Social Media Examiner will host a free online broadcast Monday, June 6.

You’ll be able interact live with four marketing experts over three hours of free online video broadcasts.

Join Michael Stelzner (author, Launch), Mari Smith (co-author, Facebook Marketing), Joe Pulizzi (co-author, Get Content Get Customers) and Jay Baer (co-author, The Now Revolution) for three hours of FREE live instruction. You can ask all of your content, relationship and social media marketing questions live.

How Does This Free Event Work?

Are you wondering how sites like Social Media Examiner have grown large and loyal followings? Do you want to know how to build powerful alliances with experts?

Social Media Examiner wants to help you get inside the “art and science” of content and relationship marketing.

On Monday, June 6, we have invited four well-known content and relationship marketing experts to address these very issues in an event called “Mastering Content and Relationship Marketing: An Expert Interview Series.”

Experts will come to you live from their offices, answering your questions.

In a series of three live video events, Mike Stelzner will join authors Mari Smith, Jay Baer and Joe Pulizzi. During each interview, you’ll be able to ask your questions about how the pros use content to grow their businesses and how to build strategic relationships with industry leaders.

Come to one interview or all three to find inspiration and practical tips on how content and relationship marketing can build a loyal fan base for your business.

All you’ll need is your web browser.

Event Details

Who should attend: Ideal for any business owner or marketer seeking to grow their following, fan base and business.

What: A FREE online video interview series: “Mastering Content and Relationship Marketing: An Expert Interview Series.”

Where: Online, so you can attend from anywhere. On Monday, simply click here to go to our conference room.  No registration is required.

When: June 6 from Noon to 4pm Pacific (3pm to 7pm Eastern) click here for time conversion. DOWNLOAD into Outlook/iCal OR ADD to Google Calendar (XLM option here)

Noon Pacific (3pm Eastern): Mari Smith and Mike Stelzner

1:30pm Pacific (4:30pm Eastern): Jay Baer and Mike Stelzner

3:00pm Pacific (6pm Eastern): Joe Pulizzi and Mike Stelzner

Cost: Free! And there’s no registration required! Feel free to invite your friends.

Your Presenters

Michael Stelzner: Michael is the founder of SocialMediaExaminer.com (one of the world’s largest business blogs), and author of the books Launch: How to Quickly Propel Your Business Beyond the Competition and Writing White Papers: How to Capture Readers and Keep Them Engaged, and the Social Media Marketing Industry Report.

Mari Smith: Mari is co-author of the book Facebook Marketing: An Hour a Day. Fast Company calls Mari the “Pied Piper of Facebook.” Mari has mastered the use of compelling content on Facebook and Twitter to build a raving fan base. As a social media business consultant, Mari helps her clients leverage the power of Facebook, Twitter and other social sites, grow their fan base and sell more products and services.

Jay Baer: Jay is a tequila-loving, hype-free social strategy consultant who works with major corporations and their agencies to successfully integrate social media. A founder of five companies and a digital marketing pioneer, he’s worked with more than 700 brands (including 26 of the Fortune 1000) since 1994. He’s the co-author of The NOW Revolution, and his Convince & Convert blog was ranked as the world’s #3 social media blog by Social Media Examiner.

Joe Pulizzi: Joe is co-author of Get Content Get Customers, recognized as the leading handbook for content marketing. As a content marketing evangelist, he founded the Content Marketing Institute, which includes the client–vendor matching site Junta42, as well as the forthcoming content marketing event, Content Marketing World.

Will you attend? Please help spread the word and leave your comments in the box below.

He also talks a lot about why Facebook can have a big impact on business, and explains why most companies approach Facebook the wrong way and what they need to do instead.

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 use the “opportunity economy” to build your business
• Where the opportunities are for selling indirectly on social media
• How to get more out of your internal communications with a centralized control structure
• Why Facebook has a big impact on business
• Why you should think of Facebook as “email newsletters 2.0″
• The danger of Facebook “yellow-paging”
• Why you need to invest in actively maintaining your Facebook page
• Whether you should wait for the next “Facebook”
• Why you need to go where your customers already are

Connect with Jay on Convince and Convert and download the first chapter of his new book The Now Revolution.

Does your business have a Facebook page? What tips do you have to share for businesses using Facebook? Please leave them below.

What follows is an amazing list of social media tools you’ve likely never heard of—covering a wide range of categories:

• Tools for pictures, video, audio and screen capture
• Tools to measure and track results
• Tools to manage content
• Blogging tools
• Twitter tools
• Other social media tools

Try them out. And be sure to report back here with your thoughts.

Tools for Pictures, Video, Audio and Screen Capture

#1: Cinches

Recommended by Denise Wakeman, online marketing advisor and founder of The Blog Squad.

“My favorite new tool is CinchCast.com. This simple tool can record audio, either via the web or phone (there are apps for iPhone and Android), so you can share audio messages with your followers. While audio tools like this are not new, this one seems to work the best and most consistently for me both on the web and my mobile app.

Cinches can be syndicated automatically to your Facebook status (not to pages, though) and to your Twitter stream. It’s simple to find and follow people from your social networks as well. Adding an image and description to the audio message is easy too and boosts visibility and encourages comments and sharing. Cinches can be shared by embedding the player in blog posts and posting links in status updates.

I’m using CinchCasts to repurpose a lot of content into audio: presentations (I record one tip from a PowerPoint and expand on it a bit), blog posts and articles. I also reverse the process and embed Cinch tips in blog posts to expand on the written text and create an experience that encourages my audience to stay longer on my blog.”

Learn more about Denise at Build a Better Blog and follow her on Twitter @DeniseWakeman.

CinchCasts was created by the folks at BlogTalkRadio.

#2: Screenr

Recommended by Tim Ware, owner of HyperArts Web Design, helping businesses build and promote their web presence.

“My favorite social media tool in the past half year has to be Screenr, an enormously useful online service to create screen-capture videos, with audio, easily and for free. Because much of what I do these days involves teaching people how to do things online, usually on Facebook, Screenr is the perfect tool for me. I can just say, “Wait a sec. I’ll send you a video.”

Creating an instructional video on Screenr is just about as easy as it gets, allowing you to record, pause (while you rearrange what’s on your screen) and then click “Done” and that’s it! With a few clicks, you can post the video plus comments to your Twitter account, or download the file as an MP4.”

Follow Tim on Twitter @hyperarts.

Create screen-capture videos quickly and easily with Screenr.

#3: DailyBooth

Recommended by Lewis Howes, the author of two books on LinkedIn and founder of Sports Executives Association and SportsNetworker.com.

“As an online/social media marketer, it’s easier to get more sales (or transactions) from potential customers if those individuals feel like they know, like and trust you.  A great way to let them get to know you better is simply by letting them see you daily. A great way to do this is to record a video each day and post it to your networks.  But who has the time to set up a camera, shoot a video, edit it, wait for it to upload and publish to your network each day?  I know I don’t, as it’s hard enough getting a blog post out once a week!

Pictures solve this problem, and DailyBooth provides a fast-growing social networking site that allows you to easily upload and share pictures in seconds. DailyBooth.com is still under the radar for most, but the interaction for those on it is similar to the mad interaction Twitter users have, and it’s getting more and more additive as the days go by.”

Learn more about Lewis at LewisHowes.com and follow him @LewisHowes.

Be sure to check out DailyBooth. It could be the next big social media tool in the future.

#4: Skitch

Recommended by Clément Yeung, co-director of Easisell, a digital marketing and design company that helps small businesses achieve success online.

“I love Skitch because if you constantly need to communicate complex on-page issues to people, then Skitch helps you do it seamlessly from your desktop! Just a few clicks and you have a shareable link that you can send to anyone you like. It’s also free.”

Follow Clément on Twitter @ClementYeung.

Skitch is your online camera and pen. You can screengrab anything, add a note and share it quickly.

#5: Instagram

Recommended by Christine Gallagher, relationship marketing speaker, trainer and coach.

“Instagram, which is an addictive, free photo-sharing app for the iPhone.

It’s social and fun to share your pics with others and see theirs as well. You can also comment or like others’ photos, follow other users and see what they’ve posted lately. It’s super-simple to use and my favorite thing about it is that you can transform seemingly ho-hum pictures into unique little works of art with the assortment of filters available. Two thumbs way up.”

Learn more about Christine at Communicate Value and follow her on Twitter @christineg.

"Use Instagram to take pictures, add filters to make them look artsy or retro and then share them on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter and Flickr."

Tools to Measure and Track Results

#6: Argyle Social

Recommended by Jason Falls, principal of Social Media Explorer, a social media marketing consulting firm based in Louisville, KY.

“Because my primary use of social media is to share great content, I think the tool I’ve become most dependent upon in the last six months is Argyle Social. It’s a URL shortener that has an elegant suite of measures around it, a bookmarklet for easy use and the customization you would need to separate your shares on Twitter from those on Facebook to deliver different messages around the same content. Once they add LinkedIn and perhaps even Posterous or Tumblr to their publishing options, Argyle could become THE tool for folks who not only want to share, but also measure the impact of that sharing.

