All indications are that the social media space may quickly become very crowded as companies look for ways to stretch their marketing and advertising budgets. Being engaged with your clients and prospects online has never been more important. Social media will transform the way that companies interact with their customers. You need to be there. Your competition probably already is.

• Being Peter Kim: Social Media Predictions 2009
• eMarketer’s Predictions for 2009
• More media blogger predictions for 2009
• 42+ Social Media and Content Marketing Predictions for 2009
• Social Media Wins In Marketers Plans for 2009
• Search Trends To Watch In 2009

Have any predictions of your own?

SMM stands for Social Media Marketing.  As defined in Wikipedia: “Social media marketing is the process of promoting a site, business or brand through social media channels by engaging and interacting with existing consumers or potential consumers. The term most often refers to activities that are used to enable marketers to build links, attention and receive large amounts of traffic for their company or site.”

yoursearchadvisor.com defines SMM as “Utilizing social networking and user-generated content platforms to promote a product, service or content. Often involves creating and participating in a dialog with the target audience, rather than forcing an advertisement upon them. SMM can also include creating and promoting viral content that is meant to be shared by users. Many marketers are not comfortable with the lack of control over social media but when approached properly, social networks can be extremely effective channels for building product evangelism, reputation management or corporate branding.”

The best known examples of social media sites are YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. There are now hundreds of content sharing, networking and blogging sites covering any topic you may think of.

Sure, every business needs a website or at the very least a company Blog. The truth of the matter is you need both PLUS a well planned and executed Social Media Marketing program.

If you are just now putting together your first website, there is much to learn. Hence the dilemma, where do you start, from the beginning or from today forward. If Social Media Marketing isn’t built into your overall Internet Marketing plan TODAY, you may find it very difficult to catch up in the future. I don’t want to be an alarmist, but the current economic crisis is driving thousands of worried individuals to network wherever there is an opportunity to do so. The greatest opportunity is online.

My advice is:

1. Claim your brand and/or your name (sign up) in all of the social networking sites that are appropriate for your business. After signing up watch and listen (every single day) to the conversations taking place within these sites. Don’t post anything for at least two weeks unless someone directly asks for your input.
2. Read three books: Don’t Make Me Think, The New Rules of PR and Marketing and Tribes.
3. If you are not equipped to build a custom website or blog today, at least set up a free blog
4. Follow at least ten blogs about these subjects as well as marketing in general. If nothing else you will discover what you don’t know but need to learn. (I will share links to my favorites in upcoming posts)
5. Find a mentor or hire an Internet Marketing Consultant and learn everything you can about HTML, SEO and SMM.

The answer to the question “Start with the basics or Be in the Now?” is the basics will always need to be addressed and the basics advance as the technology evolves. What was advanced 2-3 years ago is basic today. You really have to do it all. The sooner you begin the better.

Comments, questions?

If you don’t already know, Tweeple are people who use Twitter, the fastest growing micro-blogging service on the Net.

Tweetlater allows you to manage scheduled Tweets and setup automated new-follower replies. It also allows you to set up and manage Twitter keyword tracking & alerts

I have been using the automated replies and keyword alert features with great results. In my inbox today I found a message from Tweetlater titled “How To Use Your Personal RSS Feed” Here’s what it said…

“If you have a Blog, you can put this feed in the sidebar. It will contain only the tweets that you schedule for your RSS Feed account. This can be added to your Blog regardless of whether you have your Twitter stream in your sidebar or not. This feed doesn’t contain any of your Twitter tweets.

You can very easily use it to put a “Thought Of The Day” section in your sidebar. Or, if you know your users’ birthdays, you can schedule a birthday wish for each one and display that in the sidebar. Perhaps you’d want to have a “Daily/Weekly Recommended Site” in the sidebar. You can use it for quotes, revealing “secrets,” anything that will make sense for your site and visitors.

It’s brief, punchy, and can be very powerful.

If you run a business, the  potential uses are even more.

The RSS feed can be the channel where you announce special deals, discounts, coupons, etc. Since you can include links in the tweet, you can point folks to a page where they can get more information.

You can put the feed on your site, and/or you can ask your customers to subscribe to the feed. I think in an age of information overload, they will appreciate the fact that the messages will never be more than 140 characters. Imagine if folks subscribe to the feed with their mobile phones, and they get your short and powerful messages wherever they are at that moment.

I think this is a very powerful way of showing appreciation and respect for your customers’ valuable time. Give them a very brief (but alluring) notice and let them decide if they want to get additional information. That’s often better than sending them a ton of info, just to have them ignore it, gloss over it and miss the most important point, or unsubscribe because they’re already getting too much to read every day.”

I’m going to work with this feature as soon as time permits. In the meantime, if you have any feedback about using the Tweetlater RSS feel free to leave a comment on this post.