John shares great tips for small businesses to get more out of social media. He also identifies the key social media trends to focus on to make your marketing simple and effective in bringing in more money.

Be sure to check out the takeaways below after you watch the video. Also keep reading to learn how you can win private coaching with John.

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

• How social media has impacted small business marketing
• How to more quickly build deeper relationships with prospects
• How to increase your referrals
• Why you need to create the expectation of referrals
• How to get your small business to show up in search results at the early discovery stage
• How to drive customers to your business
• Why it has never been easier or cheaper to start a small business
• Why you need to embrace today’s online tools
  

Connect with John on Twitter @ducttape and check out John’s website: Duct Tape Marketing.

Want FREE private coaching with John Jantsch?

Check out our Small Biz Dream Contest.

Do you have a small business? If so, how do you use social media to market your business? Please leave your comments below.

To help you lay down tracks for social media success, here’s a solid list of strategies from eight top social media experts. Take a look, ask yourself what tips you can use and start reaping the rewards of real success.

#1: Offer live events on Facebook

“To provide additional value and fresh ways for your fans to interact with you, periodically conduct live chat sessions or live webinars or teleseminars. My co-author of Facebook Marketing: An Hour a Day, Chris Treadaway, and I recently conducted what we called a ‘flash chat’ in order to crowdsource content for version two of our book,” explained Mari Smith.

“We used the awesome webinar platform Linqto and within a few minutes we had a large group of people interacting with us. Linqto allows presenters to be on webcam and mic and take turns ‘on the floor’ while participants interact via chat,” said Mari.

Mari also said you can keep it real by simply conducting a live Q&A right on your Facebook fan page wall. You’ll get extra visibility in the news feeds of your fans!

#2: Help others who aren’t necessarily famous

“Don’t try to build your personal brand or company brand alone. Go out of your way to look for opportunities to help others and give others credit. This may seem like a lot of work in the short term, but it pays off in the long run. Plus, it’s the right thing to do,” said Erik Qualman, author of Socialnomics: How Social Media Transforms the Way We Live and Do Business.

“Easy ways to do this include recommendations on Twitter of others’ work, retweets and hot tips on the comment section of blogs,” Erik added.

“Heed Guy Kawasaki’s advice and select those not on the A-list. The Mari Smiths, Chris Brogans and David Meerman Scotts already are showered with love. Select an up-and-comer, as you will stand out more to that person,” explained Erik.

#3: Don’t over-focus on marketing

“All too often, businesses overlook the ‘social’ part of the phrase social media marketing and jump straight into the ‘marketing’ part… to their detriment. They forget that social media is dominated by a community of people who have expectations of the various social networks to which they belong. Very often, these expectations do not include having marketing messages jammed down their throats,” explained Hollis Thomases, author of Twitter Marketing: An Hour a Day.

Hollis cites INGDirect, L.L. Bean and Ben & Jerry’s as good examples of authentic brand voices that ‘get’ the Twitter community.

Notice the engagement in their streams.

Hollis added, “If you plan on delegating your social media activities to someone, ask yourself, ‘Does this person really understand our brand, the image we want to present and does s/he have the ability to communicate properly about these attributes?’”

#4: Research what your customers are saying

“Stop reading the success stories and best practices to model your social media strategy. Use them for inspiration, but my best advice to you is to go figure out what your opportunity is first,” said Brian Solis, author of Engage: The Complete Guide to Building, Cultivating and Measuring Success in the Social Web.

“Every business case is different. Your customers’ needs are different. Use a tool such as Research.ly to learn more about what your customers and prospects are saying, looking for and sharing. It’s here where you will find the insights necessary to inspire a campaign that’s relevant and meaningful,” said Brian.

Publish your time-stamped stream as an intelligent link.

#5: Meet people in real life

“I’m from Boston and we used to have a huge user group here called the Boston Computer Society,” says Steve Garfield, author of Get Seen: Online Video Secrets to Building Your Business. “They had monthly meetings where people could go out and meet each other and get help and learn about new products. Then, people started getting answers online. So the Boston Computer Society disbanded, thinking that people could just go online to get all their answers.

“The most critical thing that the Boston Computer Society forgot was how important it is to meet people face to face. That’s why I have monthly meetings in Boston with a group I founded called Boston Media Makers. At these meetings every person who attends gets to meet every other person. That’s the secret,” said Steve.

You can meet people online, but solidify these online relationships face to face.

“The meeting is set up to allow for mingling at the beginning, then we have a round table where everyone gets two minutes to talk about who they are and share some news or ask a question. Then the meeting ends with more mingling. What’s very important is that the meeting is free, and happens at the same time every month no matter what. We never cancel. Everyone is welcome,” explained Steve.

#6: Get your content read by being controversial

“We all know that ‘content is king’,” says Dean Hunt, a leader in high-impact buzz and viral content. “This is especially true when it comes to social media and social bookmarking. But what happens if nobody reads your masterpiece? There’s nothing worse than spending hours on an article, blog post, etc., only to see it gather dust in the Internet caves.

“So here’s a strategy I created to ensure that your content WILL get noticed… In fact, people will do a double-take when they see your content title, and will not be able to resist reading it. I call it the ‘negative slant.’ It’s very simple to do, and works best with informational or how-to content,” said Dean.

“An example is a recent post I wrote, ‘How to Work Really Hard and Make No Money.’ It was a big success. Now, I should stress that the content in that blog post was informative, positive and actually showed people how to make money, but I put a negative spin on the title, which gave it shock value,” said Dean.