I know I’ve driven over 150,000 clicks to various content in the last six months. I can break those down and tell you exactly how many I drove to certain pieces of content, too. My own and other sites I found and shared with my networks. That’s pretty powerful information if one of your goals is to share or build trust. I can put numbers around that now.”

Learn more about Jason at SocialMediaExplorer.com and follow him on Twitter @JasonFalls.

Argyle Social helps you use social media strategically.

#7: TwentyFeet

Recommended by Mari Smith, social media speaker, trainer, thought leader and co-author of Facebook Marketing: An Hour a Day.

“Here’s my fave new tool: TwentyFeet.com—aggregate all your stats in one place!

I love this simple social profile analytics platform with its easy setup, intuitive interface, daily stats emails and very low micro payments model. Credits are just $2.49 per account for an entire year, but users get one Facebook and one Twitter account free forever. You can monitor one or more accounts from Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, bit.ly, Google Analytics, MySpace and more and see how your key performance indicators develop over time. Oh, and another reason I love TwentyFeet? Their logo is a giraffe (the tall blonde!), my favorite animal!”

Learn more about Mari at marismith.com and follow her on Twitter @MariSmith.

Check out TwentyFeet for a low-cost social media analytics tool.

#8: PostRank and PostRank Analytics

Recommended by Kristi Hines, an Internet marketing specialist with Vertical Measures.

“One of my favorite social media tools/resources is PostRank. You can gain an amazing amount of insight into what topics get the most engagement on a particular blog (such as Social Media Examiner) by finding it in their directory and using the Good, Great and Best filters to see what posts have the most comments and social shares. The best part is that researching another blog‘s social sharing statistics is free, and it’s something you can look at for your own blog as well by making sure it’s listed on their site. If it’s not, just enter the URL in the search box, and they’ll email you as soon as it’s on their site. Then wait a week or two and start discovering what’s most loved by your readers.

If you’re interested in learning more about your own social engagement scoring, you can also sign up for their in-depth social analytics. It’s only $15 per month to analyze up to 5 sites with custom tracking on 10 additional pages within those sites. You can even connect your Google Analytics with PostRank and see how social engagement matches up with your conversion rates and goals.”

Learn more about Kristi at Kikolani and follow her on Twitter @Kikolani.

PostRank Analytics is also recommended by Jay Baer, a hype-free, tequila-loving social media strategist, speaker and coach.

“PostRank Analytics is my favorite tool because it solves a very real problem for bloggers, which is how to understand the full impact of a blog post. What’s more important, page views, comments, tweets, Facebook shares? PostRank Analytics tracks all of the actions related to each of your posts, and compiles a consolidated score that helps you understand what your audience wants from you and your blog. It’s like a psychic, if psychics also had fancy charts and graphs!”

Learn more about Jay at Convince & Convert and follow him on Twitter @JayBaer.

PostRank Analytics is an inexpensive tool with tons of value if you're looking to learn more about how to increase your blog's or website's social media engagement.

#9: Postling

Recommended by Jeff Korhan, professional speaker, consultant and columnist on new media and small business marketing.

“Postling is a tool that brings together multiple social media channels into one interface. What makes it invaluable for me are the email notifications I receive when comments are made on my professional Facebook page. To my knowledge, it’s the only social media tool with this capability. All of the comments are nicely presented in clean threads that maintain the continuity of the conversation, thereby allowing me to easily make timely comments, or schedule them for later.”

Learn more about Jeff at jeffkorhan.com and follow him on Twitter @JeffKorhan.

Postling is also recommended by Stephanie Sammons, the voice behind Smart Social Pro, a resource for professional practitioners to help them understand how to leverage the power of social media and blogging in their practices.

“A tool that can help you stay focused on relevant tracking and engagement is Postling. Postling is designed with the small business owner and professional in mind and can simplify your social media activities. It’s a clean and intuitive dashboard that offers management features to track, engage and publish to your relevant social media profiles, and even to your blog. (It plays nice with WordPress.)

Most importantly, Postling will send you a daily email update of all of your comments so that you know who’s engaging with you and what’s being shared or said about you. (It’s great to know you won’t miss anything.) The basic features are available with a free account. The paid account at $9.00/month allows for multiple accounts per social network, brands and users, providing instant email alerts and an analytics dashboard. And there’s also a premium version for power users at $49.00/month. Overall, Postling is well on its way to becoming a great tool for business owners and professionals!”

Follow Stephanie on Twitter @StephSammons.

Give Postling a try to manage your social media activities.

#10: Sysomos

Recommended by Nick Shin, online marketing strategist specializing in SEM, social media, and PPC.

“Sysomos, by far, has been my favorite social media tool. (Disclosure: I am the SEM and social media specialist at Marketwire and we acquired Sysomos in July.)  Since then, I’ve been able to take advantage of what Sysomos has to offer. I use Sysomos to monitor our social media conversations on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, forums and blogs. The ease of use, robust features and convenience have cut my monitoring time in half. In addition, as the founder of #smmeasure social media measurement chat, I can tell you there’s a lot of concern about how to measure social media. The more I use Sysomos, the more it eliminates the need to keep ‘proving’ the value of social media because of the actionable insight you can get from its analytics. With all of my other responsibilities, any tool that will help me do the same job in less time is a win. I highly recommend getting a free demo.”

Learn more about Nick at Marketing Shindig and follow him on Twitter @shinng.

Check out Sysomos to monitor your social media activities.

#11: Inside View

Recommended by Jacob Morgan, principal of Chess Media Group, a social business consultancy focused on customer and employee engagement strategies.

“My favorite new tool that I started using within the past 6 months is Inside View (through a customized enterprise version of Salesforce).

Inside View (their Salesview product) allows you to make the “social sale” by extracting valuable company information about a person or prospect prior to making a sale. You can get market cap, the org structure, list of key employees and the social sites they belong to, relevant company news, addresses and phone numbers and more; all from your Salesforce “lead” view. You can then sync all of this information with your Salesforce account so that it actually fills in the information for you.”

Follow Jacob on Twitter @jacobm.

Inside View is truly a valuable tool that integrates social data with CRM data and is a must-have for anyone even remotely involved driving business for an organization.

Tools to Manage Content

#12: Trunk.ly

Recommended by Nathan Hangen, Internet marketing strategist and founder of Webrepreneur Media.

“Recently I was looking for a better bookmark solution, and I was getting so desperate that I was thinking of developing it myself. Tumblr was too big, and sites like Delicious and other social bookmarking services felt walled off. Then someone pointed me to Trunk.ly, which you feed with your Twitter and/or Facebook account, and I was hooked. Trunk.ly keeps a history of the links that you like or Tweet and makes them searchable and easy to share. If I was going to build a solution, this would be exactly what I built. It’s beautiful.”

Learn more about Nathan at nathanhangen.com and follow him on Twitter @nhangen.

Trunk.ly keeps track of all of the links you share on Twitter and Facebook.

#13: Storify

Recommended by Michael Brito, VP for Edelman Digital and has worked for HP, Yahoo! and Intel.

“My favorite tool is Storify which is fantastic to aggregate and curate content from around the web. It’s great for events, product launches, etc.”

Learn more about Michael at social media blog and follow him on Twitter @britopian.

Storify is a great social tool to tap into the power of stories.

#14: Posterous

Recommended by Jim Lodico, copywriter and marketing consultant specializing in creating powerful content and teaching businesses how to use blogs.

“I just started using Posterous and I really like the potential. It allows you to post to 20 or so social media channels all through email. Photos, video, blog posts, even podcasts can all be distributed throughout your network just by sending an email. I really like the simplicity and the ability to manage all your social media accounts at once.”

Learn more about Jim at jalcommunication.com and follow him on Twitter @jlcommunication.

Posterous offers an alternative to a traditional blog for publishing content online.

Blogging Tools

#15: Apture

Recommended by Ching Ya, author of Social @ Blogging Tracker.

“One of the new social media tools I found in the last 6 months is Apture. I was between installing it or Wibiya, but because I’ve decided to emphasize visitors’ sharing on Facebook and Twitter, I went for Apture instead. It turned out to be one of the best decisions I’ve made. The catchy, customizable drop-down bar on top of the site makes sharing easy and friendly. You can search for related content—not just posts, but videos and images to be linked to as well. Your visitors can even use it to search similar posts within your site. Highly recommended!”

Follow Ching Ya on Twitter @wchingya.

Apture adds a social dimension to your blog.

#16: OnlyWire

Recommended by Dino Dogan, blogger, writer, motorcyclist, dog trainer, singer/songwriter, martial artist and founder of DIY Blogger.

“OnlyWire can auto-submit your blog post to 42 top social network sites like Digg, Reddit and StumbleUpon. By doing this, you build backlinks to your blog the quick and easy way. This doesn’t improve your page rank but it does improve your social rank so much that in one of my tests, this one technique alone took me from the page 14 on Google to page 4.”

Learn more about Dino at DIY Blogger and follow him @dino_dogan.

Use OnlyWire to build backlinks to your website or blog.

