I love it when my smart friends agree to write guests posts for the V3 blog. This one is from Jamie Turner, Chief Content Officer at the 60 Second Marketer.

The Internet is packed with tips on how to use Twitter, how to supercharge LinkedIn, and how to get the most from Facebook. They’re all good articles. (In fact, I’ve written more than my fair share of them.) But sometimes before you get too deeply involved in tips and tactics, it helps to take a step back and look at the landscape.

That’s what I did recently when I was in the process of writing “How to Make Money with Social Media.” I found that I was getting too entrenched in the tactical side of the equation, so I decided to do an overview of the ways the Fortune 500 use social media to drive sales and revenue.

What follows are the 5 different ways businesses are currently using social media.

Branding. Some companies use social media strictly as a branding tool. Typically, this means running a YouTube campaign that (hopefully) gets a lot of buzz around the water cooler. In our opinion, using social media simply as a branding tool is a twentieth century mindset. If you really want to supercharge your social media campaigns, you’ll incorporate one or all of the next four highly measurable approaches.

eCommerce. If you can sell your product or service online, then you’ll want to drive people to a landing page on your website where they can buy your goods. How can you accomplish this? Just do what Dell does—they Tweet about special promotions available only to the people who follow them on Twitter. The promotional links are easily tracked so they can see how many people went to the landing page and how many converted from a prospect to a customer. They generate millions of dollars in revenue each quarter by using this method.

Research. Many companies are using social media as a tool to do research. Sometimes, this involves building a website to track the results. Starbucks has done this famously with their MyStarbucksIdea website. Other times, using social media as a research tool can be as simple as doing a poll on LinkedIn, SurveyMonkey, or via email.

Customer Retention. A good rule of thumb is that it costs three to five times as much to acquire a new customer than it does to keep an existing one. Given that, wouldn’t it be smart to use social media as a tool to keep customers loyal and engaged? That’s what Comcast and Southwest Airlines do—they communicate via Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms to help solve customer service issues.

Lead Generation. What do you do if you can’t sell your product or service online? Then you’ll want to do what many B2B companies do—that is, to use social media to drive prospects to a website where they can download a whitepaper, listen to a Podcast, or watch a video. Once you’ve captured the prospect’s contact information, you can re-market to them via email, direct mail, or any number of other methods.

Are there any I missed? Are there new ones on the horizon? Leave a comment if you’d like to add to the list — there are new ideas coming online all the time!

Jamie’s Bio:
Jamie Turner is an author, speaker and consultant. He is also the Chief Content Officer at the 60 Second Marketer, the online magazine for BKV Digital and Direct Response. If you’re smart, you’ll stalk him on Twitter. He not only generates a ton of great content, he’s genuinely a really awesome guy. If you’d like to download a chapter from his book, visit his website and click “How to Make Money with Social Media.”

Cover image: Courtesy of Chris Ware, rejected by Fortune editors because of its ironic nature. Which makes me love it even more.

This is a message I find myself struggling to get through the heads of my many talented creative friends on pretty much a weekly basis. And don’t get me wrong, I’m a fan of great creative and realize how important producing great work is to talented designers.

But you can take your Flash and stuff it if it doesn’t do what I need to do – which is produce definitive results for the clients who hire me. Those clients don’t hire me so that you can do great work, have something new for your portfolio, reel or website and win awards. Those clients have businesses to run, employees to pay, products or services to sell. And they need results. And that’s why they hire me. My job: R.E.S.U.L.T.S.

There was an amazing piece in today’s AdAge, written by Mike Wolfshon, a creative, who totally nails this concept. Please do yourself a favor and read it. Especially you, my creative friends.

As Wolfshon so aptly puts it, portfolio pieces don’t matter. Results do. And these days, if you’re a creative type and you want a job – whether it’s for an agency or working for someone like me who outsources the bulk of my creative needs – I hope you’re prepared to come to a meeting and discuss results. Things like how you designed a website with the user experience in mind rather than what you thought was hip and cool. And how you factored in the importance of conversions, when designing various pages of the client’s website and landing pages. Or how the newsletter campaign you designed was specifically crafted to reach across social platforms and allow shareability – that oh-so-important factor in today’s world of content creation. Oh, and speaking of content, if you think you can whip up some web copy and stuff it with keywords (even though you barely know what those are) – because your other designer friends told you it wasn’t all that hard – and that would suffice. Well, you’re smoking some massively impressive weed.

