I sat in on an interesting webinar thrown by the 60-second marketer.  The presenter gave these anologies for our favorite social media marketing sites.

Facebook is like a pub, an informal place where people get together, hoist a beer and shoot the breeze.

LinkedIn is like a Tradeshow – very business-like, watch your language, dress up a little.

Twitter is the famous cocktail party, with lots going on and very high energy

YouTube is like Times Square on New Years Eve – anything goes!

MySpace is like Woodstock - populated by the young and the crazy!

Click the horizontal buttons to learn more about social media marketing.

In the time that I’ve worked with authors and entrepreneurs, it’s clear that many of them think promoting their services or products online is too expensive. Fact is, it can be.  Bad news is, spending big bucks on pay-per-click or advertising doesn’t always translate to online sales – at least not for the "ordinary Joe".

If you’ve been reading this blog, you’ll know that I’m keen on relationship marketing – building conversations with blog readers and site visitors, being your authentic self, and establishing yourself as a trusted expert.

Three quick and easy techniques I’ve used time and again are: 

1. Blogging

2. Publishing on Amazon’s Kindle

3. Social networking

Here’s my quick take on each:

Blogging

For authors, blogging can be as second nature as breathing. For non-writers, blogging may be torture (that’s why you hire someone like me to write your posts!)

It’s well-known – search engines love blogs-particularly those that are updated at least a few times a week, and are filled with solid, no-B.S. content. Search engines swoop through blogs like bed bugs in the Bates Hotel–spidering content on a daily (or even more frequent) basis.

Entrepreneurs use blogs to build a solid readership, add to their e-mail lists, and get comments so meaningful it gives them plenty of ideas about which to write. 

If you’re an author, build your blog readership BEFORE submitting a proposal.  Book proposal committees love a built-in audience.

Cost: Zero, if you use a free blog service like Blogger.com or WordPress.com

Publish on the Amazon Kindle Platform

Regardless of Sony and iPhone’s chest-beating about beating the Amazon Kindle in the digital reader wars, Amazon has one thing no one else has – access to more than 300,000 books and articles delivered wirelessly (immediately) to the Kindle.

Publish your articles or special reports to Kindle, and you will achieve INSTANT expert status.  Remember – we ALL love to do business with the best!

Truthfully, Amazon did NOT make it easy for people to convert their own books and articles to Kindle format, but it’s doable. If you’re willing to do tech-stuff, you can do it yourself. I started converting my own work several months ago, and there is a learning curve.

The good news is, by converting your work to Kindle format, you can get your books, articles, and reports in front of Amazon’s 54.2 million monthly visitors. If the conversion process makes you want to shoot yourself, contact my amigo Steve (the Kindle Guy) and tell him Nancy sent you.

Cost: Zero, if you convert the work yourself.

Social Networking

Millions have jumped on the social networking bandwagon over the past few years. In fact, one person I know brags that he’s on 34 different social networks. Don’t know about you, but I’d rather be on the RIGHT three networks, than the 34 where my audience does NOT hang out!

How can you tell where to find your audience? Take an afternoon and cruise through MySpace, Facebook, Digg, Twitter, Tumblr, et al, and search for your target keywords. You’ll quickly discover which services house your audience; once discovered, devote your social networking time to that service only. Quality over quantity matters.

Seek out questions in your field and answer them.  Remember, it’s about letting the world know that you’re the expert.

Cost: Zero

I had the opportunity yesterday to sit in on a 90-minute presentation by Sandy Carter, an IBM VP who spoke about social media marketing.  I wanted to share some of my take-away gems (hint, the biggie is at the bottom):

• Marketing 2.0 is a combination of social media and traditional marketing channels
• The “secret sauce” is the right mix of of marketing venues, all dependent on your goals
• In a poor economy, you can move customers through the buying cycle faster
• It’s critical to monitor and respond to buzz about you or your business
• Look for opportunities to provide a human face to your brand
• Look for opportunities to interact with your audience
• Companies need to focus on loyalty to customers
• You statisticians this is huge for you: track what’s valuable, not what’s measurable

All valuable – - but what really hit home for me was the same thing I’ve been telling you for months – - it’s all about relationship building.  Ms. Carter said we’re moving away from the concept of B2B and B2C.  What’s really happening is P2P . . . . . PERSON TO PERSON.  (was nice to get validation from a Big Blue VP!)

Note: Presentation was via MarketingProfs