By this point, you’ve developed a list of ideas for potential marketing tactics, and you’re now ready to begin weeding through them to find those that you think are most likely to work for you.

Tools to Help You Plan Your Marketing

When you begin brainstorming the possibilities for promoting your business, things can start to get overwhelming and confusing. It’s a good idea to find a way to track and organize your options and then begin prioritizing them into a plan of attack.

One of my favorite tools for this kind of brainstorming is mind mapping tools like bubbl.us. I use a mind mapping system from Todoodlist, which is what I used for the sample plan included below.

I begin by putting my business name as the central box, and I then add my options for marketing around it like spokes on a wheel. This gives me a full overview of the possibilities and allows me to move them around into a logical order.

Some of the marketing tactics you select might already be in the works, like blogging or sending out a monthly newsletter. I like to distinguish those by color so that I know I need to do them on a recurring basis (for this illustration, I used blue for recurring tasks). I then add related tasks to those tactics in a lighter shade of the same color.

The next thing you’ll want to add are all the new possibilities you have for marketing your business. I begin by adding those in all the same color (yellow). At this point, just add them all, and you can narrow them down later. If there are steps that need to be completed in order to set up any of the given tactics, add them as connected steps under the task so that you’ll know what needs to be done to get started, and so that you can organize all those stray notes and ideas into actionable steps.

Then begin narrowing your options by eliminating those that are not well-suited for your situation or business, require more resources (time, money, people) to get off the ground than you currently have available, or that you otherwise think are not a good fit at this point. If you want to keep them for future use, change their color to something less prominent (like gray), and that way, you can pull them into your plan down the road.

For the remaining tactics, select those that you want to implement right away and that will work alongside the recurring tactics you already do. Denote those with a new color (red). You should be left with:

• Your current, in-progress marketing tactics (blue),
• The new marketing tactics that you will begin implementing now (red),
• The new marketing tactics that you will begin implementing soon (yellow), and
• The someday/maybe tactics that you want to hold off on for a while (gray).

Implementing Your New Marketing Plan

Now that you have an easy-to-follow chart that encompasses your entire marketing plan, you should be able to quickly refer to it on a daily basis and begin carrying out the strategy and tactics you’ve developed for your business.

I always start by running through my current, in-progress tactics (blue) in a clockwise fashion (I organize them by priority and/or frequency).

Once I get through those tasks, I begin with the next-in-line priority tasks and tactics (red). Ideally, there should only be one open tactic and one open task under any given tactic,  so that you stay focused and moving the top priority elements of your plan forward. As you complete tasks, delete them. As you integrate new tactics into your ongoing plan, change them to recurring (blue), and then select your next tactic to be bumped up and integrated (for this example, “PR/Media” would be next in line).

In essence, you want your entire plan to be straightforward and to provide you with an obvious and visual plan of attack. When you open this plan, for instance, you would know to start with the recurring tasks (post your blog entry for the day, write/publish any guest posts or your newsletter, and do some online networking). Then you would move on to the marketing tactic you’re trying to employ next (your podcast), which means your next step is to decide on its format. Using this illustration, go to blue first (recurring), red second (to integrate now), yellow third (next-in-line priority), and then gray if you decide to use those tactics (someday/maybe).

By creating this kind of plan, you’re able to avoid over-committing or getting sidetracked mid-stream, and it allows you to remain focused and consistent, while still being able to explore other options and remain current and relevant. You’ll have a clear plan of attack at the start of each day that allows you to see your progress and move your business forward.

Good luck with your marketing!

What tools and techniques do you use for planning and implementing your marketing plan?

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Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub. req.):

• Enabling the Web Work Revolution
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• Social Media in the Enterprise

Before you can begin any kind of marketing or promotion, it’s important to have a firm grasp of the purpose, mission, and values you want for your business, but for the sake of this post, we’ll assume you’ve gotten that far. You know your unique selling proposition, your target market, and what your business represents. Now you just need to find a way to create a more focused and consistent plan for increasing awareness and, ultimately, finding more customers and clients.

Finding Your Marketing Strategy and Tactics

One of the hardest things about marketing is selecting the overall strategy and individual tactics for promotion. There are hundreds of ideas; narrowing them down can be a challenge, especially if you’re new to marketing.

