[Hey everyone - our submission form has been acting up, so if you have submitted a guest post and have had troubles, please email it to me at lara@twitip.com - Thanks!]

Today’s post comes from Jenni Izzo, a Drexel University graduate turned PR Account Coordinator with a social media obsession. You can follow Jenni at @jenniizzo.

Whether large or small, Twitter can enhance your event in a number of ways. Take a hint from MTV, who recently used a live Twitter Tracker for their 2010 Movie Awards. They encouraged those in the audience, as well as those at home, to get in on the action by tweeting their thoughts, reactions and questions. Throughout the night, tweets containing “MTV” hit over 400 per minute. But, even if you aren’t planning a star-studded event, you can still use the following tips to create a tweet-worthy event.

Establish an event hashtag.
Long before you start promoting the event, create a hashtag. It should be easy to remember, short and relevant. This will be key in incorporating Twitter into your event. Include the hashtag on everything from the Evite to the Facebook page to signage at the event. Other creative ideas include: event t-shirts, business cards and centerpieces.

Create buzz before the event.
Now that you’ve established the event hashtag, get out and there use it. Tweet about sponsors, ticket sales, guest appearances and topics. Get people excited before the event and it will ensure that the enthusiasm carries over to the day-of.

Encourage attendees to tweet during the event.
Using the previously mentioned tips, make sure the hashtag is visible at the event. If you have a PowerPoint or Keynote presentation, make sure it is included on the title slide. If you will be taking planned breaks, display slide encouraging attendees to tweet — or better yet…

Host a live stream.
During scheduled downtime, replace your presentation with a live stream. A live stream should also be incorporated at all times on a projection screen. If you are announcing winners or honorees, use Twitter to share the big news. Also keep your audience actively engaged by tweeting trivia questions and giving an award to the first to tweet the correct answer.

Take advantage of post-event insight.
Twitter gives event coordinators a valuable opportunity to look back attendees’ candid thoughts. Review tweets marked with your hashtag to see what worked and what didn’t. Use this as an opportunity to improve your next event or connect with people who had further questions.

When it comes to using Twitter to enhance your event, the possibilities are endless. Feel free to add to this list and share some of your favorites in the comments.

This is a guest post by Kwame Boame. Follow him on Twitter.

If you look around the social web a lot like me, you will agree that most social media campaigns suck. Some people think social media is just fun. Some however see it as an opportunity. What do you think about using social media for business? I hope you are still not confused by the whole concept.

If your business is already on the social web, you will need something to help you improve on your campaigns. You will need an audit.

When you audit your social presence, you will be able to make better business decisions when it comes to social media. You will be able to gather enough data from your own campaigns to help you improve your online marketing.

We are going to go through a series of questions that will help you in your audit. The audit has been divided into parts so that it will be easy for you to take notes.

Grab a pen and paper or open your word editor and let’s begin.

Branding

• Are my profiles complete? Make sure all your social media profiles are complete with the most relevant information. Fill out your bio by saying something about what people do with your brand. It’s all about your target audience; not just about you.
• Do I have exclusive profiles for my brand? If you have your brand name as your Twitter handle and a portrait photo of you on your profile, you are getting it all wrong. People want to be able to identify your brand. They don’t want to get to know the CEO. You can introduce yourself another way, another day. Get rid of your photo and put your logo there.
• Do I have custom profile landing pages? Custom landing pages can increase your social media efforts. You may want to create a custom Twitter background, custom Facebook fan page landing tab (with FBML) and custom YouTube channel backgrounds.
• Are my profiles well branded? Don’t give your brand another image by mixing things up. I have seen people mix up colors on their YouTube Channels, Twitter profiles, and Facebook fan pages. For example, they use a green background on Twitter, black background on their YouTube channels and maybe red on their Facebook fan page landing tabs. They completely ignore their brand colors of green and white (or blue or white maybe). A situation like this confuses people and makes it difficult to identify your brand. If your colors are green and white, use those colors all over your social profiles.

(And that was the UK. In 2008.)

