A theme that seems to be popping up quite frequently these days is the concept of building your own marketing tribe that’s basically composed of a vibrant community of individuals just like you and me that help contribute to each others content by syndicating it using social media marketing tactics. But as with any marketing plan it needs preparation, sharp focus and a keen eye on detail. Social media marketing tactics mainly consists of contributing to your online communities and tribes by sharing powerful and valuable information but if you listen carefully there is much to learn from your tribes and social networking site if you just know how and where to start.

SO if you are looking for solutions to a situation, challenge, or need to research your market what is the most common and practical thing to do? Why you listen of course, maybe ask some questions but mostly record the feedback and just sit back and listen.

1. Listening To Your Tribe and Audience

Use the following social media marketing tactics to gain an advantage over your competition and pay careful attention to what your community is saying about the market and also about you.

• Use Pipes.Yahoo.com to create one powerful RSS Feed that completely aggregates the results from Social Networking sites like Flickr, Digg, Youtube, Technorati etc…
• Blogpulse.com is a specialized search engine that helps you patrol the social networking blogosphere with four tools – (1) Trend Search, (2) Featured Trends, (3) Conversation Tracker and (4) BlogPulse Profiles. Use them to track the conversation about you or your competitors.
• SocialMention.com is a fantastic social media search engine that scans the internet compiling user-generated content from blogs, rss feeds, comments, bookmarks, events, news, videos and microblogging platforms like twitter.
• Search the world of Blogs by utilising Trendpedia.com ‘s unique ability to monitor the “Buzz” online on any topics like a keyword, brand or topic to see whose blogging about the target topic and what they’re saying.
• Keotag.com is a nifty little tool that searches the web for Tags. Whether you’re looking for single or combination tags Keotag can do just that. It compiles its results by scanning across several search engines and social media sites, including Google, Technorati, Del.icio.us, Twitter, BlogPulse, Newsvine, Digg, YouTube and others.

2. Develop Your Tactics and Strategy

Use the following tips to gain an advantage over your competition and pay careful attention to what your community is saying about the market and also about you. Take time out to develop a tangible marketing strategy to ensure you get closer to social media marketing success, but as with most things that are worthwhile it requires the patience sit down and work on your plan.

Save time by following the advice from professionals so be sure to read and listen to what they have to say and stick to it. Avoid throwing all your eggs into one basket like focusing all your efforts on Twitter for example. It’s better to identify multiple channels like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Myspace, and spread the time among them and grow your Tribe.

3. Contribute To Social Media

You’ve put down all the groundwork and started building your online relationships, so now it’s time to go out and participate and add value in your communities. You can do so by leaving comments in forums and blog posts, ask and answer questions in various social networking sites.
Obviously the point here is to participate in various social networks so open and create accounts and get active and respond fast when someone sends you a direct message.

4. Measure Your Progress and Success

Use the tools listed above in point 1 and various other online tools to help you track and monitor the “Buzz” online. Doing so enables you to keep track of which efforts are working best which in turn speeds up the process harmoniously. Remember to be responsive to messages, emails or any sort of communication. Failure to do so can result in potentially damaging your brand and your credibility.

Most companies are quickly learning that they ignore social media to their own peril. Remember that social media marketing tactics takes time and effort, so be patient and the rewards will be worth it.

If you’re reading this then it means that you’re somehow involved in working online or you’re looking for a better way to communicate with your followers on Twitter, well here are some twitter marketing tips to help you along the way. It’s no secret that twitter has become one of the most important tools in an internet marketer’s toolkit, which when used following some easy steps will yield worthy rewards. Like all social networks twitter is a buzzing hub of information and users that are constantly engaging in online conversations albeit only through 140 characters, so try spicing up your profile by using these 7 easy twitter marketing tips.

Before diving into these points lets first make a note that you can basically separate your tweets into two different kinds namely:

• Broadcasts
• Conversations

With broadcast tweets you can make sure the information you want to share gets through to the right tribe. Combined with this you should use conversation tweets to turn those followers into a community, and continue providing good content to keep your twitter tribe coming back for more.

7 Twitter Marketing Tips for Better Tweets

The following tips have shown to be the most effective in your tribe of twitter tools:

1. Opinion Tweets: “This is what I think about this and that”
   If you think about it the followers you might lose by posting tweets on your opinions is by far made up by the remaining loyal twitter followers. Be careful about controversial topics but remember to stand your ground. It shows you’ve got focus whereas people without opinions are in danger of looking impersonal and cold.
2. Classic Tweets: “This is what I’m doing right now”
   Ad personality to your tweets by reminaing colourful and original. Avoid sounding boring by saying what you’re doing and why.
3. Entertainment Tweets: “Something lighthearted and comical”
   People are suckers for unique simple and catchy tweets which is like honey for bees. For example take Kanye West who recently chose to follow only one lucky guy amidst all the hundreds of thousands of followers. All this because the kid has really original and funny tweets.
4. Link Tweets: “I’m working on this right now”
   Use Twitterfeed like Darren from Problogger, which checks his blog’s RSS feed at designated times and sends the title, description or both of any posts uploaded since its last check, together with a shortened link, through Twitter.
5. Picture Tweets: “This is what I’ve been doing”
   A must have in your arsenal of twitter tools is to use Twitpic.com to upload your pictures and tweet about whatever you just uploaded.
6. Mission Accomplished tweets: “This is what I’ve just created”
   People can associate with having a strong sense of achievement in something, especially if its meaningful or powerful. Use it to start a discussion and engage your twitter tribe community.
7. Question Tweets: “I need some help with something, who knows how to do this or that?”
   Used quite frequently by experienced Twitterers and if used smartly can transform your followers into contributing members in your twitter tribe. Use it for market research and to learn from our followers. Twitter is literally an information Goldmine!! Never forget that.

Achieve the best results by mixing things up and/ or using combinations of the twitter marketing tips above. When you’re building your own social marketing tribe use Twitter to find those people who can do what you cannot. Surround yourself with people and help each other achieve success.