One of the best ways to get your initial direction for marketing online is by looking to other successful companies or entrepreneurs and learning from their experience. For example, if you want to build a blog, find a few bloggers that you admire and follow, and then dig back to the very beginning of their blogging days. This will take a bit of time, since most successful blogs take a while to establish. If they’ve published two or more posts per week, it might take a while to get back to their very first post, but keep digging!

Once you reach the beginning, get ready to take notes. You’re going to begin going through all their posts looking for clues as to what has made them such a success, and here are a few things to look for as you go.

• How often do they publish to their blog? Weekly? Twice-weekly? Several times daily?
• Are their posts long or short?
• At what point did they starting getting consistent comments, and when did their comments start to steadily increase? Was there something that they changed or were doing during those times (and the months before) to generate those comments?
• How is their site laid out, and do you notice anything about their site that might be particularly helpful for capturing visitor attention and converting them to subscribers or customers?
• How has their writing evolved over time?
• What kinds of posts do they regularly publish? Interviews? Advice? How-to articles?
• Many bloggers tend to create “How I Created a Successful Blog” posts, once they reach a certain level of success. Keep an eye out, and if you find this sort of post, pay close attention to the blogger’s advice, and then think of ways you might be able to apply that advice to your own marketing efforts.

Be aware that there is no single answer to some of the questions listed above. If you can find a successful blogger who advocates short daily posts, I guarantee that you can find another who prefers long articles posted weekly. The key is to find an approach that you think will work best for your situation, personality and style.

Also, a note of caution, you’re not looking to copy any other blogger (in fact, that would be a good way to fail). You want to be original and unique with your business, so the point of this exercise is not to copy anyone else, but rather to emulate the marketing strategies that they’ve used to build their blogs. Think of these bloggers as mentors and role models, not people to clone.

Brainstorming Your Options

As mentioned, the options for marketing and promoting a business are virtually endless, but here are a few that I like best:

• Blogging, guest blogging and article marketing
• Podcasting and video casting
• Interviews and appearances for relevant websites and media opportunities
• Online networking

Once you have some ideas for potential marketing tactics, you’re ready to begin weeding through them to find those that you think are most likely to work for you. In next week’s post, we’ll discuss tools to help you with tracking and organizing your options and then begin prioritizing them into a plan of attack.

What tactics do you use to market your business now, and what ideas are you thinking of adding to the mix soon?

Photo by Flickr user dps, licensed under CC 2.0

Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub. req.):

• Enabling the Web Work Revolution
• Report: The Real-Time Enterprise
• Social Media in the Enterprise

As I frame my view of where mobile is going, I can’t avoid starting with some numbers I just saw in Seth Weintraub’s post in Fortune about Android.

Globally, market intelligence firm IDC counted 269.6 million smartphones sold this year, compared to the 173.5 million units shipped in 2009.

In 2011, we might see half a billion phones sold worldwide. Smartphones will likely blow by traditional computers next year as the way most of the world gains access to the Internet.

If that doesn’t blow your mind, I don’t know what will.

Are you thinking about mobile yet? And if so, how are you thinking about it? Let’s plant our feet firmly on the ground and talk about how you should be thinking about mobile. Here are some guiding thoughts:

1. Don’t think product; think platform. People are excited about devices and apps: that is, products. As a marketer, you need to look at devices and apps as platforms for communication, conversation, conversion; pick your “C” word. Develop your app or apps with that broader concept in mind. Look to integrate mobile into your current marketing mix as a new communications and marketing platform. Don’t try to sell a product now; you can add sales later.

2. Leverage the ubiquity. Smartphones — and more recently, iPads and other tablets — are becoming essential tools. Their ubiquity is going to be unprecedented. We love these devices even more than our laptops. We are bringing them into places and situations we never imagined. There’s an intimacy, a necessity, that these devices are engendering in us. Whether that’s good, bad, or indifferent, it’s our new reality. So, as a marketer, how can you leverage this intensely personal, can’t-live-with0ut-it feeling smartphones generate? How can you be present on these devices in a way that’s meaningful, useful, and purposeful? How can your app be indispensable? Don’t think, “I want to create a cool app.” Think, “I want to solve real problems, offer real solutions, create a must-have feature” for your audiences’ mobile device. Create something essential.