“Imagine if the title had been ‘How to Make Lots of Money’ instead. We see these kinds of promises every single day, and we’re trained to not believe or trust them. So put a negative slant on your social media content, and watch it create buzz and get shared faster than ever before,” explained Dean.

#7: Invest in social media after you do your research

“Just as you would invest your personal finances based on your family size, age and market conditions, you should be spending in social business with the same industry knowledge,” said Jeremiah Owyang, partner of customer strategy at Altimeter Group.

According to Altimeter’s recent report, How Corporations Should Prioritize Social Business Budgets, “Corporations should gauge their own social business maturity and prioritize spending decisions based on the industry benchmarks. Novice programs must focus on getting their internal teams in order; intermediate programs must scale customer-facing initiatives; and advanced programs must integrate social business throughout the enterprise.”

This chart matches spending priorities with an organization's social business maturity. Take a look and see where your business fits best.

#8: Share the knowledge of experts with your audience

“Get experts involved with your content. Determine who the experts are in your industry. Then go to them and offer to interview them about their hottest new project. During the interview, be sure to ask plenty of questions your audience would like to know the answers to. The result will be a great article, audio or video that provides valuable information to your audience AND forges a relationship with the expert,” said Mike Stelzner, founder of Social Media Examiner.

To see an example of this strategy, check out Mike’s recent interview with bestselling author Seth Godin.

Want to Learn More About Social Media for Business?

If you’re not fully leveraging the power of social media, don’t worry. You’re not alone.

There’s one easy way to take your social media efforts to the next level. By attending the web’s largest online blogging conference, Social Media Success Summit 2011 you’ll become empowered to use social media to gain more exposure, better engage customers and grow your business.

The great part is you’ll be learning from 22 blogging experts. Join  Jeremiah Owyang (Altimeter Group), Brian Solis (author, Engage), Frank Eliason (Citigroup), Mari Smith (co-author, Facebook Marketing), Erik Qualman (author, Socialnomics), Michael Stelzner (founder, Social Media Examiner), Dan Zarrella (author, The Social Media Marketing Book), Andy Sernovitz (author, Word of Mouth Marketing), David Meerman Scott (author, Real-Time Marketing & PR) and experts from Verizon, Boeing, Intel, and Cisco as they reveal proven social media tactics at Social Media Success Summit 2011.

Check out this video from Michael Stelzner

It’s the web’s largest online blogging conference. Go here for a free sample and to learn more.

By the way, all eight of these experts cited in this article will be joined by 14 other social media pros at this year’s Social Media Success Summit 2011. Go here to learn more about this online social media conference.

Now it’s your turn! Which of these expert tips are you going to model for your own social media strategy? Share your comments with us in the box below!

During this interview, you’ll gain some great social media insight, discover some key mistakes businesses make, and learn which corporations are excelling with social media.

Mike: In your book, you made the following statement: “We are forever students of new media. We should never strive to master something that evolves much faster than our ability to grasp its lessons.”

Can you elaborate on what you meant?

Brian: Yes. We can’t rest on our laurels based on the successes of others, because this medium, the processes, the techniques, the cultures of social networks are evolving quickly.  So applying templates to them or assuming confidence in past experiences don’t last long enough for them to be promising for the future.

Mike: What you’re really saying is that you should constantly make sure you are experimenting and studying what others are doing to ensure that you’re on the edge?

Brian: Yes, but not just on the edge.  You must be able to bring what’s on the edge back to the center. In the process, you actually contribute to the evolution of the industry.

Mike: I know you’re a big advocate of blogging for business. Can you give us some of the biggest mistakes you see corporate bloggers making and why you think they’re making them?

Brian: The biggest mistake I see is they’re not blogging. The secondary mistake is that they’re using blogs as just extensions of every other push medium they have in operation today, whether that’s a marketing sheet or a website.

A lot of times I’ll read corporate blogs and they’re very self-serving or they’re very shallow, or they’re just done because you’re told you need to do it and you’re supposed to introduce or inject passion into it.

If you look at some of the blogs like 37signals, their blog ultimately became a book in terms of the lessons they share there. It’s just a value-added resource. You go there as a destination so that you can learn, and you can walk away with direction and empowerment and inspiration.

Mike: Let’s talk about a big company or two that you feel are doing social media right. What are they doing?

Brian: One is Starbucks because they’re experimenting. It goes back to the part where we were discussing being a student of new media.

You see what they’re doing on Facebook and Twitter. They’re absolutely engaging. They’re rhythmic. They have a programming or editorial calendar in place and every day there is something new. There are comments, questions, and polls. There are things that are offered in terms of incentives or rewards.

But they’re also doing things that show they’re trying to actively grow by going to where people are specifically. For example, Starbucks did something very interesting with a company called Klout that didn’t get much fanfare, but it’s really interesting in terms of what’s to come in social media.

Klout is a service that allows you to identify influencers on Twitter. Influencers are people who can move the needle around certain topics. Starbucks decided to test it.

They went to Klout to find all of the influencers around coffee, those people who have the ability to drive activity.

They went out and rewarded all those influencers with free samples of their Pike’s Peak coffee. What better way to reward somebody for their level of influence that they’ve attained and maybe earn some relationships in the process, or at least attention?

Mike: In addition to Starbucks, can you talk about one other well-known company that you think is doing social media well?

Brian: Dell.  Here’s one of the reasons I find them to be so fascinating. This again is a lesson that is taught in the book. There is a whole chapter about this idea.

