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!

I’m shocked. I’ve been stunned twice in 1 day by former coworkers. First, I had a former colleague admit openly he didn’t know what Twitter was. We worked in a software company together, and he is still there…working in technology…not knowing about Twitter. Twitter isn’t saving the world, it’s not the next Microsoft or Google, and it isn’t going to power the next generation of green vehicles but I am reminded how outside of new media geeks Twitter might not be so ubiquitous yet.

Then, a blogger I occasionally collaborate with admitted they had never heard of Summize. I realize that Twitter is still catching on (as I was reminded earlier) but for fellow bloggers I just figured Summize was a given. If you don’t know, Summize is Twitter search - letting you peel through the tweets to find the relevant ones and further helping you track down people with like interests. Summize is a great tool for marketers and Twitter users who want to build their networks. It’s also fun to prove you aren’t the only one thinking (or tweeting) something. Here are some great recent articles about Summize and Twitter.

TechCrunch - Twitter buying Summize?

Mashable - Summize adds local search.

Louisgray.com - TweetDeck combines Twitter and Summize.

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.

It’s been gaining mainstream buzz this year, but Twitter has finally stepped into the bigtime recently with the Wired article about how Twitter broke the news about the Earthquake. To be clear, “Twitter” the company didn’t break the news, but Twitter users were all tweeting about the earthquake before any major news site had published anything.

Wired said, “Blogs and news sites buzzed the next day about how Twitter had ushered in a new era of communication.”

Most people want to talk about the Twitter business model, and sites like Mashable are all excited about Twitter breaking into the big time, but the article made mention of something in passing that really caught my eye. Towards the end of the article, Wired pointed out how companies like Dell, Jetblue and Whole Foods are using Twitter to communicate with customers. It’s this style of “opt-in” communication that people typically think about when they discuss email marketing. If you’ve ever tried to rent or buy, much less create a useful email list for marketing purposes, you’ve no doubt experienced frustration.

It brings me back to my earlier article about leveraging Twitter to build “communities” and get better feedback from customers - in real time. Products like live chat have created great tools for connecting with customers in real time - but times they are a changin - and now consumers like to wear their brand affinities right on their virtual sleeves (aka: social networks like Myspace and Facebook) and this gives brands a phenomenal opportunity to connect with consumers in a network environment.

So what’s this all mean for the entrepreneur or web business out there, debating about whether or not to use social media to connect with customers and whether it has true value. Debate no more. Social media has gone from being news to making it.

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.