taking the time to build a good foundation before you expect to execute a successful blog promotion.

#17: Questions

What are you going to write about post after post, week after week, year after year? Sometimes thinking about content for your blog can seem daunting.

Lee Odden offers a great piece of advice: “One particularly effective way to get content ideas for blogging comes from reviewing web analytics for the kinds of questions people type into search engines like Google or Bing that deliver visitors.”

In one example, Lee said that he noticed that numerous visitors each month were typing in the question “What does a community manger do?” and search engines were sending them to one of his posts about that topic. He used it as an opportunity to explore other related questions about social community managers and providing content in the form of answers.

What questions are your web visitors asking before they arrive on your pages? How can you maximize your content to answer readers’ questions?

#18: Research

Well-researched blog posts can differentiate your content from your competitors’. Being known as a go-to source in your industry will help make your blog stand out. Where do you go to research posts?

I find that utilizing a variety of sources helps me gather the information I’m seeking.

For example, while I can often find a lot of useful content via web-based searches, sometimes there’s nothing like a visit to the library or a bookstore where I often will discover a helpful book on the shelf that I wouldn’t have known existed if I hadn’t been standing there physically eyeballing them.

Oli Gardner makes a good case for using social media research for your blog posts. He suggests ten social media research strategies:

• StumbleUpon
• Infographics
• Twitter real-time searches
• Facebook events
• Experts who are using LinkedIn
• Uncovering quotes with Delicious
• Letting users tell you within the comments section of your blog and others
• Creating roundup mega-lists with Delicious and StumbleUpon
• Apps on Facebook
• Delicious and Google Marketplace
• YouTube and the UrbanDictionary

#19: Stand Out

When you’ve been blogging in a competitive marketplace for a while, chances are good that you’ll see other bloggers writing on topics similar to yours. It doesn’t mean that you have to stay away from the topic completely; rather you can use it as an opportunity to see what worked and didn’t work in their post and write yours in a way that will help you to stand out in the topic area.

By reading the comments on similar blog posts, you will get a great view of what questions and thoughts people had after reading the post and you can take a slightly different angle by making sure you cover those areas in your article.

#20: Title

How important is the title of your blog post? Simply put, very important!

Brian Clark writes that the title is the first, and perhaps only, impression you make on a prospective reader.

He says, “Without a headline or post title that turns a browser into a reader, the rest of your words may as well not even exist.

But a headline can do more than simply grab attention. A great headline can also communicate a full message to its intended audience, and it absolutely must lure the reader into your body text.”

An example of an eye-catching title from copyblogger.com.

#21: User-Centered Content

Possibly one of the worst mistakes a blog post can make is missing the mark of its readers, forgetting who they are and their needs and interests.

Georgy Cohen goes as far as to say that content can serve as customer service and that to be helpful, content should be user-focused (asking what our users’ problems and priorities are), communicated clearly and presented in succinct language.

#22: Valuable Content

In the perfect blogging world, creating valuable content would be at the top of every blogger’s list for their post objectives.

While our definitions about valuable content may vary, Ahava Leibtag has created a very helpful step-by-step checklist that reminds us to ask five questions:

• Can the user find the content
• Can the user read the content
• Can the user understand the content
• Will the user want to take action
• Will the user share the content

She suggests:

• Findable content includes: an H1 tag; at least two H2 tags; metadata including title, descriptors and keywords; links to other related content; alt tags for images.
• Readable content includes: an inverted-pyramid writing style, chunking, bullets, numbered lists, following the style guide.
• Understandable content includes: an appropriate content type (text, video), indication that you considered the users’ persona, context, respect for the users’ reading level, articulating an old idea in a new way.
• Actionable content includes: a call to action, a place to comment, an invitation to share, links to related content, a direct summary of what to do.
• Shareable content includes: something to provoke an emotional response, a reason to share, a request to share, an easy way to share, personalization.

Download the checklist for future reference.

Ahava Leibtag's Valuable Content Checklist.

#23: Word Count

How many words should you have in your blog post? Some blogs have set parameters for optimal length and put a value on whether a post is short or long.

Corey Eridon has an interesting perspective on word count and suggests that focusing on blog word count might not be as important as you think it is. “Some topics take 100 words to explain, some take 1,000, and that’s okay.”

Corey suggests that writers focus instead on whether posts are optimized for mobile, use effective formatting, communicate in a clear manner and that outlining the points you want to cover may ultimately be a better use of your time and energy.

If you’re restricted to shorter posts by the parameters set up in advance for your blog, then you could also follow Corey’s advice to link to longer-form content you’ve developed around the topic.

Bottom line: Don’t let the quantity of words dictate the quality of your post.

#24: (E)xcerpt

On the heels of our discussion about blog word count, a shorter blog post can also be an excerpt or summary of what readers will find in your longer-form content—e.g., eBook or white paper—but it needn’t be restricted to words.

You can also use an excerpt of the transcript or a brief description to demonstrate what information the users will learn if they watch your video or listen to your podcast.

Mike Stelzner provides great excerpts from his expert interviews on Social Media Examiner.

#25: Your Story

Readers like to get to know how writers tick and often appreciate hearing a few personal details and insights from the person who has taken them on a journey through a post. While business blogs shouldn’t be thought of as personal journal entries, you can tell your readers a little bit about how you operate.

For example, I stated above that writing curated posts like the 26 tips series here on Social Media Examiner is one of my favorite types of posts to write. (Truth be told, curated posts are also some of my favorite types to read.)

In the description of “research” above, I also shared how research is one of my favorite parts of blogging and how I enjoy researching both online and offline by doing the footwork of visiting libraries and bookstores in search of materials.

What parts of yourself are you willing and able to share with your readers?

#26: Zone for Writing

Ideas for blog posts come at all times—when you’re driving in your car, sitting at your desk, and yes, even in the middle of the night!