One of the things that works against any champion of social media is the culture of the company. But really where the potential of social media is realized is in your ability to learn from engagement and adapt accordingly, and to introduce or evolve new products and services that are more meaningful to the communities or the marketplaces where you’re trying to earn greater market- and mindshare.

Dell has demonstrated that their organizational culture gets it. It’s from the bottom up, it’s from the outside in, and it’s from the top down. Michael Dell believes in this so much that he spends weekends and evenings working with his teams to figure out ways they could be more relevant. Plus, the team gets motivated by it.

One such example that I don’t necessarily see or read about is how they attack issues that are basically emerging problems. Dell says, “Let’s monitor for things that are about to go wrong or that are just going wrong now and nip them in the bud.  We pay attention to driver issues or hardware issues as one, two, three, four, or five people start to mention these issues. The minute it hits a certain point, we put a team on it, find a fix, and introduce the solution to the marketplace before it becomes a real problem, before it makes blogs, before it makes the press.”

Mike: What are your views about Facebook fan pages? How important do you think they are today and how important will they be two years from now?

Brian: I was speaking at a conference recently and said something that turned out to spark a massive debate afterwards. That was, “By this time next year, brands will be spending more time on their Facebook brand pages than they will be on Twitter.”

That just sent everybody into a riot. Twitter is beloved. Twitter really puts the “me” in social media, because we bring a little bit of ourselves to that. Even though we do so with Facebook, there is something a little bit special or personal with Twitter.

Twitter has even said this. It’s less of a social network than an interest or themed network where individuals are forming relationships around context or interests.

The Facebook fan page, or the “brand page” as I call it, is a hub that can guide and drive experiences, but also can define them. By “define,” I mean it’s one thing to have interactions on the wall. It’s one thing to respond to comments. It’s another thing to be able to customize those tabs.

If you think about it, FBML, that language that you’re able to use to customize these tabs, allows you to do some really fascinating things. Not too many people understand that you can actually install Google Analytics on a tab in Facebook so you can start to measure the activity—almost like you can with your website analytics, to get intelligence necessary to improve the experiences.

So, Facebook is probably, in my opinion, one of the most underutilized networks out there from a programming standpoint and from an engagement standpoint. I’m bullish on it, if you can’t tell.

Mike: I honestly do believe that’s where it’s at right now. I actually tweeted recently, “I can’t believe I’m actually enjoying Facebook more than Twitter.” I almost had to cringe when I said it.

Speaking of Facebook, on our fan page, we posted that I was going to be doing this interview and asked our fans to chime in with their questions. Mari Smith asked, “What is your daily routine and what tools do you use to keep on top of everything?”

Brian: I call it the attention dashboard. Facebook is like an attention hub. I’ve created an attention dashboard that pulls in content from all different types of sources across multiple networks into one place based on keywords of interest tied to levels of influence so I can at least get the skinny on certain things.

Mike: Is this a custom thing, or do you use a public tool?

Brian: It’s a custom thing.

Mike: You’re going to have to release that as a product.

Brian: I released part of it as a product with the help of Christopher Peri. It’s a product called FriendFilter. It added this level of intelligence to surfacing the people who are following you on Twitter, for example, but only showing you the ones who might be of interest to you so that you could consider following them back.

Mike: So the attention dashboard is how you keep up on the hottest and latest trends in the industry and that’s how you decide to write content for your blog? Is that correct?

Brian: No, that’s how I stay smart. I write on the things that move me at an emotional or intellectual level, or if there is something incredibly important that I need to share with people, to get them to move in a particular direction.

Mike: Where do you see social media headed in the next few years? Give me the mile-high view.

Brian: About a year ago, I talked about the idea of syndication and aggregation, meaning that we were going to be subjected to multiple networks to which we’d have to pay attention, as well as mobile networks to which we would also have to pay attention using other devices.

At some point, all of these things are going to have to aggregate in some way, shape or form, where we could have a strategic presence. Look at services like Check.in, where you can immediately broadcast your presence. Let’s say I show up at the Westin Hotel in San Francisco—I would use a service like Check.in to broadcast or syndicate my presence to Foursquare, Gowalla, etc.

Those are all temporary bandages to address a bigger issue. That is, how are you going to manage your strategic presence online? And also, how are you going to stay connected to those who matter to you without having to be across multiple networks at the same time?

What the future holds, I believe, is this idea of semantic intelligence and filtering that are going to allow a lot of this to work for you without you having to do everything manually.

We see tastes of this on the horizon even now with companies like my6sense. I don’t know if you’re familiar with that company. You run your Twitter feed through it, and through that, it’s able to learn how you interact with the feed. As it learns more about you—and this learning is very rapid—it only feeds you the tweets, or at least at the top-line tweets, it feels would be most appropriate for you regardless of when they were published, earlier today or at the moment.

It learns and it gets better as you interact with it. If you follow thousands of people, imagine how wonderful it would work for you over time. Imagine applying that same technology across multiple networks into one stream or into one river of relevance, if you will.

Mike: Brian, where can folks learn more about you?

Brian: They can learn more about me at BrianSolis.com, on Facebook, Twitter which is @BrianSolis, or they can pick up the book Engage!, which is hopefully at a bookstore near them or definitely on Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com.

Mike: Brian, I just want to thank you very much for taking time out of your day. You’ve been a great fountain of knowledge. I’m looking forward to seeing some great things from you.

Brian: Thanks so much. I do really appreciate it. Congratulations on all your success as well.

Listen to the rest of this interview below…

What do you think about Brian Solis and his recommendations? Leave your comments below.

