Last night I joined a group of friends, and about 600 others, at the Chameleon in Lancaster to see Ingrid Michaelson. And it was a wonderful show.

The beauty of watching Ingrid is that at times it feels less like a show and more like a sing-along. It was participatory.

Ingrid knew her audience. She worked Lancaster into her banter and a few of her songs (and she even pronounced it correctly, though made a few too many Amish jokes).

She engaged the audience and listened to us. She invited us to participate and sing along, and as a result, had us eating out of her hand.

For that short time, we were a community. We were there for a shared purpose: to see Ingrid. And we communicated with each other and with her.

Ingrid knows her audience. Do you? Are you engaging and including your audience as if they are a part of your community?

In the meantime, while this video isn’t from last night’s show…it’s part of what you missed if you weren’t there, and gives you an example of how Ingrid works the crowd. Enjoy!

My friend Adam Hann and I have had a number of conversations about Social Media. About two weeks ago he and I engaged in a conversation about Twitter and how various people use it. The conversation really encouraged me as Adam described to me how his thinking on Twitter had been shifting. So I asked him to write a guest blog post for me to describe what we had discussed, and what he wrote not only encouraged me further, but blew me away. I love the way he thinks and how he articulates those thoughts.

Recently, I’ve been undergoing some sort of a revelation in regards to Twitter. I’ve been on Twitter for almost 2 years now. I remember the first day I joined and had a couple of friends join with me (@mattparks and @pearlparks; you should follow them if you are not already, great people.) I had two big goals: I was going to get tons of people using Twitter, and I was going to be their friend. That was an unrealistic goal, and a naive one at that. Also, I did not know that there was already a flourishing Twitter community here in Lancaster County.

As I started out into the Twitterverse, I would tend to only follow people who I knew or whom I had met, usually in person. I had approached it with a backwards trust: If you can prove to me that you are worth following and are trust worthy, then I’ll follow you.

Honestly, I never thought through it enough to even realize the message I was sending, but it could have been interpreted that way.

At it’s core, Twitter (and social media at that) is all about connecting. Even more, it’s about the relationships that come from that connecting.

When thinking about this over the past few weeks and learning some new things in regards to technology, I’ve realized that I’ve approached this all wrong. Technology is an extension of you as a person. The technology you use extends your human capabilities. Whether it’s driving (helping you move from one place to another faster) or video chatting (letting you communicate with someone hours and miles away), it’s extending what you can do as a person.

Essentially, Twitter is an extension of the community in which I am a member. I am developing an understand that a healthy community is a two way street. If you don’t think Twitter is a community, stop and read this and then read this.  I’ now realize that I need to be more engaging in my community, both offline and online. For me, doing that online means I need to be following the people who are following me and engaging in the conversation that is happening.

This is a big shift in my thinking. First, it gets me out of my comfort zone. Second, it introduces me to a lot more people and gives me a lot more content to take in on a daily basis. These are the two reasons that kept me from doing this before. While I’m still figuring out how this will work for me, I’m excited to be a part of what’s going on and stepping out into new territory.

As I begin to understand my role in this interactive community, I’m slowly learning what implications this has on leadership in regards to transparency and approachability or the tools to use to even pull this off well.  But that is a whole other post.

I guess, for now, I’m just here to say, “Hello, my name is @adamhann, and I look forward to getting to know you!” I’ll see you out in the community.

Adam Hann and his wife Amanda live in Elizabethtown, PA.  Adam loves engaging in conversations about social media and music.

He currently works for LCBC Church as the Saturate Experience Architect and helps craft environments for young adults. You can find him over at the Saturate Blog or at adamhann.com/blog.

In a recent message in our church, the speaker voiced the following truth: respect is never forced, it is always earned.

Think about that for a minute.

No matter how hard we try, we can’t make people respect or trust us. While it may not be put in so many words, this is at the core of how Social Media works, and is much of what Chris Brogan and Julien Smith talk about in Trust Agents.

We can sell. We can browbeat. We can push. But we can’t force people to like or respect us.

But, we can become “trust agents.” By the way we live our lives and treat the members of our communities, we can earn respect. If others choose to respect us, it is because they see something in us that is respect-worthy.

As active members of a community…as a member who gives…selflessly, people will learn to respect us.

If all you do is sell to people, they won’t respect you. But if we interact, engage, and give selflessly, people will notice. It’s all a matter of perspective and how we live our lives.

As businesses and organizations, we can’t just expect customers and prospective customers to respect us. We need to earn it through how we treat them, how we engage, and how we create quality products or services.