Chances are good though that the actual writing of the post will happen in multiple drafts and revisions, and depending on how you work, it may take place over a period of days.

What can be helpful is to create a time and place where you can get into the zone for writing and allow yourself to go with it, with as few interruptions as possible.

What do you think? How do you keep your blog posts consistent and dynamic? What tips would you add? Leave your questions and comments in the box below.

Today, she runs her own rapidly growing destination, drawing nearly three million page views every month.

Successful professional bloggers aren’t hard to find, but a few things are remarkable about White’s success:

1. She writes a do-it-yourself carpentry blog. With White’s help, droves of women are discovering they can build beautiful, stylish things.
2. She started with dial-up Internet and does it all from her home in the Alaskan interior (where record-smashing temps recently hit -40° F).
3. White succeeded accidentally. She never expected that simply sharing what she loves could support her entire family.

This self-described “homemaker” has an innate knack not only for woodworking but for business as well.

Turns out, this blog Cinderella tale is all about sharing your personal story. Oh, and relentless blogging.

Do-it-yourselfers find hundreds of easy – and free – building plans on White's site.

Three Months – One Million Page Views

Delta Junction, Alaska, population around 1000, is about 100 miles southeast of Fairbanks – and more than 2000 miles from the nearest Pottery Barn.

Delta Junction, Alaska, population ~1000.

But that’s not a problem for Ana White, who grew up in this Alaskan interior making forts and other projects from salvaged wood and nails. After she and her husband painstakingly hand-built their home, she relied on her handy skills to furnish the place and make extra money selling her furniture.

But White really wanted to share her passion for woodworking with others. In October 2009, while reading a friend’s blog, she clicked “Get Your Own Free Blog” on Blogger.

She started by posting her carpentry plans for a farmhouse bed, the same one she made for her own home. Then, every single day, this stay-at-home mom with an infant in tow blogged more designs for items like dining tables, shelves and storage cabinets, adding up to nearly 400 posts that first year.

Without White doing anything else, the blog hit one million page views in just three months, and then reached more than one million page views every month following. She’d struck a chord with an audience eager to furnish their homes at a fraction of retail prices.

Fortunately, those readers proudly told their friends about their handiwork.

“This is a one-woman show from remote Alaska with no experience, no connections, no network,” White says. “I’ve just got a real passion for what I do and a huge desire to share it.”

What she also has is her story, which she shares on her blog and in many of her posts. Readers – many like her – get to know about her husband, daughter, extended family, home, town and weather.

High-Value Content – Always Free

Today, White’s site, “Ana White Homemaker,” has more than 500 plans. Despite suggestions to charge for plans, she’s insistent on keeping them free.

“I needed to be able to provide plans for free so women could look at it and it would create confidence in them that ‘I can build this’,” she said. “I knew that for me, as a mom with a single income, a really limited income, at home all day, it needed to be free because I myself couldn’t have afforded to pay $10 a plan.”

All 500-plus designs on White's site are free for readers.

But she stresses “free” content doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take the business seriously. From the start, she committed to frequent blogging and continues to post new plans a few times a week. With so many audience photos coming in, she started a brag blog dedicated to featuring fans’ work.

White started a second brag blog just for readers to share their work.

Facebook: Fans Helping Fans

Blogging alone was enough to grow the site at a nice clip. The addition of a Facebook page increased traffic, but has largely become a community for her fans to share their work and help each other.

With a base of more than 50,000 fans, those posting questions know they will get an answer from other fans or White herself. The audience – and even White – learns from those responses.

Facebook fans share their handiwork.

Fans enthusiastically help each other with tricky building questions.

White stresses that she’s specifically chosen to allow fan postings to be publicly viewable, while many other fan sites do not.

“Ninety to ninety-five percent of the content on my Facebook page is from my readership,” she says. “What you’re seeing is not filtered. I feel like it should be an open and transparent forum where people can ask questions and post.”

The Payoff: Making a Living and a Life

White admits the first year was tough work, with long days of writing and making designs, photographing projects and blogging relentlessly while caring for her daughter.

In year two, the payoff came. The site’s high volume gave White the credentials to secure marquee advertisers like Lowe’s and other retailers appealing to women. Now, the site supports her family, with extra to invest in growing the business.

The momentum continued, with her plans appearing in numerous home magazines (without sending a single pitch letter), the chance to contribute designs for HGTV.com and now a book deal from Random House.

All press has come to White without a single pitch letter.

 Readers Help Design the “Momplex”

White recently added a whole new dimension to her blog and story with the “Momplex” project. Last summer, she and her husband started building a duplex for both of their mothers and now are letting readers decide much of the home’s design.

Sharing progress of the duplex White and her husband are building for her mom and mother-in-law, the "Momplex," adds to White's story and gets readers involved.

Readers might not want to check in daily for furniture plans, but they may want to see updates on the Momplex.

When White asked readers to weigh in on which kitchen design they preferred, more than 1300 readers indicated their preferences by “liking” one of the Momplex kitchen mockups.

More than 1300 fans voted on the Momplex kitchen design.

“My community is full of really smart people, so we’re actually getting a better product with their input,” she says. “It’s helped us make a better Momplex.”

Pinterest: The Game-Changer

Now in its third year, White recently discovered an interesting change in her site’s stats. Just three months after showing up as a referring site, Pinterest has taken over as the number-one source of traffic to her blog.

“Google, Facebook and direct traffic – none of those are the top referrers. Six thousand unique visitors a day are now coming from Pinterest. It’s dominating my traffic,” she says.

Pinterest lets members “pin” images of their favorite things to virtual pinboards. Their followers see those pins and can choose to “Like” or “Repin” those images to their boards. Highly visual, Pinterest works perfectly with the photos on White’s carpentry blog.

Fans of White's designs enthusiastically "pin" images on their Pinterest boards.