You’ll hear how they grew their Facebook page rapidly to over 70,000 fans. And Scott also highlights how the US Navy uses each of their social media platforms for a different purpose. Be sure to check out the other takeaways below.

You’ll also hear how:

• Social media is a relatively new initiative for the US Navy at a departmental level.
• But they used what they had learned from previous decentralized social media activities to integrate social media on a larger scale.
• You need to have a social media presence up now. Sooner rather than later.

Here are the other places where you can find the US Navy

• Website: Navy.mil: for most of their content can be found.
• Twitter: @NavyNews: for interesting stories and to provide information when topical events occur.
• YouTube:  for pre-packaged video content produced by their internal branch, and also for a lot of imagery from the Navy video news channel.
• Flickr: for still imagery.
• SlideShare: for analysis and resources to others in the Navy and the general public.

What does this inspire for you?  Please leave your comments below.

In this video, Jay offers social media tips to help businesses succeed.

You’ll learn why Jay talks of “Noah’s ark” in social media and why Twitter and Facebook are not a social media strategy. He shares a wealth of information. Be sure to see the other takeaways below.

Some key takeaways:

• Twitter is a “tools strategy” not a “social media strategy”
• You need to “be social” and not “do social”
• Build a social media playbook with key players in your company
• Figure out what is being said about you and where
• Creating content is the future (especially video), bypassing traditional media
• Location-based social media will be hot in next 18 months
• Yelp has added checkin’s to their app for authenticity
• Facebook metrics can be better than Google Analytics
• Facebook should be part of your sales funnel
• Email can have a social component

Be sure to check out Jay’s content ladder to help you to create a strong social media content strategy. Want to hear more? Jay does 60 or 70 speaking gigs a year and may be coming near you.

Please share your thoughts and comments below.

Darren also authored the best selling book Problogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income.

In this video Darren shares why Problogger took off and his great tips on how bloggers should use Twitter.

Listen to this interview to find out:

• How creating a profile in one space can help you to springboard into another space
• Why blogs no longer look like blogs and how they are changing
• How to use Twitter to benefit your blog

What do you think about this interview? How are you using Twitter to benefit your blog? Please share your comments and experiences in the comments below.

Have you ever wondered how a business handles more than a million Twitter fans? Want the inside scoop from the largest retailer on Twitter?

Even if you’re a small business, there’s some great insight to be gained from Marla Erwin, Interactive Art Director for Whole Foods Market. Marla was instrumental in creating Whole Foods’ acclaimed social media program and the results have been phenomenal! For example, in the first year, Twitter.com/Wholefoods gained a million Twitter followers. It has now surpassed 1.75 million people.

If you’re not familiar with Whole Foods, it’s the leading natural and organic food store in the world with nearly 300 locations in North America and the United Kingdom.

Whole Foods Market is the most popular retailer on Twitter and is a leading example of Twitter’s power to build millions of relationships a single customer at a time.  Here are key excerpts from our interview (you can listen to the entire exchange at the end of this article).

Marla Erwin, Whole Foods Market

Mike: Marla, what was the tipping point that got Whole Foods to say, “We need to get involved with the social media thing?“

Marla: As far as timing, mainly it was there. Twitter was getting big. It hadn’t really broken out into the mainstream – full of celebrities and a lot of new sources just yet.

But when we hooked up with it about a year and a half ago, it was clearly going to break out and we thought, “We had better get on this. It’s where people are.”

As someone said at a conference I recently attended, “You want to fish where the fish are.” We realized this is where our customers were going to be.

Mike: What were you hoping to achieve in the beginning?

Marla: We wanted to just connect with people. It’s very easy for people on the outside of a company or an organization to see you as a monolith. You’re a corporate entity or you’re a building or you’re a logo or you’re this giant chain of stores, when really we’re a whole bunch of laid-back people with pretty idealistic visions of what we want to do.

It was a good way for us to communicate that and also to let people know some things about us that maybe they didn’t realize; for example, the philanthropic mission of Whole Foods in terms of our Whole Trade programs and our Local Producer Loan programs and so on.

I feel like social media is falling into buckets right now where people are using it for sales and marketing, people are using it for customer service, or people are using it to establish a corporate personality and corporate culture. We’re trying to do a lot of these things, and depending on the venue, one medium might have a greater percentage of one of those than the other, but they all balance out in the end.

The first thing that we did, even before we got on Twitter or Facebook, was just to incorporate some user-generated content on our website – recipe reviews, product ratings and so on, and comments on our blog.

Mike: How do people get to your blog?

Marla: It’s Blog.WholeFoodsMarket.com. Or if you’re on our main website, just look for links to our blog, which is called “Whole Story.”

The blog has a lot of editorial content, everything from articles on how to conserve and recycle to cooking tips and profiles of some of our local producers.

After the website and the blog, we started with Facebook and Twitter. Facebook is very similar to our blog in that we have a lot of editorial content. It’s a little bit more conversational. We invite engagement more. We ask people, “What do you think?” or “What are some of your ideas?” We try to get more of a conversation going.

On Facebook, unlike Twitter, everyone can see each other’s comments, so it becomes much more of a group conversation.

Twitter we use primarily as a customer service tool. We do promote our blog content and we may mention, “We’re having specials for the holidays,” and that sort of thing. But our number-one focus on Twitter is customer service.

Probably 90% of our output on Twitter, if you go to Twitter.com/wholefoods, is directly responding to people who have questions. They’ll ask us, “Can I get this at my local store?” or “What are your holiday hours going to be?” or “Can you tell me a gluten-free alternative to cornbread stuffing?”

