When I first heard about Quora, the conversation went a little like this:

Jill: “Have you heard of Quora? It’s a question and answer site.”
Jack: “You mean like Yahoo Answers?”
Jill: “No, it’s full of experts who give you the best answers.”
Jack: “You mean like LinkedIn Answers?”
Jill: “No, the community votes for the best answer and they can hide irrelevant answers.”

There you have it. Quora is what happens if every Wikipedia article was turned into a Jeopardy question and then answered with the same Wikipedia article, although much less accurate, completely subjective and much more self-promoting.

Too many of the answers are self promotional here.

I’m not inviting Lewis Howes to this… He’s already on a better platform—LinkedIn.

Of course this was just my first impression of Quora. After some prodding and poking, I decided to check the place out for myself. Let’s see how close my initial thoughts were to reality.

What Is Quora?

Quora calls itself a “continuing collection of questions and answers created, edited, and organized by everyone that uses it.” Which sounds great until you register and see the stream.

The truth is that Quora is organized more like a trunk full of toys that a group of five-year-olds continually use, edit and organize as they see fit.

Never fear, because unlike most children’s rooms, Quora has a great search function and gives really good information once you’ve narrowed down on a question.

The Benefits of Quora

In fact, despite my sarcasm, Quora has a number of fantastic opportunities for the social media ninja out there.

1. Quora is a great place to find content ideas.

Don’t know what to blog about? Find out what your audience wants to know about your industry, and blog about that! Quora can be a great market research tool for bloggers to make sure that their content is relevant to their actual audience, and not just a good idea to them.

2. Quora is a great place to find experts.

The one thing Quora has a lot of is experts. Every question has a democratically voted-on “Best Answer,” and by consequence, “Best Answerer.” Connecting with these people will give you tons of experts in an industry to pick the brain of or hobnob with. Which brings us to Quora’s next benefit.

3. Quora provides networking opportunity.

It’s tough being a “nobody” in any industry, but networking with the smartest and most popular of the bunch is a good way to increase your own visibility. Quora gives you the chance to connect with experts—not only on Quora, but also on the social network of the expert’s choice, depending on how many of their social networks they’ve connected to their profile.

4. Find joint venture opportunities on Quora.

The real benefit of Quora has nothing to do with questions and answers. The real power is connecting with very smart people to do business together. If I were to use Quora as a strategic resource, I would only connect with “Best Answerers” and try to do joint venture deals with them. They’re already ambitious, as they’re staking claim to a social network that’s only popular with die-hard social media users. They’re investing time hoping that Quora works out, so they shouldn’t have an issue investing in a joint venture deal for the promise of a future benefit. And finally, it’s likely that they have, or are trying to grow, an audience for their expertise, so you can offer to showcase them to your audience in return for the same or another benefit.

The Disadvantages of Quora

It ain’t all sunflowers and origami Swans. As much as I’d like to end this article with all of the benefits of Quora, the truth is that there are some glaring holes in the platform, as there are with any new social platform. Let me bring you up to speed.

1. There is such a thing as a stupid question.

Your sixth-grade teacher was lying to you. If you’re a professional or a marketer looking to answer serious questions about your core industry to raise your exposure level, you’ll run into many questions like this one:

Poo poo also floats in water. Next question.

Stick to targeted searches, my friends.

2. Quora is the self-promotion capital of the world.

You knew this was coming. The point of your business is to make profit. You get profit from customers. And you get customers by being the best, or just positioning yourself as the best. Unfortunately this kind of member has cheapened the experience and potential of Quora. No one answers questions for the greater good of the question; everyone has an angle. Wikipedia had it right—keep it about the info. Quora isn’t there yet. Not even close.

3. Wait, have you heard of LinkedIn Answers?

I wasn’t joking earlier. Nothing about Quora screams unique.

LinkedIn Answers is more professional, it’s already tied to your professional profile and there are already 100 million users there. Now I’m all for competition, but the simple act of allowing users to vote answers up or down doesn’t make a new platform.

Maybe this point of view will make me change my mind:

Yeah. That’s the point… (see yellow box above)

Besides being completely wrong (Quora allows you to tie all aspects of your professional life into your profile), as a marketer, why wouldn’t you want something you say to be linked to you professionally? The only reason that I can think of is that you’re saying something you shouldn’t be saying, or you don’t know what you’re talking about.

Finally, a difference! On Quora, maturity and accountability are optional.

Final Thoughts

I know I sound negative, but think about this. There’s already a place where you can get answers from professionals, then look at their profile to connect with them for more information, and learn their life story. It’s called LinkedIn, and it’s pretty awesome. Apparently 100 million people agree.

Also, there’s already a place where we’ve decided to organize the world’s information so high-school and early college students don’t have to study nearly as hard as they tell their parents they are. It’s called Wikipedia, and it already has a pretty awesome community that’s working on that whole “keeping the information awesome and reputable” thing. Add that to the fact that they already have a kind of voting system where inaccurate info just disappears. Oh, and they have to use footnotes too.

We need to end the habit of creating platforms that are simply the same as platform ‘x’ but with feature ‘y.’ It’s not worth the time or effort, nor is it particularly useful to anyone to uproot their presence or add another burden to their social media plate.

The only thing Quora introduces that makes it different from my previous two examples is ego and peer pressure. Now I can add my name and my brand to the knowledge that I’m giving the world. Now I can publicize that it was me who knew the most about industry X on Twitter, and every other social platform that we’ve been trying to take the ego out of for the past 2 years.

And after that, I can bring my swarm of Twitter followers to the platform to ensure that my answers are voted to the top, giving me the title of Smartest Question Answerer Ever, and possibly even acquire the Power of Grey Skull.

Quora is an adolescent version of two platforms that we already have mature versions of. What’s that saying? “When I was a child, I spoke as a child…”? Well ten years ago, I would have LOVED Quora, but hopefully, the social media industry is mature enough to realize we have the solutions we need to be successful, and not abandon them for something new and shiny for new-and-shiny’s sake.

Have you used Quora yet? How was your experience? I’d love to hear your take on social media’s newest “it” platform. Leave your comments in the box below.

As more professional LinkedIn users create Twitter profiles, I believe this application will become more and more powerful for building influence and visibility with your network connections.

The primary benefits of the LinkedIn Tweets application are:

• Follow your LinkedIn connections on Twitter
• Post status updates simultaneously to both Twitter and LinkedIn
• Monitor and interact with your Twitter streams from within LinkedIn
• Create a LinkedIn-specific Twitter list

Before we look at some additional ways to leverage the Tweets application, make sure you’ve first added your Twitter account to your LinkedIn profile.

