Consider this for a second: there are millions and millions of websites out there and billions and billions of pages of content online. So what are you going to do to reach people, knowing that it’s a difficult task to get them to your website?

You Plant Seeds online. You build outposts. You get out there on other sites and work it.

Today, I’ve added a new seed to the effort, creating a Facebook Page for Transmission Content + Creative, my business.

No doubt that it’s a work in progress, but I’d love to know what you think. Head on over and add your thoughts to the discussion board, post a review, answer a poll question or add a picture or video. Remember, same thing applies there as applies here - the page is just as much yours as it is mine. So have fun with it.

You’ll find the page here: Transmission Content + Creative on Facebook.

I hope I’ll find you there.

UPDATE: Seems the link to the TC+C page isn’t working properly. Here’s the right destination, plus I’ve corrected the ones above. Sorry!

Josh Peters is a freelance social media consultant and corporate trainer from Salt Lake City, Utah who, when not frolicking in the fields of social media, enjoys working on his startup RoyalAnts, watching horror movies with his wife, and playing with his dogs. He blogs at Shuaism and would really like to connect with you on Facebook, LinkedIn, and/or Twitter.

Josh has a unique challenge for Planting Seeds readers - check it out near the end of the post!

Guerrilla Social Media Marketing: Guest Post and Articles
By Josh Peters

What’s the best way to get your name spread around town? Have someone else do it for you!

The last Guerrilla Social Media Marketing (GSMM) post was about using tools to create a features and benefits list to extol the virtues of your brand and get others to spread it for you. This one is about sharing your insights, which I thought was appropriate since I’m guest posting here on Mark Goren’s fantastic Planting Seeds blog.

One of the age old guerrilla marketing tactics was to write articles for local newspapers, dailies, or newsletters on subjects you were familiar with. This usually pertained to your business and at the end of the article the publisher would allow you a little byline about yourself and your business. This was the epitome of a win/win situation. You received free publicity and the publisher received valuable content for their readers.

The same thing works today as it did yesterday and will work tomorrow. If you can’t tell that’s exactly what I’m doing with the GSMM series (in fact the whole GSMM series is a case study of its own ideals). I wanted to spread the ideas and help as many people as I can by posting the entire series on other people’s blogs. This works for me because I get my ideas in front of their readers, they win because they get free content and get to take the day off.

When posting on someone else’s blog there are a couple of things to remember and consider. Since people like lists, and since you and I are both people I’m going to “list out” some key points.

Remember

• The blog, ezine, site, etc you’re putting the article is not allowing you to post a 300+ word advertisement of yourself. They are expecting content and value.
• Make it the best advice or content that you can. Don’t just slop something together and throw it out. Their readers will be judging you on your post/article.
• When sending your article make sure you attach all relevant images, don’t create work for your host by making them hunt for images.
• Ask if your host wants to have anchor tags for links or just the links so they can add them.
• If you’re a pain to work with it dramatically decreases your chances of being asked /allowed back.

Consider

• Their audience and if your content fits their subject or audience.
• Your language and writing style and if it’s going to fit or if you’ll need to change it around a bit.
• If the blog or other online publication is really the right fit at all. You don’t want to make a Meatball Sundae.
• If it’s something you will enjoy doing.

The blog is pretty much the hub of social media. It’s a point to gather, discuss, and share ideas. Your information can be tweeted, bookmarked, emailed, and shared from that one location in an instant.

If you run a blog for your company then writing a guest post will probably come easily to you, if not you might want to find someone in your company who does like to write or perhaps runs their own blog. Either way the rewards alone for guest posting will be great for both exposure and experience. It’s something you can link to from your own site and point customers to help build your credibility. It’s a great way to build out your body of work and share your ideas and your passion.

Some people have even turned it into a regular gig and its helped them gain great exposure for their own stuff while working with big names in the industry. Look at how Jesse Stay has helped grow himself and his Twitter service Social Too by becoming a regular guest on Louis Gray’s site. This also helped Louis Gray by giving him someone else to help pump out great content.