Whole Foods has more than 1.7 million followers on Twitter.

Mike: I understand that you have over 150 different Twitter accounts. Can you give me the rationale for having so many different accounts and maybe how you use the different Twitter accounts?

Marla: We started out first with our global account Twitter.com/wholefoods. For about a year, that was all we had.

Then we thought, “It might be neat to niche a couple of accounts.” So we have an account for cheese. It’s called Twitter.com/WFMcheese. That’s our cheese expert who has a quadruple PhD in cheese. She’s one of the world’s leading cheese experts. It’s a terrific niche account.

We also have a wine account and an automated account for recipes.  So that’s four accounts. The rest, the 150 plus, are our local stores.

Mike: For businesses that might have stores or chains, what kind of oversight do you have or recommend? Is it typically done by an employee, a manager of the store, or a cashier? Or is it somebody special who’s not actually working at the store?

Marla: The first thing we found is that not every store has someone who’s really familiar with social media or with Twitter specifically. So we did provide some guidance to these folks in the form of a very, very casual document that was part tutorial: “What’s the difference between an @reply and a direct message?” It was also part guidelines: “Here are some things you shouldn’t do and here are some things you should do.”

For the most part, we’ve pretty much let them run with it. A tight control from a corporate level would be exactly the opposite of what we were trying to achieve, which was to decentralize the responses.

I definitely think that people who tweet on behalf of an organization need to be in it. If you can find the wonderful combination of someone who really knows your business and really knows social media, then that’s the person to use, even if they’re in the meat department or they’re a cashier.

Mike: I want to talk about your master account, your main Twitter.com/wholefoods account.  A lot of the social media pundits out there say that you need to have a physical face behind a brand. I know Whole Foods has not done that. Why did you choose not to put a face behind the Whole Foods Twitter account? What are your feelings and rationale about whether you should have a face behind the brand?

Marla: That was a conscious decision, definitely. We considered both sides of that question and I do see both perspectives. When I was trying to articulate our thinking on this, it fell into a natural ABC thing, which is “authority, boundaries and continuity.”

Authority, to me, just means that it is very clearly a corporate account. With the verified accounts now, this is less of an issue. But we wanted to make sure that it was very clearly the official voice of the company and not one person’s opinion.

Boundaries just means that if you keep your personal account and your professional account separate, go ahead and talk about whatever you want in your personal account. Talk about your favorite football team and talk about where you took the kids for dinner.

Then there’s continuity. When we first started our Twitter account, there were three people in on the account. We would all sort of jump in and tweet or take turns or handle different areas of it.

Now we’ve got one person, Winnie Hsai, who has really stepped up to the plate to manage our social media presence. She does most of our tweeting. If she were to win the lottery tomorrow and leave us, we wouldn’t have to worry about introducing a new person. It would still be the Whole Foods account. There wouldn’t be that sort of jarring disconnect.

Finally, another one that is important to me because I’m a designer is a distinctiveness to having a logo in your account. For example, Frank Eliason at comcastcares is definitely one of the trailblazers of customer service on Twitter. Yet when I’m scanning my Twitter feed, he looks like 10 other guys that I follow.

But when I see Starbucks, instead of seeing Brad Nelson’s face, I see the Starbucks logo and that jumps out at me. I like that distinctiveness of having our branding there.

Mike: Do you think if you were a smaller retailer that you might give the same advice to your peers who are really small?

Marla: That’s a very good question. I’m glad you asked that because I do see a lot of benefit in small businesses having a more personal face.

There is a local dog grooming place that I follow. I’m going to take my dog there because I like the individual I’m corresponding with. I feel that personal connection and I think, “Yes, I’m going to bring my business to you because we’ve talked.”

I think for a small business the rules would probably be quite different than for a large company.

Mike: Let’s talk about Facebook a little bit. How are you using Facebook? How are you using it differently than Twitter? If Twitter is predominantly for support, what is Facebook for?

Marla: Facebook is a really good extension of what we’re trying to do with our blog, which is to promote more of our editorial content. Because so many of our stores have Facebook accounts as well, it allows us to do more local promotions.

But on our global account, we exploit its strengths and weaknesses as opposed to Twitter’s immediacy in one-to-one. We are able to expand a little bit more in Facebook. We can have longer posts, we can post photos, and we can post videos.

The tradeoff is that Facebook is somewhat more passive. People come to you. People will subscribe to your feed on Facebook, but it tends to get lost more, I think, than on Twitter. That’s just my personal experience.

There is also that community aspect where people can respond, not only to us, but to each other, which, because of the way @replies work on Twitter now, has fallen off quite a lot, but is still quite strong in Facebook.

Whole Foods has more than 175,000 Facebook fans.

Mike: Have most of the folks who have discovered you on Facebook and Twitter discovered you through the good old-fashioned viral nature of the two networks?

Marla: I believe so and I think there’s an awful lot of dissemination from the global account.

On our website, wherever we had a link saying we’re on Twitter, we used to send people out to Twitter.com/wholefoods. We realized we were doing that wrong. What we needed to do and what we have done is built out a page at WholeFoods.com/twitter. On that page, we list all the different accounts we have so people can see, “Oh look. There’s not just this global account. There’s also an account for wine, which I would be interested in, and there’s also an account for my local store, which I would be interested in.”

Because Whole Foods has 150 Twitter accounts, it created a page on its main website to help customers determine which accounts to follow.