Turn conventional wisdom upside down. It’s not about us, our business, or our product. It’s about the customer.

How do you choose your friends? Are you attracted to the people who are trying to sell to you? Or the people who are helpful and giving?

How are you engaging your customers and treating them? Are you earning respect?

Every Sunday we bring you a new installment of our original comic The Social Life of Frank & Linh. This week we take a look at the empire that is Google.

Thanks to Jeff Burkholder, the creator of Zoidland for his work on these!

Previous installments of Frank & Linh

The State of the Internet by Jesse Thomas is a great video that will blow your mind in terms of the numbers related to Social Media and the Internet.

We’re talking numbers. Big numbers.

found via the Social Media Guide

JESS3 / The State of The Internet from Jesse Thomas on Vimeo.

I’m part of a group that is promoting an upcoming benefit concert for Haiti. The event is called Lancaster for Haiti – Hearts in Harmony, and with less than a month to go, we are utilizing a heavy Social Media push to get the word out. Here are a few tips for creating and promoting an event properly via Social Media.

1. Plan and Organize – Like any other aspect of marketing, go in with a plan. Know what your goals are, identify your target audience, and have things mapped out. Sure, things will change, but you can adapt on the way.

2. Create your event properly on Facebook – Make sure you include as much information as you can: title, date, time, any important details. Also include important links. In our situation we link to the main CHL Website, as well as the various band websites, and the organization that is benefiting from the event. Make the details as specific as you can. And use pictures and videos if they fit.

Note: by nature, RSVPs to Facebook events tend to be “fuzzy”. Just because someone says they are coming, doesn’t mean they are. If you are selling tickets, make sure you link to information about ticket sales. If it is a free event, but you need a hard and fast RSVP count, make sure that is clear and link to that RSVP page.

3. Set the viral sharing in motion – Once your event is created and published, you need to get the word out. If it is part of a page or group, the SHOULD see that it exists, but don’t rely just on that. You and anyone involved can use the “share” function to post the event on your personal walls, thereby letting your friends know. You can also use the “invite” function to personally invite any number of friends. As people RSVP that they are coming, encourage THEM to share and invite. The more the merrier.

Note: be selective as you invite. If the event is in Lancaster, and you have a friend in Kansas…probably best not to invite them. Invite your friends that you are pretty sure would be interested in this specific event.

4. Compliment your Social with Traditional – As powerful as Social Media can be, don’t stop there. There is nothing wrong with a full marketing campaign with whatever elements you think will work and will fit into your budget. For our event we are having some great posters made up that will be plastered all over the area. We’re also hoping to secure free promotion through standard PR and media measures, as well as perhaps secure some digital billboards in our area.

5. Tap into all channels – Don’t overlook other channels of promotion. Even though MySpace is on the decline, it still can be strong for music events. We are encouraging our participating bands to utilize their MySpace accounts, websites, e-mail lists and more, to help promote the show. One of the bands is even having a CD release party the week prior to the event, and is allowing our group the chance to set up an informational table, sell tickets, and even make an announcement from the stage. For some events, LinkedIn might even work. Be open minded as to how to get the word out. And of course you have people blog about the event.

6. Frequent Updates – As details change, add them to your event pages. In this case, as we add bands and sponsors, we add them to our digital properties. Not only does this make the information current, but it pushes the information out to the Facebook feeds of those who are involved.

7. Use multiple touch points – Not just Facebook, but also use Twitter to spread the word, as well as traditional websites. A key to marketing is having multiple touch points for your audience. If you can reach someone in three different places, they are more likely to remember your event. We’re even using several dozen brick and mortar locations to sell tickets and hang posters. Our hope is that people will have no excuse NOT to have heard about this event.

8. Give people opportunities to participate – If someone is involved in an event, they feel more invested and are more likely to spread the word. In our case we are asking for volunteer help. We also have a number of companies from printers, designers, and equipment companies involved. They are getting proper credit for their donations of time and services, but because their name is attached, they are more likely to help us out with promotion, both online and on the street.

9. Set the Street Team in motion – Think of your fan base as a street team. Mobilize them and give them the tools they need to help you promote your event. This might include downloadable flyers that they can either send to friends in email, or print out for distribution. In some cases you might be able to reward them with free admission to the event, or perhaps a t-shirt or other item.

10. Engage – Announcing an event isn’t enough. If people comment, engage them. Draw them into conversation. Give them a reason to post on your event wall.