Twitter Tools

#17: FormuLists

Recommended by Elijah R. Young, lead strategist and owner of Social Talk Live.

“My favorite social media tool over the past 6 months has been FormuLists. FormuLists allows me to effortlessly keep up with my newest followers, my recent conversationalists and tons of other specifications that I can adjust in my settings to keep me on top of all of the new folks I meet in my Twitter timeline. Before FormuLists, I had to hope I remembered who I added to my lists, and work around crossover… It was just a mess. Now I can just focus on keeping up with conversations that matter to my followers, and pitching in when appropriate.”

Follow Elijah on Twitter @elijahryoung.

FormuLists is also recommended by Ann Smarty, an experienced blogger and SEO consultant at BlueGlass.com.

“The tool that I’ve just recently discovered and fallen in love with is FormuLists. I have a lot of followers and it’s been almost impossible for me to organize the following manually. The tool has quite a few very handy options.”

Learn more about Ann at MyBlogGuest.com and follow her on Twitter @myblogguest.

FormuLists manages your followers for you so you can focus on building your relationships.

#18: HashTracking

Recommended by Lori Taylor, a self-proclaimed “URL-junkie,” and an award-winning marketing veteran with 20 years experience turned social technologist by day and angel investor (Klout, Live Matrix, Pixsy) by night.

“My favorite new Twitter tool is HashTracking, which we use to track campaigns on Twitter. It takes group conversations and measures the influence and type of engagement level for each participant. The reason I’m in love with it is because the depth of data is incredible. Starting with the total number of people who participated in the group conversation, HashTracking chunks the participants into 4 buckets they call leaders, people who were engaged, just curious, and even identifies the wallflowers. We can get content to the most powerful hands who can truly give us the most reach on a specific topic, not just a broad category.”

Learn more about Lori at lorirtaylor.com and follow her on Twitter @lorirtaylor.

HashTracking is a great testing tool for all kinds of direct response metrics such as a top-ten list for impressions, number of tweets and follower count for each person using your hashtag (for free).

#19: Oneforty

Recommended by Ekaterina Walter, social media strategist at Intel.

“My favorite tool of the past 6 months is oneforty. Oneforty helps you discover thousands of tools that help you do more with your business, career or life using Twitter! This is essentially a directory of various Twitter apps that can help you do whatever you can possibly imagine on Twitter from helping manage your brand Twitter account to managing your followers to finding fun apps for your everyday life. I love their Toolkit feature which allows you to see what other industry leaders or even brands are using to manage their presence.”

Learn more about Ekaterina at ekaterinawalter.com and follow her on Twitter @ekaterina.

Oneforty also just introduced the Q&A section where the community of tweeps can share tips and tricks and help each other discover new cool ways to engage.

#20: TweetDeck for Chrome

Recommended by Corbett Barr who wants to help you attract as many visitors to your site as you need to make your business thrive.

“My favorite new social media tool is definitely TweetDeck for Google’s Chrome browser. I love it because I get all the awesome functionality of TweetDeck without having to run a separate application. I also love how it integrates multiple Twitter accounts into one combined column of @ replies and another for direct messages. It’s a huge time-saver for people who tweet a lot from different accounts.”

Learn more about Corbett at Think Traffic and follow him on Twitter @CorbettBarr.

Chrome users can also use TweetDeck to manage their Twitter accounts.

Other Social Media Tools

#21: LinkedIn Company Page

Recommended by Linda Coles, a sought-after speaker who also runs various workshops and seminars on how to use social media tools effectively and productively.

“I love the LinkedIn Company Page upgrade as you can upload three banner ads, add video to each product or service page and you’ve even got analytics to monitor what’s going on. It may well get as good as a FB business page but in a different environment.”

Learn more about Linda at Blue Banana and follow her on Twitter @bluebanana20.

LinkedIn Company Pages are a welcome addition for businesses on social media.

#22: Quora

Recommended by Lori Randall, online marketing strategist specializing in social media and WordPress sites. Follow Lori on Twitter @lori_randall.

“Quora, an online knowledge hub for mostly social media and technology, is a tall glass of water. People ask insightful questions and exchange substantive answers. I was starting to feel like I was in a social media desert of genuine thought because of all the noise and this has risen to quench my thirst for knowledge admirably.”

Quora has become a popular Q&A platform in a short time.

What Are Your Favorite Social Media Tools?

Have you used any of the social media tools mentioned above? Which ones are your favorites? Which other social media tools would you add to this list? Please share your comments below.

In this interview, we talk about social media marketing, Jay’s experience writing the book and about where this crazy, fast-moving industry is headed.

Mike: Jay, what’s the single most important thing that marketers or business owners need to know to be successful right now?

Jay: It’s a terrific question. One of the things that we talked about a lot in the book is the fact that you have to act quickly as an organization. The example that we use to kick off the book is if you’re at a hotel and you’re having a bad hotel experience—it’s dirty or gross or whatever—historically, you might go down to the front desk, or call the 1-800 number or write a letter.

Now you can just dial up Yelp or TripAdvisor and leave a bad review or a tweet in two seconds. Now that particular hotel has to respond to whatever you’re doing as a consumer. Every customer is a reporter now.

In a world like that—where every customer is a reporter—each employee ends up having to be in marketing. Your company has to move so fast, to capitalize on both the good and the bad, that you really must have an incredibly strong and consistent corporate culture.

We don’t have time as businesses anymore to call a committee meeting and talk about what we’re going to do about this tweet or this blog post or this Yelp review. You have to empower your people in the organization to make decisions that are culturally appropriate for your organization.

We believe that culture is the most important factor around social participation and doing social media right. You have to focus on how your company is going to be social, and less about how your company is going to do social.

Mike: What you’re saying is that speed is the thing you want people to take home, and it’s important for them to respond. Secondly, that every customer or every prospect who has a bad experience is like a reporter. They can let the world know about their experience and that can be a bad thing. Thus, everybody in your organization needs to be like a marketer and respond quickly.

What does this mean to someone who is a small business owner?

Jay: From the small business perspective, where you may not have dozens of people in your organization, it means that you have to be a multitasker. You have to be operating your business while simultaneously listening to the social conversation. Not just from a response perspective—waiting for somebody to mention you—but looking for opportunities.

We talk a lot about the “opportunity economy” in the book and the ability for companies to find ways to interact with individuals on the social web in a way that’s contextually appropriate and relevant.

Let’s say you own a volleyball camp in California. You set up Twitter searches around the search term anyone know + volleyball. You’re going to find people who are asking questions about volleyball—some of those questions you can answer as an organization, and some of those people whom you help with those answers may end up being customers.

Mike: Something else you talk about in your book is how social media is kind of like the new telephone. What exactly do you mean by the new telephone, and what does this mean for businesses?

Jay: That’s actually a paradigm that was started by Amber Naslund’s employer, Radian6. Amber is my co-author and the vice president of social strategy for Radian6, the social media listening software company that many Social Media Examiner folks may have heard of. Her CEO, Marcel LeBrun, developed the metaphor of the social media telephone.

We think it’s particularly apt because customers are increasingly turning to the social web both to punish and praise brands. You see, “Thanks very much Southwest Airlines, Dunkin’ Donuts, Social Media Examiner,” or “Convince and Convert,” or anything else, as well as criticism.

So the same way that your actual telephone in your organization has both good news and bad news on the other end of the line, the social telephone does as well.

The other way that metaphor makes sense is that we believe over time, the same way that everybody in your organization now has an email address and a phone on their desk, everybody in your organization will eventually be active in social media in some way, shape or form. In fact, the guys at CoTweet, a client of mine, really believe that eventually most folks will have two different Twitter handles. They’ll have a personal and a business Twitter handle, the same way that most of us have a personal email and a business email address.

Mike: It’s quite interesting, this metaphor of the new telephone, because if you think about it, you have people now who have iPads, iPhones and Android devices on their person every waking moment of the day and even when they’re sitting on the couch. The only time they don’t really have it with them is when they’re sleeping. So it seems as though the consumer or the customer or the prospect is now “on” all the time.

That’s really a paradigm shift for businesses because customers are active whether they’re on the couch or stuck in traffic. In the past when they were home, they were dealing with personal stuff, and when they were at work, they were dealing with business stuff. Now it seems to be all the time, and means a shift for businesses, doesn’t it?

Jay: Oh, clearly. Social media doesn’t stop at 5 o’clock and it doesn’t stop on Friday. In fact, there have been lots of studies that show there’s actually more sharing behavior on Facebook on weekends because people are using it a little bit more personally and more likely to share content, so you’re exactly right.

If you look backwards, every time new technology was developed, we fundamentally changed our businesses to meet that challenge.

Yet we have not fundamentally changed our businesses to meet the social media challenge in any way. What we decided to do was put together a Twitter account and throw up a Facebook fan page and maybe a blog, and call it good—and that’s not going to get it done.

When every customer is a reporter and it’s a 24/7 world, we’re just scratching the surface of what businesses are going to have to do, so we wanted to write a playbook that shows businesses what they’re going to have to do over the next two to five years to transform themselves from the inside out to meet the challenges of the Now Revolution.

