This excerpt is just a short sample of some of the content in “How to Make Money with Social Media,” by Jamie Turner and Dr. Reshma Shah. To download a free chapter, click Free Chapter. Or, better still, buy a copy right now on Amazon (affiliate link).

You were probably pretty fired-up when social media first started came along. It was an exciting new approach, there was a lot of buzz about it and everybody was eager to see if social media was going to be like paid search. You remember paid search — in the early years, it was so successful that it was the equivalent of printing money. Today, it’s a solid, viable medium, but in those early years, it was super hot.

And that’s what social media is today. Super hot. But somewhere along the way, there have been a lot of people who have stumbled. They’ve launched a campaign, sometimes with great fanfare, and failed miserably.

Our point is this – if you’re a company that sells paper or pet supplies or, God forbid, industrial widgets (apologies to the industrial widget makers out there), you’re going to have to reach out to the consumer and get them engaged with your social media campaign.

How can you do this? By creating a campaign that gives the consumer something of value that they don’t currently have. This can be give-aways and other special promotions that are relatively traditional. Or, it can be information that the visitor finds useful. Better still, it could be a tool that keeps the visitor coming back for more.

One of the best and smartest versions of these tools is what a company out of Boston called Hubspot has created. They realized that one of the best ways to create inbound traffic to their website was to create a tool people couldn’t do without. So they created an SEO analysis tool called WebsiteGrader and put it up on their website.

How to Make Money with Social Media is available at fine bookstores around the globe. Click the image above to order on Amazon.

What’s an SEO analysis tool? It’s a sophisticated program that analyzes how Google, Yahoo or Bing see your site. The real stroke of genius was that the folks at Hubspot decided to include WebsiteGrader on their website. By sharing their tool with other people, they created inbound traffic, which ultimately converts to customers.

“A great way to get more customers using social media is not just to engage, but educate,” says Hubspot Chief Technology Officer and Founder Dharmesh Shah.  “We believe in this passionately at HubSpot and it has worked miracles for us.  We’ve learned that more people you make smarter by educating them, the more leads and customers you get.”

How successful has Hubspot’s WebsiteGrader been? So far, it’s generated grades on more than 2 million URLs. So on more than 2 million occasions, potential customers for Hubspot have visited, engaged and interacted with one of the tools it has on their site. That kind of traffic is mind-boggling, especially if you’re a company with only a few hundred employees.

Check out MyStarbucksIdea.com or WebsiteGrader.com next time you’re at a computer. You’ll get a clear sense of what they’re doing to engage people – and keep them engaged – with their companies.

Which brings us back to one of the key things a lot of folks are asking themselves right now, “If social media is such a powerful tool, then how come my first campaign failed?”

It’s a great question. So we did an analysis of the most common mistakes people make when they run a social media campaign and came up with the list below. Take a spin through it and put a check by the ones that apply to you. Don’t be surprised if you have more than one checkmark – the idea is to figure out where you’re coming up short so you can focus on fixing the problem areas:

___ You didn’t measure the results of your campaign: Interestingly, this is an all-too-common problem. We’ll discuss ways you can measure the results of your next campaign in an upcoming chapter.

___ You didn’t set clear objectives: Some companies create a Facebook page or a YouTube channel before thinking through their objectives. Is it to build awareness? To drive traffic to a landing page on your site? To give people a channel to make comments and record their frustrations?

___ You thought social media was only about Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook or YouTube: Of course, social media is about having many conversations across as many platforms as you can manage. The more opportunities you provide customers to engage with you, the more successful your campaign.

___ You didn’t know how to set up a landing page: One of basic models of social media success look like this: prospect à social media channel à landing page on website à new customer. If you don’t have a landing page on your website designed to convert prospects to customers, then you won’t be able to track your ROI. No ROI, no social media campaign. (Or, rather, no effective social media campaign.)

___ You didn’t re-market to customer prospects: Most prospects who visit your landing page won’t become customers. In fact, the vast majority won’t. But that doesn’t mean they’re never going to buy. It just means they weren’t going to buy at that time. Keep ‘em in your pipeline – you’ll get them someday, if you re-market to them.