Mike: I understand that you also have an iPhone app. Can you tell me a little bit about what it does and how it has helped you?

Marla: It’s called Whole Foods Market Recipe and it’s primarily a recipe search app. We have a database of recipes and the iPhone app lets you search those recipes and then not only search by ingredients, but also filter by special diets such as ” vegan recipes” or “gluten-free recipes.”

It also has a store locater. When you find the store nearest you, which you can do either by the automatic GPS location or by typing in a zip code, it takes you out to the page for that store. From there, that page links out to the Facebook account if they have one and the Twitter account if they have one as well.

Mike: Let’s talk a little bit about the future. What do you see happening from a social media perspective down the road?

Marla: I think the same thing will happen with social media that has happened with everything else. They will begin to consolidate and to align quite a bit more than they are now.

Social media has taught companies an enormous lesson about breaking down walls. But the applications themselves don’t seem to have learned that. They’re going to have to learn to be more open and transparent.

Twitter is especially interesting to me right now in that it’s being driven in two directions simultaneously. The individual users are driving it from the bottom up and Twitter, working very hard on its business model, is trying to drive it from the top down in some directions that will be more attractive to businesses.

Mike: What is on the horizon for Whole Foods as far as social media? Is there anything that you are working on that you could share with us?

Marla: We actually, for the size that we are, have a really tiny social media program right now and I would love to see that expand.

As new apps come along, for example, we’re looking at some of these location apps and trying to figure out how we can participate in some of those. We’ll definitely expand our presence as much as we can.

Mike: Thank you so much, Marla. If folks want to learn more about what you’re doing or more about Whole Foods, what sites would you recommend they go to?

Marla: WholeFoodsMarket.com is our primary website. On the top of every page, you will find links to our Twitter and Facebook pages as well as to our blog. Those are WholeFoodsMarket.com/Twitter, WholeFoodsMarket.com/Facebook, and also our blog at Blog.WholeFoodsMarket.com.

Mike: Thank you so much for all this great information. It was very, very insightful.

Marla: Thank you, Mike. I really appreciate it.

Listen to the rest of this interview (below) and learn a lot more about how Whole Foods sets up and manages its social media efforts.

What do you think about Whole Foods’ social media programs? Do you shop Whole Foods and have you engaged them online?  Leave your comments below.

Here are our top five articles (in order of popularity) from this year…

#1: Five Must Read Social Media Marketing Studies

Here’s a quick overview of the this article:

Study 1: By 2010, 26 Million (1 in 7) U.S. Adults Will Use Twitter Monthly

The study by eMarketer found the following: “In 2009, there will be 18 million U.S. adults who access Twitter on any platform at least monthly. That represents a 200% increase over 2008 levels. Usage will reach 26 million U.S. adults in 2010, a further 44.4% climb.“

Study 2: Americans Spend 17% of Online Time on Social Media Sites

As popular social media platforms continue to grow their numbers of users, it is logical to conclude that Americans are spending more time on social networking sites.  According to a study by The Nielsen Company, among those paying the most attention to this recent trend are advertisers. Online ad spending increased by 119% to $108 million in August 2009.

Study 3: In 2010, Over 50% of Marketers Will Be Using Social Media

The “2010 Media Planning Intelligence Study” by the Center for Media Research, examined the likelihood of marketers including social media in their 2010 marketing plan.

Study 4: Blogs Most Useful Social Media Tool, Say 51% of Businesses

McKinsey Quarterly’s “Global Survey” examined companies’ overall assessment of the value of different social media technologies.

Study 5: 75% of Marketers Plan to Increase Social Media Use in 2010

The study by the virtual events provider Unisfair showed that marketers are most focused on attracting and keeping customers in 2010 and they plan to use social media to make this happen.

Click here to see the full article.

#2: Five Ways to Promote Your Facebook Fan Pages

Have you ever wondered, “How do I promote my Facebook fan page?” or “Why do I even need a Facebook fan page?” This article reveals five ways to use the power of Facebook to grow your fan base.

Here’s a snapshot of the five fan page strategies:

Strategy 1: Invite People From Your Facebook Friend Lists

Segment personal friends and professional colleagues into lists and invite these lists as groups to your Facebook fan page instead of sending individual invites. This is the easiest and fastest way to jump-start your fan base.

Strategy 2: Find People With Facebook Search

The updated Facebook Search feature (see the Search bar at the top of Facebook) gives you a view into conversations of your friends and status updates that may even show you who may be looking for the services you provide.

Strategy 3: Attract People With Facebook Social Ads

Social Ads provide advertisements alongside your Facebook sidebar, which show related actions your friends have taken on the site. It is possible to tailor ads to your friends and their interests, which makes it more appealing for them to take action because you are interested as well.

Strategy 4: Facebook Fan Page Twitter App

The Facebook Fan Page Twitter application is a great tool that brings your Twitter following back to your fan page. When you post a status update, a link or a photo (you can choose) on your Facebook fan page, there will be an update to Twitter with a shortened bit.ly link back to your fan page.

Strategy 5: Facebook Fan Box Widget

The Facebook Fan Box Widget is a great feature to add to your blog or website. This widget allows you to show your fan base and allows others to become fans instantly.

Click here to see the full article.

#3: How to Add a Retweet Button In Your PDF Documents

One growing trend on Twitter is the retweet button showing up on websites everywhere.

The retweet button allows any reader to easily post a tweet into his or her Twitter account.  And it’s not just any tweet, but one that’s prefabricated by you and links back to the original landing page where your document resides.