Integration Audit

• Am I integrating my social media profiles? Can you please share your Twitter feeds on LinkedIn? (Just not like this.) How about telling your Twitter followers what is up on your Facebook fan page? When you integrate your profiles, you help build the relationships you have already started on each social site. It helps build loyalty, generate conversations, and it also gets you more followers if you do it right.
• Do I have social media integration on my business blog? If you have a business blog, you have to integrate your social media profiles on it. Ask your blog’s readers to follow you on Twitter, subscribe to your YouTube channel, add you on LinkedIn, or “Like” you on Facebook. There are plugins that can help you do that. Also, you should consider sharing your Twitter feeds and Facebook updates on your blog’s sidebar.
• Am I integrating offline marketing with my social profiles? You can promote your social media profiles by integrating offline media. You could have a T-shirt for Twitter, one for Facebook and one for YouTube. Your Twitter T-shirt could have your handle printed on it. For example, I’ll put “I tweet. Follow me @Sociatic” on my Twitter shirt. Make your handle big and bold so people can see it. Think of places you could wear your T-shirts to. You could also add your social media profile URLs on your business cards, in your catalogues, on your flyers, etc.

(Get this shirt style here).

• Am I integrating on other networks? When you write guest posts, do you include that people should check you out on the Twitter or Facebook in your byline? Do you do any guest posting at all? Consider integrating your social profiles on blogs.  Another way you can integrate is using your social profile URLs as your website when leaving comments.

Content Audit

• What types of updates do I share? Do you share other updates relevant to your followers? Do your updates request for conversations? I have seen people share their family holiday plan on their business Twitter profile. That’s not the way to go. Your updates can make or break your business. Be careful what you share.
• How many times do I update in a day? It is not necessary to update 50 times a day. When you have nothing to say, don’t update. When you do, they are not genuine because you had to actually think about something to write when you had nothing to say. When you have something to say though, you can think about how to put deliver it; maybe you will want to add some emotional angles.
• Do I hard sell with my updates? Do you always tell people to “buy now”, “buy before midnight”, “For the first 300 people”, etc? What you should do is to be insightful, insightful, insightful… and then “New price reduction on our favorite product, “X”. Visit http://shorturl.com to take advantage.”
• What feedback do I get from my followers concerning my updates? People are definitely saying something about what your business is saying or doing on the web. What are they saying about it? What do they complain about? What do they praise you for? I hope you still have that pen and paper in your hand.
• Do I have bait? Do you have something you can give out for free? Give it out to the people who take the action you want them to take. Examples of baits are: graphics, eBooks, whitepapers, scripts, website themes, coupon codes, etc.

Measurement Audit

• What part of my social activities do I measure? If you haven’t already, get measurement tools to measure all your social activities. The data will let you know where you are effective and where you suck. Some tools you can use are Social Mention, Trackur, and PostRank. You can also get Google Analytics installed on your Facebook Fan page. Facebook Analytics for domains was recently announced as well.
• Do I have alerts set up to notify me of brand mentions? If you don’t have alerts set up to notify you of conversations involving your brand, do it now. You can use Google Alerts or Social Mention’s alert feature. I prefer Social Mention because they are more thorough than Google.
• What social media site gives me the most traffic? According to your web analytics, what social media site gets you more traffic? Why do you think you keep getting traffic from that site?
• What social media site gives me the most leads? What social media site gives you the most leads? You should track this too. Don’t assume the site that brings you more traffic gives you the most leads. This is wrong. Sometimes the site that gives you less traffic gives you the most leads.

Overall Campaign

• How much time do I put into social media? You need to know the average time you put into social media every week or every month. This is going to help you realize how much time you are utilizing or wasting on social media depending on your results.
• What results am I getting from it? Are you reaping great benefits from your social efforts? Are you getting ROI on your investments on the social web? Don’t give up if the results are not good. Social Media marketing is about building relationships and conversations. Building relationships takes time so you have to give it enough time before you will see good ROI.
• What is working for me? What activities bring you more positive results? What works for you in terms of generating leads? What social media site works for you best? What types of bait brings you more leads? Analyze every part of your social media efforts and write down what’s working.
• What is not working for me? Now list all the things that are not working for you in your campaign. What bait is not working? What social media sites are not working? Write all of them down. No, don’t quit them yet. Make some changes to them and measure it another day. If it still doesn’t work, quit it.
• How effective is my overall campaign? From your results, determine whether your campaign has been successful. After you decide that, decide what’s next for you and your campaign.
• Should I get help? Did you get great results all by yourself? If you did, I bet you will love to do it again. If your campaign wasn’t successful, would you outsource it or rather learn more about social media on your own so that you can do it yourself? Put some thought into it and decide.