And so, my brilliant and talented creative friends, here’s my plea. I don’t want you to do crap work. I want you to do GREAT work. But I’m looking for great work that WORKS for the one person that matters – the client. And that means results. Come to our meetings talking about results, and you’ve got yourself a gig. And if you don’t yet know about things like user experience, conversions, shareability and the importance of SEO optimized keywords, it’s not too late. Get out there and do what the rest of us have done — learn.

And your brilliance when it comes to design, coupled with strategies that focus on results will do what all really awesome creative is supposed to do – it’ll WORK!! That means that together we can manage to help our clients build strong businesses, sell more stuff to more people and, in the process, produce great work. And that, my friends, is a portfolio that you can be proud of.

Two hours ago, I discovered Cee Lo Green’s new single, F**K YOU, on YouTube. Imagine that. Actually, I first discovered it on Facebook, and swiped it from my friend Redheadwriting’s wall, posted it on my own and ultimately ended up on YouTube, where it had a little more than 750,000 views.

It’s a brilliant example of how effective the combination of a little strategy and a whole bunch of good luck can be when it comes to viral marketing. Cee Lo, with a paltry 8,000+ followers on Twitter and only 3,000 some fans on Facebook, used a combination of YouTube, Twitter and Facebook marketing to drive some almost 750,000 views in the space of a three day period, since its posting on Thursday, August 19th. Do you know how many brands would kill for that kind of exposure and viral buzz?

Not to take anything away from my man, Cee Lo, but this doesn’t appear, at least to me, as a slick marketing campaign carefully orchestrated by an agency and a slew of “social media gurus.” Rather, it seems to be someone who created a great “product” … put it out there, combined it with some timely PR – and then let the public do the rest. I could be wrong. I’m just guessing here, but after spending a fair amount of time looking through Cee Lo’s Facebook feed and Twitter stream, it really appears to be a bit of historic dumb luck. But part of the beauty of this, at least for this consumer, is the inherent lack of slickness in the whole thing. – it appears to have just happened. And that is often a critical ingredient when it comes to the magic of something going viral. Oh, and let’s not forget the power of social media marketing.

The geek in me is compelled to point out some stats here. YouTube has some 2 BILLION views a day and is in an enviable spot as the second most popular search engine in the world. Add to that Facebook’s 45 million daily status updates and 700,000 new members joining on a daily basis, and it’s no surprise that this strategy was effective for Cee Lo. Combine that with a song that’s sure to make even the most curmudgeonly among us laugh – even for just a minute or two – and you’ve got yourself a viral phenomenon.

Cee Lo. Dude, what can I say? A few hours ago, I’d never even heard of you. Now, you can count me among your biggest fans. Hat tip for a job well done. Oh, and your song – well, it rocks! Gawker calls it the song that should have been the song of the summer. I say that no matter when it’s “officially” released, it’ll be at the top of the charts.

Oh, and in the FWIW category, in the time it took me to write this blog post, the YouTube video has had an additional 80,000 views, bringing it to 830,741. In two hours. That’s 80,000 – in two hours.

I don’t know what came over me – I just saw this picture of the Hot Ninja Babe and wanted to BE her for a minute (but only a minute), so I thought she belonged here. This post, while NOT written by or about a Hot Ninja Babe, was written by my friend, Matt Bernier, who is not only very fun to hang out with, he’s really smart when it comes to WordPress. So, here he is, sharing his brain cells with you! Enjoy.

When I read and then re-read Shelly’s post about 5 Things to Make Your Business Blog Totally Kick A** I immediately thought that there might be quite a few WordPress site owners who might WANT to do these killer things, but who don’t know what to do to make these changes to their site. Lucky for you, there’s me! (Shelly is clearly rubbing off on me).