___ You didn’t know how to turn a social media campaign into a sales and marketing campaign: Social media isn’t just about building awareness. It’s about turning prospects into customers. Don’t be shy about nudging prospects along the sales funnel. They expect it, to a certain degree.

___ You sat on the sidelines: True story – we were in contact with a creative director at a major advertising agency a while back who said, “this whole internet thing is just a flash in the pan and I can’t wait for it to blow over.” We’re serious. He said that. Our point? You don’t want to be that guy.

___ You downplayed the importance of social media: Some people don’t sit on the sidelines as much as they participate without passion. That’s almost as bad as sitting on the sidelines. You don’t want to be that guy, either.

___ You thought you could do social media in 10 minutes a day: Social media is a little like a marriage – you won’t have a successful marriage if you plan on spending just 10 minutes a day having a dialog with your spouse. The same holds true for a successful social media campaign.

___ You thought social media was like traditional marketing: There are a lot of similarities between social media and traditional media. But there are a lot of differences, too. Your job is to embrace those differences. Don’t be scared. Social media won’t hurt you.

We could go on and on about some of the ways your social media campaign might have failed in the past, but we won’t. Our job here is to show you ways to succeed with social media, not how to fail.

This excerpt is just a short sample of some of the content in “How to Make Money with Social Media,” by Jamie Turner and Dr. Reshma Shah. To download a free chapter, click Free Chapter. Or, better still, buy a copy right now on Amazon (affiliate link).

Social networking offers endless potential for companies to promote and build their business online. But savvy businesses should remember “social” is just as important as “networking” when it comes to using tools like Twitter and LinkedIn, marketing expert and entrepreneur Drew Gerber says.

“While the new social networking tools are a powerful way to reach a lot of people, what really makes a difference is the personalized touch,” says Gerber, CEO of Blue Kangaroo and creator of PitchRate.com.

It’s a little like that bestselling book by Robert Fulghum, All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten, according to Gerber. “To be successful with social networking, you have to play well with others.”

Here are 5 tips on how to use social networking tools without forgetting the relationship aspect:

1.  Share your goodies: To be successful with social networking, remember to provide valuable information that people can use. Provide 12 things of value for every one thing you are getting back.

2.  Take interest in others: Engage with people online just as you would if you were building a business relationship one on one. If someone comes in and all they want to do is promote, promote, promote themselves, it doesn’t go anywhere.

3.  Be polite: People have a tendency to say things online they would not say face to face. Avoid that pitfall, and don’t say anything you wouldn’t want your parents to read.

4.  Make sure everyone is included: If you are participating in an online discussion, let other people have a chance to share their ideas and perspectives and wait your turn.

5.  Have fun and be creative: Think of ways you can share information about your product, your business or yourself that are fun and make people want to follow you.

These tips work because social networking is all about building community, Gerber says. “Just like the community you live in offline, the people that have a say are the people who are engaging and really provide value for the community,” he adds.

To learn more visit: www.PitchRate.com.

For articles or interviews, send requests to Jennifer@publicityresults.com or 239-573-0088.

They say that if you live by social media, you need to be prepared to die by social media (speaking figuratively, of course).

David Henderson, a former CBS journalist who writes a fabulous blog and is the author of The Media Saavy Leader, recently blogged about an unfortunate situation that highlights the speed at which social media can spread news.

It seems that a member of Ketchum public relations in Atlanta, Georgia was flying into Memphis, Tennessee to make a presentation on social media to one of Ketchum’s largest and most important clients, FedEx.

Upon arrival in the Memphis airport, this employee Tweeted this message to his followers:

“True confession but I’m in one of those towns where I scratch my head and say, ‘I would die if I had to live here.’”

The problem was that a member of the FedEx team was following the Ketchum employee. When the FedEx employee read the Tweet he was, well, not impressed.