Conclusion

Did you finish up all the ink in your pen? Yeah, that’s good. It means you got a lot of ideas from the audit. It will be best to re-plan your social media campaigns. Divide your plans into days. You can make a 30 day plan or 45 day plan to improve your social media campaigns. Your plan should be based on your audit; both the good sides and bad sides.

What other questions will you ask yourself in a social media audit?

Kwame Boame is a marketing consultant who blogs about brand communication on his blog, Sociatic.

First photo by Shutterstock. All other photos are linked to their respective pages on Flickr.

Tagged as: audit, content. branding, integration, kwame boame, measurement, social media, social media measurement

Many business people on the Web are obsessed with links. Actually, most of them are. And it makes sense. It’s well known that one of the most important things you can do to help your site rank is to build links to it. But that doesn’t mean you need to engage in outlandish linkbaiting attempts, beg for them or even go the route of trying to buy them. As a small business owner, there are lots of easy way to attract links that don’t require such exertion or impressive feats.

Here are 14 ways SMB owners can easily build links to their Web site. Go grab a pen.

Use What You’ve Already Got

Use your internal links: Start here. Internal links are the links on your site that point to other pages on your site. Naturally, you have much greater control over these than you will with a link that doesn’t appear on your own site. So use them as much as possible. That means being smart about your internal navigation, the structure of your site, your alt text and how you link within blog posts. You want to make sure you’re linking with the appropriate anchor text to help give yourself a small boost.   Linking smartly on your own site can really have a high impact.

Find unlinked mentions: There are probably lots of times when customers and local organizations/media outlets mention your company but, for whatever reason, forgot to add the link back to your Web site. Contact them and ask for it!  Often, these sources meant to link and either forgot or were pressed for time.  By contacting them, you help remind them of their error and pick up some low hanging fruit.

Happy customers: Folks who are happy with your services will very often be willing to talk about you or link to you on their own site or blog if they have one. While, not every one of your customers will be Web savvy enough to be blogging, some of them will and they’ll take you up on the offer. You just need to remind me.

Share and Be Social

Directory links: A directory is similar to the Yellow Pages in that it lists sites by categories to help users find you.  Listing your site in your niche-specific directories is a good way to build visibility to your site and you’ll also get a link back.  To find relevant directories, use searches such as [keyword directory] to find the ones that appear the most active/authoritative or where you see your competitors listed.  Being listed in a directory typically requires you to simply submit your URL. Once you do, you’ll get a link back to your site.

Syndication links: If you’re a SMB blogger (which you should be!), submitting your RSS feed to a syndication service can serve a few purposes. First, it will expose your content to a new audience to help give it legs, but you’ll also get a link to individual articles as they’re posted. Over time, this can help you build up authority, readers, and, of course, links.

Blog comments: This is less effective than it previously was thanks to marketers spamming blogs to high heavens, but leaving valuable comments on niche blogs can also be a good way to gain some back links. And even if the blog nofollows the links, it’s still a great way to build exposure to your own blog and site, which can lead to additional links down the road

Link social media accounts: Make sure you’re linking to your Web site from Twitter (the bio link is nofollow’d but link anyway), LinkedIn (use the additional info links wisely), YouTube (put a link in the video description) Facebook, niche accounts, etc. You’re in complete control of these accounts so you want to take advantage of them as much as possible.  Also, by linking all of your social accounts, you help make them stronger.

Use Your Content

Guest blog: I’ve already written about how guest blogging can increase your exposure, but it can also be a way to earn links. Because guest blogging opportunities typically allow you to add links within the content and to include an author bio, you can not only get a link back to your site, but you can link to relevant pages within the content of the post to earn some authority, as well. The author gets free content and you get to build authority and targeted links. It’s a win for all involved!