She considers Pinterest a potential “game-changer” in her industry, with extremely viral person-to-person sharing. As a membership-only site, that traffic is also likely of higher quality than from other sources, she says.

As for encouraging “pinning,” White added a “Love this? Pin it right now!” button on all pages of her blog. She also gives readers photography tips to enhance the quality of their photos, which in turn helps increase pins.

White encourages "pinning" with a button on every page of her site.

While White has her own pinboards on Pinterest, she rarely pins her own content, preferring to let readers share freely and naturally what they like.

Reader-Inspired Content

White’s content model has also changed since she began. Though initially she blogged all her own ideas, now nearly all new design ideas come from readers. A fan will snap a pic of an antique or something in a catalog and post it to Facebook, asking if White will design plans for it.

“I look at myself as a servant to my readers. What do you want me to design a plan for? And then we go from there,” she says.

Nearly all of White's new designs now come from reader suggestions.

Not content to just sit back and rest on her handcrafted farmhouse bed, White continuously looks ahead to the next thing.

“If you’re on the Internet, your business goals and your business plan can change overnight,” she says. “You always have to be on your toes and be aware of technology emerging and be willing to adapt to your readers.”

What do you think? Is what you provide visual? How are you tapping into new social media avenues like Pinterest? Leave your questions and comments in the box below.

Joe shares the story behind the Content Marketing Institute and explains why content marketing is not a fad and is here to stay.

You’ll also learn how a multi-author blog can help your business and what you need to know to develop one.

Be sure to check out the takeaways below after you watch the video.

Here are some of the things you’ll learn in this video:

• Why there will always be stories to be told
• How a multi-author blog helps to create community
• How to recruit authors for a multi-author blog
• Why it’s important to connect with experts
• Why it’s best to think about giving without thinking of what you want to get back
• What makes for great content
• Understand the connection between content and social media
• Why you need to figure out your content mission
• Why you need to focus on building great content and then adding a social sharing strategy
• Why there’s value in physical events

Connect with Joe on Twitter @junta42 and check out the Content Marketing Institute.

How does your business use content marketing? Do you have any content marketing tips to share? Please leave your comments below.

Marcus shares the content strategy he used to increase sales for his pool business.  He shows the connection between your blog content and your business growth.

You’ll also discover why content is the soul of your business and is the best sales tool you own.

Be sure to check out the takeaways below after you watch the video.

Here are some of the things you’ll learn in this video:

• How to extend your reach with content
• Why you should blog about the cost of your products and services
• How to convert your content into sales
• How content makes your customers “sales-ready”
• Why you need to blog about the problems customers have with what you sell
  
• Why you need to adopt a different approach as a content marketer
• Why story is important for your business

Connect with Marcus on Twitter @TheSalesLion and check out his blog: The Sales Lion.

Do you blog about the problems your customers have with your products? How do you use content to make sales? Please leave your comments below.

Even the most prolific writers can find themselves with a serious case of “blogger’s block.”

When blogger’s block strikes, some basic keyword research can provide a fresh batch of blog post ideas.

A series of posts written around related keywords can also look good in the eyes of the search engines or prospects.

Using Keyword Tools to Brainstorm Blog Post Topics

#1: Google Related Searches

There are a number of tools that can uncover related keywords and ideas for possible blog topics.

One of the first and easiest places to start is on the Google home page. Start by searching for a phrase that you’d like your blog to rank in on search engines.

After conducting the search, click on “More search tools” in the left column and then “Related searches.” Google will return a list of related searches for the keyword or phrase for which you just searched.

Opening Related Searches on Google provides a list of possible blog post ideas.

For example, let’s say I wanted to write about blogging and needed blog post ideas. I would start by searching Google for “blog” and looking at the related searches. As you can see in the image above, related searches for the term “blog” include terms and phrases such as “free blog,” “create blog,” “blog software,” “WordPress,” and “Technorati.”

Each one of these terms could be turned into blog posts with titles such as:

• Five of the Best Places to Start a Free Blog
• Three Things You Must Do to Create a Successful Blog Post
• Why I Like WordPress
• How to Get Your Blog Post Listed in Technorati

#2: Google AdWords Keyword Tool

The Google AdWords Keyword Tool is another place to brainstorm topics for your next blog post. A search on Google AdWords will bring up a much bigger list of search terms and will also provide insight into how often the term is searched and the competition for the keyword or phrase.

For example, a search for the phrase “how to blog” brings up phrases such as “YouTube blog,” “funny blog” and “blog calendar.” All three have a high monthly search volume yet low competition for the keyword. Blog post titles using these keywords might include:

• How to Create a YouTube Blog Post
• Five Things to Consider When Writing a Funny Blog Post
• Schedule Your Posts With a Blog Calendar

Google AdWords returns a list of related search terms that can be used to generate blog post topics.

#3: Wordtracker’s Keyword Questions

Wordtracker’s Keyword Questions is a powerful tool designed to help with content brainstorming. Enter a keyword and Wordtracker returns a list of 100 questions asked by search engine users that include the keyword.

For this example, let’s say that a realtor is trying to come up with a list of possible blog post ideas. Entering the term “Home” into Wordtracker’s Keyword Questions brings up a list of possible blog topics including:

• “How leasing a car affects qualifying for a home mortgage”
• “Home security systems and which one is the best one”
• “How do I calculate the value of my home”
• “Do it yourself home remodeling”

The search above also provides a number of topics not related to real estate to sort through such as “Can I make holy water at home or do I have to go to a church,” but who knows, there might be an interesting blog post in there somewhere. When it comes to writing blog posts, don’t be afraid to think outside the box.

Wordtracker provides actual questions asked by users searching their search engines. Many of these can be directly used as the title of a blog post.

Along with questions, Wordtracker Keyword also offers search results based on keyword connections, random trigger words and the top searched keywords. Each of these options pairs your keyword with various other search terms and provides results based on actual searches conducted through Wordtracker’s partner search engines. The results can provide a wide range of blog post ideas and topics you may not have considered.