Mike: This is pretty mind-blowing. Talk to me about a story in particular, or a business that you discovered in the process of writing the book that might be doing this right. Is there any particular business that stood out in the process of crafting this book?

Jay: Almost every example in the book is of a small- or medium-sized business. I would say 90% to 95% of the examples in the book are purposely from small- and medium-sized businesses because we didn’t want to write a book for Ford or IBM.

One that I like best is Martell Home Builders. They’re in Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada. The owner is Pierre Martell, a young guy. They’ve been in the homebuilding business for four years, and while the Canadian homebuilding market hasn’t had the catastrophic declines that we’ve had in the U.S., it certainly hasn’t been an easy road.

When Martell first started out, they had to rely quite heavily on realtors to bring in prospects and help them drum up interest for their houses. That first year, 92% of all of their sales were through realtors, so they were paying commissions, and commissions in Canada are higher even than they are in the U.S.

Pierre decided that they ought to tell their own story, instead of having realtors tell their story. “He was prodded along by his brother, Dan Martell, who is actually the CTO of Flowtown, a company I think you’re familiar with, and some of your readers and listeners may be as well. Dan said, “You’ve got to get on this social media train,” and convinced him to do it.

Mike: Sure, the rationale was, “If we can sell a house without a commission, we just take most of that money and return it to the company,” right?

Jay: Precisely. They started telling stories about the organization in a really fantastic blog, and the blog isn’t really about them at all. It’s about winterizing tips and what you can do in New Brunswick, so it’s really fun marketing—it’s “unmarketing,” as Scott Stratten would call it. Pierre has a very successful Twitter account where he just talks about relevant issues and helps people and does it in a very authentic and natural way.

Martell's Blueprint Blog provides information on what needs to be done to winterize your home both outside and inside.

But then they do some crazy stuff. This is the one that really blew us away. Their foremen, who are actually out there helping customers and building houses, all have GPS tracking devices in their work trucks, so if you’re a customer of Martell’s and you ask, “Where is the guy? He’s supposed to come over here and fix my ceiling,” or whatever, you can dial up the web page and see where his truck is at any time.

They have completely adopted this 2.0, storytelling, authentic, executional approach, and two years later, they went from 92% of their deals through realtors to 12% of their deals through realtors and a 300% increase in sales.

Mike: Just so I understand, they decided to go ahead and blog and create outstanding content that was going to be really valuable to their community—their prospective buyers, if you will—and probably an even larger audience. A lot of people found great value in that, and some of them said, “I want to learn more about these guys,” and that’s how it got started as far as getting the word out?

Jay: Yes, everybody just comes directly to the company.

Mike: And then they employed some really cool full transparency: “If you want to know where we are, this is where we are.”

Jay: Yes, because you’re talking about a huge purchase, and the psychology of homebuying is you’re always nervous. So what they’ve done is humanize the company. They’ve reduced the perception of risk by putting together all these tracking mechanisms and date guarantees, and you can find your foreman, so they’ve created humanization.

As a result, what they have now are direct sales—people come in and say, “I don’t need to hear any more. I want to buy a house from you because I believe in your company.”

One of the success metrics they use is the time to close a sale. When you’re trying to sell a house, it can be hours and hours, and Pierre says that it used to take them three or four hours, sometimes as many as eight hours. He said their new record from somebody walking in the office to signing a house agreement is 35 minutes.

Mike: Their blog has probably enabled them to build a lot of trust with people before they even get to the point of purchase.

Jay: They’re already sold when they walk in the door.

Mike: That’s outstanding. Their profits must have gone through the roof.

Jay: Yes, because that money all drops to the bottom line. Not paying those commissions is essentially free revenue for them.

Mike: What would you recommend for someone who wants to get smarter about social media? Where exactly would you say they should start? What would be some smart tips for a business to get this thing underway wisely?

Jay: Once you’ve moved past the question of “Should we do social media?” and you’ve moved on to “How should we do social media?”, I always then start to look at it through a metrics prism. If you accept the premise that you should be doing social media, to what end? How are you trying to improve your business? Are you trying to sell stuff? Are you trying to sell the same amount of stuff, but have a higher average order? Are you trying to increase loyalty? Are you trying to turn your existing customers into a volunteer marketing army?

Each of those things is significantly different at the execution level in terms of social media programs, so you have to really understand why you’re doing social media, what you’re trying to achieve as an organization, and then put together success metrics that help you determine whether what you’re doing now is accomplishing that.

There’s a chapter in the book about success metrics and how to pick the right ones. If your objective is to create loyalty among your existing customers and you hope they will buy from you again and again, Facebook is a particularly good approach because Facebook is a brand community.

In large measure, your Facebook audience is already converted; otherwise, they wouldn’t have become your fan on Facebook. The people who like you on Facebook are people who actually like you in the real world, so that’s a perfect place to create loyalty, repeat customers and repeat purchases.

Yet a lot of companies think that Facebook is where they’re going to create new customers—that it’s a customer acquisition medium, when quite clearly it’s not.

Mike: It’s a community tool, really.

Jay: Yes, but a lot of companies don’t see it that way. They see social media in general as primarily a new customer acquisition mechanism. I think for almost all companies, it really is better as a loyalty and retention mechanism. So having that sort of clear-headed approach about what you’re trying to accomplish and the kind of metrics that you can put in place and know whether it’s working, I think is really the bridge behavior between “Okay, we’ve experimented” and getting more serious about it.

Mike: I just want to reiterate something you said that I think is ultra-wise—the why and the what. So many businesses aren’t sure why they’re doing social media. They’re doing it because everyone else seems to be doing it. But what’s the real reason and what in the world do they hope to achieve?

Jay: Yes, because it ain’t free, right?

Mike: You’re spending a lot of labor to do it.

Jay: I stole this line from Charlene Li, but social media is not inexpensive; it’s just different expensive.

Mike: So the question is why you’re doing it, and if you really don’t know, then you’re not going to find a lot of value in it because you won’t know whether it’s successful or not. I’m with you 100% on that.

Looking down the road two years from now, which I know is a long time in the world of social media, in your mind how is the landscape going to change for marketers?

Jay: I’d say in three areas. First is decentralization; we talked about that a little bit earlier. Social media will be a skill, not a job. You won’t have a social media department any more than you have a typing department. Someday it will seem crazy that you had one person in your company listening using Radian6 or a tool like that. That will seem insane. Eventually it’ll be on everybody’s desktop and listening will be part of everybody’s job, as will responding.

The second one is integration. We’ll start to see more of a convergence of social and CRM and email and other communication tools, a lot of the R&D being done out there by the smart software company that is trying to bolt together other parts of marketing, which will make it a lot more powerful.

Then I think the third piece that I’m really excited for is optimizing social media; adding more of the science in social. I can do a Google AdWords campaign and figure out whether having a comma in the second line as opposed to a period has virtual impact on results, yet I can’t send two different tweets to each half of my list. I can’t do any sort of testing or optimization other than somewhat anecdotally in social media. That’s an issue, so there are a lot of people working on it as well.

I’m really excited to see where we’re going to be in two years when they really have a lot more sophisticated data and testable hypotheses and things like that. It’s going to make social a lot more like email in terms of having that availability of data and testability and optimizing, which will make it a lot easier for CEOs and company owners to understand whether it’s working, just like we talked about. When you’ve got richer data, you can make better decisions.

Mike: Jay, my last question is if people want to learn more about you and your book, where would they go?

Jay: The book is called The NOW Revolution: 7 Shifts to Make Your Business Faster, Smarter, and More Social, obviously available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Borders and anywhere books are sold. The website for the book is NowRevolutionBook.com. Also, on Facebook, just search for “Now Revolution.”

You can find me at ConvinceandConvert.com or on Twitter at jaybaer, and on occasion, you can find me on the world’s greatest website, SocialMediaExaminer.com.

Mike: Jay, thank you very much for some really interesting insights that you provided myself and fans of Social Media Examiner today. I really appreciate your time.

Jay: Always a pleasure. I appreciate it.

Listen to the rest of this interview (below) to hear some of the amazing ways Jay promoted his book and how he thinks the world of social media will change for marketers two years from now.

What do you think of Jay Baer’s ideas? Leave your comments in the box below.

Social media is a big subject. If you’re looking for some reliable places to go for the best tips and social media tactics, look no further!

Our second-annual contest generated more than 300 nominations. Our panel of social media experts carefully reviewed the nominees and finalists, analyzing the quality of their content, the frequency of posts and reader involvement (among other things).

The following are the winners of Social Media Examiner’s Top 10 Social Media Blogs for 2011.

If you’re looking to master all that social media has to offer, these rich blogs need to be at the top of your reading list.

