Secrets of Social Media Marketing

“People on MySpace aren’t running away from pedophiles and stalkers. They’re running away from marketers and advertisers.”
—Giovanni Gallucci, cofounder, Dexterity Media, in an interview on IT Conversations

winnowing down your result set to a more manageable number.

As noted earlier, Google’s Alerts service is a valuable way to get new Web mentions dropped into your e-mail box. Every marketer should have Google Alerts set up for the products, brands, executive names, and competitors that matter to them.

For mining the blogosphere, the options expand. There are dozens of blog-specific search engines (you can find a good list at aripaparo.com/archive/00632.html), but the most popular ones are Technorati, Google Blog Search, IceRocket, Blogdigger, Blogpulse, and Bloglines. Zuula is a new meta search engine that just does blog search. There’s even Twittersearch, Terraminds, and Twittermeter, which search only Twitter messages.

Secret: Learn to use advanced search—it’ll save you boatloads of time.

cease-and-desist notice.

On the other hand, repeating the message back to the source and delivering a well-reasoned response can go miles toward demonstrating concern

Customers who complain are an opportunity. Engage them in conversation. Find out what would make them happy. Then make changes that knock their socks off

4. Embrace all feedback

. Incorporating social media into your marketing isn’t a quick fix, magic elixir, or sure thing. It’s about creating community, and that doesn’t happen overnight. Consistent participation in social media delivers its best results months, or even a couple of years, down the road. You need to be in it for the long haul.