With WordPress, the first thing I do is try to find a plugin that will do what I want. Plugins are often free, which is cool. Free is good. And sometimes, you have to pay a little something for a really awesome plugin, but you usually get so much FREE functionality that it makes it worthwhile. Plus, you don’t have to pay a geek like me to build the feature for you! Here are some specifics mentioned in Shelly’s post … and quick and easy solutions. w00t w00t!! (that’s geek speak for “totally cool beans”).

1. Do you have a Contact Form?

You can get a quick and easy contact form that will allow people to get in touch with you easily and quickly by using the Contact Form 7 plugin. All you have to do is install it and add a simple tag to your contact page, the form shows up like magic and you are protected from spam comments by a CAPTCHA!

2. Do you feature “Connect With Us” buttons that are easy to spot?

There are a couple great plugins for this, but the one we really like is called Find Me On. You can customize it with the top social networks and locations where you are found and can create the community around your online presence.

3. Do you utilize social sharing buttons, prominently displayed on your blog?

Shelly is a big fan of AddThis and Apture. We love Apture too and have it on three different sites right now because it is so awesome. Another great plugin that I love is ShareThis which is almost exactly the same as addthis but it will add the icons to the bottom of every post.

4. Comments!

Comments are one of the very most important features of a site, but they have a tendency to attract those wonderful spam bots. One of the quickest and easiest ways to fight spam is with a plugin that comes with WordPress called Akismet. It is built and managed by the WordPress guys to fight spam and much like your email spam detector, it learns!

5. Do you invite your readers to subscribe to your blog by BOTH an RSS feed and by Email?

Most popular themes have links to RSS feeds, either in the theme, or your browser will let you see the RSS links in the address bar. But, since many people still don’t know what RSS is or how to use it and many don’t want to use an RSS reader because it is just one more thing to check, email is super important. An email notification plugin that we love is Post Notification. It gives you a widget for your sidebar and lets people sign up quickly and easily, enabling your brilliant posts to be quickly delivered to their inboxes.

There are literally thousands of WordPress plugins out there, all you have to do is look. Or you can read my blog and discover them there! The ones mentioned above are usually standard fare when we put together a WordPress site because they are so simple and add such great functionality for website visitors.

Matt Bernier is co-owner of Spotted Koi LLC in Denver, CO. He has been working with web software and technology for over 7 years. Recently, he has been helping people set up and maintain their WordPress websites through how-tos, tips and tricks on WP-Relief.com He’s good people and if you’re not yet following and engaging with him on Twitter, I suggest you do so, immediately. #thatisall

P.S. And if you’ve not yet subscribed to this blog’s bitchin’ RSS feed (for convenient delivery either in your reader OR in your emailbox) why the heck not???

I discover new blogs all the time, written by smart small business owners and marketers who understand that the world is changing and that their marketing tactics need to change with it.

I also see lots of mistakes, or things left unfinished. Here are a few tips to think about as you start down the path of blogging for your small business:

1. Do you have a Contact Form integrated into your blog or company website? This is the best way to capture leads and allow people who are interested in more information about you and the products and/or services you offer to contact you. Plus, it allows you to not only build a lead database but also to track your conversions.

2. Do you feature “Connect With Us” buttons that are easy to spot? If your business has a presence on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or elsewhere, by allowing your blog readers and/or website visitors to easily see and click those buttons, you encourage them to be a part of the communities you are building on those social media networks. Doesn’t that just make sense?

3. Do you utilize social sharing buttons, prominently displayed on your blog? I’m a fan of having sharing buttons at the top of each blog post and also at the bottom. If you don’t make it easy for your readers to share your content, guess what – they won’t! And isn’t that the whole point of the content you are creating — the fact that you’d love for it to be shared? And by the way, I’m also a big fan of the Apture toolbar, which is located at the top of a page – check it out on this blog – their stats are amazing and their customer service out of this world.

4. Comments! Comments are one of the most important elements of a blog and I find many blogs don’t allow them. A reader who cares enough about what you’ve written to leave a comment is a reader that you WANT. Don’t leave off this important element of your blog – and don’t forget to respond to all comments that your readers leave, even if they are comments that disagree with you.