Here’s how an employee from FedEx responded, as reported by David Henderson:

“Mr. (Name Withheld), If I interpret your post correctly, these are your comments about Memphis a few hours after arriving in the global headquarters city of one of your key and lucrative clients, and the home of arguably one of the most important entrepreneurs in the history of business, FedEx founder Fred Smith. Many of my peers and I feel this is inappropriate. We do not know the total millions of dollars FedEx Corporation pays Ketchum annually for the valuable and important work your company does for us around the globe. We are confident however, it is enough to expect a greater level of respect and awareness from someone in your position as a vice president at a major global player in your industry. A hazard of social networking is people will read what you write. Not knowing exactly what prompted your comments, I will admit the area around our airport is a bit of an eyesore, not without crime, prostitution, commercial decay, and a few potholes. But there is a major political, community, religious, and business effort underway, that includes FedEx, to transform that area. We’re hopeful that over time, our city will have a better “face” to present to visitors. Everyone participating in today’s event, including those in the auditorium with you this morning, just received their first paycheck of 2009 containing a 5% pay cut … which we wholeheartedly support because it continued the tradition established by Mr. Smith of doing whatever it takes to protect jobs. Considering that we just entered the second year of a U.S. recession, and we are experiencing significant business loss due to the global economic downturn, many of my peers and I question the expense of paying Ketchum to produce the video open for today’s event; work that could have been achieved by internal, award-winning professionals with decades of experience in television production. Additionally, with all due respect, to continue the context of your post; true confession: many of my peers and I don’t see much relevance between your presentation this morning and the work we do in Employee Communications.”

Ouch!

The lesson? Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media tools are all wonderful. But if you’re going to use them for business, remember that they can be read by just about anybody, including your friends, your family and, perhaps worst of all, your clients.

Follow Up 1/22/09 am: The 60 Second Marketer Team would like to acknowledge that we all make mistakes and that most of us have a story similar to this one in our business history. It’s for that reason that we’ve left the name of the Ketchum employee out of this article. We’re all human, after all.

Additional Follow Up 1/22/09 pm: The latest word is that the Ketchum employee’s Tweet was because of an intolerant comment he received from someone in Memphis upon his landing. For a 360 degree understanding of the story, you can click here.

The story continues 1/23/09 am: David Henderson, who originally brought our attention to this story, has an excellent post on his blog outlining the additional events that happened on this story. If you’re interested in a behind-the-scenes look at how Ketchum and FedEx responded to the story, check it out. It’s also worth noting that the statement from the FedEx employee above was originally reported as having come from FedEx Corporate. It turns out that it was a statement from a FedEx employee which was not necessarily sanctioned by FedEx. (Not having a clear set of employee communications guidelines is an additional issue FedEx needs to address.)

On Wednesday, December 17th, the 60 Second Marketer team conducted a webinar called “How to Use YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook to Grow Your Business.” Marketers from as far away as London, England tuned in to gather tips on how to use these social media tools to grow sales and revenue.

We’ll be doing more webinars in the future. Better still, within a few weeks our webinars should be available on the 60 Second Marketer Tools page on a cost-per-download basis. (Our tagline: “There’s a fee, but there’s also a 100% guarantee!” Clever, eh? We should be in marketing.)

One of the more popular topics we covered was “The Six Most Common Social Media Mistakes.” Here they are, in case you missed the webinar:

1. Thinking about Social Media the same way you think about Traditional Media. Social Media is anything but Traditional. If you’re going to stay stuck in the 20th century, you’ll soon be left behind.
2. Trying to be all things to all people. Social Media is about a conversation with a targeted segment. If you try to talk about everything, you’ll end up talking about nothing.
3. Focusing on quantity instead of quality. We chuckle at the people on Twitter who brag about their number of followers. It’s not about the number of followers, it’s about the quality of the connections you make.
4. Sitting on the sidelines. As Ruby Gottlieb of Horizon Media once said, “You can’t understand Social Media unless you use Social Media.” (Actually, we’re not sure Ruby said that — it may have been one of her employees. But we’re going to give her credit anyway.)
5. Trying to be a perfectionist. Don’t be afraid to visit, post and contribute often. You’re not writing a Churchillian or Obamian speech, you’re having a conversation. Conversations include stammers, bad grammar and the occasional hiccup.
6. Expecting miracles overnight. We’ve all heard about YouTube success stories, but those are like hitting the lottery. A successful Social Media strategy accepts the fact that it’ll require a lot of hard work and labor and that the results will be slow, but consistent.

We hope you found these 6 most common social media mistakes helpful. Tune in next month for our new webinar called, “We don’t know what the title is because we haven’t started writing it.”

It’s sure to be a show-stopper.