On the never-ending journey to locate, implement and document the most efficient, practical, effective, reliable and affordable means for entrepreneurs and small business owners to get the word out in this always-on, socially-connected world I jumped into Typepad blogging this week with some joys and some frustrations.

Frustrations First:
I had to forget what I “knew” about domain forwarding. For years I’ve had dozens of domains I secured because the name was cool but I had them forwarded to sites I was actively developing rather than have them “parked.” Since it was so simple I thought I knew what to do, and I did insofar as a simple forward was concerned.

Joys:
I use GoDaddy as my domain name registrar (and they’re having a sale, by the way). Since I wanted to have my simple domain name point to my Typepad blog I had to forward it from GoDaddy.

Forwarding a URL typically limits the SEO effectiveness of your site because a lot of search engines and directories will ignore forwarded URLs. However, Typepad is pretty snazzy and provides instructions on how to make your Typepad blog get indexed like any other blog.

They do this by not only forwarding your domain name to your Typepad blog URL but also providing instructions on modifying your CNAME records at your registrar (GoDaddy – they’re having a sale, you know!) and then activating your Domain Mapping in your Typepad Account Settings.

GoDaddy talks about it here: http://help.godaddy.com/article/5106#configuring

Typepad talks about it here: http://help.typepad.com/godaddy.html

All in all it was pretty simple but you need to follow these steps:

1. Get your domain name (at GoDaddy).
2. Get your blog at Typepad.
3. Modify your CNAME (at GoDaddy).
4. Forward your URL at GoDaddy to the same URL including the “www.”
5. Wait 24-48 hours then activate your domain mapping at Typepad.

Easy cheesy.

Happy blogging.

This is a shorter rendition of Southern Social Media due to “time constraints” and scheduling conflicts, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t packed with some good info and a few jokes.

Amongst the topics:

• How 1 company leveraged Twitter to grow their customer base by 840% in a year
• Why strategy is so important to your social media campaigns (we sound like a broken record on this, but it’s that important!)
• Social Media Mondays
• List Samurai update (it’s likely going to have more like 20 videos instead of just 13)
• Facebook 20.1 tips

Social Media Sites Are The Way To Go To Get New Customers

This is more of a “selective myth” than an outright lie.

I say “selective-myth” because not all social media sites are created equally, nor with the same purpose and goal in mind. A great majority of the sites are “social” first (hence the name), which means people are there to visit and be sociable rather than shop or be sold something.

Because of that oft-overlooked fact, many of the major social media sites are either not the best places for a business owner to spend their resources – time and money – and/or their “typical” approach to marketing is not ideal and must be reevaluated and redesigned to fit the social media landscape.

*Sidebar: Truth be told, most – as in 92.75% – of small businesses don’t know SQUAT about sales or marketing. They waste money on glossy brochures that end up in the trash. They turn over their sales force at an alarming rate but hold on to the doddering do-gooders that know how to brown nose and befriend the staff despite missing numbers year after year. Their media buys are based on the deal-of-the-month with no consideration given to creating and delivering a powerful message or considering how it will fit into a bigger strategic marketing picture. And they have no centralized, process-driven system for automating, tracking and measuring it all. Now back to your regularly-scheduled blog post already in progress…

When approaching social media for business purposes – and ALL businesses should – you must first determine your primary objective and there are only two choices: networking or link building.

Volumes have been written on the various means and methods to achieve both objectives (and a Saturday morning blog post before the Army @ Air Force and LSU @ Alabama games (Air Force and LSU will win, IMHO) is not the place to get into the weeds on those topics) but suffice it to say every major and minor social media site lends itself more adequately to one or the other for your business.

Once you understand the primary focus and benefit of each social media site for your industry you can then leverage them to first make the marketplace aware of you, then lead them back to your site or blog and then to become a customer.

Start small. Create a standard profile on several major sites and start listening. Demonstrate your expertise and skill level and industry insight by first asking great questions. This will show how good you are without bragging and provide insight as to the interest level and market potential in the chosen social network based on the degree to which others contribute to your question.

Answer questions posted by others. This again shows your expertise and will begin to attract prospects to you. (It also gives you a chance to create valuable content that can be used on your site for SEO.)

Integrate your social media sites together with free tools such as RSS feeds, Ping.fm and HootSuite to expand your reach and presence with minimal duplication and see which platform produces the best results.

Always keep in mind the primary function of social media sites is help you get noticed, which causes the reader to want to visit your site or take you up on a unique, timely, relevant call to action, which, at a minimum, enables you to capture their contact information and ultimately results in a sale.

There’s a lot of moving pieces and parts.

If you need a little help give me jingle and watch your cash register ring.

Kudos to the Germans for leveraging social media to build awareness by getting free press via social media. They’re also using their creativity to solve “mundane” issues.

What’s the last creative idea you actually thought of, let alone had the guts to implement and test at the risk of being called “silly” or “stupid” or “whatever?”

It’s working for Volkswagen. Might it work for you?

Getting creative help is more affordable and accessible than you think.

Why in the heck is social media so confusing? So full of wasted energy and broken promises? So full of snake oil salesmen promising you “secrets revealed” and the “one thing you gotta do to make money with social media?”

If these guys and gals are so good why do they hide behind fancy websites and 240 page PDF’s and 95 CD’s they know you’ll never get through?

What happened to good old-fashioned, real life, live interaction?

Well, I guess it takes a Southern boy to bring Southern hospitality to the world of Social Media Marketing.

