Zappos is one of the top retailers on the web, selling loads of shoes and building a stellar reputation for customer support. Great support has been a mantra of the organization since inception, and recent changes to the company marketing strategy simply reinforce this. Zappos is successful, because they embraced the web early and didn’t try to force it into old business paradigms.

Zappos success, and the success of Barack Obama (democratic political candidate for President) have something in common. They understand the difference between using the internet to drive traffic - and harnessing the network effects of communicating online. Both are heavily invested in social networking - many, if not most Zappos employees have a Twitter account. Obama and his team created groups and profiles on every major and minor social network, and leveraged Youtube extensively to spread the message. One of the most successful viral campaigns of the last few years, Will.i.am’s “Yes we can” video may go down in history due to it’s viral success.

What this company and this candidate understand, and what you can take away from their experience is that being visible on the web through SEO/SEM is very different from this all inclusive web strategy that includes blogs, blog outreach, social media, video and personal networking. When you wonder if all this Web 2.0 “stuff” is for real, think about the first term Senator from Illinois who defeated the Clintons on his way to running for President.

When you speak with many executives and marketers, the concept of a “brand” is something they are comfortable with discussing and frequently can tell you the difference between their brand strategies and other marketing efforts. Having worked with many small businesses, the idea of their company being a “brand” is unclear, as are the strategies that go along with it. Some will argue that their company has no brand, usually due to a lack of logo or “designed” brand identity. But thanks to search engines, it’s time for everyone to realize that yes - you are a brand now. Fortune 1000 companies, small and medium businesses, and even bloggers are brands now too.

If I’m supposed to be a brand, do I need a logo now?

Let’s break the misconception that a brand is intrinsically tied to the ‘logo’ - it’s not. I’m a brand. I write and produce content online under my name, which is how I’m recognized. My name stands for a certain perspective, a particular type of content, a writing style and is further defined by everything I produce. This is a brand - it’s how the world identifies you. IBM needs a clear logo and color scheme so that as diversified as they are, when they release a new product or service offering you can identify it with their brand. Years of being IBM defined their brand, so their logo and the blue color represents how and what everyone feels about IBM. This allows them to do something new or innovative and tie it back using their recognized brand identity (their logo.) When I produce new content, I require other methods of “branding” that content since as an individual I don’t have a logo or branded color scheme. I use my name, picture, or style of writing to “brand” the content as mine. That said, I really would like a logo - I think that would make it all much easier.

What do I need to know about my brand?

Branding strategies are usually built on the idea of crafting a specific message in the market that will move your brand in a particular direction. For example, a company want’s to move upmarket into the Enterprise software space. To do this, they will need to launch a brand campaign around connecting their company to the enterprise. They will likely start with their website, redesigning and (possibly) rebranding completely to present a more “enterprise” friendly brand. Then they will have a SEO expert work their content, launch some SEM campaigns around it, print marketing and email marketing, and if they are smart - they will launch a social media campaign to get some momentum online. Your business is no different. You will need to do all of the same things, possibly in smaller doses, to get your brand “VISIBLE” online and offline. You need to think about your website, and how people find it, and work to “craft” your message about your brand.

You can either take control of your brand online, or bloggers and employees (sometimes ex-employees) will handle it for you.

For small businesses, managing your brand online can be as simple as adding a blog to your website and launching a social media campaign to improve and control your brand’s visibility online. This simply scratches the surface of what you can do to build your brand online, but anything you do will only strengthen your other marketing efforts. Online marketing, blogging, and social media have provided new opportunities for companies to build their brand, but the most important first step is to rethink what that means to your company and to start thinking about yourself and your company as the brand you want them to be.

Social media marketing gurus can be lumped into bunches - those that understand personal branding using social media, and those that understand how to translate that to business branding. If you are currently interested in social media marketing, or are researching for business purposes, you likely know that there are tons of self-proclaimed social media marketing “experts” who seem to talk a good game.

How do you tell who can help you and who can’t?

Good question, because in many cases these people will be using the same websites and some of the same methods to distribute their message. Some of them (not all, be careful) actually have been successful at branding themselves using social media - which is probably how you found them. The problem is, while someone might be really good at talking about themselves on social networks, they don’t always understand how companies must carefully craft their brands online - and how to combine these two efforts to achieve the goal of using social media marketing for business success.

Here’s what you look for…

1. Do they have a personal blog?

2. On this personal blog is it obvious who they work for in at least 3 posts?

3. Do the posts on the blog seem to be about the author, or the subject?

4. Are they leveraging social media effectively from their blog?

5. Do they list businesses as references, or other people?

6. Can they articulate a difference between using social media for personal gain versus business branding?

You may also ask, does it matter? Isn’t using social media beneficial either way? Won’t the sites be the same and thus, the processes be the same?

Yes and no. Using social media can be beneficial, but it’s about ROI. If your time is valuable, then it matters because while the sites may be the same the processes will differ somewhat. In both types of branding you are building your network based on your value to the greater “conversation”, but you don’t want to give away too much of that “value” as a business because you are supposed to be charging for it.

Keep in mind that some people are just trying to cash in on the emerging economy around social media marketing and look for help from people who can show you experience rather than a big ego.

In case it wasn’t apparent from previous posts, Twitter is my favorite social network. Of all social media sites, Facebook and Linkedin included, I would much prefer Twitter and use it far more. Not only has Twitter been one of the more enjoyable of the web 2.0 technologies, it’s spawned some amazingly helpful tools to get more out of the technology.

Here is a collection of the most useful or interesting Twitter tools (that I’ve found.)

Summize - This is actually THE Twitter search engine.

Tweetburner.com - Metrics for your links on Twitter.

Tweetscan - Another Twitter search engine, but a very useful one.

Twellow - It’s a different kind of Twitter search, that’s more focused on finding and classifying people, than just giving you a list of tweets by content.
Twitterific - If you have an iPhone, and use Twitter, you probably already have this app. If you don’t have an iPhone this is a great reason to go get one.

Twhirl - I will caveat this by saying I don’t actually USE Twhirl. I did. I’ve downloaded it a couple of times. I can’t get into using it. It’s a cool app, though.

Twittervision - It’s cool, but totally useless. It’s not a Twitter client, it doesn’t aggregate, it will help you make many minutes of your life disappear. Of course, I visit it at least once a day.

Twitter Netvibes Widget - Netvibes is a type of widgetized feed reader and I like it quite a bit. Each feed is visually encapsulated in it’s widget, making them easy to keep apart and scan easily.

Twitpic - I just learned about this and I’m very excited. It allows you to post pictures to Twitter.

Tweetbeep.com - Like Google Alerts, but for Twitter. MUST USE THIS!

I’m sure there are many missing. Please tell me all the cool stuff I’ve missed in comments.