A retweet button in your PDF file empowers readers to easily share your PDF with their fans as well as allows readers to show their appreciation of your work by simply clicking a button. It also provides steady streams of traffic to your PDF file (because as people discover the file, they will retweet it if they like the content), plus allows you to know precisely who is sharing your document (for marketing engagement)

Check out the entire article to learn the 6 steps to add retweet buttons to your PDF files.

#4: Three New Social Media Studies Worth Reading

Here’s a quick overview of the this article:

Study 1: Social Media Engagement Big Challenge for Many Businesses (Deloitte)

Survey results from a Deloitte study (2009 Tribalization of Business Study) pointed to some key challenges that organizations are facing as they move toward integrating online communities into their social media strategy.

Study 2: Social Media Used as a Discovery Tool by 18% of Online Population (Nielson Company

This study by Nielson Company examined the relationship between social media and user search options.  The report compared social sites to search engines and portals like Yahoo! Of those surveyed, 18% reported social media sites as core to finding new information.

Study 3: Businesses Slow to Incorporate Social Media Into Practice (BIA/Kelsey)

Although numerous recent reports show how businesses plan to incorporate social media into their 2010 marketing mix, a recent study by BIA/Kelsey reported that many small- to medium-sized businesses are slow to incorporate the strategies into their plans today.

Click here to see the full article.

#5: How to Create Headlines That Go Viral With Social Media

If you are struggling to get more clicks and bookmarks on your articles, there is one area in which your content might be letting you down: your headlines.

Without a compelling headline, you will not attract attention, and your article will not spread as easily. If you do write a killer headline then you will get more clicks, more bookmarks, and your readers will be compelled to share it with their friends and contacts.

Compelling headlines grab attention, identify a targeted group, are specific, generates curiosity, and promises powerful benefits.

To grab your audience where it counts, you want your headlines to show empathy and make your readers feel. Here are three popular headline emotional hot buttons:

Boost and Slam—What is the best/worst/most/least? Compare and contrast.
Laugh, Cheer, Snigger or Cry—Human interest that tugs the heartstrings work.
Outrage, Anger, and Righteous Indignation—Listen to talk radio or the talking heads and their jabbing fingers on any cable news network.

Check out the entire article for more emotional hot buttons and a free PDF of 102 Proven Headline Formulas.

As we move into the new year, we are looking forward to sharing with you the latest trends and insights in the social media world.  On behalf of all of us at Social Media Examiner, we wish you a happy, healthy and prosperous new year in 2010!

So, now it’s your turn.  What do you think of our top 5 social media articles for 2009? Which article resonated most for you?  What social media topics do you think will hit the “Top 5” list for 2010?  Let us know your thoughts!

Here’s the cool part.  They cost next to nothing and allow you to instantly communicate with hundreds of people.  The marketing upside is huge here: quick video chats with groups of prospects, organized events and much more.

We conducted four live multi-guest video broadcasts for the launch of Social Media Examiner. In this article I’ll explain how we did it and share the tools we used so you can do this on your own.

How it Works

Are you launching a product or service?  Looking to create a big social media splash?   A new and powerful marketing idea is live video broadcasts with multiple guests. Think videophones with multiple people who the entire world can see. Then add public chat and integration with social media sites like Twitter and Facebook.

As you can see in the above image, I broadcasted live with Facebook expert Mari Smith.  In the area below our video boxes is a chat box where people asked us questions and interacted with each other.

The magic combination of seeing talking faces and being able to chat live is a powerful marketing experience. Nothing beats seeing experts in their natural habitats. Click here to watch the playback of the above example.

What makes this really interesting is the simplicity.  People simply visit a page and immediately partake in the experience.  No special software is required.  Anyone can login as a guest.  In addition, people can login with their Twitter or Facebook ID, making it easy to participate and share the experience over social media networks.

So, multi-guest live video broadcasts combine multiple live video streams (you can do more than two if you want) with public instant messaging.  Anyone can type in questions and their video can even be brought into the live video stream.

Why Do Multi-Guest Live Video Broadcasts?

Many people are already familiar with services like Skype that allow one-to-one video communication.  The mass adoption of Skype is market proof that people like seeing live talking faces.

However, the idea of multiple people streaming video publicly is something really new.  In the past, this kind of experience was restricted to executive boardrooms or major television studios.  Now it can occur without special equipment or software.

So here are the variables:

• Talking faces: Multiple people talking to each other over video
• Interacting watchers: Many people (even hundreds) interacting with the talking faces by typing in questions
• Social media: The ability for guests to effortlessly share their live experience with others in their networks (powerful viral marketing here!)

The result: serious wow factor, powerful engagement and social proof.

Here are a few benefits of doing multi-guest live video events:

• Allows special guests to connect with people on a very personal level
• Enables your business to quickly test out ideas
• Provides a platform for educating prospects and customers
• Enables live expert interviews among multiple parties
• Attracts new people to your offerings as guests share their experience via their social media channels (with the push of a button)

And I’m sure I’m just scratching the surface of the possibilities here.

How to Conduct Multi-Guest Live Video Broadcasts

The Service

TinyChat is the service we used for our live video broadcasts. From a user’s perspective, TinyChat is really simple.  You just provide people a unique URL (like tinychat.com/ourcoolbroadcast).  You create this at TinyChat.com (see image below).  When people visit your “room,” they simply enter their name and they’re brought into your live broadcast.

Starting a video broadcast with TinyChat is super-easy.  Just visit the site, enter a name for your new room and hit the green “Create your room” button.