11. Reminders – As you get closer to the event, Facebook events give you the opportunity to reach out. If the event is created from a Facebook Group, you can send messages to those who are attending, the “maybes”, and all of the invitees. If the event is created from a Fan Page, you only have the option of sending an “update” to all fans. Either way, use these tools

12. Be Creative – Think of unique ways of promoting the event. In our case, the local podcast Creatively Wired will be doing at least one live podcast prior to the event, along with covering the benefit concert live on UStream as it happens. Another thing that often works is getting “supporters” of your event to change their Facebook profile pictures and Twitter avatars to something related to your event, such as a logo or even a Twibbon.

Every event is unique and your approach to promoting an event will be different every time. As you create and produce more events, you’ll learn from what you and others have done in the past.

How have you promoted your events? What do you find works for you?

Oh, and if you are in our area here in Pennsylvania and would like to help out, feel free to leave a comment or email me for details!

Today’s guest post is from Rebecca Corliss of Hubspot. Part of her job is managing their Inbound Marketing University. I asked Rebecca to write this piece because I’m both a graduate and a fan of IMU. If you are interested in Internet marketing and Social Media, I encourage you to sign up for this free on-line webinar series. I can’t even begin to tell you how useful it has been as I seek to understand this rapidly changing field, and work with clients on a daily basis. So here’s Rebecca to educate us on Inbound Marketing:

Inbound Marketing is an online marketing strategy that helps businesses get found by their best customers online. It developed as a solution for the decreasing effectiveness of “traditional” outbound marketing techniques that have historically pushed marketing messages out at consumers.

And you know what? This inbound marketing stuff makes sense! When’s the last time you fast-forwarded through a commercial using your DVR? (Yesterday evening.) When’s the last time you did a Google Search to find information about a product or service you needed? (How about 10 minutes ago.)

Adoption of this strategy is growing quickly, and businesses are seeing results. According to HubSpot’s State of Inbound Marketing Report, companies that use inbound marketing as their primary marketing strategy experience a 61% lower cost-per-lead than outbound marketing-dominated organizations.

Here are five steps from HubSpot and the folks at Inbound Marketing University to successfully use inbound marketing to grow your business:

1) Create content. Are you blogging? Are you somehow contributing helpful information to the web that your target audience would appreciate? Consumers search for informational articles, not static websites. And each blog article you write is another page on the internet that increases your chances of getting found! Think about creating a blog if you haven’t already.

2) Optimize your content for search engines. The title of your blog content is key for readers *and* search engines. Are you including keywords in your content that your best customer would search for online? With some keyword optimization and some hard work to get links back to your site, you’ll start ranking in Google.

3) Build your social media network and promote your content. In order to spread and share your content, you need to create a network where you can promote it. Make sure you’re on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, and you’re interacting with folks to increase your reach. Remember! Don’t ONLY promote your content. Promote others’ too!

4) Create targeted landing pages on your website to convert your traffic. Now that you’re starting to get an increase in traffic, make sure you have a specific offer on your website to give people a reason to give you their contact information through a form. For example, do you have a free trial or a free consultation? Maybe you can offer an ebook download. Give your anonymous visitors a way to “raise their hands” and tell you who they are.

5) Track, analyze and repeat! It is absolutely crucial that you check back to see which channels are giving you your best leads and sales. How else will you know where you should focus your efforts?

Good luck applying these steps to your marketing. And of course, feel free to keep learning!

Rebecca Corliss is an inbound marketing manager at HubSpot, an internet marketing software company in Cambridge, MA. At HubSpot, she specializes in social media marketing and creative video content. She is also the executive producer for video podcast HubSpot TV and manages HubSpot’s Inbound Marketing University certification program. In her free time, she sings with her a cappella group Common Sound. Be sure to follow her on Twitter as @repcor.

Back in the ’70s, Carly Simon’s song “Anticipation” was a hit…and a commercial. It was the soundtrack to a Heinz ketchup ad, married to video of  ketchup slowly coming out of the bottle. It was the embodiment of the phrase “good things come to those who wait.” And it is this concept that is at the heart of the 2 lessons we can learn from technology and marketing giants Google and Apple.

1. Create Anticipation – Creating anticipation can be an effective way of generating interest in your business or product.

When Google rolls out a new product, they talk about it, then slowly send out invites…creating a sense of anticipation as users clamor for those coveted invites. This is how they introduced G-mail. Those who were part of the first group of invites would talk about how wonderful it was, and their friends would lobby to get one of the limited number of invites users had at their disposal.