#4: Google Analytics (or Other Traffic Analytics Program)

Analyzing the incoming traffic to a blog can provide a number of ideas for blog posts and highlight the opportunity to build upon popular posts and search terms that are bringing traffic to a site.

If our realtor notices that searches for a particular neighborhood are driving traffic to her site, she can capitalize on the opportunity by writing a series of posts about community resources and the real estate market in the neighborhood.

If you discover that an unusual or unexpected keyword is driving traffic, the brainstorming methods above can help unlock potential blog posts related to the keyword.

Google Wonder Wheels

Although Google has taken down their Wonder Wheels tool, I have to mention it because it was such a great brainstorming tool and comments in the Google help forum have left the door open (if ever so slightly) for its return.

Wonder Wheels provided a graphic display of related terms that could be clicked and searched in an ever-growing web of related keywords. As I wrote in an earlier post on Social Media Examiner, it not only provided a great brainstorming tool for writing blog posts, it also gave insight into the way Google connects keywords.

Hopefully Google will find it in their wisdom to bring it back in the near future because I personally feel that it blew the above tools out of the water.

Create a Resource

When done well, a series of posts written around keywords can give your blog a nice jump in the search engines. Always remember, though, focus on content first and let the keywords follow.

By providing a resource of topically related articles, you create a reason for others to link to your site and quality incoming links are key to top search engine rankings.

What do you think? Leave your questions and comments in the box below.

What’s New This Week?

YouTube Releases YouTube Analytics: YouTube Analytics now gives you a quick overview and more detailed reports for tracking your audience building and retention statistics.  Be sure to check out the updated YouTube Creator Playbook to learn how to take full advantage of the new YouTube Analytics features.

Use the new Analytics to build and engage with bigger audiences, earn more money and make better videos.

YouTube Reaches 20 Billion Video Views per Month: The latest comScore statistics for online video rankings show Google-owned YouTube had a record 20 billion video views in October 2011.

The Google Sites are "driven primarily by video viewing at YouTube.com."

The New Google Bar Incorporates Google+ Features: Note how this new toolbar enables you to navigate quickly among Google’s services, as well as share the right stuff with the right people easily on Google+. This means marketers will probably notice more Google+ listings in Google search results.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSIMpFfNLEA

SlideShare Redesigns Their Presentation Pages and Names Them “Bigfoot”: SlideShare presentation pages are cleaner and increase the footprint size of your presentations.  You can now discover presentations related to what you’re viewing and it’s easier to share with your friends on SlideShare, Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn.

"Someone on the team nicknamed the new design 'Bigfoot' and the name stuck!"

Foursquare Adds a “Save to Foursquare” Bookmarklet: Use this new Save button on any page on the Internet to add it to your Foursquare list, and Foursquare will remind you about it the next time you’re nearby and searching for a recommendation in Explore mode.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhRheQ_vBeQ

Here are a few interesting infographics worth noting:

What Is Inbound Marketing:

Check out the Inbound Marketing Ecosystem!

Social Media Tactics in B2B Marketing:

Notice how Pardot's study show LinkedIn as the best source of social media lead generation for B2B marketers.

SlideShare: The Quiet Giant of Content Marketing:

And don’t miss this:

Social Media Examiner presents Small Business Success Summit 2011! (online conference)

Join 25 experts, including including John Jantsch (author, Duct Tape Marketing), Anita Campbell (founder, Small Business Trends), Michael Stelzner (founder, Social Media Examiner and author, Launch), Mari Smith (co-author, Facebook Marketing), Jesse Stay (author, Google+ for Dummies), Hollis Thomases (author, Twitter Marketing), David Siteman Garland (founder, “The Rise to the Top” and author, Faster, Smarter, Cheaper), Joe Pulizzi (founder, Content Marketing Institute and co-author, Get Content, Get Customers), Brian Clark (founder, Copyblogger Media), Lee Odden (founder, TopRank Online Marketing), Ramon Ray (founder, Small Biz Technology and author, Technology Solutions for Growing Businesses) and Lewis Howes (co-author, LinkedWorking)—just to mention a few (scroll down to see full list)!

Go here to learn more.

What social media news caught your interest this week? Please share your comments below.

Do you have a pretty nice fan base, but you’re struggling to come up with ideas to engage them on a daily basis?

One proven approach is to help your fans.

Here are 3 techniques used by some of the most successful Facebook pages. Try them on your page to see how your fans respond!

#1: Become a resource

Despite the level of connection you think you have with your fans on Facebook, many still express pleasant surprise when you respond to them personally on the social network.

Use fan names when you can, and respond one-on-one to the comments they make. This proves to fans you are listening and are receptive to their commentary and feedback, making it more likely that they will post in the future.

Moreover, invite conversation by asking your fans’ opinions on topics, or asking them to tell you what sorts of content they’d appreciate.

Everybody likes being asked, and fans feel extra-appreciated when you fulfill these desires—so don’t ask them for input you never intend to use or incorporate.

In the example below, Time Warner Cable demonstrates an inconsistent response strategy toward different users. While “Sharon” got her request attended to by the page administrator, “Regina” reports frustration that her posts are being removed instead of replied to, indicating that she had posted additional comments earlier than the final post visible in the thread.

If your brand strategy is to be a resource to all fans, it is important that you treat all fan comments in the same way by responding to all of them, no matter the sentiment.

In the responses to this status update by Time Warner Cable, several fans voice concerns with the company, but only one gets a response. Seeing this, users like "Regina" become upset about being ignored and become even more vocal.

One example of this kind of open interaction strategy working very successfully is our own continued initiative to build out a Facebook fan page community of marketers, business owners and social media managers interested in sharing knowledge about social media (as well as Wildfire!).