5. Do you invite your readers to subscribe to your blog by BOTH an RSS feed and by Email? Email is still the most popular platform there is, so when you assume that people will prefer an RSS feed over an email subscription, you are sometimes making a fatal error. Do you have any idea how many of your readers and potential readers have no idea what an RSS feed is? Trust me, there are many. Adding an email subscription option is critical. And, guess what, it’s MY personal preference, too!

These are just five tips – and things I see often that new small business bloggers forget and/or overlook. There are many more great ideas and tips – and if you have some, we would all love to hear them. So go ahead, leave a comment. And, while you’re at it, subscribe to this blog – you know you wanna.

I have been vocal about my resolve to integrate video into my blogging efforts and the last time I wrote about this quest, many of you were, too. I met Steve Garfield last year at Jeff Pulver’s 140Characters Conference in LA and we’ve been friends ever since. Mostly (private joke). Oh, and when Newsweek calls a guy “one of the web’s more beloved video bloggers,” I’m thinking that I’m not the only one who thinks he’s peachy.

Steve’s new book ‘Get Seen: Online Video Secrets to Building Your Business’ recently came out and if, like me, you want to do more with video, you need to quit fooling around, buy the book and dive in.

Garfield’s book is filled with tips and information that is valuable to both veterans in the world of video and newbies like me. And, for marketing your small business online, there’s really not a better tool out there. It’s down-to-earth, easy to digest and a quick read. I’m not done with it yet, and when I am, I’ll write more. What I can tell you is that it contains tips and tactics on subjects like what cameras to buy, best practices when it comes to lighting, recording and shooting and editing (which was the hardest part for me), and much, much more. Trust me on this one. Follow Steve on Twitter, buy his book, once you buy it read it (always the hard part for me!) and get going.

And my own personal message when it comes to vlogging – get over being perfect. Few of us are perfect in real life, so why expect that you will be on video? My necklace is crooked, my hair could always use a good brushing, and I’ll always look and sound goofy. But then, aren’t we all our own harshest critics? So get over that, buy Steve’s book, read it and send us both a link to your first vlog post – I can’t wait!

Sitting in the office, minding my own beeswax today, cranking out work and living large. You know. The story of my every day existence. Glam beyond belief.

The phone rings. I answer. Yes, you’ve guessed it. No administrative assistant. No gatekeeper to hide behind. Just me. And the phone. It rings, I get it. Works for me.

“Shelly?” says a young lady identified by my handy-dandy Call Stalker as Donna Dangerous (name changed to protect the innocent). I respond in the affirmative.

“I’m calling to remind you about the BUST OUT Boot Camp” she says.

Hmmm. Boot camp? And a BUST OUT one at that. How can it be that I don’t know about this?

“What are you talking about?” I say, in the nicest way possible. And for me, that’s sometimes a stretch. I know. And I know you know.

“Well, it’s the BUST OUT Boot Camp, on September 9th and 10th, right there in Kansas City,” says she.

Oh, that one. You don’t say?

“But why,” say I, to Donna, “are you calling ME about this?”

“Well,” she replies, “because you’re on the list!”

“Great!” I say. By this point I think she realized I wasn’t going to bite, so she said something lame like “See you there!” and hurried off the phone.

Super. I’m on a freaking list. And, clearly, this means I’m going to miss out. Miss out on WHAT you say? Thank GOD for Google, because the answer was at my cute little fingertips. I do so love a mystery. Utilizing my intrepid and finely tuned research skills, I quickly discovered that I’ll be missing out on the fabulous Monica Cornetti, “one of only 13 professionals (on the planet?) with an MS degree in Economic Development and Entrepreneurship.” Who knew there even was such a thing?

I’ll also be missing out on the fact that Monica is a published author, top-notch speaker and so many other things I forget … oh, and “one of the best entrepreneurial training experts in the business.” I will miss out on the fact that Monica has, apparently, “dedicated her entire life to helping others reach and fulfill their dreams.” Sigh. I’m not sure I can manage it.

I am beyond chagrined to realize that, according to the BUST OUT Boot Camp propaganda I found online, I will also miss out on what is, apparently, a “life-changing weekend” where Monica and her crack team of top industry experts will be there with the sole purpose of helping me to cash in on MY skills and experience. I am heady at the very thought. This team of “top industry experts” apparently know all about things like branding, marketing social media, website optimization and so on, and so forth, and they are chomping at the bit to teach me how to chose the right business model to turn my passion into profits.