Add Your Twitter Account to Your LinkedIn Profile

Click “edit profile” and “add Twitter account” next to the Twitter field. This will create a link directly to your Twitter account on your LinkedIn profile for all visitors to see if you choose to display it on your profile.

To share your tweets in your LinkedIn status, I would recommend that you choose the “Share only tweets that contain #in” option rather than allowing every tweet to flood into LinkedIn as a status update. Typically, one or two daily status updates in LinkedIn will be sufficient—you don’t want to overdo it.

Share tweets that can add value to your LinkedIn connections!

Install the LinkedIn Tweets Application

Go to “Applications” in LinkedIn and search for the Tweets application to install on your profile. Once installed, you’ll be able to visit your Twitter page on LinkedIn by going to the “More” menu tab and clicking on “Tweets.”

With Tweets, you can now display your most recent tweets on your LinkedIn profile.

How to Utilize the Tweets Application to Build Social Influence

Below are three important features of the Tweets application that you can use to help you grow your Twitter connections, gain intelligence about what your LinkedIn connections are tweeting about and promote your connections through their tweets.

#1: Identify and follow all of your LinkedIn connections on Twitter within the Tweets application

Go to the “Connections” tab to see who you’re NOT following on Twitter and follow them. You may not find a substantial number of your connections on Twitter, but go ahead and follow those who are! Most likely they’re going to follow you back.

#2: Create a dynamic Twitter list of your LinkedIn connections

From within the Tweets application, LinkedIn makes it easy for you to create an official dynamic Twitter list of your LinkedIn connections. Go to the “Connections” tab and on the left-hand side you’ll see “Save as Twitter List.” It may take a few minutes for this list to populate, and by default it will be a private Twitter list. The newly created list will show up within the Tweets application where you’ll have the ability to view the stream in real time.

This is a great tool in and of itself. Rather than manually having to go through and create a Twitter list of your LinkedIn connections, it’s done in the click of a button and always up to date. I can’t think of a better way to make Twitter more relevant to your existing professional network! If I had very little time to spend on Twitter, this is where I would focus my efforts.

Consistently monitoring this unique Twitter list can give you tremendous insight into what your LinkedIn connections are thinking and spreading online. People tend to update Twitter much more often than LinkedIn.

#3: Look for engagement and promotional opportunities through LinkedIn Tweets

The Tweets application actually functions as a Twitter client. You can tweet, reply, retweet or even share posts as messages with any of your LinkedIn connections. However, the real power comes from being able to update your LinkedIn status simultaneously, along with tweeting, replying or retweeting.

Remember, promoting and connecting others is a very effective strategy to build social influence! Don’t underestimate the power of consistent status updates, and the reach that those particular updates can have. When you find a tweet in your LinkedIn Twitter stream that’s relevant, or could be interesting, entertaining or helpful to your broad LinkedIn network, this is where you’ll want to engage and promote.

Ideally, you’ll want to retweet the important post(s) from your LinkedIn connections within the Tweets application and go a step further by checking the box to share the tweet as a status update. The retweet will then show up as a status update to your entire LinkedIn network and it will hyperlink to the individual’s Tweet page within LinkedIn, giving others an opportunity to follow that person on Twitter.

Not only have you promoted the content to your LinkedIn network, but you’ve also provided your connection with extended visibility in both networks and will potentially help him or her gain some new LinkedIn connections and Twitter followers.

This is a retweet from the Tweets application that I also shared as a status update.

By clicking on @ducttape from within the status update, the link travels directly to his Twitter page in LinkedIn.

You could spend time reviewing your other Twitter lists from within the LinkedIn Tweets application and engaging with those individuals as well. If you find something relevant that your LinkedIn network connections can benefit from, again retweet it as a status update. Follow up with that individual to let him or her know that you also posted the tweet as a LinkedIn status update because you thought your network could benefit from seeing it.

Ultimately with any social network, you want to be viewed as a resource who can be relied upon to share and spread quality information. If you can marry this with promoting those professionals with whom you’re already connected on LinkedIn, you can build social influence by helping your connections increase their visibility. This is a win-win.

For additional tips on leveraging Twitter and LinkedIn together, read “How to Prospect Using the Combined Power of LinkedIn and Twitter.” Consider downloading the Free LinkedIn Guide for Professionals from HubSpot as well. This is another very helpful resource for taking advantage of all that LinkedIn has to offer for growing your professional network.

Have you incorporated the Tweets application into your profile? What are some other ways to utilize this application to build influence on both networks? Share your feedback in the comments box below.

LinkedIn Groups offers one of the best ways to make the most of your social media engagement time, but you must adopt the right strategy to be successful. This article will show you how.

LinkedIn allows you to join up to 50 groups, but you can’t possibly be effective and spend enough time to make a difference in 50 groups.

What works best is to focus your time and effort on a deep and narrow approach in order to build influence within LinkedIn Groups, enhance your credibility and generate new connections.

Here’s how:

#1: Identify the Best Group Opportunities

Evaluate the groups you’ve joined or intend to join and focus on the top 3 to 5 groups that most accurately represent your target demographic. Also, you’ll want to choose groups that don’t have a huge membership.

I recommend that you choose groups that have at least a few hundred members, but no more than a few thousand if you really want to maximize your visibility.

Plan to proactively visit each of your top groups 2-3 times a week. Don’t wait for the daily or weekly updates that come to your email inbox. Identify your best opportunities and plan to make frequent and consistent appearances!

Find groups that represent your target demographic.

#2: Target the Most Popular Discussions in Each Group

The most “popular” discussions within a group generally get the most visibility. These are the topics where members are most actively engaged and they feature discussions that you will want to weigh in on. The most popular discussions are at the top of the group discussion page, and typically there will be quite a few comments associated with them for you to review and learn from.

Participate in popular discussions.

As you weigh in on popular discussions, respond to existing comments, provide an insight or opinion or even ask a thought-provoking question to generate additional comments. You can also “Like” and “Share” these discussions with your connections.

If your comments add value to the popular discussions, members will begin to recognize you as a thought leader within the group.

#3: Start Your Own Discussion

Starting your own discussion thread is also a powerful tool within a group, but you must be strategic with this. I recommend that you wait to start your own discussion until after you’ve spent some time participating in the top discussions first (#2).

