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.

A proper social media promotion strategy for your blog is critical for building links, readership, and potential new customer networks. You can look at them as tools for syndicating and distributing content, but they should be considered business networking tools. If you aren’t familiar with the variety of tricks for building your networks online, this latest website service has just made networking on Twitter easier to do. Twellow is a “people search” tool that helps you find people by category for networking purposes. I think you will find this invaluable for building a solid network of people who are interested in what you have to say - personal or professional.

Read more about it at Mashable or go check it out directly at www.twellow.com!

Social media is a phenomenon. No one will argue with it’s popularity, traffic, and continued monopoly over people’s time on the web. For marketers, this is wonderful as it offsets the loss of access to consumers due to declining television ratings and diminished popularity of radio. Google grew to monopolize advertising in web 1.0, and traditional marketers missed the boat. Now, all eyes are on social media and marketers are ready to react.

The question is, now that everyone is participating, networking, tweeting and friending…what are companies going to do to leverage these tools?

Twitter is a great example of a popular social media tool that is ripe for creativity. Twitter can be used to build a community, network directly with consumers, share PR news and updates, add personality to your company’s brand, provide status updates related to your company or service, and probably a litany of things that have yet to be discovered. For all it’s traffic and users, Twitter is missing 2 significant things that made companies like Google and Yahoo! successful - it has yet to provide a clear way for anyone to make money using it in the way that Google Adwords and Overture did before.

Let’s explore options on Twitter that could create value for businesses. There are the less creative things like sponsorship and advertising. Twitter could require company or branded accounts to pay, versus their current unlimited free model. I think one of the more creative ways to leverage Twitter would be to build communities.

This is The Community Model:

For the Community Model, let’s take a popular brand, website or blog with a growing but dedicated following. Rather than create it’s own branded social network, why not leverage Twitter to extend the blog and build a community of readers. This way, readers with like interests could begin to follow the blog’s Tweets and the connect with each other. The blog or website could use Twitter to give additional insight, live blog special events, provide a “behind the scenes” look at activities at the blog, and pre-release teasers to articles.

How does this create value for companies?

The Community Model would help distance blogging from social media, allowing companies to make it a mainstream form of publication. For established brands, this could be especially useful since their blog likely resides on a subdomain and is closely tied to the main website and brand. Leveraging Twitter in this way would allow them to frequently update without having to post directly to the blog, but still keeping up frequent connections with consumers.

Why would consumers do this?

Consumers are capable of brand loyalty, but more than anything this gives uninitiated consumers an entry into Twitter and a way to connect with like-minded people in a non-brand specific way. Forums on websites have proven successful, but by participating in forums you are tied to a particular website or brand. Twitter provides an ability to go beyond that company and continue growing your own personal network (this also benefits the companies involved as well, since it amplifies the network effects of each member. Thanks to Yoan Blanc or his excellent visual representation.)

This is just one example of way to leverage Twitter to build a community around a blog or website. Do you have any ideas of how Twitter can be used to create branding or marketing opportunities beyond just posting Tweets?

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.