I’ve got you now, don’t I? You’re actually blocking your calendar and planning a trip to Kansas City to get you a piece of the pie that Monica is offering up, aren’t you?

Here, my friends, are the treats you are in for, backed by no less than a bona fide, certified, nonrefutiated, money-back guar-an-TEEEEEEE:

• Create infoproducts and start generating revenue in 14 days or less
• Increase your clients and dates on your calendar in 30 days or less
• Learn the fastest way to get clients using the free local talk strategy
• Write a book in 30, publish in 45, and generate $1K in 60 days
• Improve your conversion rates – increase web sales by 20% or more
• Master your time – increase your selling, networking and creative writing time by 25% by elimininating unproductive activities and habits

Holy CRAP! I’m gonna start generating revenue in 14 days or less, have so many meetings I’ll be dizzy, write a doggone book, publish it AND make $1,000 smackeroos all in less than 60 days. Be still my beating heart!!! On top of that I’m gonna convert, convert, convert, network like mad and write like crazy when I get rid of all my bad habits. My friends will hardly recognize me.

Sign Me Up!!!!

Well, Monica, I’ve toyed with you enough. And I’m sure you are a very nice, and very well-meaning person. But you don’t know jack about telemarketing. And how important it is to train the folks manning your phone lines to say exactly what you would like them to say. And you don’t know jack about your list building techniques if you had your people call a Certified Smart Ass like me, because you’ve gotta know that I can’t resist calling you out.

It’s like crack cocaine to the addict. When I see stupid, I’ve just gotta stand up and say something. I’ve just gotta.

This, Monica, is stupid. It’s akin to selling snake oil. Maybe there are lots of people who are dumb enough to shell out their hard-earned $297 for the entire 72 hours of magic (and what a generous discount from your regular price of $1597 that is), for your BUST OUT Boot Camp. But sistah, I’m not one of them.

Sloppy. That’s what this is. Sloppy. Sloppy Snake Oil. And you oughta be ashamed.

And, while I wish you success at what is clearly your life’s mission. That dream of helping others fulfill their life’s dreams and all that jazz, you, my friend, need some marketing help. And you need some help with your outbound marketing. And with your inbound marketing. Come to think of it, your entire website needs some work. With only 131 pages of your site indexed by Google and only 120 inbound links, your site is, well, less than impressive. I won’t even mention the video that jangles my nerves as it starts to play the minute I navigate to your site. The big no-no is the fact that there is absolutely, positively NO conversion form on your website. Do you know what that is? It’s that little thing that helps you turn a lead into a customer. Convert them, you know.

Oh wait, you know about conversions – that’s one of the things you were going to teach me about.

Here’s the thing. In today’s business world, it’s easy to discover the snake oil salesmen. Don’t say you can do something if you have no idea what you’re talking about. Don’t put it out there if you can’t back it up. Don’t promise if you can’t deliver. And, for heaven’s sake, don’t take people’s hard-earned money in the process. Because if you do, I can promise you, it will just about always come back to bite you in the nether regions.

There are plenty of you out there – and you know who you are – you’re feeling all squiggly right now, because you don’t particularly care for people like me. If you’re confident in your ability to sell this, or any other kind of crap to people, that’s cool. There’s a fool born every minute and I’m all for the old caveat emptor adage that we all first learned about in high school.

But, you can be damn sure that if I stumble across you – or if you’re unfortunate enough to have me or one of my many friends who actually DO know what they’re doing when it comes to some of the things you’re hawking, on a poorly developed telemarketing list, be prepared. Because I’m going to eat you for lunch. And then I’m going to make fun of you. Because I’ve just gotta stand up. It’s in my blood.

