Whether or not you’re tracking and following the conversations, your customers are talking about you online via their social media networks. They are writing about what they like as well as what they don’t like.

The brands that are successful in this new world of social media are those with a solid social media strategy for how to actively participate in the conversation around their brand. Consumer brands like Starbucks, Webkinz, Cold Stone Creamery, and Burger King have built awareness, preference and general goodwill among consumers through active social media marketing efforts.

But is social media marketing all just warm and fuzzy? Hardly! Blendtec achieved a five-fold increase in blender sales with a viral video series “Will it Blend.” Starbucks uses its “My Starbucks Idea” site (powered by the Salesforce.com Cloud) to generate and vet valuable product and promotion concepts. Dell estimates that their social media efforts create about $6 million in revenue. Comcast set up the “@comcastcares” Twitter account to actively monitor and respond to customer complaints and requests – for a vastly better customer experience – which leads to increased retention and better word of mouth. Social media efforts can generate real business value and results, and those results and be tracked and measured.

But for every social media marketing success story, there are hundreds of failures. So many companies have gone to the effort of launching social media sites, but created boring, lifeless pages on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, MySpace, and blogs that no-one is paying the slightest attention to. Why? Simply put: poor planning. These companies jumped on the bandwagon of social media marketing without developing an adequate plan with business goals and metrics and a relevant creative strategy, and their efforts simply died on the vine.

So who wins in social media? The brands that make a big splash seem to follow a pattern:

Start with a clear objective

If you don’t know what you want your customers to do, then how can you expect them to do it? If you don’t know what your business goals are for your social media marketing efforts, then how can you drive toward them and how will you know when your efforts have worked? You need a social media strategy. You need to set goals, create tactics, measure, and adjust. Slapping some social media pages together is not a plan.

Offer something of real value

Your customers engage in social media to enrich their lives. They are happy to interact with your brand, if you’re giving them valid reasons. Starbucks has 3.7 million Facebook fans on this principle alone! They regularly offer their customer fans coupons and other cool stuff, and it absolutely works.

Show your human side

Jonathan Schwartz, CEO of Sun Microsystems, achieved 400,000 visits per month on his blog merely by being honest and human. He was open with his thoughts and opinions and allowed his readers to post comments with the same openness. People respond to human connections over social media. The more real and transparent and the more personable your brand can be, the more you will win in this space.

Entertain

Let’s face it: social media is fun. We share our wacky stories with our friends and family. Likewise, we invite companies and brands into our personal conversation if they’re fun! Burger King gets recognized for their outrageous promotions like the Whopper Sacrifice application in Facebook where users could “sacrifice” ten friends from their list in exchange for a free Whopper. Successful brands have found that they can show a more fun and edgy side in social media than in other channels, and be rewarded accordingly.

Engage in the conversation

Your customers are talking about your brand, and they’re doing it via social media. Shouldn’t you be a part of that conversation? Starbucks embraced this principle with MyStarbucksIdea.com, where users can submit their thoughts and ideas and see progress on what’s being done with those ideas. Many brands monitor mentions of their name online and respond to customers who need help or have a complaint. When done correctly, customers appreciate this level of support and interaction, and retention and referrals will improve accordingly!

Track & Measure Sales Impact

The point of social media marketing is to make money. You can’t manage what you don’t measure, so track everything and make sure you’re responding to the information you’re receiving. We’re living in real time and social media has never been so demanding of instant gratification and response.

Earn while you learn

If you’re not making money, then you shouldn’t be in marketing. I’m not talking the hard car salesman here, but everything you do should track back to how it impacts your sales. If something’s not driving sales, then figure out what needs to change. You’re never going to bat 1,000, but the more profitable your marketing efforts are, the more “at bats” you’ll get from your company.

For more information on Social Marketing, please download our Free Webinar on Monetizing Social Media: How Do You Make Money with Facebook and Twitter.

easy, but selecting the right gift for birthdays and holidays is

not so easy. Finding the right gift for kids can be a lot easier

if you follow these three simple tips.

First and foremost, building on the child\’s interests and

hobbies. It is easy, although often expensive, to help a child

build a collection of toys they love — whether the child is into

Thomas, Star Wars, or Webkinz — but what do you do after you

have bought all the track sets you can fit in their toy box or

that you can afford? Branch off from that interest. Build on the

child\’s fascination with Star Wars by buying books about the

cosmos, model rocket or robot kits, and martial arts lessons.

Thomas fans might like to receive books about different kinds of

trains and engines. Webkinz owners might be interested to learn

more about their pets real-life counterparts.

Another key to successful gift giving is looking for the hidden

educational value. Toys do not need to come from the educational

section of the toy store to offer valuable lessons. Many toys and

games require children to read or perform simple math that gives

children valuable practice applying these key skills. Other toys

require memory or reasoning and the very best toys require

imagination. Gifts with educational value will impress parents

and teachers but are more likely to challenge children and

therefore hold their interest longer than pure mindless

entertainment.

Finally, and this is key to investing in a successful gift for

kids, look for longevity. Will this toy grow with the child? Will

this game continue to challenge the child in the weeks ahead?

Many children are attracted to some new flashy toy and then

quickly lose interest in it. If a toy only has one trick then

once you have mastered it then why would you play with it? This

does not mean it has to be a complicated toy or game. Sometimes a

very simple car or action figure can lend itself to hours of

imaginative play. Think about what can be done with a game and

how many ways it can be used before selecting it as a gift.

If you keep these three tips in mind when buying gifts for the

special kids in your life then buying gifts for kids will be a

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I first discovered Webkinz several weeks ago. After a day of teaching first grade, my wife returned home with that gleam in her eye that tells me that she has thought of a new and unique way to educate her first graders. She told me that her classroom had adopted a pet frog called “Froggie” and that the children were very excited. I thought a pet frog would be great in a first grade classroom and wanted to know who would feed it. She told me that feeding “Froggie” would require money that the children could raise online through the pets interactive website. I was confused until she told me that the frog was really a toy pet called a Webkinz.

Since I had never heard of a Webkinz, I was interested in learning more. Webkinz is produced by the Ganz company headquartered in Toronto, Canada. It is a small stuffed animal somewhat larger than the size of a beanie baby. There are about thirty five different types of Webkinz that can be purchased /adopted as pets. You can adopt pets that include pandas, cats, poodles, pigs, monkeys, and frogs. Webkinz pets can only be bought for adoption through specific independent gift and toy stores. The adopted Webkinz comes with a secret code that is used to register the toy pet and gain access to its highly interactive world in cyberspace. In this world in cyberspace you can name and feed the pet, design its room and raise cash through interactive games that can be used to develop the toy pet’s life and story. The online activities are designed to teach children to be responsible, nurturing pet owners and to save and budget. The Ganz company also now sells Webkinz charms ,clothing and playing cards.

My wife certainly proved to be correct in the adoption of the toy pet frog for the classroom. Her first graders loved playing and learning with “Froggie” their adopted class mascot . Some of the educational activities in her class room that used the Webkinz included writing about the frog using descriptive paragraphs with illustrations, researching the red eye tree frog as well as math activities that sometimes utilized the Webkinz interactive website. The class even wrote a letter to the Ganz company suggesting ideas for future Webkinz toy pet designs.

However, it was her final class activity that astounded me the most. She asked the class how many of these adopted toy pets that they owned at home. When the counting had stopped, her twenty five students told her that they owned four hundred twenty one Webkinz.

That unadvertised small toy pet certainly has huge grass roots appeal.