Apple has created the same kind of culture but on a grander scale. Apple users are highly loyal and devoted customers and eagerly look forward to every new announcement from the company. They speculate on what new products will be introduced and scour the Internet for clues. And when the new iPhone or Mac computer is introduced, the count down the days until they can actually purchase the item. It’s almost as if they would buy anything on which Steve Jobs decided to slap the Apple logo.

But this brings us to the second lesson.

2. The payoff must be equal to, or greater than, the anticipation – More often than not, the anticipation associated with a Google or Apple campaign is met with a strong reward. People loved G-Mail and Google Voice, among other things. The iPhone is a smash. But…every once in awhile, there seems to be a letdown. While the results are still not in, the day the iPad was announced there was a lot of hoopla, but the talk seems to have died down a bit. Oh, sure, the iPad will probably still sell like hotcakes, but even some of the most dyed in the wool Apple-holics seemed to be underwhelmed.

Not every hit is a home run. And you better believe that Apple and Google will bounce back from any gaffes, either real or perceived, but if we are going to create anticipation, we have to make sure we give our audience the appropriate payoff.

Are you creating anticipation in your marketing plan and use of Social Media? If not, how CAN you create anticipation and keep your customers coming back for more? How can you tap into the marketing genius behind Google and Apple?

Sound familiar? You check your blog’s traffic score on Google Analytics or Alexa, but you’re not sure what to do after that. Or perhaps you haven’t even installed Google Analytics yet, but you’re curious about how your blog ranks.

Tracking traffic and other metrics are crucial to blogging success. These metrics not only let you know how fast your blog is growing, but what you can do to speed its growth.

Unfortunately, interpreting analytical data can overwhelm even the biggest blogging pro. That’s why I’ve created a system to make the process easy. Now, I spend about a half hour on blog analytics each month, and each month I gain valuable insight to help grow my blog.

Tracking Your Blog, Step-By-Step

• Make sure you have Google Analytics installed on your blog. (If you use WordPress, the Google Analytics plug-in can make this easier.) Ideally, you should install Analytics on the same day your blog launches, so you can start collecting baseline data. But if you haven’t already, do so now to start collecting data.
• If you use WordPress, download the PostRank plug-in, which uses a special algorithm to rank your posts by traffic and reader engagement. You can also download Blog Metrics plug-in, which averages your monthly posts, word count, reader comments and other valuable information. (Click the screenshots below to see how each plug-in looks on WordPress.)

• Create a spreadsheet with the data you want to track in the left-hand column, and include a column for each month. (See mine below.) You can also include details like number of Facebook friends, Facebook Fans, Twitter followers, and email subscribers.

• Schedule a block of time at the end of each month to collect and interpret this data. Be sure to write it in your schedule – otherwise, it’ll become easy to forget or put it off indefinitely.
• Each month, look for changes and correlations. In addition to adding numbers in each column, you may want to jot down some notes about post subject matter and other details that can’t be tracked in a spreadsheet. Do readers seem to enjoy one topic more than others? How does post length affect the amount of time spent on the site? Tracking stats each month will give you interesting numbers, but only your analysis lets you use the data to improve.
• Don’t stop at metrics to learn about your audience. At least once a month, ask questions via surveys or blog posts. SurveyMonkey is a great free tool to create surveys – see how I used it to get audience feedback below. (Click the image for a larger version.)

I learned much of this information from Beth Kanter’s blog post, Seven Tips For Measuring Your Blog’s Success. Check it out to read her blogging insights. And if you want to learn more about Google Analytics, check out Google’s Conversion University. This free site has 24 in-depth video lessons on everything from interpreting basic data to creating split tests.

Kelly Watson provides online marketing consulting to business owners across the nation. She’s the author of the Blogging Blueprint e-book, and blogs at One Woman Marketing.

A friend got a bill the other day and on the back of one of the pages they saw this:

You’ve probably seen that before when you’ve had to fill out some official forms. And it made me think about the way we use Social Media for marketing, and we SHOULD use Social Media for marketing.

A lot of times businesses create Social Media properties and then don’t use them. If you aren’t updating your Facebook page or actively using your blog or Twitter account, it may as well be blank.

And the reason they write that phrase on a previously blank page, is that they know that people expect something to be there, or might wonder if they are missing something.

Don’t neglect your Social Media properties, and don’t just fill them with…well…filler! If you have a business, you certainly must have something to say. And if you don’t have anything to say, ask yourself, “Why not?”

• Create good content.
• Ask questions.
• Provide links to relevant content.
• Engage your cutomers/clients/fan base.
• Provide customer service

Do these things and you’ll always have something to talk about.