Anytime you see yourself questioning the “Status Quo” of marketing and how-to information on marketing, consider this: Marketing, internet marketing, blogging, twittering, facebooking, MySpacing, LinkedIn’ing, and everything in between are simple ways for you to generate responses to your message. Most of the time, the leaders in a particular industry or niche, have a mindset that the best marketing dollars are spent where the highest possible return can be met, yet with the lowest risk or smallest amount of effort. In other words, you follow where the big guys go and MOST of the time you’ll see results?

Small Business Online Marketing ROI – Small Business Trends

Here’s a lesson I am learning right now for Rungtong & Co. website. We set a mildly basic marketing plan together that assumes we can go negative (more on that in a future article) or spend x amount of money to acquire a new customer. The chart to the left shows areas on the internet and offline that can be potential lead generation or getting customers through video, audio, text, pictures, chats, and simple bookmarking and sharing.

If you were to raise your hand right now and tell me what you think the best marketing medium for achieving the highest ROI, what would it be I bet, with all the $4.00 I have in my pocket as of writing this blog post, you would choose something that has been written a lot about in the media. Let’s assume you choose a combination of twitter, YouTube and Digg.

What made you believe these are the right or BEST ways to find customers?

It takes time and experience to stay on the cutting edge of SEO, and more than likely you don’t have that kind of time, considering your other marketing efforts. So here’s a quick update on what’s hot and what’s not in the world of search engine optimization.

What’s hot:

• Becoming a trusted contributor on social news/content sites like Digg, Propeller, Reddit, Mixx, StumbleUpon, Wikipedia, and Knol
• Building your personal and professional network in online communities like Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Flickr, YouTube, Bebo, MyBlogRoll, and the blogosphere in general, and then taking advantage of the residual network effect
• Link baiting—posting humorous/fascinating/contentious/controversial content that is a magnet for links
• Truly understanding and leveraging the power of “Long Tail” dynamics

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My social media Guru site -?Steve Rubel’s Micropersuasion.com

• The Benefits of Distraction and Overstimulation — New York Magazine
  A loooong story on the Attention Crash for people short on time.
• One Tweet Over the Line – Room for Debate Blog – NYTimes.com
  • The top 12 trends of the video game industry ? VentureBeat
  • MediaShift . Kicking Ink: The Struggles of a Print Newspaper Unsubscriber | PBS

As my wife and I walked into the St. Joesph hospital, we were greated by three people: security, nurse and someone donating their personal time at 12:10pm at night. What I noticed, other than my wife ready to deliver our first baby, was the subtle lures the hospitals use today to try and entice visitors to engage with their hospital. The most notiable, the “Upcoming Webinar” sign I have here that was shown in the second door you passed through right before you will deliver your baby.

Here are three tips to figure out how to leverage what you experience from other people’s experience in your business or life:

Tip 1: This came from our night nurse who was so intuitive to what we were experiencing that, as a result, we were able to intuitively ask her questions that made sense even though we had no idea where it come from. Does that make sense? I’ve been up for 36 hours so it may not. She had a little journal with notes that showed over 121 common questions she has received from new parents right before labor starts. The nurse could of easily just given us a copy. Instead, she went through the most favorable questions asked by new parents. Not ones that have three kids, brand spaken new. ?She basically unconsiencly or knew this ahead of time where to put the questions and how to bring them up at the right time so it cuts the amount of prodding she has to do.

Tip 2: Never leave the room (this could be a conference call, e-mail, voicemail, anything really) without being absolutely clear what is going to happen next. The nurse quizzed us in a fun way that made us temporarily forget why we were there. The lesson I got was a little bit of misdirection every once in a while is good.

Tip 3: Don’t panic when you don’t know the answer. I could visibly see the reaction of some of the nurses who were less experienced that didn’t know how to answer a question they didn’t know the answer to. The focus was on figuring out how to answer it so she or he didn’t look dumb. Rather, what we learned from nurse one was take the focus on the generic question and put focus on questions that help her to be understood.

Image Credit: John Magner, Social Media Mix

Other than the time and effort it takes to distribute content, ideas or your message, what makes social media so compelling? This is not an all inclusive article on how to do all things social media. Instead, I want to share three fascinating truths about what I learned in implementing a social media plan:

Strategy 1 – think measurable, external, specific, tangible, verifiable ways to make value a driven result and not something that is left for the other person to figure out on their own. If you think about the concrete things you want the other person or group to do, think how using social media benefits the user. For example, if I want someone to buy my ebook on “Choosing a niche and creating a product that sucks less than your marketing” I first theoritically think why anyone would buy this. Once I drown myself in those thoughts, I think next… external, specific, tangible, measurable and verifiable ways I can communicate the impact or result my content, idea or information will do. The one thing left out is time, when the result or desired outcome will happen.

Strategy 2 – Where does someone doing what you do publish their information? For me, if I am training on how to use social media for a guy who runs a tennis camp, first thing I have him or her ask themselves is, “where are the ideal hangouts and how sticky or likely this area is influential versus just a gathering place”. When you are creating these areas of influence, that is, how authentic the magazine, blog, social site, search result, or where they go to find stuff out, if it resembles any direct response opportunities (text ads, banners, image display box, etc) then we can test. In my experience, the more edgy, less pretty and more focused on pushing the line, regardless if it’s your style, you then write, talk, speak, educate, and engage yourself to fit in and blend your marketing.

Strategy 3 -no money to advertise. I know, that is ultimate suckiest aspect of trying to become successful. All it means is you have to get more creative, you have to be willing to get outside your comfort zone that much more, because it’s usually you talking, selling, or marketing in a way that doesn’t have a pre-defined way or the path hasn’t been widely followed.

You are probably scratching your head on what to do now… First, visit here Buddy Press Blogging Platform?that shows you how to get started setting up your own blog network. This is the extreme. There are plenty other platforms like Wordpress or using existing social media networks out there to join the conversation. This is just something that will get you invested in learning how to engage with social media. It’s the ultimate measurable, external, specific, tangible and measurable way to get started in building a social media plan.

But, if you don’t want to go that route… The best way to get started is to go into the best hangouts with the most conversations: Facebook.