In addition, observe the contributions of the most active group members in order to understand their concerns, goals and objectives. What seems to be important to them?

Also study prior popular discussions. What topics have resonated with members? In starting your own discussion, pose a question, ask for help or advice or post a relevant and interesting article or resource for the group’s benefit. Your goal with starting your own discussion is to encourage as much engagement as possible!

Start a discussion by asking a compelling question.

Start a discussion by providing a helpful tutorial for the group members.

If you’re truly engaging members of the group with the discussions you initiate, you’ll have the opportunity to be recognized as a “Top Influencer” in the group page sidebar, which can help you build visibility and authority within the group.

Focus on becoming a "top influencer" for greater visibility in LinkedIn Groups.

Note: It’s extremely important to add value when starting discussions and avoid promoting your own products, services or content. After you’ve earned some credibility within your top groups, it’s acceptable to post one of your own articles from time to time. Just make sure that what you post to the group answers a question or solves a problem with members, and don’t ever post sales-related material.

#4: Follow Up and Follow Through

One of the disadvantages of LinkedIn Groups is that it’s difficult to keep up with updates unless you proactively visit your top groups as recommended. Make sure to keep up with the conversations you’re participating in.

Don’t let too much time lapse and don’t leave a conversation open. Keep your comments fresh and interesting to demonstrate your commitment to your groups.

Also consider handing out “Likes” for interesting posts by group members and share valuable posts as LinkedIn status updates. When you share a group discussion post as a status update, you’re exposing it to all of your connections and giving the post greater visibility within LinkedIn. Promoting and connecting others on LinkedIn can build social influence.

#5: Start Your Own Group

If you’re willing to make the commitment, another option is to start your own LinkedIn Group. If you manage your own group, you have control over many aspects of your group. To an extent, you can control which discussions get more visibility through the “Manager’s Choice” feature.

As a group owner, you will have control over the "Manager's Choice" discussions.

As the founder of the group, it’s actually your job to lead discussions with the group! Ultimately it will be the members who push the most interesting discussions to the top. When you start your own group, make sure that you have a well-defined niche or theme. Otherwise you may not get much traction. Focus on bringing people together who can benefit from sharing mutual experiences and insights.

Using this approach for your LinkedIn Group participation strategy can help you maximize your time and energy on the network. Making a commitment to adding value to a small number of targeted groups on a consistent basis will help you build influence and new connections. In addition, you’ll find that there’s little competition in this strategy!

What strategies are you currently using within LinkedIn Groups? Are you finding relevant groups for your industry where you can truly add value? I would love to hear about your experiences. Leave your comments in the box below.

But very few think of leaving a comment on a blog as a strategy to driving awareness—and potentially, down the road, garnering leads.

Wait, how can leaving a comment on a blog drive awareness (or leads) for your brand? You might be surprised at how effective this strategy can be, given the right circumstances. B2B organizations, for example, are often positioned well to capitalize on this approach based on their need to establish themselves as thought leaders on various topics.

But, before we get to the “how,” let’s talk a bit more about the “why.”

Why Comments as a Strategy

Think about the leading business blogs. Take the Harvard Business Review (HBR) blogs, for example. The traffic on those HBR blogs is pretty heavy, right? According to a simple Compete.com query, the main HBR blog site had more than 330,000 unique visitors in March 2010 (its highest point during the year). That’s some serious traffic.

More importantly, if you’re interested in the kind of people who are disposed to read HBR (and let’s face it, many companies are), it can be the right traffic for your organization or clients.

Sure, the HBR blogger builds credibility and thought leadership with the 330,000-plus eyeballs that are reading the initial post—but so can you (to an extent) with a thoughtful perspective in the comment stream. In effect, what I’m saying is you can raise visibility and awareness for you and your company by commenting on well-read industry blogs like HBR regularly.

A blog commenting strategy can also serve as a solid foundation for future blogger outreach “campaigns.” By commenting regularly on blogs that you’ll be targeting in future blogger outreach campaigns, you’re building trust and credibility with bloggers that will pay off down the line.

Take that concept one step further for a moment: What about using a blog comment strategy as a way to open the door to guest posts on targeted blogs that your customers may be reading on a regular basis?

Personally, I’ve done this a few times in the past with success. Namely with Gini Dietrich and Danny Brown—two bloggers (and now friends) who are very heavily read in the digital PR industry (and, more importantly, blogs I know some of my clients are reading).

Bottom line: Don’t sell a thoughtful blog comment short—it takes time and energy to produce an insightful comment. And bloggers know that—and they’ll take notice.

Now that we know a blog comment strategy is a viable potential tactic to increase online visibility and awareness, how do you go about developing such an approach? Follow these seven simple steps and you’ll be up and running in no time:

#1: Research and identify the blogs your customers are reading

Start culling the list by using tools like Alltop, Technorati and PostRank. Or, just do some good old-fashioned Google searches. And, once you find a few industry-leading blogs, don’t forget to review their blogrolls. They’re usually full of other blogs your customers are reading.

Finally, why not use Twitter to crowdsource your blog list? For example, tweet “What are 3 blogs in your Reader that you simply couldn’t live without?” This tactic might give you a nice mix to add to the list.

#2: Organize for daily consumption

To track and follow these blogs daily/weekly, you’re going to need a system—a methodical process for scanning new posts and identifying comment opportunities. The best tool? A “reader.” Most folks use Google Reader—but not me. I religiously use Feedly. It’s a bit less “geeky” than Google Reader and is organized more like an online magazine for blogs. What I love most about Feedly is the customization—group blogs by topic, browse by most recent posts or review in “cover” mode. Whatever suits your fancy.

Feedly is a less geeky alternative to Google Reader for monitoring blogs regularly.

#3: Track and monitor bloggers via Twitter lists

Yes, you want to comment on these blogs, but you also want to monitor the bloggers’ other online behavior, including Twitter. By building specific Twitter lists, you can easily scan and see what these folks are talking about and sharing on a daily basis. Check it once a day—just enough to give you some insight into the way they think and what they’re talking about. Respond or retweeet a few of these bloggers’ posts (and leave a few comments), and believe me, they’ll notice and remember you.

By using Twitter lists you can track and follow what bloggers are sharing and commenting on daily.

