What are the buzz words in the business arena these days?

Yep! “Social Media” it is!

I happen to be a founding member of a new business networking group here in San Francisco Bay Area. And the #1 topic on the survey that these business owners want to know more is…

“How To Use Social Media To Bring In More Sales”

And they are local and traditional businesses but they are catching up.

As you may already know, I am a hardcore networker and I use social media a lot as one of my main tools to attract leads and sponsor more reps. But as you can guess, I see a huge opportunity in helping these business owners get on the social media train.

Even my casual talk with them about Facebook and Twitter made their eyes wide open and almost instantly put me as THE social media expert. I am pretty sure you know about attraction marketing, right?

Once I was the “expert” they LISTENED.

In fact, I was offered to be the speaker for our next meeting, speaking about the very topic.

Now, let me tell you a little secret.

The night before the previous meeting, I kind of quickly went through this new course called Let’s Get Social by Kate Buck Jr. about selling social media management services to local business owners.

Armed with these powerful knowledge in addition to what I already know works, I felt so much confident in talking to them. And that’s the key – Confidence – and people can see whether you have it… or not!

So if you want to know how this girl made thousands from her iPhone, check it out and listen to her story.

You may be involved mainly in network marketing but there’s nothing wrong in making another stream of income by helping local business owners in your area with their social media marketing (…and you may eventually build trust and, who knows, sponsor some of them into your business).

When it comes to building credibility and personal branding through online social media, you have to consider the immediate as well as long term effect of putting yourself out there for public viewing.

Why?

You’re one post away from making or breaking your marketing efforts. Every tweet, status update, picture or video will either enhance or lower your brand. Thus, you should be mindful in posting what you want others to see.

If you have been an online marketer for a while, I’m sure you’d agree that you should automate and outsource many of your marketing campaigns as needed. You can hire writers, spin articles, use autoposters, or even pay someone to do your PPC campaigns.

However, in my opinion, social media need to be personally taken charge due to its viral nature. Even when you use software or feeders to post updates, you have to make sure they will only post content that you would have approved if you would post it yourself.

I see some of my Facebook friends who have status updates every hour that contain quotes from well-known authors or speakers. I don’t see the point of doing that other than to always be on the front of the news or live feed of their friends. Even with that, I have no problem with it as they post positive and inspirational remarks.

The sad thing is when I saw a few updates that said something racy and inappropriate when credibility and personal branding are at stake. I am sure that marketer friend of mine would not want to post those updates if she would do it manually.

I use several RSS feeds for Twitter myself and I carefully choose the bloggers and news sites that I know will only post useful quality content since otherwise they will risk their reputation. One of them is Seth Godin. Even then, I choose not to ping every tweet to my Facebook and other social media as to not overload my friends and followers with redundant updates.

Friends request is another effort that I choose to take on myself. It gives me the opportunity to make real connections and build a base of loyal followers. I used to outsource this but then, what’s the point of social networking?

Let me know what you think whether you should or should not automate your online social networking.

So many marketers have watched their multiple YouTube channels get suspended or removed during the recent YouTube slap – channels that have thousands of subscribers and millions of views and built over the past few years.

No wonder since it belongs to the big G.

If you are fortunate enough to still keep your channel, here are the basic guidelines to remember:

1. Provide value and build your online presence or brand
2. No more automated software
3. No more spammy videos
4. No more friend stealers (eg. TubeBlasterPro)
5. No buying views (a big no-no)
6. Only 1 account with 1 email address

Does it mean you can no longer use YouTube to promote your business? Of course not.

The recent slap is actually helping marketers to clean up and play by the rules. Nobody like spam in any form including videos.

However, there are ways to better promote you and your MLM (or any other business) with YouTube. Here’s an example:

The key is to be content-oriented and give value as you offer your expertise and invitation to contact you. Build your channel with enough value and training-oriented videos and your visitors will appreciate it and the YouTube reviewing team will leave you alone.