1. Brian Solis: The grand master of social media, Brian is one of the web’s leading social media evangelists and his blog is required reading for businesses.
2. TopRank: This popular blog, the brainchild of Lee Odden, provides exceptional social media advice and should be one of your daily destinations.
3. Convince & Convert: Jay Baer’s Convince & Convert provides outstanding content for businesses seeking to embrace social media. This is the second year Jay has made our list.
4. Six Pixels of Separation: Mitch Joel offers consistent and thought-provoking content delivered with personality.
5. Social Media Explorer: This blog, from Jason Falls, provides excellent perspective on the current state of social media and should be a regular stop for serious social media marketers. This is the second year Jason has made our list.
6. Brand Builder: For businesses looking to dive deep into social media discussion, check out Olivier Blanchard’s rich insights. This is the second year Olivier has made our list.
7. Spin Sucks: Gini Dietrich’s blog takes a look at social media from a PR perspective. Check her site out!
8. Danny Brown: Danny Brown’s blog examines the human side of social media with rich content and insights.
9. The Anti-Social Media: For something completely unique, check out Jay Dolan’s satirical blog on the state of social media.
10. BrandSavant: This unique blog from Tom Webster combines a great intellect with with common sense, giving it an edge.

Congratulations to the winners. Be sure to check out these amazing blogs!

Share the love: Feel free to post the above list on your blog (just reference this post).

The badge of distinction: If you’re a winner, you can post the image you see here on your blog and please link back to this page.

A special thanks to our judges! Thanks to David Armano (Edelman), Debbie Weil (author, The Corporate Blogging Book) and Rick Calvert (CEO, BlogWorld) for their participation.

Do you frequent any of these blogs? What do you think? Share your comments in the box below.

Since we started Social Media Examiner in October 2009, we’ve published more than 280 articles. These original posts were written by dozens of social media professionals.

We decided to tap their knowledge and expertise to see what’s likely coming next year. Here are their predictions for where social media is headed in the next 12 months.

#1: Marketers will have more tools to stimulate conversation.

Tom Martin

“Social Media will become Conversational Marketing and its practitioners will shift their focus more to ideas and technologies that can create or stimulate conversation versus simply focusing on the engagement in conversation. These technologies will be very data measurement–driven, like QR codes for instance. By making this shift, social media consultants will retain and improve their standing within the internal ROI-driven cultures of today’s companies.”

Tom Martin is founder of Converse Digital. He works with companies and ad agencies to help them monitor, create and engage in digital conversations to grow market share or increase customer loyalty.

#2: More companies will invest in social media.

Nicole Kelly

“As paid search traffic and conversion rates continue to decline and become more expensive, companies will start looking to social media to replace volume. Therefore, measuring the ROI of social media will become a top priority as companies consider expanding budgets and staff members for social media–related activities.”

Nicole Kelly is the director of social media for CareOne Debt Relief Services and is passionately working to understand and help define social media measurement.

#3: Social media will become mainstream.

Debbie Hemley

“In 2011, the social media dust will finally settle and folks will stop referring to it as ‘new’ media. Social media will take its rightful place on the editorial calendars and budgets of corporate marketing departments. The calls to action will reverberate virtually and within the brick-and-mortar planning rooms of corporate marketing departments. Those who hadn’t before will report reading online news, magazines and books; and watching more full-length and short videos on a myriad of screens and devices than they did in 2010. We will catch up with friends and colleagues as we leap from one geolocation to the next.”

Debbie Hemley is a blogger and nonfiction writer. She writes about social media, marketing and writing.

#4: Quora will leave beta and become a serious player in social networking.

Peter Wylie

“Quora is superior to any other question-and-answer platform in terms of quality, and it has fantastic technologists working on the product to help it scale.  Its experiment with setting up Twitter handles for every topic on the site using Mechanical Turk was genius, and it shows a clear strategic desire to integrate more closely with other social behavior.  Expect Quora to be brought up in conversation with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube in 2011.”

Peter Wylie is lead researcher for Three Ships Media, an emerging media marketing company that specializes in using blogs and social networks to connect clients with target customers.

#5: People will demand more from social media.

Jason Falls

“Business will demand more business-driving proof, readers will demand more substance to blogs and those who are practitioners will have to demand excellence out of themselves. This will go a long way in cleaning up the industry, in my opinion. The ‘gurus’ will fade away while the practitioners excel. If you aren’t moving the needle, you’re done.”

Jason Falls is principal of Social Media Explorer, a social media marketing consulting firm based in Louisville, KY. He is the author of the popular industry blog SocialMediaExplorer.com.

#6: Social media will no longer be something the “cool kids” are doing.

Lewis Howes

“Social media is something all entrepreneurs and businesses have to do if they want to succeed going forward. In the last year, we’ve seen many start to jump in and experiment with various campaigns on Twitter, Facebook and geolocation networks. Going forward, we’ll continue to see more of that and I see mobile and social media meshing even more.  There will start to be actual numbers and statistics to back up what works and what doesn’t.  2011 will be an interesting year during which creativity will continue to thrive, yet social media will start to gain solid support with evidence that it does in fact work.”

Lewis Howes is the author of two books on the topic of LinkedIn and runs the largest resource of sports social media marketing content online.  Learn more at LewisHowes.com.

#7: Facebook will become a real ecommerce platform.

Tim Ware

“I predict Facebook will launch a Facebook-based ecommerce payment system so that users can truly complete the entire checkout process without leaving Facebook. No iFrames, no logging in to your Paypal account, etc. Look out, Paypal!”

Tim Ware is the owner of HyperArts Web Design, helping businesses build and promote their web presence. His focus these days is Facebook app development and Static FBML.

#8 Social communication skills will get better.

Linda Coles

“We will all get cleverer with how we communicate online and add a little etiquette as we realize we are not simply communicating with another computer, but a warm-blooded human. Networking and developing relationships online is no different than offline, so let’s stop treating it differently. The Internet has simply increased its scale.”

Linda Coles of Blue Banana is a sought-after speaker who also runs various workshops and seminars on how to use social media tools effectively and productively.

#9: Social media will expand through creativity, diversification and content.

Terry Lozoff

“Tumblr saw a decent amount of buzz in the business world during the latter part of 2010, but still has a relatively light presence in the corporate world. Following in the footsteps of brands like Huggies and news organizations like Newsweek and The New Yorker, more brands and content-based organizations will take a longer look at Tumblr in 2011, and how to engage with a new base of consumers through this channel, as well as others in the social periphery.”

Terry Lozoff is the president and CEO of Antler, an experiential and digital marketing agency based in Boston, MA.

#10: Internet noise will reach rock-concert levels.

Dino Dogan

“Three to four billion people are currently NOT online. However, given the growth and adoption patterns over the last 10 years, I wouldn’t be surprised if by the end of 2011, more than 4 billion people are using the Internet, effectively doubling the current Internet population. Where is this growth coming from? This new emerging market is coming from Africa, the Middle East and South America. In 2011, a new playing field will open up filled with people hungry for specificity, quality and education.”

Dino Dogan is a blogger, writer, motorcyclist, dog trainer, singer/songwriter and martial artist. He’s currently working on Human-Dog Problem Tree, a thesis in human-dog relationships. His home is at DIY Blogger.

#11: Social media will become targetable.

Jay Baer

“2011 will be the year of convergence and integration. We’ve been talking about ‘one-to-one marketing’ for 20 years, but in 2011 we’ll finally start to see it become a reality. We’ll start to be able to send an email only to customers who clicked a particular bit.ly link on Twitter. We’ll be able to send a Facebook status message only to customers who visited a particular page on our website. We’ll be able to meaningfully segment our social communication, and that will make social far more useful for companies and organizations of all sizes and levels of sophistication.”

Jay Baer is a hype-free, tequila-loving social media strategist, speaker and coach. He’s the author of Convince & Convert, one of the planet’s most popular social media blogs. And his latest book is The Now Revolution.

#12: Social media will become more cross-functional.

Jacob Morgan

“Social media will branch out from typically being owned by PR and/or marketing departments.  Social media itself will be seen as just a channel instead of a panacea for solving all organizational business problems.  Social media will also be looked at as more than just an external-facing communication channel; it will be perceived as an internal communication channel.  I think we will also see a broader movement toward ‘social customer’ strategy, which seeks to solve organizational business problems as they pertain to customers. This means integrating people, process and technology.”

Jacob Morgan is the principal of Chess Media Group, a social business consultancy focused on customer and employee engagement strategies, and authors a popular blog on Social CRM and Enterprise 2.0.

#13: Small businesses will stand a better chance of competing with the bigger names.

Ching Ya

“2011 will be the year where social media can be a game-changer for many sectors. Data on user experience and personalized sharing will be more emphasized than ever, but so will be the dispute about privacy and where the line should be drawn. Profile security will probably be another huge issue that requires a clear standard and resolution from the authority.”

Ching Ya is the author of Social @ Blogging Tracker. She provides Facebook customization service for small business.

#14: There will be a shakeout in second-tier social media platforms.

Rich Brooks

“This shakeout will leave Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn as the only viable social media platforms for business. They will continue to steal ideas from each other to where their services overlap and they’ll all become a bit homogeneous, leaving an opportunity for a disruptive technology in 2012. In addition, prominent B-schools will start promoting their social media course loads, legitimizing social media for giant corporations. Finally, Justin Beiber will cause a massive overload of the social media networks, forcing us all to re-evaluate our priorities.”