This is the part where I tell you how I’ve applied this idea to myself and give out a project that I’d like you to get involved with.

Me: You’re reading it. I’m doing 50 guest posts to spread the ideas of GSMM, start new conversations and look at tools from a new perspective.

You: This is going to be easy. I want you to do a guest post somewhere and then comeback and post the link in the comments here. If you’ve already done a guest post somewhere then I’d like you to post both your blog’s link and the link to your guest post in the comments.

I’d love to see you readers fill the comments with examples of your work. If you want to plant a seed the best way to do it is to share what you’ve done. Go ahead and brag a bit. Give us your blog link, a link to your best guest post and if you have a story about how that guest post helped you (or didn’t) leave that too. All examples will also get linked from the Guerrilla Social Media Marketing resource page!

Thank you for reading,

Josh “Shua” Peters

•

This is part of a year-long project about taking offline guerrilla marketing ideas/tactics and applying them to social media marketing. If you enjoyed this post and would like to host one of the Guerrilla Social Media Marketing series on your blog, please email me: shua (at) shuaism.com. To easily follow the series please subscribe to my feed via RSS or email.

On the heels of my participation at two Social Media for Government conferences in Ottawa (September 2008, February 2009), I’ve been invited to conduct a workshop at the Social Media Summit in Toronto this April.

The conference is loaded with great talent, including David Alston from Radian6, Dave Fleet and Joseph Thornley from Thornley Fallis, and Parker Mason from CNW Group. I encourage you to check out the full conference lineup here.

As for me, I’ll be conducing a post-conference workshop on the Thursday afternoon. Here are the session details:

Using Free Tools To Monitor The Web:
How To Collect Information That Aligns With Your Business Goals

Think of the Web as fertile ground for information. With millions and millions of websites and billions more pages of content, there is so much valuable information to gather. Whether it’s real-time conversations taking place on blogs and discussion forums or market research you’re looking for, you can work the Web to distill and collect the information that matches your business goals.

In this hands-on workshop, you’ll learn about monitoring the Web, highlighted by some of the free tactics, tools and websites you can use to accomplish this, including:

• Gaining a handle on the all the different reasons to listen to online conversations
• Understanding the concept of RSS feeds and how to set up a RSS reader
• The importance of keyword selection
• Knowing where to listen to online conversations
• Preparing to respond and initiate online conversations when necessary

I’m excited to be a part of this conference and would like to thank Kelly Flynn at the Advanced Learning Institute for inviting me to participate. (Follow Kelly on Twitter!)

The purpose of this blog, right from the start, was to help people understand the importance of reaching out beyond their four digital walls and extend their web presence. The idea? To help people understand why they should seed the web in different ways and form relationships with others.

Part of the promise at plantingseeds.ca is to help you use my URL as a place to plant your seeds as well. Either through guest posts, videos or slideshows, you’re welcome at any time to leave your thoughts/work here, along with your URL.

Then, in other cases, I’ll plant a seed for you in any number of ways. Today, though, I’m going to play matchmaker.

And the inspiration for this came from a recent post on CK’s blog about thinking differently:

Here’s one way that really helps me and I strongly recommend it to my fellow marketers: with the wealth of knowledge that is now shared through these tools and technologies, please don’t just read the high-traffic blogs. Balance your time with voices at low-traffic blogs. Because they, too, have BIG ideas that will have you thinking in different ways.

And if history proves, it’s more likely that the voices that may seem small or “fringe” will change the world, start new trends and better the profession.

Because I think CK is right on the money here, I’m going to help things along from time to time by introducing a high-traffic writer to someone who is just starting out. Or I’ll hook up two bloggers who think differently. Whatever. However. Either way, think of this effort as the new Match.com.

So, Peter Korchnak, meet Christina Kerley.

Peter runs Semiosis Communications, located in Portland, and blogs at the Sustainable Marketing Blog. His focus is to “champion community-building as a viable and sustainable marketing strategy.” I first met Peter when he invited me to guest post on his blog and we hit it off. Peter is a relatively new blogger, but got it down pretty quickly.

