Hey,

 For the next few posts I'll be doing a series on Microblog marketing, talking about several microbloging platforms, apps, and tools useful for making the best use in marketing communications. But of course we'll begin the story in the platform everyone is aware of, Twitter.

 Now while everyone see's that twitter is important piece to thier social media marketing mix, how to make use of it is sometimes hard to think of. So here's a list of different ways you can use twitter to accomplish marketing goals.

1) As Broadcasting Medium - This is a great for larger well established brands cause it allows an easy route to get brief messages out, many celebrities do this, instead of participating in the twitter conversation they just broadcasts the message. If this is what your doing you can broadcast across the many microblog platforms using ping.fm which I'll talk more about them in future volumes in this series.

2) Join the Brand conversation - Probably the most effective thing generally is to join the conversation being made about your Brand, search for your brand see what their saying and give a response. Who doesn't enjoy making a comment about someone and getting a response from them in the process. Again, better for more established brands.

3) Join other conversations - are you an upcoming personal brand, well use twitter or any community platform and be part of whatever the community is talking about, become an opinion that with well thought statements becomes an opinion of value and thus strengthen the brand.

4) Create a brand mascot - You can create imaginary charachters who participate in all the previous ways via twitter, give them a unique personality like Morky the Hater and create someone who compliments your brand.

Again, Twitter being the largest platform is usally the most streamlined and usally adopts waterdowned versions of features other platforms are built around (ala facebook or myspace). We'll talk about other platforms built around unique ways to follow a conversation as well, but in the microblog wars twitter is the winner and is target number one as you build your online social media brand.

- Alex Merced

Hey,

 A part of creating a successful brand is being authentic of course, if you arn't yourself then people won't be able to connect, but you need to express yourself though content. So while, twitter and facebook and all the usual targets are important in getting the message across how about broadcasting audio.

I have an iphone, so finding a way to record audio to my iphone and post it to the web convienently has create a great outlet for content production. Here are two of my favorite ways to accomplish this.

1) AudioBoo.fm - Alex's AudioBoo

A fairly new webapp, it's basically audio blogging from the iphone, with all the following and reply features your familiar via twitter. What's really neat is when you check out someone profile you can subscribe to their "Boos" with the click of a button in itunes.

2) Tumblr.com - Alex's Tumblr

Like a much more feature rich Twitter, with the ability to post videos, audio, etc. The Iphone tumblr app makes it easy to put together rich media and post it tumblr whereever you are.

Although not everyone has an iphone, there are some great tools for putting out audio media.

FOr Podcasting: MyPodCast.com comes with great software and tools to make anyone new to podcasting a podcaster with ease.

For Audio: While mainly a music hosting site, Reverbnation.com features, tools, and audio hosting features makes it a great way to create an archive of audio bits, especially if you doing educational soundbites. Like I did with my political site, MercedForFreedom.com, I created this audio archive.

OR if you have a ning.com community there is already the ability to upload and host audio on your community which you can post on the front page like I have at the Alex Merced Community

Well, trust me I understand the logic behind a multi level marketing program. It actually is very clever to have your customers pay you to be your customer and market your product, and even though it works really well I wouldn't sleep well running one.

Although I think the idea of taking your marketing dollars and puting them in the hands of your loyal fans to promote your product which they probably would do anyways, but it makes for good karma and loyalty. If I were a more wealthy man a program where you pay people to maintain a local fangroup, and pay out based on new members of the group and quality media created would be a marketing program I'd get behind.

Just a thought to all the record labels trying to find newer maybe more affordable ways to market and create viral media.

Social Media is not the answer to all your marketing woes the traditional issues to address

- Who are you trying to communicate with (target market)

- What do you want to take away (the message)

- do they like what you offer (customer feedback)

etc. etc. etc.

Social Media isn't the answer to your marketing challenges, but it's strong tool in finding answers to those challenges and addressing them in some cases. My only point is to not think a social media strategy is a quick way to massive exposure, it's the new standard way of marketing communications, cause it's the new standard of communication.

So it's important, why, cause it's where the people are, and it's where they are talking.

- Alex

Should you care what people think?

Yes! What you shouldn't do is let what people think effect how you define yourself, yet you should care if people see you the way you see yourself. If people can't see you the way you see yourself, it's not there fault most of the time, it's usally due from bad communication or lack of communication.

This is why personal branding is important, it gives you the tool to create clear communications so the power of what people think about you is once again, in your hands. Many people will argue that Personal Branding is disgenuine and not organic, but that's usally excuse to continue poor communication. Good communication, if it's good communication is always honest, transparent, and organic.

Now while I can write a book on personal branding, and many have, here's a checklist of the basics of what you should do to brand yourself using social media:

- Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter accounts are a MUST, with completely filled out profiles. You don't need to give your life story but an essence of who you are whether it be favorite poems instead of a bio, or a picture of a favorite place instead of a picture of you. Expressing yourself is key.

- Establish your Google Profile this is a fairly new development in the world, but knowing google this will play a key role in the landscape to come, plus it only takes a second so do it.

- A linkedIN profile if your looking to job hunt or network professionally linkedin is a must, even if you meet people on other networks some contact will want to see a fleshed out linkedin profile with recomendations from colleagues.

- Participate in the Conversation the best way to communicate who you are is to involve yourself in as many communication streams as you can comfortably handle, join a forum or a ning community of an interest and socialize with those with the same interest or profession to better known in those circles.

OTHER NICE EXTRAS:

- Start a blog on Wordpress.com, Blogger.com, or Squarespace.com

- Start a Podcast, mypodcast.com is an excellent tool for those new to the game

Remember, if you genuine and honest, no one can fault you for being you. It's when communications are muddled cause of soem identity crisis or lack of identity is when people can fall prey to misunderstanding you.