We have found over time that our most engaging posts, which get the most feedback from our users, are consistently the ones where we invite people to post any question they have about social media or invite them to have their pages reviewed by social media professionals.

The key is to follow up (even for just an hour) with all of the questions and actually answer them. Because the promise to answer any question is not an empty promise, the users become confident that their questions can be answered and trust the brand for it.

An excellent example of a smaller business getting engagement right with great messaging strategies comes from the Pennsylvania Macaroni Company, an imported foods store in Pittsburgh.

As of this writing, the store had just under 1,100 fans. Their social media manager told me they regularly get over 1% engagement on their posts, a great figure for their size.

In this screenshot, we can see that the store's informal and kind-mannered one-on-one interactions with its fans help to grow a loyal and happy community.

#2: Offer your services, free

What is your brand known for? What would you like it to be known for? If you provide a product or a particular service like consulting or advisement, consider offering your fans a taste of it every once in a while for free!

According to eMarketer, the #1 reason users become fans of a brand on Facebook is to gain access to exclusive content, events or sales. Your brand can capitalize on this desire while leveraging the brand’s capabilities by giving users an occasional exclusive pass to experience the business, free.

Here are several examples of companies doing this on Facebook, to the delight of their users:

Rue La La, an online boutique of designer merchandise and clothing, knows many of its fans are in tune with fashion trends and enjoy thinking about design, clothing and style. As such, one of their most popular fan page “events” is a weekly invitation for fans to join a stylist on the page for an hour of live interaction.

Because typically most people don’t have access to a personal stylist or advice from one, Rue La La creates an environment where fans can happily expect this recurring event.

Fans can post any of their style questions, and the stylist will respond to all of them within the hour, right on the fan page, free.

We use this technique at Wildfire as well.

Every week, these invitations to post are the most consistently popular updates! Even the users who don’t get their pages reviewed that week leave feedback that they enjoy watching the advice for other fan pages, and that the learning experience is valuable.

Every week on the Wildfire fan page, users are offered the chance to get their fan pages reviewed by an expert for free.

#3: Make your fan page a complete knowledge hub

When brainstorming how to entice users to join and interact with your brand, the challenge is to come up with ways to encourage them to interact with the page continuously over time and prevent disengagement.

For brands that have a rich background or require a fair amount of user education, creating a fan page containing valuable resources and information that benefit the user is essential. The goal is to capture users with an initial promotion, and to keep them returning to your page for information even after the promotion is over.

An example of a page that achieved this goal is Webroot, a software company that distributes security applications and programs.

The initial user pull is the promotion Webroot has set up on its landing page. Users visit the Facebook page for a chance to win high-value prizes such as airline tickets, electronics and kitchen appliances.

Webroot created a powerful, resource-rich page about its products and services, including a tab with educational slide decks, a full customer support portal ("Ask Webroot"), an explanatory splash page about their mobile security products and even a collection of YouTube videos about the software.

Recognizing that its promotion would drive considerable traffic to its page, Webroot created a powerful, resource-rich page about its products and services, including a tab with educational slide decks, a full customer support portal (“Ask Webroot”), an explanatory splash page about their mobile security products, and even a collection of YouTube videos about the software.

Webroot has created a resource rich page for their fans and visitors on Facebook. Not only do they include a tab for a virtual agent that users can interact with to "Ask Webroot," but they also have a collection of product related videos in the "Videos" tab and information about how to start a free trial in a separate "Free Trial" tab.

As a result, users who visited Webroot’s page to participate in the promotion were also exposed to the page’s valuable content, which gave them a reason to return. In turn, Webroot created a full-service, user-friendly community through its Facebook page, a place where fans go to access information about the company.

Now that you’ve seen several examples of companies helping their fans help themselves, what’s the first approach you are planning to take with your fan page? Putting together a library of resources? Testing the waters by giving away some free services? I’d love to hear from you! Leave your questions and comments in the box below.

If you’re interested in learning how to capture audio, pictures and video with nothing but an iPhone, keep reading.

Multimedia Content With an iPhone?

This is what I’ve been doing with my TalkingWithTom project this year. I’ve been interviewing digital thought leaders and then sharing those video interviews once a week.

And I’m creating the ENTIRE BLOG using just an iPhone.

The best part of the deal is I’ve learned a lot about what an iPhone can and cannot do. Along the way, my iPhone has become one of my favorite blog content creation tools.

In fact, I’m now using it in ways I had never envisioned when I purchased it last year.

In this article I’ll share 5 tips and tricks that will help you use your iPhone for capturing audio, photographs and video.

The new iPhone4 has all-new 8MP camera and optics.

Audio—Your Secret Blogging Weapon

Since inception, the iPhone has come with a fine audio recording tool resident on the phone. Sure, there are lots of additional audio apps, but for a blogger’s needs, the basic Apple Voice Memo app works just fine.

The problem though is with the microphone. It’s just not that good. So my first two tips are about getting better sound.

#1: Small Directional iPhone Microphone

To ensure optimum audio, you need an external mic. For basic audio interviews where your intention is to use the entire iPhone like a microphone and point it at your interviewee while he or she speaks, pick up Brando Mini Directional mic.

This little gem is small, lightweight and perfect for conducting one-on-one interviews at conferences and meet-ups.

With this, you just pop it in, point it in the direction you want to record and go!

You’ll like this mic because it is small enough to comfortably carry in your pocket and then just snap it into to the headphone jack when you’re ready to record. Then just point the mic in the direction of your subject and start recording.

What you’ll get is audio that is much better in terms of volume and clarity. BUT—what I find is that it amps up ALL of the audio. So, while it is directional, you still need a pretty quiet place to record.

#2: Professional Microphone Adapter

If you want to the ability to record higher-quality audio in spaces that generate more noise (conferences/restaurants), you’ll need a professional-grade microphone. The problem is, the iPhone can’t accept regular microphones that use the standard 3.5mm jack.