3. Put goals in the driver’s seat. Don’t go crazy and forget the fundamentals of business and marketing. We saw companies forget these when they first went on the Web. They thought that they could spend a lot of money to build a website, and all their business problems would be solved. We have seen similar madness with people getting on Facebook and Twitter without any sense of why they should be there, who they are trying to reach, and what they are trying to get their friends, fans and followers to do — other than “buy our product” or “do business with us.” Without a clear plan and strategy, mobile will become this new year’s huge time and money suck.

Mobile can be a new platform for building brand loyalty, stimulating traffic, and enhancing interaction. Eventually, sooner than we think, mobile will drive sales. If you’re going to “go mobile,” make sure that your efforts are framed by clear and attainable goals.

What will be your mobile strategy in 2011?

This post was inspired by Fred Wilson and his post The Smartphone Explosion which references Seth Weintraub’s post in Fortune about Android.

Image by sxc.hu user mrceviz

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Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up. — Thomas Edison

There comes a point when being a business owner gets really hard (and I mean really hard). You’ve come up with your big idea, you’ve done all the initial legwork to set it up, and now comes the hard part: Getting the word out about your business and, more importantly, hanging in there while you get the word out about your business. The hard part now becomes not giving up too soon.

The Real Work

When you start a business, when you start a new product or service, when you launch anything really, that’s when you feel like you’re working really hard. That’s when you’re willing to stay up late and get up early to get all the groundwork completed so that you can start making money. As hard as it can seem during this time, you generally know what to do, or you can at least figure out what to do, and you just plow through getting the work done. Then you finish the work. (Cue sound of crickets.) Now what?

All right, now you figure out that you need a marketing plan. Great, that gives you something else to do! You finish the marketing plan and begin implementing it. (You believe in this plan. You’ve given it a lot of thought. You feel really confident about it. It’s going to generate the business you need.) You run through your plan for several days, maybe even several weeks, and then … nothing. Nothing happens, and in our instant-gratification-seeking world, this is where things start getting testy:

• When you’re over the rush of your big idea,
• When you’ve completed the work of creating it,
• When you need to pay the bills, and
• When it feels like you’re sitting on your laurels.

When you’re doing all that initial setup (building your website, creating the product, etc.), it feels like real work. Marketing doesn’t feel like real work, and it gets harder to justify and explain to those around us, particularly those who don’t have businesses. Marketing? What’s marketing? Building a website people get; that sounds like real work. Marketing? Marketing on Facebook and Twitter? All right, now you’re just playing around. Those are the conversations you have, both with yourself and with others, for justifying what you’re doing.

Writing posts for your blog, replying and posting on social networks, doing interviews, commenting on other sites and forums, searching for opportunities to guest post — all these things don’t feel like work, but they’re very necessary for building a successful business, and sticking with these activities for the bulk of your time each day for the six months or year it’s going to take you to gain some traction seems impossible.

Not Giving Up

So, how do you do it? How do you avoid giving up too soon?

1. You make a commitment. Do you want to do this? Are you willing to bet the next 6-12 months of your life on it? You have to be willing to say, “This is my commitment. These are the milestones I intend to reach. This is my intention.”
2. You maintain discipline. Each and every day, you have to say, “This is what I’m committed to doing. These are my top priorities.” You have to focus on what you believe to be the “highest and best use” tasks that will get the word out about your business and start generating income for you. You stay focused, not only on what you’re going to do, but also on what you’re not going to do (compulsively checking email, surfing the Internet, taking a dozen breaks each day, etc.).
3. You trust your plan. You’ve given a lot of thought to the best way for promoting your business, and now you just have to believe in it. Don’t keep switching plans and changing things up. It’s going to take time to see results. Give yourself at least a 90-day test with your current plan before doing any tweaking.
4. Be willing to stay up late and get up early. Although it’s not easy to think about, success isn’t just going to be handed to you. You’re going to have to roll up your sleeves and do the hard work to get things going. No one’s going to do it for you. As you start to get more successful, you still have to continue getting the word out, and juggling priorities can be a challenge. Know that handling incoming work and generating opportunities for future work are equally important.
5. Find support. Get an accountability partner to help you stay the course. It’s a lot easier to waiver when you don’t have someone else holding you responsible and accountable for your original plans and intentions.