And if you’re really a stand up gal, I apologize. I’m sure you’re out there, just like the rest of us, trying to earn a living. Just be careful when you breeze into my home town and make promises that I’m not sure you can keep. Because I just can’t keep quiet about that. I just can’t.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with haul videos, they are show and tell videos typically filmed by teenage girls and shared on YouTube, sharing the spoils of their shopping trips with their friends. Savvy retailers like Forever 21, JC Penney and American Eagle have identified this as a potentially lucrative form of online marketing and are jumping on the haul bandwagon. They are hiring teens to engage in “hauling” at their stores, review their products online and use this as a means to create buzz and drive sales. And if their burgeoning video views and appearances on shows like Good Morning America are any indicators, some teens, like @allthatglitters21 and @juicystar07 are taking the world by storm. There are definite risks associated with this practice, but so far, that hasn’t precluded these retailers from testing the haul waters. “Hot but risky” is what Carol Tice’s recent post for bNet calls it, and she’s got some valid points, scoot over there and read it if you’re so inclined.

As with anything, there plenty of people who think that this practice is one step removed from complete and total ruination of society, but we’ll save that for another blog post. That said, Jessica D’s post for SodaHead in February of this year was pretty prescient. Too bad she’s not writing for them any more – I like how that girl thinks. But if read it and if want more of her, you can stalk her on Twitter.

By the way, my bounty was scored at the Brookside Community Farmers’ Market. If you live in the area and are not making this a part of your every Saturday morning, you are missing out!

P.S. Effective immediately, I am officially striking the word “awesome” from my lexicon.

Then don’t miss an opportunity to get some advice from America’s leading small business management expert, Jane Applegate.

Applegate is coming to Kansas City on Wednesday, June 23 as part of my friend, Kelly Scanlon and her Thinking Bigger Business Media’s Thinking Bigger Business Speaker Series. She’s the author of four books on small business success, including 201 Great Ideas for Your Small Business, and is a leading expert on small businesses, growth and resources and best practices for small business owners.

With a huge area of focus for today’s small business owners and entrepreneurs being on understanding and navigating the online space, which includes regularly producing online content, Applegate will be an invaluable resource. She has produced online content including not only her columns, but podcasts and TV programs as well. In 2000, she founded Small Business TV, the first streaming video network devoted to small business news and information, which continues to be one of the leading small business resources today.

Applegate is a don’t miss resource for small business owners serious about coming out of a recession and focusing their efforts and energies on growth and change. As an added benefit, Applegate is looking forward to connecting with small business owners in the audience with a view toward including them and their stories in her next book. What a great opportunity to not only learn, but be a part of a book focusing on small business!

Space is limited and I’ve already made my reservation. Hopefully you’ll come and join me and other Kansas City area small business owners for what is sure to be a terrific event! And by the way, the registration fee includes lunch and a book, so it’s a great value. Here’s a link to register and I hope to see you there!

Sometimes I suspect they skeptically regard us as just another bunch of people with something to sell, rather than a team of people passionately committed to embracing this new paradigm shift and helping them do so as well. Whenever that happens, I chuckle softly to myself and whip out this graphic, created by Gary Hayes in September of 2009.

And when I do, I watch their eyes grow wider, as the veracity of what we’ve been trying to tell them sinks in. Social media matters. Blogging matters. Search matters. And integrating digital marketing into an overall marketing strategy is critical for businesses who are serious about success. Or even serious about staying in business. This is true whether you’re a small business or a large one – and the people who are paying attention are the people who stand to gain the most marketshare the quickest. Sometimes a picture really IS worth a thousand words, and that’s certainly the case in this instance.

I am eternally grateful to Gary for creating this compelling piece of art. For a geeky girl like me, this kind of stuff makes my heart sing. Even better, it makes my job easier on a daily basis. The other thing that makes my job easier is this: for every five prospective clients who don’t get the relevance of this information, there is one gem of a prospective client who does. And that is the client we most want to work with. That makes our jobs less like pulling teeth and forcing change upon an unwilling group of people and more exciting – because we get to be involved in what we really love. And that’s helping people grow their businesses. With people who are committed to making that happen. That’s what makes us get out of bed in the morning with smiles on our faces.

What’s the thing that wakes you up in the morning so excited about that you can’t wait to begin working on it?

And PS, I happen to think Gary is brilliant – and lots of other people do, too. If you want to know more about him, visit his website and see why I’m such a fan.