To solve the iPhone’s microphone incompatibility problem, you’ll need to buy a KV Connection iPhone Microphone Adapter. It will run you about $20. With it, you can attach any microphone (that has a 3.5mm plug) to the iPhone—this includes wireless lavaliere microphones like the one I use for all of my stuff.

KV connection cable allows you to connect a standard microphone with a 3.5mm connector to the iPhone.

Photographs: Moving Beyond Instagram

Easily the biggest advancement in the iPhone4 was the camera. With the iPhone4, you can actually shoot pretty decent photographs and HD video. But if you really want to kick it up a notch you need a few extra toys.

#3: External iPhone Lenses

External camera lenses for iPhone can transform your standard phone photos into wide, up-close, super-zoomed and wonderfully warped wonders.

Invest in a few iPhone external lenses. I carry this set with me all the time. It contains fish-eye, macro, telephoto and wide-angle lenses.

With these lenses, you can create iPhone pics that don’t look like iPhone pics.

For instance, the wide-angle lens will easily add a few feet of image left and right, creating more of a 16:9 ratio vs. the more standard 4:3 ratio. This can be especially good if you’re shooting outdoor scenes, like for a travel blog or video, and you want a more cinematic effect.

The macro lens is great to shoot really small stuff up close or to create that “blown out background” effect.

And if you want to create some really off-the-charts–looking photos and videos, attach the fish-eye lens and get some cool effects.

But lenses can only take you so far.

#4: Photo Retouching Apps

My go-to app for on-phone retouching is Photogene. The app lets you crop, alter colors, reduce the “noise” in a photo and basically take a normal shot and make it look pretty darn cool.

So if you’re running a food, travel or hotel blog, where pictures really are worth a thousand words, you might want to consider exploring the entire list of photo retouching apps in the app store.

Picture shot using iPhone4, retouched/resized using Photogene.

Video: Are you the next Spielberg?

Probably my favorite use of the iPhone (at least for blog content creation) is the video capabilities of the phone. While Apple’s built-in video recording tool will give you basic trimming capabilities, you’ll have to spend a few bucks to bring the world of video editing to your phone.

For all of my videos, I’ve used iMovie. It’s easy to trim, split and edit clips. You can add a voice-over or soundtrack, even insert title slides (JPEGS) or in my case, sponsor slides, and apply titles and transitions—all on the phone.

With one click, you can make epic movie trailers and create beyond-amazing effects. It's your home video's big break.

Then you can render and publish directly to YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, CNNiReport (for which they even offer a video template for titles and such) or just send it to your camera roll to be imported to your computer.

If you’re a big Vimeo user, Vimeo came out with an editing app, but thus far, I’ve found it a bit buggy.

#5: Zoom During Video Recording

Lastly, if you are shooting in a place where you just can’t get good lighting, try picking up the Flare app which also gives you the ability to zoom while you record video (can’t do that in the iPhone’s native video app) as well as apply HDR effects, etc.

One of the many features is you can share full-quality videos to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr, Flickr and more.

Well that’s it… 5 simple tricks that will help you turn your iPhone into the multimedia production studio it was meant to be so you can have better blog content.

What do you think? Do you have any tips for using your iPhone to create better blog content? Leave your comments in the box below.

You’ve also seen her outstanding articles on Social Media Examiner pretty much since our inception, and she’s also the anchor of Social Media Examiner TV.

She now has a brand-new hot book out called, The New Relationship Marketing: How to Build a Large, Loyal, and Profitable Network Using the Social Web.

Catch the full interview (audio) at the end of this article.

Mike: Your new book is called The New Relationship Marketing, and I want to key in on the word “new.” What’s new about relationship marketing?

Mari: Well, first of all, the phrase relationship marketing was coined way back in the ’80s by a professor, and I have for 10 years—long before Facebook was even on the map—called myself a “relationship marketing specialist.” And I love that term because to me it transcends the medium. It’s all about people doing business with people.

What’s new is the social networking aspect and the fact that business is much more personal now. Everything is out in the open with the advent and popularity of social networks like Facebook and Twitter.

People are being much more open. Consumers are sharing vast amounts of information about themselves online, and as a savvy marketer, you can use that in creative and respectful ways to actually reach out and forge new relationships and deepen existing ones. Marketers can actually use online social technologies to create new relationships with prospects, customers and potential business partners.

Let me give you a couple of examples.

Using information that people are sharing openly and publicly about themselves, a friend of mine has a key contact with whom he really wants to do business. He looks at that person’s Facebook profile and finds out what some of his favorite movies are. Then he does a little bit of research, and he’ll go onto eBay and find a piece of a movie set from that particular person’s favorite movie, for example, and he sends it to him. He told me that he’s gotten so much business from it. It blows people away.

Here’s another quick example of utilizing online social technologies. One time I was flying up to Seattle from San Diego. My flight was at noon and I showed up an hour early. I got to the desk—I was flying Alaska Airlines—and they looked at me and said, “Oh, I’m terribly sorry, Ms. Smith, your flight has been delayed five hours.” I said, “What?! The flight is only three hours long!”

I’m not the type of person to post anything negative or derogatory. I’m not going to complain about a brand publicly like that, but I wanted to express that I wasn’t terribly happy. As it happened, I had forgotten to bring my iPhone charger with me, so I just put a little tweet out @AlaskaAir indicating I forgot my charger and: “Oh, bummer about the five-hour delay.” I didn’t think anything of it.

I go off to a quiet spot in the San Diego Airport and I begin to do some work on my computer. I’ve got Internet. I’m okay. I’m plugged in, I’m wired in—I can always do stuff. Forty-five minutes later, I hear this voice, “Hello there. Excuse me, are you Mari Smith? We have an iPhone charger for you.” I was absolutely gobsmacked!