Rich Brooks is president of Flyte New Media, a web design and Internet marketing company helping small businesses succeed with SEO, blogging, email marketing, social media and websites that sell.

#15: 2011 will be the breakout year for social search.

Jeff Korhan

“There will be less noise as marketers seek more personalized interaction with consumers.  Fresh and creative methods of social marketing that encourage engagement will become the norm—along with a noticeable decrease in traditional brand marketing.  This progressive use of social media for what it does best will generally result in business becoming profoundly social.”

Jeff Korhan is a professional speaker, consultant and columnist on new media and small business marketing. Read more on his website.

#16: Content marketing will drive social media forward.

Kristi Hines

“More businesses will continue to jump into social media, but instead of pushing sales pitches, they will be pushing content in the form of blogs, infographics, ebooks, whitepapers, free reports and much more.  Content development is growing in popularity, and social promotion—when done correctly—is the best way to make content marketing successful.  The only real issue with this will be if businesses go overboard pushing poor content in an attempt to try to get it to go viral.”

Kristi Hines is an Internet marketing specialist with Vertical Measures and author of Kikolani, a blog that focuses on social media and networking strategies for successful bloggers and businesses.

#17: Social media will have an ever-larger impact in the search engine rankings.

Jim Lodico

“In the same way that the search engines currently value incoming links as a way of giving credibility to a website, I think we will also see Facebook Likes, tweets and other forms of social media sharing working their way into the formula. From a publishing perspective, this isn’t a big change. High-quality, outstanding content is still key to an organic SEO campaign. Publishers (and who isn’t a publisher these days) need to create content that others will want to share and make it easy for them to do so with Facebook Like buttons, Tweet This buttons and other easy-to-use social media tools built right into the post. Visitors should be encouraged to share across social media channels, especially as this sharing starts to play a more important role in the search engine rankings.”

Jim Lodico is a copywriter and marketing consultant specializing in creating powerful content and teaching businesses how to use blogs.

#18: Curation tools will become the primary way people use social media.

Jamie Beckland

“I could tell you that all key metrics (like time spent, amount of content generated and influence) around social media will hit new records in 2011, but you already knew that, didn’t you? With hundreds or thousands of online connections, it’s impossible for people to keep track of all of the great content from their social network. In 2011, we will reach a tipping point, where there is no way to manage social media without a curation tool. From Facebook’s Top News to Cadmus to Google Reader, filtering and prioritization is already a thorny challenge. In 2011, it will become a crisis as the number of voices, and number of channels, continue to explode. Look for a new set of consumer-oriented tools to lead the way, as business tools for marketers lag.”

Jamie Beckland creates social and emerging media programs for White Horse, a digital marketing agency, and has built online communities since 2004.

#19: 2011 will be a year of listening, courage and enabling.

Ekaterina Walter

“More and more brands will realize the power of listening before engaging (and not the other way around). I anticipate more brands will have the courage to open up and truly and humanly participate, not just broadcast. Brands are also realizing how critical it is to fully enable their employees to become brand ambassadors, hence you see more brands creating internal university-like training around social media and putting Social Media Center of Excellence functions in place. This list is not exhaustive at all, but it demonstrates that more brands are going back to marketing basics and focusing on their objectives, their stories and on empowering internally rather than on technologies and platforms.”

Ekaterina Walter is a social media strategist at Intel. She is a part of Intel’s Social Media Center of Excellence and is responsible for social networking strategy and social media enablement. Read more on her website.

#20: Influence will be measured by follower and fan engagement.

Dr. Rachna Jain

“Social media will continue to evolve toward followership/fans as a measure of influence. Not numbers for numbers’ sake, but instead, how many people can you activate to your cause or belief? It will be less about growing a huge fan base, and moving more toward growing an interactive and engaged fan base. Whoever drives the most engagement wins.”

Dr. Rachna Jain is a psychologist by training and a social marketer by preference. She writes about the interconnections of neuroscience, psychology and social media.

#21: Personal authenticity will become increasingly important.

Stephanie Sammons

“Business owners and professionals will cultivate personal authenticity to rise above the increased noise, earn the respect of their target markets and ultimately generate new business.  Outsourcing social media activity or utilizing shortcuts to automate blogging and social media participation will not be effective for building community and developing new business relationships within the social world.  My best advice?  Be yourself, develop a strategy and establish a system for managing all your efforts.  Remember, marketing is a commitment!”

Stephanie Sammons is the voice behind Smart Social Pro, a resource for professional practitioners to help them understand how to leverage the power of social media and blogging in their practices.

#22: Brands will use more one-on-one communication on social media.

Lori Randall

“Social Media is still a novelty to many. Brands that beam content via social media like a TV commercial enjoy some success just because it’s new.  I see a huge shift in coming in 2011. I predict that mass media approaches will continue to run riot, but that mainstream people will develop a clear-eyed view on this murky subject and seek out unaffected, one-on-one communication that meets their desire to be heard, understood and helped concerning what matters to them most.  Scripted answers from an outsourced ‘Social Media Department’ won’t do. This dynamic will cause brands that communicate like normal people (instead of infomercials) to rise above the babble and get noticed because they will be so rare.”

Lori Randall is an online marketing strategist specializing in social media and WordPress sites. She often asks, “What truth about your brand makes your heart pound? Then work it!”

#23: The social media industry will “reboot.”

Elijah Young

“Brands that have hired outside consultants to handle social campaigns will start to look for more than friends/followers/fans as a metric of success, and start looking at the bottom line of their business.  Expect many fly-by-night specialists and consultants to see much of their client base dwindle due to a lack of tangible business results from their campaigns.  Expect the entire industry to start to mature, possibly with some industry-wide metrics and standards being adopted by the most forward-thinking of the bunch.”

Elijah Young is the lead strategist and owner of Social Talk Live. He’s also a business strategist who helps existing and new companies promote and grow their business.

#24: Expect to see more traction, innovation and spending in group buying in 2011.

Christine Gallagher

“I believe we’ve only just begun to scratch the surface in the group buying space. Services like Groupon, Living Social and BuyWithMe will continue to grow, spawn competitors and change the way businesses offer—and customers reap—the benefits of discount deals.”

Christine Gallagher is a relationship marketing speaker, trainer and coach. Christine helps small business owners maximize their profits using social media and online marketing techniques.

#25: In 2011, we’ll see a further divide between Twitter and Facebook.

Bill Seaver

“Facebook will continue to grow and broaden both how many people use it and what people do with it (i.e., Facebook email), whereas we’ll see Twitter narrow in use and appeal. People who continue using Twitter in 2011 will have a reason for being there beyond connecting with long-lost classmates and sharing photos of their weekend activities. They will overwhelmingly have business reasons for staying connected on Twitter. As such, Twitter will become a platform where you can connect with some people in their professional lives, and Facebook will continue to be the platform where you can connect with most people in their personal lives.”

Bill Seaver is the founder of MicroExplosion Media, a social media marketing consulting firm based in Nashville. He’s an active blogger and podcaster.

#26: Social media marketers will get the value—and necessity—of relying on direct-response tactics.

Tia Dobi

“In 2009, I made $40,000 from one tweet, thanks to my skill in evoking ROI learned from teachers like Claude Hopkins, John Caples and David Ogilvy. Direct-response know-how will separate the men from the boys in 2011… exploding opportunities that apps such as Facebook Places, Facebook Ads and Amazon Facebook Connect Campaign afford us by making point-of-purchase available everywhere, all the time. For the savvy marketer with the right thinking—and writing—2011 is the year of profits beyond belief.”

Tia Dobi is a former TV producer, direct-response marketing consultant and author of the upcoming book Copywriting for Twitter Impact.

#27: Social media measurements will become visual.

Nick Shin

“According to many who participate in my weekly #smmeasure Twitter chat on Thursdays (with co-host Sheldon Levine of Sysomos), metrics such as the number of followers/fans are highly irrelevant. However in 2011, social media measurement will focus on why basic metrics such as the one described are very much relevant. As social media strategists explain the measurement aspect, the shift from data tables to visual statements will begin. Rather than Excel sheets, expect PowerPoint presentations to visually tell the success of one’s social media strategy.”

Nick Shin is an online marketing strategist specializing in SEM, social media and PPC. When he isn’t collaborating or consulting on marketing strategies, you can find him on the tennis court.

#28: Deals, specials and discounts will flourish inside of Facebook pages.

Amy Porterfield

“Facebook pages are quickly becoming the exclusive promo hubs; the place where businesses can offer exclusive discounts and specials to warm audiences on a consistent basis. And the best thing about Facebook promos is that they can spread virally inside Facebook and beyond quickly, cheaply and with few barriers. With the continuing sophistication and flexibility of Facebook pages, I predict we will see a huge rise of promo hubs inside Facebook and businesses will continue to create even more opportunities to gain greater visibility for themselves while offering enticing opportunities via great deals to their customers.”

Amy Porterfield is a social media strategy consultant. Her passion is helping companies, authors and speakers create raving fans using social media and online marketing.

#29: More collaboration between social media players.