Finding a way to hang in there and not give up on your vision can be the hardest thing you ever do to see your business to success, but you have to figure out how you’re going to stick with it for the time it will take to gain some momentum and start seeing results.

In the past, how did you find ways to hang in there until your idea took hold?

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On rare occasion, you can find one shop that does all of these tasks and does them all well. More likely, as new forms of communications and marketing crop up with the development of new technologies, you have to go to a newly formed shop that is well-versed and immersed in the new ways.

So what happens when you start your foray into social media marketing by outsourcing to a new agency? You face a number of challenges, not the least of which is some tension from your existing agencies who may insist they know everything there is to know about social media while simultaneously scrambling to get up to speed.

Bringing in a new agency can be fraught with pitfalls, but the most common seems to be the creation of “silos.” Your other agencies — or even in-house marketing and communications departments — can cut out the new guys from key conversations or withhold critical information so your social media marketing team can’t properly integrate their work into your outreach efforts.

What you want to see happen is:

• Communication. Open discussions from the moment the new agency is introduced to establish that nobody is in competition but are all working toward a common goal.
• Cooperation. Willingly and frequently sharing information and assimilating the new agency as an integral part of your communications team.
• Collaboration. Bringing the new agency into projects from the start, not as an afterthought.

But with dispersed teams often vying for as much of your business pie as they can slice off, how do you foster an atmosphere of cooperation instead of competition?

If You’re Hiring the Team

If you’re the one hiring the new team to bring into the mix, there are some steps you can take to ensure that all your teams work together:

• Be open. If you are hiring others to carry out your communications work, everything starts with you. So from the start, make sure you are open with all your teams as to your expectations, particularly as to how you expect them to work together.
• Be clear. Clearly define roles, communicate who is responsible for what tasks, and outline your expectations to everyone separately and then together so everyone is playing by the same rule book.
• Be inclusive. If you are leaving someone out of the critical initial strategic conversations, you set a tone and pattern for others to do the same.
• Don’t create new silos. Including new teams at all stages of your planning and execution processes could mean discovering new opportunities and enhancing existing tactics.
• Don’t take sides. You may end up taking an almost parental role if your agencies begin finger pointing, but nip that in the bud immediately and always do what is best for your company as a whole, not what satisfies one agency or team versus another.
• Ask for something from everyone. If you want to see some creative from the advertising team, you should include your PR and social media marketing teams in the mix. Integrated marketing is not a new concept, but you need to put that into practice every day.
• Re-examine your workflow. Have touch points over time (maybe monthly and quarterly) to make sure that your new social media marketing team is becoming an integral part of the process. Have open and honest conversations and get critical feedback to make sure everyone is on the same page.
• Measure and leverage results. Don’t look for ways to prove or disprove that one type of marketing is better than another. It isn’t about pitting PR against advertising against social media marketing. It is about finding what works and building upon successes.

If You’re Part of a Team

The flip side of hiring an agency is being part of a team or agency that is being hired to assimilate into an existing group to provide social media marketing services. Here are a few things you should consider as you enter into the new relationship:

• Be aware. Understand the dynamics of different business interests. Each agency has their own bottom line on their minds but all the teams should be working toward a common goal: Helping the client to succeed.
• Be available. Establish and maintain open lines of communications so other teams or agencies can’t accuse you of being unavailable or unwilling to participate in planning sessions or other key events in the creative and execution process.
• Extend a hand. As new kid on the block, look for ways where you can help other teams or agencies get a win. Offer to help where you see others needing additional support. Prove yourself to be the asset that you know you can be by making the first overtures to participate.
• Play nice in the sandbox. Your goal should not be to win additional business by taking work from another agency. If you win new business from the client, it should be on the merits of your work, not because you stepped on toes, threw sand in faces and undermined others. You’ll lose in the long run.
• Look for collaborative opportunities. Maybe the other agencies aren’t bringing you into the fold as readily as you’d hoped. Don’t be discouraged but instead look for ways to bring them into the social media marketing realm in meaningful ways. Prove that everyone can win when working together.
• Give kudos. Regardless of how other teams are reacting to you, be the first to say something positive about others. Compliment their work, celebrate their wins. You know what they say about honey versus vinegar. But be sincere. You’re all part of the same team even if you might reside at a different company.
• Keep good records. Even while keeping a positive attitude and being professional, you shouldn’t be Pollyanna about everything. Keep careful records of work rendered, goals achieved, lessons learned and communications and interactions with other teams. It’s both good business practice and also protection in case there is ever a conflict.