#4: Get to know the bloggers

Spend about two weeks reading the bloggers’ posts and getting to know their style and the topics they like to write about. I say two weeks (seems like a lot, I know) because not everyone blogs every day like Jay Baer or Darren Rowse. Some people are actually human (in case you didn’t catch that, this is a compliment to Jay and Darren) and only blog 2-3 times per week. In that case, you’ll need to read a few posts to get a better sense of their blogs.

#5: Provide insightful comments

Sure, this might seem obvious, but there are a few tricks to the comment trade:

• Add one piece of useful information. Instead of focusing on adding too much—concentrate on just delivering one super-useful contribution to the post. Specifically, look to add one quality piece of content to the frequent “list posts” we see so many of online these days.
• Play devil’s advocate. One of the common refrains we hear is there is too much agreement among bloggers. Take a contrarian stance. Offer a substantiated argument, backed by facts and data. More often than not, you’ll be seen as guiding a constructive conversation about the topic at hand.
• Get personal. Don’t be afraid to share a personal story or anecdote as a way of highlighting your point. Be sure to make it relatable, interesting and when possible, poignant.

#6: Leave a digital “breadcrumb”

Don’t go overboard here. Just a Twitter handle will often suffice. If you’re not on Twitter, use your blog/site URL. What you want to avoid is being too aggressive. No links back to your site (unless it’s extremely relevant). No language saying readers should follow you on Twitter. Your comment should stand on its own merits—just leave readers a way to get back to your blog/site.

#7: Follow up with an “ask”

If the goal of your blog commenting strategy is to obtain guest posts, this is obviously a critical step. In the past, I’ve found this to be a great way to broker a guest post on different blogs (a client of mine secured a guest post on Jay Baer’s blog this way). Read the blogger for a few weeks. Share a number of posts on Twitter. Leave a few well-thought-out comments. Then do your asking. You’ve established that you’ve taken the time to leave comments and share their content on Twitter.

By this time, the blogger should recognize you (as much as anyone can “recognize” someone online). If you approach the blogger with a thoughtful request and a solid rationale, it makes it difficult for him or her to say no. Then, all you have to do is follow through on that promise and deliver extremely compelling content.

What about you? Have you implemented a blog commenting strategy in the past? What steps would you add to this list? Leave your comments in the box below.

I was tasked to write about this mega social media conference. Here are 6 specific things that I took away from BlogWorld 2010.

#1: I discovered geocaching

At one point or another we’re all victims of complacency, if we’re being honest. BlogWorld is where I discovered geocaching, via Julie Henning.

Geocaching is where people all over the world hide things (caches) and use a GPS app that lets searchers find them. Yes, you heard me right; it’s a WORLDWIDE never-ending scavenger hunt. And I uncovered a geocache in Las Vegas while attending the event. Had I not attended, I would have never even known about this craze that has 4 million participants. Watch this video for more info:

Quick and dirty Geocaching lesson…on the house!

#2: The sessions are great, but the networking is GOLD

Scott “The NameTag Guy” was my personal favorite session, and not because he let me videotape him pretending to be a pro-wrestler either (or that he gave me a free book).

Lewis Howes delivered in his panel discussion, as usual. Adria Richards gave great tips on how to use social media for your next job search, and the keynote by Scott Stratten was awesome.

With all that being said, I’ll never forget the post-BlogWorld party at Darren Rowse’s place, where Allison Boyer, Shannon Smith and Chris Ducker discussed the nuances of pronouncing the word “apricot.”

Or the lunch with Mike Stenger, Jordan Cooper, Allison Boyer, Jamie Tardy and Oleg MokHov, where we discussed the definition of viral and what true engagement is.

The first night with Amy Schmittauer, Sammy Hammons and Scott Robinson is going down in the history books as the most walking done by any human being ever, and Amy Schmittauer’s awkward introduction to both Scott Stratten and Jay Baer won’t be forgotten anytime soon.

Social media will never replace the human experience. I got really close to about 6 people in the span of 72 hours and I don’t think any of us will forget each other. This is what we strive for when we’re tweeting back and forth. These are the conversations that we want to have when we comment on each other’s blogs. BlogWorld reminds us of the true purpose of social media, and that’s to eventually advance the conversation offline and build relationships.

#3: Connecting with people, not profiles

Scott Robinson and I might have spent 10 hours together over the course of the conference. We spent maybe 15 minutes actually talking about what we do—and that was at the closing party. Too often, we get caught in the act of engaging for a business purpose and forget that what we really want is to create “know, like and trust.”

Ask Nate about his karaoke skills…

Sitting at the Social Media Examiner breakfast, I got to have an amazing conversation about power and influence with Mike Stelzner that encouraged me to accelerate a project I’m working on. I had one of the most reckless conversations with Amy Porterfield, Gina Onativia, Katherine Salt and Rich Brooks about everything from stealing great ideas to the concept of a “play cousin.” No business, just people.

Again and again I got to learn about people, not business representatives, and for that reason I felt like I had the time of my life nonstop for 3 days straight. In the process of that I may have made some nice business contacts, but I definitely made some new friends, and that’ll take me much farther than business info in a CRM will ever do.

#4: Expanding your network quickly

I met people who hailed from Gainesville, Florida, to local folks right from Las Vegas itself. I met Katherine Salt, an awesome lingerie store owner from Jersey (a small island off the coast of England) and Chris Ducker, a man who disagrees with my pronunciation of the word “apricot,” who was about to travel to Columbia via a brand-new—and possibly dangerous—airline at 3 am.

It didn’t really hit me until I got back to my room on Monday morning. I just went global.

Forget the Internet; BlogWorld is a literal phrase. I was amazed at the range of people, countries and especially accents that I encountered. I’m pretty sure I now have a lunch date if I’m ever in 20 or so countries around the world. Something like this could take years to build, but one conference in Vegas created that in a weekend.

#5: Scott Stratten

Memories: Worth the price of admission…

Yes, his keynote speech was amazing. His banter was consistently hilarious. And he made the phrase, “What happens in Vegas, stays on Twitter” a top tweet for 3 straight days on the #bwe10 hashtag. But my calling Scott “Steve” twice to his face within 5 minutes of each other was one of my best memories.

The “cool kids” of social media are regular people just like us. BlogWorld gives us a chance to make an impression on them the way they make an impression on us daily. You don’t get to just “meet people” at a place like BlogWorld. You get to have experiences and collect stories.

Imagine how much fun Amy Schmittauer is going to have telling the story of her Scott Stratten book cover, signed by “Scott Steve Stratten” over the next few weeks. Better than any blog post comment could ever do.