CK, I think you’ll like Peter because he’s making a real effort in this space, has a clear and defined vision and writes well thought out posts.

Peter, CK is a driving force in this community. She’s a real connector, keeping herself busy organizing meetups, Blogger Social (along with Drew) or moderating the MarketingProfs book club. If it’s going on, she’s involved. CK’s blog is also very well thought out. Her posts are articulate, smart and always make me think.

Peter, I think you’ll like CK because she’s warm, friendly and cares a whole hell of a lot about the marketing community we’re all linked to.

Hope you two hit it off!

Here’s a new “Post from the Past“. This, one, titled, “Behind your back”, was originally posted on June 29, 2007.

It’s all about listening, which is a major topic over on this blog - and will be increasing in focus as we move on.

Would love to get your thoughts on this line of thinking. Comment lines are open!

BEHIND YOUR BACK
29 June 2007, 1:18 pm

People are talking behind your back. All the time. Online. In conversations that never die.

What’s so interesting about this? To me, it’s seeing who’s listening. And there are ways to see who’s listening (just visit the Social Media Wiki to find out how). After listening, though, comes responding. Letting people know that you hear what they’re saying. Whether it’s positive or negative.

In the past week or so, I’ve seen examples of good and bad listeners.

First the good. Hats off to Tom Abbott over at Warwick University. In a comment I left over at Shel Israel’s blog, I linked to Warwick as an example of a school that’s doing well with social media programs. Tom, head of the podcasting program at Warwick, responded to the comment over at Shel’s and sent me a personal email. In it, he offered his time, letting me know that he’d share more information with me if I was interested.

His response felt good. Made me feel valued, listened to.

Now the bad. As a customer of the TD Bank, I’m not sure they have an online pulse. I’ve written about the service (negatively) at a branch several times. I know they saw what I wrote - I know it with 100% certainty, thanks to Google Analytics - but nothing. No “We hear you”. Nothing.

This makes me feel shut out, roped off, ignored.

Companies are going to have to make online monitoring and responding a given. A natural. A job title. These are the conversations that will live on forever - with a gaping void right down the middle of them if they never respond. And, thanks to search engines, they’ll live on and on and on and on. Like zombies, they’ll come back from the dead to haunt until they’re addressed.

It plays right into the Give + Take attitude. In fact, it’s just a common courtesy to respond to someone who’s talking to you - or about you. Even if it’s behind your back.

What are some examples of times when you’ve felt roped off, ignored? Conversely, if you have positive stories of companies that listened and responded well, I’d love to hear those too.

Instead of turning to Google Notebook to share links with others, here’s an alternative using Delicious that will allow you to accomplish the same thing, while keeping your links in one account.

While, technically, there is no feature that allows you to create a notebook for link sharing similar in functionality to what Google Notebook can do, if you use Delicious creatively, you can get around this.

Here’s how:

• Create a generic account on Delicious that you’re comfortable sharing access to

• Add the generic account to your personal network on Delicious

• When you bookmark something you only want to send to the shared account, hit “Do not share” and tag it with “for:sharedaccount’susername”. Of course, you can also add other tags.

• The bookmarked item will appear in your timeline unshared and, at the same time, it will appear in the shared account’s inbox

All in all, it’s really not all that different than having a Google notebook for link sharing. Sure, you may not be able to export the Delicious links from this account to Google docs and so forth (like you can with a Google Notebook). However, you’ll benefit by having all your links in one place, ready to be categorized and searched with all your other links, the ones you’re happy to share with a wider audience.

Do you have any similar tips you’d like to share? Please do!

While tracking conversations for a potential client, I came across a potent combination that opens the door to many different marketing opportunities. Friendfeed, of course, has a very powerful search function. Test it out right now and you’re likely to find search results related to your brand.

With the ability to add any RSS-supported network to a FriendFeed profile, one thing to look for are Amazon Wish List search results.