Quick story: We were searching high and low for services that could easily include multiple people at multiple locations talking on a single stream.  We found no easy solution.  Then we saw an article on Mashable.com introducing TinyChat.  Despite some bugs, I was immediately impressed and decided we’d give it a try for our launch.  I’m glad I did!

Here are some of the service’s capabilities: videoconference rooms can accommodate up to 400 people and you can have up to 12 live video streams.

The service is free, but shows advertisements.  If you pay $14.95 per month (and you can cancel at any time), you can eliminate the ads for your room and guests.  The paid upgrade also provides a few more useful features. You can:

• Reserve up to five room names for your business (like tinychat.com/yourname)
• Set a password for video broadcasters (ensures guests cannot begin uninvited video broadcasts)
• Set a password for rooms (for more private functions)
• Create simplified recordings (I have not tested this one)

Tiny Chat Tips and Hiccups

There are a few bugs you should be aware of.  First, if you set up a room on one computer and then expect to manage it on another, you could run into problems.

When you first set up your room, you are presented with a Room Settings option (also referred to as Room Starter Controls under one of the menus—see image below).

Making things private: A few things you want to do right away include NOT allowing anyone to broadcast and NOT listing the room publicly.  I have found that entering a topic for a room is of no use if you don’t list the room publicly.  This will prevent random unwanted guests from coming into your room.

Beware of the Twitter login: You can require folks to enter your room using their Facebook or Twitter ID.  In order to maximize the entry into the room, I would select ‘No, just a nickname is ok”  (see image above).

When people first enter the room, they are given the option to login via a nickname, or with Twitter or Facebook.  If the person selects Twitter, for example, it will post a tweet in his or her feed, bringing even more people into the room.  Beware of logging in using Twitter when you are first testing your room, as others will be invited to join you (via an automated tweet).

Upgrade to save your room (and headaches): If you plan on doing a live broadcast, I would advise you to pay the $14.95 and upgrade.  This will get rid of the large advertisements for all participants in the room.  It will also allow you to set a master password for broadcasters.

Here’s why this is important.  One big bug with TinyChat has to do with Room Starter Controls.  Let’s say you set up your account on one computer (or browser) and then you want to change settings later on another computer.  TinyChat won’t let you control the settings of the room because you did not “start it.” The best way to ensure things go well is to upgrade and login.  Then set a broadcasting password for the room and only give it to presenters.  This ensures random people do not begin broadcasting and addresses the bug as well.

I’m here, where are you? Okay, this has happened a few times.  I was logged in my paid room and no-one else was there.  BUT, they actually were in the room and did not see me.  I had to log out and log back in with a different browser.  The problem seemed to be isolated to the Safari web browser.  I hope they fixed this issue.  The good news is it only occurred during test runs.

Tips for Video Presenters

Here are a few tips to ensure your live broadcast goes as planned.

Do a Test Run: Having done a LOT of live events, I cannot overstate the importance of a dry run to test everything with your presenters.  Technology always means hiccups.  Conduct a test run days before your actual event with each of the presenters individually.  This ensures audio and video issues are worked out before your live event.

Make All Presenters Wear a Headset: One of the biggest challenges with live video broadcasts is audio echoes.  This nearly always occurs because a presenter is not wearing a headset.  So the voice coming from a presenter’s computer speakers is picked up by his or her microphone and creates a horrible echo.  The simple solution: Ask if the presenter has an iPod headset.  Have the presenter stick the headset in one ear and run the cord behind his or her back and into the computer’s audio output port.  Also watch the audio indicators to make sure your voice doesn’t get too loud or too soft.

Lighting: If you can, make sure everyone is well-lit.  Often this involves asking presenters to move a lamp behind their computers. Lighting, however, is a real art (and I’m no expert).  Go here for a cool video on basic lighting techniques.

Have regular breaks to introduce new attendees to the presenters: Because people will virally discover your broadcast while it’s happening, it makes sense to have some regular 30-second breaks where you introduce yourself and who you are talking with.  Here are a few tips from Damian Christianson.  Have some pre-crafted text that you can paste into the chat channel with details about the presenter and the event.  Also provide a place for folks to go (like your blog) with follow-up questions.

Recording sessions: I have not experimented with the built-in recording capabilities of TinyChat.  I prefer to capture recordings myself. I’m on a Mac and strongly recommend ScreenFlow to record your sessions.  Just remember that you’ll be recording audio from your computer and your input microphone, which can result in a slight delay between your lips moving and your voice.  I think it’s not that huge, but be aware it will happen.

What do you think? Do you find value in live multi-person video broadcasts?  If you have done live video broadcasts, please share your tips in the comment box below.

But Technorati is also TechnoratiMedia.com—the largest ad network focusing on social media where businesses can purchase ads.

Watch this video as Richard shares:

• How bloggers use Twitter and video to promote their blogs
• How bloggers can now publish their articles directly on Technorati to reach bigger audiences
• The difference between mainstream media content and blogging
• And insights into the future of blogging

Be sure to check out Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere reports. As Richard Jalichandra tells us in this video, this year’s survey was double in size compared to the one used last year to create the State of the Blogsphere report. This year’s report focuses on professional blogs today, including part-time bloggers, self-employed bloggers and corporate bloggers.

Now, over to you…

• What do you think of the current blogsphere and the future of professional blogging?
• What other social media platforms do bloggers use to promote their blogs?
• How do you like the new option of publishing your articles directly Technorati?

Please share your thoughts and comments below.