#6: Content avalanche

I’ve written down about 20 blog post ideas in 24 hours.

The conversations at BlogWorld don’t just build relationships, they build content. Discussing Jamie Tardy’s goals led to a blog idea about the evolution of a millionaire mindset. Debating the definition of viral with Jordan Cooper led to another post, as did our discussion about what engagement works and what doesn’t.

Amy Schmittauer and I shot videos of me having a complete #fail test-driving a new 2011 Ford Mustang (I hadn’t driven stickshift in a while…just imagine it). This led to a blog post about committing to learn something new and doing something that may scare you.

If you don’t have an editorial calendar before BlogWorld, you will afterwards. Discussing the lives, dreams, experiences and businesses of the top thought leaders can only lead to ingenuity and growth.

Like I posted recently, our content doesn’t only come from us. If you have writer’s block, then you haven’t talked to enough people; you haven’t read enough posts (thanks, Scott “The NameTag Guy”).

Pictured: Dedication personified.

For me, BlogWorld started as a reckless spur-of-the-moment decision (Woo, Vegas!) and ended up being one of the turning points of my business. From Lucy Thompson validating the name of our new blog, “Super Villain Strategy”, to walking for a full fortnight on the floor of the Luxor and Mandalay Bay, to some of the most unexpectedly talented karaoke singers I’ve ever heard, BlogWorld is more than a conference, it’s an experience that can change everything.

In addition to those I mentioned, I want to thank Tanya Chadha (I know you rigged that contest for me), Michael Vallez (Crazy Mike!), the BlackBerry Team (People stared at my t-shirt all night long—I felt like a victim. New rule: no shirts with paragraphs on your chest… not one person looked me in the eye).

Naomi Trower and Kristi Hines (Thank you for having lunch with me, those playing cards are awesome!), Bill Rice (The smarter half of my discussion with Mike), Lori M. (One of the first quotes on my stream, thank you), Tiffany James (For making me get an IPad… eventually), Amber Osborne (Sorry I couldn’t be your back-up rapper, but you got your karaoke on; maybe next time).

Matt Simpson (Great pitch, even with all of the noise!), the Kodak Team (You’re awesome, next time we’ll do lunch on your break. I’d still love to win a Zi8…HINT!), Jason, AKA “Blog Luvr” (we’ll have to connect another time), and finally Cindy King (You are truly a sweetheart. I smile every time we speak). You all MADE BlogWorld no matter who put the event on. From the bottom of my heart, thank you all.

Anybody up for a trip to South By Southwest? I wonder if Steve will be there.

Every person highlighted in this article was a delight to be around. In my opinion, you should connect with as many of them as possible. I promise you won’t be sorry.

What was your favorite BlogWorld moment? I know I wasn’t the only one who had fun! Share your comments in the box below.

Be honest. Do you follow up on every LinkedIn connection request you get? No, probably not. I’ll bet you click “accept” and that’s as far as you go.

When someone requests to connect with you and you simply click “accept” and make no effort to carry on the conversation, you’re both simply saying hello to each other and it stops dead there. The only thing you gain by doing this is a string of connections that don’t have any real value. You become a connection collector.

So how can you use social etiquette to really make your LinkedIn connections valuable and stand out from the crowd at the same time?

Follow the 4 steps below and watch your reputation grow.

View LinkedIn as your own boardroom of connections versus your coffee shop connections on Twitter or Facebook. They tend to be managers, directors, business owners, CEOs and the like.

#1: Send Personalized Connection Requests

When you first send a possible contact an invitation, do it from his or her own profile page by clicking the Add to Your Network link.

We’ll use Paul as an example. By adding Paul this way, rather than simply going to the Add Connections tab, you can send a personalized message such as “Thanks for the coffee yesterday! It was great to catch up.”

This gives you the opportunity to remind Paul where you know him from. This is particularly useful if you’re getting back in touch after a long period of time, say from an old job or your school days.

If you simply send a connection request from the Add Connections box, there’s no facility to personalize your message.

This might be a quick and easy way to add a handful of new connections, but spend the time and do it right by adding your personal touch to each one by following the steps above.

#2: Reply When Accepting a Connection Request

All too often, I receive the standard email from LinkedIn that says a connection request has been accepted, but I rarely then get a short message from the new connection saying “Hi.”

So what should happen? Well, the same thing that happens in real life!

When Paul has accepted my connection request, he could then send a short message back. I like to take a look at my new connection’s profile if I’m not too familiar with him, and find something I can comment on. That may be something like he comes from my home town, or works for a company I know well or perhaps I can see from his interests that he’s a cyclist like me. Whatever it may be, try to find something to start a short conversation to build on your relationship. Make the effort to find out more.

So I’ve covered a couple of the initial steps we tend to forget about. Let’s look at composing a message to a group of connections.

#3: Composing a Group Mailing

First, you can only send a message to 50 people at any one time. This is a good thing; otherwise, I’m sure you would see a lot of spam. There are a couple of things to note here:

• Your Opening: If you’re sending an email to a group of connections, think about your greeting. How are you going to address them? I suggest you start with something like “Hi everyone” or “Greetings to you all” and then immediately say “Please excuse my lack of personalization in this email, as I am sending this out to a group of connections.” That way, you can be forgiven by any possible bad manners critics.
• Hide Others’ Email Addresses: Always uncheck the box that says, “Allow recipients to see each other’s email address.” This makes the email a BCC (blind carbon copy). Value other people’s privacy by not sharing their email addresses with everyone else.

When you receive a message yourself this way, respond where possible, depending on whether the content is relevant to you. If the sender has followed the rules below about message content and what to add, hopefully you found something of interest.

What about the message content?

If you want your connections to leave you in droves, feel free to write about all the good things you or your company can do or offer!

I’ve made this mistake in the past myself and then I came to my senses. I realized I needed to treat this form of communication just the same as my newsletters: add valuable resources.

People don’t want to hear about you all the time and what you can offer, but they do want to know about how you could possibly help fix one of their problems.

A recent example of an email to my connections looked like this.

Nowhere is there anything about my company; simply three bits of information I thought would be great to pass on. The message contained a great book that most businesses could probably utilize, a free event being put on by two great companies and a website that may save a business a bit of money.

By keeping in touch this way, my aim is to simply add value, but at the same time, put myself back on the radar of my connections.