No matter which side of the fence you sit, it is up to everyone at the top to set positive examples to everyone else on each team. Don’t approach inter-agency relationships from a position of scarcity but instead employ an attitude of abundance. There is enough work to go around for everyone who does good work. And the more you all work well together and better serve the client, the more work they’ll gladly outsource to build on that success.

How are you working social media marketing teams into your process?

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Related GigaOM Pro content (sub. req.): Social Media in the Enterprise

1. Run an interview series on your blog, video cast, or podcast.

It might seem counter-intuitive to provide promotion and publicity for others when you’re trying to provide it for yourself, but in reality, an interview series can actually accomplish both of those goals at the same time. Decide on a great topic that’s relevant to your target audience and that you’d love to get the perspectives of others on. For example, if you are a virtual assistant, you might run an interview series on the topic of getting things done.

Next step, set a target quantity of interviews. A good starting point would be 25, but you could go much higher  (“100 Business Owners’ Tips for GTD”). You want to do at least 10 interviews, because the more interviewees you have, the more people there are who will promote the series and the more attractive it will be to readers, viewers, or listeners.

The setup doesn’t have to be very complicated either. You could ask 100 business owners, for instance, one question through Facebook and Twitter, like, “What’s your best tip for getting things done?”

2. Hold a free (and irresistible) tele-seminar.

Think of an in-demand topic, something that concerns or interests a lot of people (one idea could be “Take Control of Your Facebook Privacy”). Consider sending out “formal invitations” to 50-100 VIPs in your network (making sure to let them know they’re your VIPs) and ask them to “bring a date.” The setup for this can be simple, too. A free conference line will fit the bill.

3. Arrange a “coffee date” or informal luncheon around a favorite book.

Pick a book that’s relevant to your target audience and set up a discussion or “one-day book club.” A great idea would be to get local sponsors, too. One business owner I know coordinated a luncheon at a local farm to discuss her favorite book.

If you’re really nervy and live in a good market for it, you could even try to coordinate a book signing, especially if it’s for an up-and-coming author who would love the publicity (and on that note, why not call in local press to let them know about the event?).

4. Hold a dinner party.

Invite 10-15 special guests who are nearby, maybe people who run complementary businesses to yours. If you want to keep the cost down, make it a potluck and ask everyone to bring a dish. Get together to brainstorm joint venture possibilities for marketing and co-promotions. You might even put together package deals and steep discounts when customers purchase something from every vendor in the group.

5. Coordinate a group-sponsored contest.

Put together a really awesome “business start-up” package or something enticing to your ideal audience. Then run a week-long event where folks tweet for chances to win. Get creative (the more creative, the better), because that means more interest and buzz around the contest.

6. Host a blog carnival or content round-up.

Remember those? Decide on how you want to set it up, set some ground rules , and then invite people to participate through Twitter and other social networks.

7. Go on a “promotional tour.”

You know how actors heavily promote their new movies in the week of their release? Why not set up a promotional tour for your business? Decide on a topic that’s relevant to your audience, one on which you’re very knowledgeable. If you’re a child safety blogger, for instance, there’s your topic. Contact 10-20 related and complementary bloggers and offer an interview on the topic of choice (so, if you’re the child safety blogger, contact 10-20 parent bloggers to offer up an interview on the topic of child safety).

In the week before your “promotional tour” begins, start internal promotion of the tour, mentioning that you’re participating in upcoming interviews on the topic on your blog and on social networks. As you do the interviews, link back to them, and at the end of the tour, send out a “round-up” blog post or email newsletter with all the links.