Alaska Airline’s headquarters are up in Seattle, and their PR department spotted the tweet, called down to San Diego and said, “Hey, there’s this lady…” and they described me. “Look her up. She needs an iPhone charger.”

They really went the extra mile, and to me this is what the new relationship marketing is. You can take publicly available information to build a relationship with a prospect or existing customer. I will now go out of my way to fly Alaska Airlines because of their emphasis on really caring.

It didn’t stop there. They have sent me vouchers in the mail for Internet access on their planes and things like that.

Mike: That’s pretty cool. That reminds me of Peter Shankman from Help a Reporter Out. He recently tweeted Morton’s Steakhouse and said something like, “Landing at Newark Airport in five hours. I’d love a 21-ounce porterhouse.” He was just kidding, but when he got off the airplane and he was going over to the luggage claim, there was a guy in a tuxedo with a bag, and inside the bag was a 21-ounce porterhouse steak. Can you believe that? The guy said, “We got your tweet.”

I would imagine one of the take-home points here is that it doesn’t really matter what kind of business you’re in—on the business side of things, you can be watching for these opportunities to make a difference.

Can you share one or two of the softer skills that you think marketers need to develop in order to try to build relationships with “strangers” via new media?

Mari: The first skill, without a shadow of a doubt, is empathy.

I think there’s still a lot of fear around embracing new media: fear of exposure, fear of it being all-consuming and fear of privacy concerns. But also, there’s the technology fear of knowing what button to press. Those are technical. Those are more hard skills: “When I click ‘send,’ what happens?”

But underneath it all, there are also the soft skills. Soft skills are like people skills. People skills have never been more important than now because things can be taken out of context and misconstrued. You can say something in jest and someone takes it seriously, and so forth.

But the empathy part, especially, on Twitter where the messages are limited to 140 characters, it’s really easy to take things out of context. You have to train yourself and build that muscle to read between the lines and read what’s not being said.

Mike: Can you give us an example of a situation you’ve been in or that you’ve heard about where empathy helped build a relationship in a place that it didn’t seem plausible?

Mari: Off the top of my head, an example comes to mind which may be not quite in line with what you’re asking. But one time, somebody decided to put up a big blog post and start a meme with a hashtag. The hashtag was just #Iloveyou. This guy was really imploring people, whether they were a professional or a business or an individual, to just really go with this hashtag #Iloveyou.

For this one girl, it was literally the catalyst she needed to make this profound shift in her life. She read this blog post, she got caught up in the meme, and she really, really felt connected with people when she hadn’t been before.

And she shared that nine years before, her mother had died, and they were on bad terms. Her parting words were rather harsh, and she just kind of got shut down. She closed down her heart and didn’t really want to be friends with people. She saw this meme go by and it made such a profound difference to her that she was able to open up and share more with people.

Let me give you another example on a grander scale. Recently, there have been a lot of hurricanes. Sometimes individuals and brands try to capitalize on a situation for commercial gain, and it ends up being devoid of empathy.

Recently someone had posted an image trying to build up their presence on Facebook. They were saying, “Click ‘Like’ to wish everyone safety during the hurricane.” Well, of course, they got all these likes. It was weird.

Somebody drew it to my attention and said, “What are your thoughts on this, Mari? Don’t you think it would have been better to say something like, ‘Our thoughts and prayers go to anyone affected by the hurricane’?”

Empathy, to me, is like listening between the lines, putting yourself in the other person’s shoes. This girl losing her mom and the “I love you” meme, putting myself in her shoes was like, “Wow, that was really brave of her.” She just put herself out there. She wrote up this big blog post that was completely transparent and it let people in.

To me, a large part of this relationship marketing concept is allowing yourself to be a little bit vulnerable and let people in. They naturally empathize with you, in fact.

Mike: Let’s talk about maybe one other soft skill that you think marketers need to develop.

Mari: I know that this one will resonate with you, Mike. It’s basically giving with no agenda. It’s helping people just because you can if you see a question on Facebook or on Twitter.

We’re talking a lot about online, and really, relationship marketing transcends and goes offline as well, but it’s basically giving with no agenda. It’s helping; it’s building what I call “social equity.”

When you do that, you’re building this grand social capital, and what comes back to you is that someone in that grand scheme will do business with you. It may not be the person that you directly helped initially, but if you keep contributing and giving with full intent of just being a genuine, caring person, that totally comes across.

It’s a fine line. I see people all the time who really genuinely believe that they’re giving with no agenda, but you can feel it. There’s a great line in the book Tribes, by Seth Godin. He says that people can “smell the agenda of a leader.” I think we can smell the agenda of anybody.

Mike: “Give to get” is this thing that so many marketers have been trained to do. “If you give something, you’ll get something in return.” I don’t think that’s a good reason for us to give.

I think when you just give in a genuine way, people know it and it’s an expression of care for them. It is an expression of love for your customers and the end result can be something positive.

I’ll share a brief little story. There was a lady who had to ask for a refund from one of our events. I felt really sad for her situation, and I said, “I’ll give you your money back and you can still attend.” She was blown away by that, and she ended up attending another of my events.

She sends me emails all the time, saying, “You’ve really taken great care of me in the past. You don’t know how much it made a difference to me.” So these kinds of things can be very rewarding.

Mari: For the longest time, my motto has been “Relationships first, business second.” And if you focus on building those quality, really connected, genuine, caring relationships, what happens is the business naturally follows.

But I think people tend to get a little fearful. They think that they have to focus on only the business and hopefully the relationships will follow, but you have to get it the other way around.

Mike: So how do you manage it all?

Mari: I usually see that social presence has two primary components and they both start with “C”—there’s “content” and there’s “connection.”

The content part is somewhat easy to systematize, even to outsource and delegate. Create a content calendar so you can decide ahead of time what you’re going to post on your various social profiles. You can have someone on your team who helps with that and goes out and looks for content to curate.