#4: How to Ask for Recommendations

Recommendations are a valuable part of your LinkedIn profile and could be the one thing that gets you the deal when a possible client is comparing you to your competitor. Most people only have a couple of recommendations so you can stand out from the crowd with a good number of genuine and applicable recommendations. I suggest 10 as a minimum, but feel free to ask for more.

You’ll notice there’s another auto-generated template that needs personalizing, not only the body of the message but also the subject line. I like to change mine to read something like “Recommendation request” as the subject line and “Are you able to write a recommendation about the presentation I did for your company last week?” in the main body. Don’t make the request too long, but be clear on what you want a recommendation for.

If you’re asking Paul for a recommendation about a seminar he attended that featured you as a speaker, you could change the message to say, “I hope you enjoyed the seminar last week. If you feel that you’re able to write a brief recommendation about how you found my presentation and speaking skills, I would appreciate it. I totally understand if you would prefer not to. Kind regards…”

There’s no need to open your message with “Dear …” as LinkedIn will automatically add that for you.

One last tip I’d like to share with you is to install a spellcheck in your browser bar if you don’t already have one. Go to www.google.com/toolbar and download it free of charge. You just need to remember to click the little icon each time you’ve completed a space where you want to check your spelling.

You’ll be amazed at how many times you make a mistake and need to correct it. You can then use this on any form field you fill out online, not just for LinkedIn. Remember, first impressions count, so don’t let all of your hard work be undone with spelling mistakes.

In a nutshell, you should personalize every aspect of LinkedIn that you can, make each standard template your own. It may take you a little longer, but the value you’ll get from doing the job right will far outweigh the effort.

Ask yourself, if you were meeting face to face, what would you do differently?

People easily judge on first impressions, so make yours a great one, each and every time you connect.

I would love to hear your thoughts on how you get your personality across when connecting online, so feel free to share your ideas or add comments in the box below.

In this article, I take a look at two studies.

The first reveals why consumers fan businesses on Facebook. The second one examines how marketers are keeping up with the ever-changing world of social media.

#1: Nearly 40% of Consumers “Like” Companies on Facebook to Publicly Display Their Brand Affiliation to Friends

As Facebook grows, we’re able to learn even more about the behaviors and preferences of its users. As Facebook continues to change, new stats surface to give us an even better idea of how consumers on Facebook prefer to interact with brands and companies. A new report released by ExactTarget and CoTweet found that discounts and “social badging” were the primary reasons consumers Like brands on Facebook.

Nearly 40% of Facebook users who become fans do so to receive discounts and promotions and 39% become fans to show their support for a brand to their friends. Just as interesting is how these stats compare to Twitter and email marketing. Only 23% of respondents said they follow brands on Twitter and about 10% say they subscribe to email notifications for the same reasons.

“Consumers use Facebook to interact with friends, be entertained and express themselves through their public affiliation with brands—factors that combine to create a potent viral marketing platform,” said Jeff Rohrs, principal, ExactTarget’s research and education group. “By engaging consumers on Facebook in a way that keeps them entertained, brands have an unprecedented opportunity to mobilize Fans and get introduced to their friends.”

#2: Marketers Are Challenged to Stay Up-to-Date on the Latest Social Media Developments

It’s no surprise that marketers are struggling to stay current with the constantly fluctuating social media trends.

In a recent survey by The Creative Group, 65% of U.S. marketing executives considered it at least somewhat challenging to keep up.

The graph above shows the breakdown of how challenging respondents viewed staying current with social media trends.

In addition, 23% of respondents cited the best resource for staying up-to-speed on social media is conferences or seminars. Surprisingly, and coming in second at 18%, was attending networking events or industry association meetings.

Only 14% cited Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn posts as their resource of choice for staying current, while a low 7% cited blog posts as their main resource.

The chart above shows the leading resources marketers cited for staying current with social media trends. Notice how social media sites were less popular than in-person events as key resources.

“Networking becomes even more important during periods of rapid change,” said Donna Farrugia, executive director of The Creative Group. “Many marketers are aware of broad social media trends, but they need nuts-and-bolts information on how to most effectively use new channels. That’s where insight from peers on what worked and did not work for them can be most valuable.”

We want to hear from you! Do you agree with these findings? How do you stay current with all the social media changes, updates and new trends? Let us know your comments in the box below.

Guest blogging has been around for a long time, but it’s an especially hot topic now. With the concept becoming even hotter daily, it’s quite natural that myths emerge.

This post looks at three myths around guest blogging that have been actively discussed recently.

Myth #1: Guest Blogging Is a Waste of Time

“Why would I spend so much time arranging, discussing and writing a post to get just one or two links from the very bottom of my article?”

Those who think guest posting is done for link-building—and measure the guest posting campaign by the number of links—completely don’t get it. There’s so much more to it, which you’ll miss if you focus on links. In fact, I’ve been discouraging guest bloggers from thinking about links overall: just stop building links while guest blogging. Period. Focus on other benefits of guest blogging.

The most important benefit of guest blogging is building influence. It’s a long-term asset which is almost impossible to measure, but is absolutely priceless.

One thing you need to remember is that when you’ve built influence, you don’t need to care about links at all. Once an influencer creates anything, it will acquire links by itself. When you become an influencer, your followers and followers of your followers will link to and share your content eagerly without you ever asking them.

Guest blogging is by far the most effective way to build influence. Look at any influential blogger out there—most of them started by guest blogging. Moreover, they now admit that they’ve achieved online success due to guest blogging.

Leo Babauta, creater and founder of Zen Habits, built his influence via guest posting. Here's his guest post at Problogger.net that dates back to 2007.

However, if you start trying to build links (and thus get the instant benefit), you fail to build influence (long-term benefit of guest blogging). In this perspective I very much like the logic of Robert B. Cialdini, author of Influence: The Science of Persuasion: If you want to build influence, give a lot. This example from the book describes how giving increases your influence in the workplace:

Because people give back what they’ve received, it means that you can increase the level of whatever you want from your coworkers and employees by giving it first. If you want more information, you provide it to them. If you want to create a feeling of trust, you offer it first. If you want to foster a cooperative attitude, you show it first. By acting first, you get to set the tone for the type of workplace relationships you want.

Guest blogging is by far the most powerful way to give. You give high-quality content, share your expertise and people start following you in return.

Myth #1 busted! Guest blogging is only effective when you focus on long-term benefits (i.e., influence-building, networking, branding, etc.) and not on instant results (traffic or links).

And just for a change, here’s a fun little citation about guest blogging from Aussie Mummy’s interview via Home Loan Finder:

I love guest posting, it’s like going on a little bloggy holiday.