Article directories: Similar to guest blogging, submitting articles to article directories is another god way to get links from content. You’ll once again be able to embed links in the text, plus pimp out an About the Author box. Sometimes you don’t even have to write something new, but can find ways to repurpose or republish content you’ve written for a newsletter, blog or even on your site.

Write linkable content: I know it sounds cheesy, but producing create content is still the best way to get links on the Web. Become a resource and the links will follow.

Use Your Connections

Vendor/Partner links: The same way you can ask Vendors for testimonials, you can also ask them for links pack to your site.  Ask your vendors to link back to your site via a Recommended Vendor List or maybe a page that details businesses that may be of interest to potential new customers.  Many vendors/partner sites will already have pages like these in existence. You just have to ask to be included.

Join industry organizations: Whatever you do, there are probably local organizations in your area for people who do the very same thing. Join them! Often times they’ll give you a link back on their site. Or, if you don’t want to join, consider creating a resource or maybe even helping them with whatever your trade is and asking for a link. You may even find targeted customers who saw the link and liked your work.

Local organizations: Join your local Better Business Bureau chapter, the Chamber of Commerce and get involved with your school board. These organizations are famous for giving links to their members.

Sponsor/ Donate to charity organizations: If you’re already sponsoring a local team or charity, find out if they have a Sponsors page on their Web site. If they do, ask about being listed.

For a small business owner, link building often means getting creative and taking advantage of the natural opportunities already presenting themselves.  Don’t be afraid to ask people to link to your site.  If you’re providing valuable information and a great service, than people are going to want to link to and make their audiences aware of your presence.   Link building as a SMB owner means scooping up lots of great local links.  You just have to know where to start.

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About the Author

Lisa Barone is Co-Founder and Chief Branding Officer at Outspoken Media, Inc., an Internet marketing company that specializes in providing clients with online reputation management, social media services, and other Internet services. She blogs daily over at the Outspoken Media blog.

Connect with Lisa Barone:

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I just read a blog post from Mashable's Jennifer Van Grove on "3 Qualities to Look for When Hiring a Community Manager". Of course, this topic can be looked at from the other side of the equation, which led me to thinking about what qualities someone who wants to be a social media manager should have.

For the record, Van Grove lists 1) intellectual curiosity, 2) passion, and 3) knowledge of your business. I'd modify and expand this to:

1. You understand technology, but you love people. Social media technology is a means to an end, that end generally being to communicate effectively, build trust and foster community. The quiet geek in the corner who wears a reddit t-shirt, knows how to use any Twitter application ever invented, but never interacts with co-workers, probably isn't the right person for the job.

Better would be the outgoing person who gets what social media can do and wants to use it to reach out to people -- friends, customers, clients, people with similar interests, etc. If that's you, don't worry about whether you have sufficient "passion" for a social media manager's job. You do.

2. You possess intellectual and emotional curiousity. Sure, you're supposed to know stuff -- your company's business, details about products and services, problem resolution procedures, etc. -- but your real strength is the desire and ability to look at things from another person's perspective. Empathy. The best customer reps have it; for a social media manager, it's imperative.

3. You're thoughtful, not impulsive or reactive. Being a social media manager is about more than tweeting positive thoughts and virtual brand-building. There's a lot of pressure. Many organizations aren't totally sold on social media, measuring its impact (especially short-term) can be difficult, not all your co-workers may be "getting it," and dealing with crises (or even just haters) can test your patience. If you can handle these types of things, you may be able to handle the stress that comes with being a social media manager.

4. You think strategically (and communicate the strategy). An effective social media manager understands an organization's social media goals and attempts to measure results against them. Equally important, they know how to convey strategic goals to colleagues.

5. You are an ensemble player, not a diva. There are some giant egos in the social media business, a lot of self-proclaimed "gurus" who amass a lot of Twitter followers and land numerous speaking engagements. Many would make lousy social media managers because they see themselves as superstars or saviors. A good social media manager freely gives out credit for successes to teammates and accepts blame for failures.

Those are the qualities I'd consider to be most valuable in a social media manager. Let me know if there are any you think should be on the list.