Nathan Hangen

“In 2011, I fully expect location-based services such as Gowalla and Foursquare to be enveloped by Facebook Places, perhaps being relegated to ancillary roles as clients, rather than providers. I really believe that this is the only way the check-in model can reach mass adoption. As part of this evolution, Groupon and Facebook will strike a partnership in order to integrate Groupon’s service into Facebook deals in some way, shape or form. I wouldn’t be surprised if Zynga joined in on the action and added a game layer on top of these services, putting SCVNGR’s business model at risk.”

Nathan Hangen is an Internet marketing strategist and founder of Webrepreneur Media. He co-authored the book Beyond Blogging with Mike Cliffe-Jones and provides small business consulting services at Making it Social.

#30: Facebook will welcome its one billionth member to massive worldwide fanfare.

Mari Smith

“I predict that the Check-in button will become just as, if not more, popular as the Like button via sites and apps such as GetGlue.com and Clicker.com, where you let your friends know what entertainment you’re watching right now. I also predict some form of Check-in button will roll out for websites because it can be clicked each time a reader visits a website, versus the Like button’s one-time click.”

Mari Smith is a social media speaker, trainer, thought leader and co-author of Facebook Marketing: An Hour a Day.

More Social Media Success Stories in 2011

And I’m sure we’ll have many more social media success stories to share with you here on Social Media Examiner throughout 2011.

Would you like to stay in touch with Social Media Examiner’s writers? Follow our “Social Media Examiner Writer” list on Twitter.

What do you think? What are your social media predictions for 2011? Please leave your comments and join in the conversation below.

The truth is there are dozens of viable metrics you can use to gauge the success of your social media efforts. The challenge isn’t measurability; it’s knowing which measures are meaningful.

Here are the 6 undervalued social media success metrics you should be tracking:

#1: Daily Story Feedback

Instead of just counting the number of Facebook “likes” you accrue, which signifies nothing more than digital bumper-stickering, track how often your fans click “like” and comment on the status updates you post.

The more fans who click “like” and comment, the more likely your future updates will be seen in their news feed, dramatically increasing your actual Facebook audience.

If you’re an administrator of a Facebook fan page, you can find the Daily Story Feedback chart at http://facebook.com/insights (look in the Interactions category).

#2: Look at Klout

Rather than paying rapt attention to the number of Twitter followers you’ve corralled, instead look closely at your Klout score.

Klout is an online influence gauge that combines several data points (followers, retweets, clicks on links, etc.) and then applies some fancy algorithmic voodoo to arrive at a unified metric.

The data used to calculate Klout continues to change (they recently added Facebook information), but I’ve found it to be the most reliable influence-tracking metric, because it’s nearly impossible to “game” using automated follow-back programs and other Twitter nefariousness.

Klout’s scoreboard for Social Media Examiner founder Mike Stelzner is 73 (on a 1-100 scale).

#3: PostRank

One of the challenges of writing a blog is knowing how to value the wide variety of reader engagements and behaviors. Should you care more about Digg submission than about comments? Are tweets more important than Facebook shares?

PostRank Analytics solves this problem.

It’s free if you connect with their “influencers” outreach program or $15/month if you don’t. PostRank provides a useful, detailed blogging scoreboard, especially if you connect it with your Google Analytics account.

The best part of PostRank Analytics is the engagement score, which is sort of your Klout score for each blog post. The system looks at total comments, tweets, shares, etc. for each post and applies behavior points and an algorithm to determine the total score. This is a fantastic way to look at your last 25 blog posts to see which type of content you’re publishing generates the most engagement. The image below is a recent post on Convince & Convert .

PostRank Analytics shows “engagement points” broken down by audience action.

#4: Share of Voice

Tracking how often your company and/or its products are mentioned on the social web is a best practice, of course. But without also paying attention to how often your competitors are referenced, it’s difficult to determine whether the chatter about your brand is significant.

To add a reference point to your social mention tracking, create a “share of voice” report.

To do so, determine the number of times your company and its products are mentioned on the social web in a neutral or positive context over a 30-day period. You’ll want to use Radian6, ViralHeat, Social Mention or any of the other social listening tools for this project. Then determine how often your competitors are mentioned (neutral or positive) during the same 30 days.

Add up all mentions for the category (you plus your competitors), and then divide your mentions by the total to calculate your “share of voice”—which is always a percentage. Usually, share of voice reports are formatted as a pie chart, so you can easily see how you fare versus your competition.

#5: Search Volume

Perhaps more than any other marketing metric, the number of people who are searching for your brand on Google serves as a catch-all metric for market awareness.

In many ways, social media and your other marketing efforts create demand, which is then harvested via searches.

The tie between search and social media cannot be overestimated. Perhaps the best study on the subject, from GroupM in 2009, found that consumers exposed to a brand in social media are subsequently 2.8 times more likely to search for that brand than are consumers unexposed within social media.

Use Google Insights to examine whether searches for your company and products are increasing over time, and if your volume is going up, and your competitors’ isn’t – double bonus!

#6: Inbound Links

Without other sites linking to your website, it’s highly unlikely you’ll ever crack the Top 10 in Google. Links are the coin of the realm in SEO, and without them all you have is a pile of carefully crafted words.

Social media is one of the best places to accrue links, because we social types are prone to link from our tweets, Facebook updates, blog posts, within blog comments, etc.

Track the number of links pointing to your website and/or blog, and examine the source of new links. How many links do you have, in comparison to your competitors? What sites are linking to them that perhaps you could get to link to you as well?

There are several inbound link-tracking services online. My favorite is Open Site Explorer from SEOmoz. The free version allows you to track and report on up to 1,000 links.

Open Site Explorer shows a total number of links (38,935!!) to Social Media Examiner that are coming from 826 separate websites.

If you’re looking for a magic number that automatically determines your social media prowess, you’re not going to find it. Instead, the secret to tracking social media is tying together disparate data sources and selecting the metrics that make the most sense for your company. And those are never the obvious ones like Facebook fans and Twitter followers. Tracking social media may not always be easy and fast, but it’s absolutely, 100% doable.

If you’re interested in more on this subject, my new book, The NOW Revolution (written with Amber Naslund) has an entire chapter devoted to metrics and how to pick the right ones.

What are your thoughts? Have you employed any of these metrics? Leave your comments in the box below.

That’s because the vast majority of consumer Facebook interactions don’t occur on your fan page, but rather in the newsfeeds of your fans. In fact, research from Jeff Widman of Facebook fan page consultancy BrandGlue (and a presenter at Facebook Success Summit) estimates that 199 out of every 200 interactions (99.5%) come from the user’s wall (or newsfeeds). This means that almost nobody is coming back to your fan page after they visit it the first time.

Think about your own behavior on Facebook. How many brands have you “Liked” and then never returned to? For me, it’s 137 total pages – a mixture of companies, organizations, other social media consultants, etc. How many of those pages have I visited after “Liking” them initially? Essentially zero, other than grabbing screenshots for presentations.

I Like “Like”

The implications for this are enormous. It somewhat invalidates the whole concept of turning your Facebook page into a mini-version of your website.

And it makes getting visitors to click “Like” the single most important component of your approach on Facebook, because if they don’t click “Like,” they may never get information from you. In fact, the conversion ratio of page visitors to new fans is a key performance indicator for Facebook success. (If 100 people come to your Facebook page and you get 20 new fans, your conversion rate is 20%.)

Sell the “Like”

With the exception of baking the “Like” button into your website, the best way to generate new fans on Facebook is to create a custom landing tab. This means when visitors come to your Facebook page for the first time, they see a customized tabbed page, not your wall.

For BrandGlue clients, using a custom landing tab increases their conversion rates by 100% or more in almost every case.

The best news about custom landing tabs is that they’re easy and inexpensive to create. Here are three options for creating a custom landing tab for your Facebook page.

#1: TabSite

TabSite is a Facebook application developer that specializes in giving businesses easily customizable tab pages. TabSite allows you to create and manage the content on your custom tab as if it was a web page or blog post, including adding multimedia. Instead of having a basic custom tab with one image, you can have multiple images, videos, text, etc.

In fact, TabSite allows you to have up to five “sub-pages” that operate underneath your custom tab.

You can create coupons, supporting information, etc., as you can see in this example TabSite from Digital Hill Multimedia.

TabSite costs $5/month for business pages. It’s free for personal Facebook pages. TabSite is not difficult to install, but isn’t entirely obvious either. It’s best for experienced users. Also, there is no free trial at this time, and the “preview” feature is a bit cumbersome, so you may need to tweak your design and layout a few times.

#2: North Social

North Social is a Facebook page application developer that maintains a large (15+) and growing stable of widgets to add horsepower to your Facebook presence. In addition to photo galleries, video applications, discussion boards and other options, North Social has a custom tab creator called First Impression.

North Social’s setup and configuration process is outstanding, and customization of their apps happens exclusively within Facebook, making it faster and more intuitive.

The one challenge with North Social is that if you’re only looking for a custom tab solution, it’s overkill. North Social packages their apps together for one monthly fee ($19 for the basic package). So you get access to 15+ customizable apps for one price, but if you care primarily about just one app, it’s like swatting flies with a baseball bat.