Myth #2: Guest Blogging Is Frowned Upon by Google

Yes, it’s about linking… again.

Guest blogging myth #2 popped up once Google webmaster trends analyst John Mueller said in answer to a reader’s question that he would rather work on his own site than contribute to another:

Q 11. I have launched a new blog and it obviously won’t rank in Google because none of the reputable blogs are currently linking to it. Therefore, I am actively writing guest posts on other blogs as that gives me a chance to get a link from them. Is Google fine with guest blogging and do links ‘earned’ from writing guest blogs matter?

John Mueller: Making and promoting a new site takes time and effort. In general I would recommend putting that work into your own site, instead of creating content for other people’s sites.

It’s much better to create great content for your blog and to let other sites refer visitors to your site on their own. Good luck!

The fact that John hasn’t directly said that guest blogging is good resulted in hundreds of posts elaborating further on that:

A guest post usually contains the author’s byline with a link back to his or her site. Google is rumored to devalue these links because they “were not built naturally.”

Now, let’s make it clear:

• Nowhere on the web will you find a direct statement that Google thinks guest blogging is bad.
• Guest blogging can’t be considered bad once you emphasize quality. (Therefore a link is well-deserved because you got it by providing quality content other people appreciated, demonstrated by lots of sharing and links.)

Here’s my way to deal with all the “Fear Uuncertainty Doubt” around Google: If I do a good job, Google will never be able to ruin my business (and most probably will never attempt to).

Myth #2 busted: If you write high-quality guest posts people eagerly share and link to, you will be loved by everyone (including Google).

Myth #3: Blogs Accepting Guest Posts Lose Identity

…Therefore guest posting is bad.

While the previous two myths were about writing guest posts, this one is about accepting guest contributions. Some people believe and eagerly state that they would unsubscribe from blogs if they see guest posts published there (“If a blog can’t provide high-quality content on its own, then it’s wiser to subscribe to other peoples’ blogs directly.”)

I call this one a myth because it’s just an opinion, and moreover, it largely depends on the quality of the guest posting.

I’ve just taken a look at my feed reader: Social Media Examiner, Mashable, Search Engine Land, Search Engine Journal—I, along with hundreds of thousands of other people, subscribe to those blogs exactly because they feature guest contributions daily or weekly. Guest posting is what makes those blogs so powerful. It’s what adds variety of perspectives and styles.

Guest contributions make a blog’s content captivating: I’m forced to check those feeds daily (unlike other feeds I have in my reader) because I’m excited to read something different: different opinions, different news, different advice.

Of course, it all comes down to strict editorial standards, but featuring quality guest posting is doable and well worth the effort.

Now, I don’t mean to say all blogs should start accepting guest posts now. There are many personal blogs reflecting the blogger’s identity that have built a following exactly due to that personal touch.

That being said, there’s no definitive answer to whether guest contributors may make a blog lose its identity. What’s for sure is that guest blogging will really change your blog, make your audience more varied and probably change your blog’s future.

Myth #3 busted: Guest blogging may make your blog less personal, but for most blogs, adding variety is not a bad thing.

What are your thoughts on guest blogging? What other guest blogging myths are you aware of? Share your comments in the box below.

He was the famous mythologist—author of The Hero With a Thousand Faces and many other books—who told us all to “follow your bliss” in his Power of Myth PBS specials with Bill Moyers in the late 1980s.

“That’s all well and good,” you may have thought at the time. “But I have to make a living. How do I make money by following my bliss?”

If you’ve been asking that question for the past 20 years, you’ll be happy to know that someone has finally answered it. Gary Vaynerchuk has written a book to teach us how to make money by following our bliss.

Many of you may know Vaynerchuk as the host of the video blog WineLibraryTV.com. Now he has written a book titled Crush It! Why Now Is the Time to Cash in on Your Passion.

Here’s a recent episode from Gary’s WineLibrary TV.

“Crush It!” refers to Vaynerchuk’s passion: wine. His family had a liquor store and by the age of 26, he had taken the store from $2 million in revenue in 1994 to $20 million in 2001. Here’s how he did it, building his personal brand along the way:

1. He started in 1997 by creating WineLibrary.com and selling wine online.
2. The rise and popularity of YouTube convinced him to start a video blog called WineLibraryTV.com in 2006.
3. He started talking about business in 2007. How to start one, what to sell, and how to sell it.

He had come to the following conclusion based on his personal experience: the only way to make money and be successful is to monetize your passion.

Or in Joseph Campbell’s words, to make money by following your bliss.

Why is monetizing your passion the only way to make money? Because starting a successful business is long, hard work. That’s exactly why you must monetize your passion and nothing else.

“If you’re living your passion, you’re going to want to be consumed by your work. The passion and love for what you do will enable you to work the hours necessary to succeed,” Vaynerchuk said.

And why is now the time to do it?

Because social media, new advertising venues, and the Internet have made it possible for you to find other people who share your passion and might even pay you for your knowledge. If you can establish yourself as an expert, people who need your expertise will seek you out.

Let’s talk about those new advertising venues. “The difference between promoting your brand via traditional marketing and advertising media and doing it via social networking platforms is like the difference between sending a message by Pony Express and chatting on Instant Messenger,” says Vaynerchuk.

Here’s how he came to that conclusion. He spent $7,500 to advertise on a billboard, send a direct mailing, and produce a radio spot. He got 170 orders from the billboard, 300 from the direct mailing, and 240 from the radio ad.

Then he tweeted the ad for free and got 1,700 orders in 48 hours. That’s more than all three traditional ads put together!

“These social networking sites have changed the game by giving entrepreneurs a reason to ditch the sinking traditional media and advertising platforms in favor of a communication method that opens them up to markets that would have been inaccessible until just a few short years ago.”

Crush It! will give you the techniques you need to establish your expertise using social media. Vaynerchuk calls it “building your personal brand.” Here are the techniques in a nutshell:

1. Identify your passion.
2. Learn as much about it as you can.
3. Start blogging about it.
4. Find other blogs about it and leave comments.
5. Find Facebook pages about your passion, become a friend/fan and contribute.
6. Search Twitter to find other passionate people and talk to them.
7. Repeat steps 2 through 6 over and over and over.

As your knowledge and your passionate community increase, you can reach out to advertisers. And don’t be surprised if some business development people start calling you. Vaynerchuk calls them “biz dev” people.