Think about that. You’re tracking your brand or product and you discover someone who wants it so badly, they’ve publicly announced their desire. Want can you do with this information? Here are some thoughts:   
• Connect with the person and get to know them• Offer a coupon• Give the product away• Develop a channel - on your website, on YouTube, within Friendfeed - that allows these people to show how they use the product or why they want it so much

The list of marketing possibilities is as long as your creative mind is big. Once you have the information, how you use it to secure the relationship is key.

Let’s look at a real example. Clay Shirky has a book, titled “Here comes everybody” that is widely coveted on Amazon - it’s on many Wish Lists. How do I know? I’ve run a service-specific search (Amazon results only - see “Advanced Search“) for the book title on FriendFeed. Here are the results. Note that there are pages and pages of people who covet Clay’s book.

With this information, Clay - or any author for that matter - can connect with real fans, people who truly want to purchase his product. For example, he can:
• Send signed copies to his fans• Create a FriendFeed room to discuss the book and other relevant topics• He can learn about his fans by following their FriendFeed and watching what else they’re putting on their Amazon Wish List. (Imagine he sent a fan one of the other items on the wish list, something unrelated to his book? Now that would be powerful!)• Most of all, though, he can also simply thank them for Planting Seeds for his book on his behalf. That’s because each one of these people, thanks to FriendFeed, is promoting the book through their feed, and recommending it to their network at the same time. Given that people trust “a person like me” to a large extent, that’s some real strong advertsing Clay is gaining - for free.

FriendFeed + Amazon Wish Lists are just one area that makes FF Search such an important marketing tool. And, surely, there are many more ways to use these powerful search engine results.

Any thoughts?

Tags: FriendFeed, Amazon Wish List, Monitoring, Listening, Responding, Initiating, Planting Seeds, Planting Seeds Online, PlantingSeeds.ca, Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody, Edelman Trust Barometer, YouTube, RSS,

During the last couple of weeks of December, I received my fair share of holiday greeting cards. Each, of course, was greatly appreciated.

That said, the one greeting card that really left an impression was one that didn’t come in the mail - it was a link sent by email from a client. The email read:

“Not long ago, we here at Point to Point sat down to do what we always do this time of year: make a holiday card. But this year, with the stock market in shambles and the housing market collapsing and unemployment rising and America still at war, we thought a card was a bit shallow. So, instead, we thought, “Why not use our creativity to actually make a difference.” To that end, each of us took a $20 bill and set out to change the world. Or at least a small part of it. We’ve documented our stories at http://www.changefor20.com. I hope they inspire you to make one of your own.”

At the site, you’ll see a collection of stories, actions that show just how powerful $20 can be.

And the same is true of the idea itself. How so? Word of mouth is built into the idea. They ask participants to plant seeds for the idea in two different ways:
• As per the instructions at the site, all you have to do to participate is take your own US$20 bill, write changefor20.com on it, send it along its way, then chronicle your charitable decision and post your story to the site. By asking people to write the URL on the bill, the team at P2P has created a free promotional channel for the idea through the bill’s natural circulation.  So, every person who participates plants the seeds for the next person to play along.
• Online, seeds are also being planted. With every video being uploaded and slide deck embedded on the site, there’s the original page on YouTube or Slideshare as well. The savvy participant will include the changefor20 URL on their profile and lead people back to the site. The URL can also be present in the media file as well. As a result, the ChangeFor20 idea encourages people to promote the site, therefore widening its web presence. In short, more points of contact are being created by almost every participant.

ChangeFor20 is firing on all cylinders, so much so, it’s even attracted the attention of traditional media outlets.

I love this idea. I’ll be participating during the week - and I’ll post my story here as well.

How will you make Change for 20?

Full Disclosure: Point to Point is a client. While I’ve been working with the agency to introduce them to the Web 2.0 world, I was not involved in the development of this concept.

Tags: ChangeFor20, Charity 2.0, Charity Christmas Card, Holiday Greeting, PointToPoint, Point2Point, Buildamovement.com, changefor20.com, planting seeds, planting seeds online, plantingseeds.ca,