You can use pre-scheduling platforms. I’m a huge fan of HootSuite. I use it every single day for Twitter in particular. There are these studies out there where people are talking about, “You should be tweeting 20 times a day for optimal results,” and that’s pretty much almost once an hour, day and night. I think that’s far too much.

The thing is consistency. Less is more. At the end of the day, you want to be the voice that’s remembered, not just heard. So you send three to five really helpful, useful resources in quality posts, something profound—an inspirational quote or whatever it might be—both consistently and daily, which you can do with the scheduling.

Use rigorous time management, using a stopwatch if you have to or having a friend call you, if you find you do get drawn in and consumed. I struggle with this one on a regular basis, but I manage somehow to do it.

The content can be planned and scheduled. What ends up happening in the “connection” aspect—even if you don’t get around to replying to everything out there that people are saying to you or about you—if you reply to as much as you can, you will give the appearance of somebody who is conversational, connected and caring.

That’s what’s happened to me, in fact. Some people will say that about me. “Mari doesn’t get around to 100% of her @replies on any given day, but we know that she does her best to try to get to them all.” And people feel valued.

Mike: You talked about how you can schedule things, and I think you alluded earlier to the fact that it’s helpful to have people who can help you. In your book, you talk about the importance of developing a support team. Can you briefly explain why this is important and why people should do something like this?

Mari: Even if you’re a sole proprietor or solopreneur, at some level, you’ve got people supporting you. I really challenge people to think bigger, to dream bigger. If you have a talent or gift to bring to the world, if you surround yourself with really, really competent people, this will free you up to do more of what you’re good at.

I think that when you have terrific team members, that really can augment what you’re providing out there. It can help you have stellar customer service.

There’s a saying around hiring: “Hire slow, fire fast.”

I talk a lot in the book about values, and I use Zappos as an example. Tony Hsieh has 10 core values for the company. Out of that emerges this culture. I think that any company—I don’t care what size you are, small, medium or large—when you embody a really powerful value-driven culture, that comes out. It automatically permeates all your social interactions. Zappos really empowers their hundreds of staff to be discerning on their social profiles.

I think at any given time, you should know who’s on your team and what kind of stuff they’re putting out there. Are they representing you well? You don’t want to look like a broken-down store with half-baked profiles out there.

Mike: In your book, you talk about different circles of relationships with people. You talk about intimates, your friends, your key contacts, your acquaintances and the community at large. I want you to identify which of these groups are the ones we should focus on when it comes to relationship marketing.

Mari: Absolutely key contacts. It’s not always about the numbers. It’s not to go and just jam up your Rolodex with every top influencer and key contact that you can. If you get three to five stellar contacts who are aligned with your values and they’re willing to create a win-win venture, alliance or strategic partnership, that can be extremely lucrative for both parties.

In addition, you can expand beyond that three to five to have maybe 15 to 20 key contacts from whom you can easily call in favors. These would be people who would have a large following on any of the different social networks.

They might have a large email base and things like that, and they would support you in a heartbeat. If you message them directly and ask them if they could retweet something for you, absolutely, of course they would do it for you. They would want to be part of something that you’re part of.

So really look to see whom you can add to that key contacts circle and really nurture them using some of these relationship-building techniques we’re talking about.

Mike: This is kind of a crazy question, but I know it’s the one everybody wants me to ask: “How do I become the center of influence in my network?” I ask this carefully because I know that sometimes being the center of influence has pros and cons. But I think really where I’m going with this question is: how can I be someone important and perceived to be important to those within my network?

Mari: In essence, I really like to treat everyone as equals. I will interact with someone exactly the same whether they have 10 followers or 10,000 followers or a million followers. It’s all people to me, and I just like to treat everyone as equals.

Then also in regard to influence, I think we have it in our brains and perceptions that you need a massive audience to be an influencer. Ultimately, we all influence. In some way, shape or form, we have an environment around us filled with people whom we influence.

Essentially, you earn trust—and this will be music to your ears, Mike—by becoming a top-quality content provider. People realize they can come to you. They know you’re like a breath of fresh air because when they’re looking for a certain answer, they’re coming to you. You can do that even through curating other people’s content and having this attitude—as we’ve been saying throughout our chat here today—of being someone who’s kind, inclusive and generous.

And it’s also that you’re focused. I see a lot of people who are very scattered. They’re an expert in this one day and an expert in that tomorrow. But if you’re really focused, which I like to say stands for “follow one course until successful,” and you become this really kind person who’s consistently focused and providing great content, people are just naturally drawn to you.

Also, it’s expressing an opinion about the content that you’re sharing, not just necessarily retweeting everybody, but actually saying what it means to you.

Mike: This has been really spectacular stuff, Mari. I’m going to now ask you a question that might be difficult for you to answer. If there was such a thing as a “Mari reset button”—if you had to start all over from scratch and you didn’t have all the stuff that you have today except for the knowledge that you’ve gained, what would you do differently?

Mari: You know, I would absolutely think way, way bigger. If I was even to reset maybe 10 years ago, I would take far bigger risks, and I would step it up. I would live a life in alignment with my truth, my dream in my heart, my vision, my power and my light far sooner.

It took me a long time to get to the point that I’m at now. I joke about being an “overnight success” 10 years in the making.

Mike: That’s pretty quick by a lot of standards.

Mari: That’s true.

Mike: Well, you’ve done a really spectacular job. I’m very excited about your new book. And the new book, once again, is called The New Relationship Marketing: How to Build a Large, Loyal, and Profitable Network Using the Social Web.

Mari, where can people learn more about you and your book?

Mari: My main website is www.MariSmith.com, but I do want to direct everyone to the book site, which is www.RelationshipMarketingBook.com.

Mike: Mari, I really appreciate your time today and I wish you the best with the new book.

Mari: Thank you. It’s been a delight.

Listen to our complete extended interview below to hear more about Mari’s nine-step program for building a loyal network.

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