Also, your First Impression tab can only contain images and text, not multimedia (like with TabSite).

#3: Pagelever

This is perhaps the easiest of all custom landing tab creation options. Pagelever allows you to upload a single image and create a welcome tab in about two minutes.

For basic functionality, Pagelever is entirely free.

The advanced version ($20 per year) includes the ability to add fans-only content so your custom tab has different messages for non-fans and fans. When a visitor clicks “Like,” the content automatically changes (without reloading the page), and you can instantly thank brand-new fans and invite them to download a coupon, invite their friends, etc.

Pagelever includes a 7-day free trial for the advanced version and you can pay via PayPal.

Other Options for Custom Tabs

In addition to the three options reviewed above, other Facebook application companies like Involver, Buddy Media and Vitrue have custom tab components. These firms primarily offer all-in-one Facebook fan page management suites that are impressive, but typically aimed at mid- to large-sized companies.

If you’re DIY-inclined and technically proficient, you could also create your own Facebook app to display a custom tab (among other things). Using the Facebook Canvas app system, you could put this together in a day or so if you understand Facebook’s API calls and so forth. This is not for the novice. I had my pal Chuck Reynolds examine this alternative because it’s over my head.

Summary and Tips

For very simple, straightforward custom landing tabs, I’d probably opt for Pagelever in most cases. Free is an attractive price-point, and even at $20/year for the fan-reveal feature, it’s the least expensive option.

However, if you want your custom tab to have more content than just a graphic that says “Click the Like button,” such as this Red Bull page, then TabSite is a good bet.

If a landing tab is just part of your Facebook customization plan, then North Social might be the best option, as their array of useful applications is impressive and inexpensive.

Remember that regardless of which system you use, your custom tab must be no wider than 520 pixels.

Also, once your tab is completed, don’t forget to click on “Settings” on your fan page and use the pull-down menu labeled “Default Landing Tab for Everyone Else” to select your landing page for non-fans.

What’s your favorite custom landing tab on Facebook? Have you created one for your page yet? Leave your comments and ideas in the box below.

If you use Twitter, chances are you’ve tweeted from a live event.  But there’s so much more Twitter can offer.  In this article, I’ll share three secrets you’ve likely never heard of…

But first, why do you attend offline events? Is it the lunch (invariably chicken and rice)? Maybe the dorky name tag? Or perhaps you’re lured to the junk contained in a $5 laptop bag made in China?

No, no and no. You go to events and conferences for something more than a snack and some SWAG.  You go to learn something and grow your personal network.

And in that regard, Twitter has a starring role.

Beyond live tweeting, Twitter tools can give you a whole other level of live event benefits. Here are three of my favorites:

#1: Follow ‘Em All With BlastFollow

When I’m at an industry event where the attendees are almost universally interesting or relevant to my business, I want to follow them on Twitter. I’ve been advocating for a while now that event organizers create Twitter lists of attendees, but few are doing it. But now you can take matters into your own hands with BlastFollow.

It’s an incredibly simple and effective concept. Go to http://blastfollow.com and enter the hashtag for the event you’re attending. Add your Twitter username and password. Click “Get Users!” and BlastFollow automatically follows anyone who has used the hashtag.

The system also shows you a list of everyone using the hashtag, and notes whether you’re already following them. The entire process takes about 10 seconds.

#2: Keep a Digest With Twapper Keeper

Having to decide between concurrent sessions is incredibly frustrating at good conferences.  Do I go to this one, or that one? Also, sometimes you want to actually PAY ATTENTION and not tweet the session, but maybe you want to see what others tweeted as the key points. Or in some cases, your cheapo boss just wouldn’t pay for you to attend.

If any of those scenarios sound familiar, please welcome Twapper Keeper into your life. It’s the free tool that instantly creates PDF archives of all tweets that feature a particular hashtag.

Just click “Create Keyword Archive,” type in the hashtag and description, add your Twitter handle, and click the button. Bam! You’ve made an archive of all the tweets. (It also sends out a tweet from your Twitter account letting your followers know about the archive.)

I created an archive for the recent Social Media Success Summit. It’s a doozy, since SMSS (produced by the folks here at SocialMediaExaminer.com) featured 30 presenters.

Also, you can easily customize your archive by date range and by how many tweets are gathered. Date range is especially useful if the hashtag is used by multiple events, or is recurring and you only want tweets from one day. For example, I could create an archive that only includes tweets from Social Media Success Summit on the day I gave my presentation.

Twapper Keeper also has a basic search function enabling you to search for existing archives. No sense reinventing the wheel if someone has beaten you to the punch!  (Thanks to my pal Todd Lynch for the heads-up on Twapper Keeper!)

Here’s an archive example I created for the Counselor’s Academy PRSA conference I spoke at about social media in Asheville, North Carolina.

#3: Bring the Event to Your Site With Tweetboard

The problem with live-tweeting an event is that it’s so amorphous and ephemeral. Like the verbal equivalent of the smoke monster on Lost, your tweets are here one second, gone the next.

Leverage your live-tweeting skills by adding a streaming Twitter widget to your website. Tweetboard is the best of these tools. It’s simple to install, has good customer service and an excellent interface.

And most importantly, Tweetboard automatically creates threadable discussions of all of your tweets—turning your 140-character event notes into an easy-to-follow discussion forum–type layout that’s perfect for deep engagement with your followers and website visitors.

Tweetboard is currently in alpha release, so you’ll have to request an invite to try it (for now). But check it out; I think you’ll instantly see how useful it can be in conveying live event coverage in an organized, sensible fashion.

Here’s a video overview of Tweetboard and how it works:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjmiwPOCt3Q

The next time you head out for a live event, armed with your i-whatever and a stack of business cards, think about using these three tools.

Have you used any of these tools? Got your own to share? How do you use Twitter when you attend events? Write your comments in the box below.

A major component of answering those questions effectively is understanding in which social outposts your customers are concentrated, because there really is no benefit in beating your customers to the punch. Companies should follow, not lead, their customers across the social web.

At conferences, I’m often asked something along these lines: “My boss thinks none of our customers are on Facebook, but I think they are. What do I do?”

Here are 4 ways to find out where your customers are in social media:

#1: Hire a Spy

Update: Since the publication of this article Flowtown no longer offers these services.

Flowtown and Rapleaf are two of the leaders in the emerging field of social anthropology. It’s ingenious and a bit freaky (like Cirque de Soleil).

You provide a list of your customers’ email addresses and these services figure out how many (and who) among your customers are on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and niche social networks, what their “likes” are and other important details.

Flowtown is perfect for small- and medium-sized businesses (see my review here). Rapleaf is for larger companies. My friend Kyle Lacy does a lot of consulting in this area, helping organizations with Rapleaf analyses.

#2: Ask

Perhaps the most obvious way of finding out where your customers are hanging out in social media is unfortunately the least utilized. Ask them.

If you have a “Contact Us” form, an online lead generation form, an email newsletter signup or a shopping cart, why are you still only asking for name, address and email address? Add data collection fields for Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn (at minimum).

#3: Email Behavior

Have you added links to your social outposts in your emails? Have you added the ability for email recipients to share content on Twitter, Facebook, Digg and elsewhere? If you send email routinely, you need to integrate email and social immediately.

Most quality email service providers give you the option of easily adding sharing tools, and you can then run a report showing which of your subscribers clicked your Twitter link and/or shared content on Facebook. Presto! Now you know that person is active on those social sites.

#4: Gmail Stalking

Twitter, Facebook and other social outposts have incorporated functionality that allows you to see whether your Gmail contacts are using the services and invite them to connect with you. While this integration is intended for personal use, you can use it for your business, too. Here’s how:

• First, create a .csv file from a list of your customers’ email addresses (you only need email addresses, not names, mailing address, etc.).
• Next, create a free account on gmail.com specifically for this purpose (you don’t want to be doing this on an existing account).
• Third, upload the .csv to your Gmail account.
• Now, go to Twitter and create a new account using your special new Gmail email address.  On Step Two “Find Your Friends” of the Twitter signup process, select Gmail. Bam! Twitter automatically reads all of the email addresses of your customers stored in Gmail, allowing you to track the number on Twitter and/or follow them immediately.
• Now, set up a new Facebook account using your new Gmail address. On Step One “Find Friends” of the Facebook signup process, indicate that you have a Gmail account, and follow the simple instructions. Bingo! All of your customers on Facebook are presented to you, and you should be able to become their “friend” with a single click.

I uploaded a list of approximately 2,000 subscribers to my email newsletter, and was able to track down more than 1,000 on Twitter and 500 on Facebook. Total cost? Zero dollars and about 30 minutes.

Create a free account on gmail.com specifically for this purpose.

On Step Two “Find Your Friends” of the Twitter signup process, select Gmail.

On Step One “Find Friends” of the Facebook signup process, indicate that you have a Gmail account, and follow the simple instructions.

As the social web becomes more interconnected, understanding how your customers are connected (or connectable) to your brand in social media is a sizable part of the success equation.

Are you a social media detective? Let us know your thoughts and ideas below.