Please join me live every Monday morning to kick start your week with new ideas on how to leverage social media to grow your business. And because I’m a longtime salesman we’ll also get into persuasion, follow up, writing compelling copy, making powerful lead magnets, getting the attention of decision makers and a whole lotta other cool stuff that will help you garner and focus the energy and the power of Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn and Ning and YouTube and all the other 57 million (it seems like) social media platforms popping up out there.

And the good part is the calls will be recorded and you can download them anytime to listen to forever!

And the even better part is…it’s AFFORDABLE! These classes will only be $47 per month!

Yep, you read that right: $47 per month. Not per week or per day or per hour or per half hour or per quarter hour or per minute or…you get the point.

Just $47 per month gets you live weekly calls with me and a host of experts and other sales people, business owners, entrepreneurs, marketing professionals to exchange ideas, share best practices, learn from each other and from the best social media marketing minds in the country.

And you’ll get access to a new membership site we’re building as I type this blog update so the same $47 per month will get you access to the membership site, also.

And, check this out, you’ll also be able to attend any future training or participate in any future workshop I’m conducting at 50% off the published price as long as you’re an active member of the Social Media Marketing Mastery Monday Mastermind.

So what do you have to lose except headaches and backaches from staring at the computer screen all day long?

Sign up now before we get the first 100 and have to either cut it off or add another class at a higher amount. (It would be worth it at $97/mo but let’s hook each other up and do some business together and grow ourselves to our true potential.)

Today, Roger and I talked about:

• Social media marketing strategies
• 5 Cross Platform Uses for Social Media
• Why you need to hire someone to help you with social media
• How to properly make money off of social media
• Why you need to focus on lead generation at all times
• How to make money off of affiliate products the “right way”
• The misnomer of “it’s all free” with social media
• Why the redneck drove his truck off the cliff
• The southern definition of “preference” (a classic courtesy a Kentucky fan calling into a radio show today)

A later than usual version of Southern Social Media today, but it’s better late than never, right?

Among the topics:

• Men make more than women in social media related jobs
• People in social media jobs aren’t as satisfied in their roles as they were a year ago
• Why you need to simplify before tackling social media
• Social media is WORK!!! It ain’t all fun and games in spite of the misinformed opinion to the contrary.
• What do you REALLY want social media marketing to do for you at the end of the day? We believe that most people want leads out of their campaigns so that is the crux behind the List Samurai product due to be released any day now.
• The southern definition of “aspect”
• 5 Eras of Social Media (the time-frames are very short for “eras”)
• Seek guidance with your social media marketing campaigns!!! Don’t try to tackle all of this stuff solo . . . there’s simply too much of it to master in too short of time. Find someone to help you shorten your learning and implementation curve.

What’s good for big business is not always good for small business.

There have been a log of myths and misnomers about the benefits of social media marketing and social networking sites for small businesses.

Many small business owners are finding that these platforms do not live up to the buzz.

While I am a big fan and promoter and provider of “outrageous” marketing consulting, ideas and tools that get your business found and gets your message out, there are a lot of challenges when setting up your social media marketing strategy and tactics

(To be fair, I’ve not found more than a handful of small business owners that know how to market worth a cr*p, so they face challenges with any marketing medium. But we’ll focus on Social Media Marketing here today.)

So if you’re drawn to the Facebook-Twitter-LinkedIn-etc. bright, shiny pots of gold on the hill, please pause and consider the following few posts before you go any further.

1. Social marketing is free.

We all know that direct mail is not free. You have to get the list, write the letter, address the envelopes, stuff the envelopes, pay for a stamp and get them to the post office…all for a 0.5% to 1% response rate (I can help you bump that up DRAMATICALLY. It all boils down to list segmentation and copy writing, but I digress.)

Leveraging social media sites for marketing is not “free,” either. In fact, because of the proliferation of social media sites and tools, it may be the most expensive form of marketing available today because it takes so much time to wrap your arms and brain around this ever-evolving platform.

Sure, most social media sites can be created for free: Facebook, WordPress, Twitter, Google, Google Wave, Flickr, LinkedIn, YouTube, TweetDeck, HootSuite, etc. all cost zero dollars to create.

But like a new puppy, they all need constant care and feeding and attention because, just like an un-supervised puppy can get into trouble, an out-of-date blog or Facebook Fan Page can actually harm your Web 2.0 marketing efforts.

And if you’ve ever attempted to write a direct mail piece, update the content on your website or even create a radio or TV ad, you know how hard it is to keep your sites and marketing material up to date and current. Social media ads the additional “burden” of requiring you to respond to questions from visitors either in the comment section or via text/chat, post brilliant ideas and concepts (such as here! , add attractive, eye-pleasing graphics, monitor (good and bad) activity (you should see one of the “crazies” that attempted to hijack one of my LinkedIn Groups) — all in an effort to create buzz and chatter about you and your business.

Companies using social media marketing to successfully close new business are on their sites all the time. What is considered “old information” today may be just an hour old! If you allow comments – as you should – and you do not respond, you might as well transfer money straight to the PayPal account of your competition.

Most mid-sized companies (and certainly, large enterprises) have fulltime “social media marketers / writers” building their online presence. It is a fulltime job keeping a presence on these sites, and fulltime people consume fulltime resources. If you don’t have that type of cash or time on your hands you can always check out my Done-For-You-Social-Media offering at a fraction of the cost of a fulltime person.

(Next we’ll look at whether or not the “big” sites are the “best” sites for you.)

Well, Hot Diggity Dog!

I just got my Google Wave Invitation from my homeboy, Steve Gibson over at Upper Deck!

I’ll let you know how the evaluation goes. If you’re one of the fortunate ones to get an invitation and have some feedback, tips, input please throw down some notes below!

Where’s your Social Media Marketing beef?