Suppose you have no product or service to sell? You can still get paid for your expertise. You can write one or more ebooks, speak at conferences, and even sell ad space on your blog.

But Vaynerchuk doesn’t care for Google AdSense. It “makes your page look cheap and cluttered [and] it doesn’t pay that well.” Instead, he recommends banner ads.

Here’s how to find advertisers: browse through magazines about your passion and look at the ads. Who’s advertising? Contact those companies and say, “how about advertising on my blog for a lot less money?” Of course, you have to have a really big community to get their advertising dollars.

“There is lots of money to be made, albeit in dribs and drabs to start, by siphoning off money from already-existing sources,” Vaynerchuk says.

“Siphoning off money from already-existing sources” means dumping traditional advertising venues and marketing techniques that broadcast the same ad to millions of people. Most of whom couldn’t care less about the product being advertised.

Instead, you will offer advertisers a highly targeted market: all of the people who share your passion.

And if the money comes “in dribs and drabs” in the beginning, don’t worry. As you build your expertise and your passionate community, more people will seek you out. Including advertisers.

“If you live your passion and work the social networking tools to the max, opportunities to monetize will present themselves,” Vaynerchuk says. “The passion and love for what you do will enable you to work the hours necessary to succeed.”

So if you’re unhappy in your job, pick up a copy of Crush It! Vaynerchuk wrote it “because it drives me crazy to know that there are still people out there who haven’t figured out that they don’t have to settle.”

And he means “settle” for a job doing anything besides what you really love to do.

But is it really possible to make money following your bliss using Vaynerchuk’s techniques? Why not buy Crush It! or find it in a library and write down all 21 steps in Appendix A.

Then follow his techniques for one year. Do they work? Tell us about your success or failure, and we’ll summarize the results on Social Media Examiner.

Social Media Examiner gives this book 3.5 stars.

Have you read this book? What are your thoughts on Vaynerchuk’s style? Please comment below.

Yes, many people just use Twitter to share their day with their friends. Friends who may live 2,000 miles away.

And some people use it to broadcast a breaking news story as it happens. Like the time a plane crash-landed in the Hudson River. A man in a nearby boat with an iPhone got the “scoop” on that story before the news media reported it.

“That’s certainly dramatic,” you say. “But how do I create a marketing message in only 140 characters?”

You can start by buying Twitter Marketing For Dummies by Kyle Lacy. Yes, there’s a Dummies book about Twitter marketing now!

The whole point of social media — of which Twitter is part — is to find your satisfied customers and encourage them to recommend you to their friends and relatives. In social media terminology, this is called finding product evangelists.

And it’s so easy to do this on Twitter.

Twitter Marketing Made Easy

1. Sign up at Twitter.com. It’s free!
2. Create a profile for your business.
3. Use the search feature to find messages about your company, products, or services.

“Wait a minute!” you say. “Twitter keeps all of those messages?”

Yes! And suppose your search of the Twitter archives for your company name or product names pulls up the following message:

“Just bought. Can’t get it to work! Help!”

What would you do? Here’s what you should do immediately:

1. Click the Reply button.
2. Send the person who posted the message a brief helpful response.
3. Look at the next message you found about your company or products.
4. Repeat steps 1 through 3.

That’s easy enough, isn’t it?

“But what will I say?” you ask. How about, “If you need help, please call our Customer Service Dept. at 1-800-555-2848.” That’s only 75 characters.

What you’re doing is eavesdropping on the global conversations about your company and your products and services. And starting conversations with the people who are talking about you.

You can even follow them and they can follow you. This means you’ll see all their messages — their “tweets” — and they’ll see yours.

And people share information on Twitter by “retweeting” messages. If someone retweets a message you sent them, all of the people who follow them will see your message.

“The entire idea of using Twitter for marketing is to get the people who already follow you to share your content with the people who follow them,” says Lacy. “That’s viral marketing at its finest.”

And there are many third-party programs that make searching the Twitter archives so easy, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be doing it.

Once you get good at this, you’ll start tweeting yourself. More on that later.

The Twitter Marketing Plan

Like all of the Dummies books, this book takes you by the hand and leads you step-by-step through a complete Twitter marketing plan.

It includes detailed instructions, screenshots, and lists of important tips and resources. It covers the following topics:

• Planning your Twitter marketing strategy
• Searching the Twitter archives
• Using third-party applications to increase your Twitter productivity
• Using analytics software to track your marketing efforts
• Building your Twitter network of product evangelists

And many more.

Do you understand now how you’re going to use Twitter to market your business? You can start by monitoring all of those messages about your company and responding to them whenever it’s appropriate.

In social media terminology, this is called reputation monitoring.

Don’t worry about being overwhelmed by all those messages. Each tweet is only 140 characters long. That’s approximately 20 words.

Once you master eavesdropping, you can start tweeting yourself. Post interesting and informative content — not advertisements! — that your followers will retweet to their followers. And those followers might just retweet it to their followers. Content like:

• Help from your customer service department
• Links to your latest blog post
• Notes about interesting news in your industry
• Product/service updates
• Announcements of events and special deals

Yes, you can still “advertise” in a tweet. But Lacy recommends that you limit advertisements to 1 out of every 15 tweets. You don’t want to come across as a “spammer” because Twitter will close your account.

Remember, you need to find people who are already talking about you and offer them help with your products and services as well as interesting content. If you do that, they will not report you as a spammer. They might even share your messages with their followers!

And when you have hundreds — maybe even thousands — of followers who each retweet your content to their hundreds of followers, you’ll understand what product evangelism and viral marketing are all about.

Here is how social media such as Twitter are changing advertising forever, according to Lacy:

• Reach your customers where they are, instead of advertising in places you hope they’ll be.
• Send your message only to people who care about your product, instead of wasting ink and money on people who don’t.
• Create frequent content and get it to customers at all hours of the day, not once a month or only at game time.

Are you ready to try the new way of advertising? Targeting the people who already care about your products and services and helping them spread the word about your company? That’s Twitter marketing in a nutshell.

And did I mention that Twitter is absolutely free?

Social Media Examiner gives this book a 5-star rating.

See “It Pays to Listen: Avaya’s $250K Twitter Sale” on SocialMediaExaminer.com to learn how Avaya employees got a $250,000 contract by tracking their company name on Twitter.  Also be sure to check out our Twitter Marketing Video Tutorial (free when you subscribe to our email updates).

How are you using Twitter to market your business? Please add your comment in the box below!