Promoting a business doesn’t have to be a dreaded chore and can actually be a fun way to interact with your target audience and fellow business owners. Instead of having to worry about direct mailers and business cards hitting the trash can, email marketing pieces ending up reported as spam, or being turned away from disinterested prospects, wouldn’t it be great to have folks saying, “I can’t wait to see what you come up with next!”?

What’s the most creative, buzz-worthy marketing you’ve ever done for your business?

Photo by Flickr user lululemon athletica, licensed under CC 2.0

Below are the questions I received and the (paraphrased) answers I gave.

1. How do social media marketing tools work?

Many social media marketing tools — blogs, social networks or media sharing sites, for example — have similar functionality, such as providing for conversations between users, interaction within communities, collaboration and sharing. Many of these tools and allow users to set up a profile to establish their identity and interests, and to connect with others — friends, fans, followers, subscribers, contacts — and to interact with those connections.

Every site and tool might have its own proprietary terminology and some unique features, but in general, there are similarities between most blogging platforms and some recognizable features that all social networks share.

2. How can you best use social media tools?

When using social media tools and tactics, you first need an overarching strategy and plan. What are you trying to achieve? Who are you trying to reach?

When you market using social media tools and tactics, you are interacting in a “social” space where trust and etiquette are critical. Many tools may allow you to broadcast, but broadcasting should not make up the bulk of your participation in social media spaces. Instead, you should be looking to first listen, and then meaningfully engage in conversations with your connections.

3. What’s the best social media tool to start with? (Blog? Facebook? LinkedIn?)

Choosing the social media sites and tools that are right for you depends on your overarching objectives: What are you trying to achieve and who are you trying to reach? There are wider-reaching sites such as a blog or Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, but also more narrow or niche sites and tools such as social networks specific to particular industry or interest, such as Care2 for environment, animal and human rights issues, or Behance for graphic designers. If you had to start with one site to help you in business, a good place to begin is with a professional profile on LinkedIn.

4. How do I discern which social networks are best for my market?

To find your audience, start with a search on Google for keywords specific to your audience to cast a wide net. You can also drill deeper by performing the same searches on specific general networks, such as Facebook or Twitter.

5. What are the big “don’ts” in social media marketing?

Never lie. Never spam. Never just broadcast a message out to your connections and call it good. Never be too promotional.

6. What are your social media marketing “must dos?”

You must listen first, respect existing online communities, enter conversations politely, start conversations, respond to others, be generous, share and provide value.

7. I’m involved in social media, but am not sure how to use it to grow my business (i.e. monetize it)?

Think of social media marketing as another tool in your marketing toolkit. Social media marketing is not currently a direct sales tool, but can lead to sales. Think of social media marketing more as a branding and loyalty tool. How do you quantify the value of brand building and loyalty building? Look at customer service as well. What are your cost savings in the area of customer service and customer relations because you’re getting to the heart of complaints and issues more efficiently via social media channels? There are clear and sensible ways right now to determine your social media ROI. Now is the time to set benchmarks, goals, and to regularly analyze your numbers.

8. How do you “vet” clients you meet or who find you via social media channels?

How do you vet clients that you get from other channels where you don’t have a common contact? You do your due diligence, which can start with a Google search of the person or entity’s name. With social media conversations, you can find out more about people, companies and organizations than ever before. But also see if you do have a common contact, even if they’re a few degrees away from you. LinkedIn is a great place to start to see if you know someone who knows someone who knows the potential client, but Facebook can be just as useful to glean some feedback.

9. Which tools are best for graphic designers?

There are online portfolios for graphic designers including Behance, design:related, Coroflot and and online communities on social networks such as Facebook and Flickr. Designers can showcase work on a Facebook Page, a Flickr account and a blog or even a microblog such as Tumblr.

10. How do I best get started using social media marketing, and should I focus on using it for myself first and getting comfortable with it before using it for clients, or should I learn for clients first?

Everyone thinks they can offer social media marketing services to their clients. However, it takes more than having a Facebook account and knowing how to tweet to provide quality and comprehensive consulting and services. If you aren’t even engaged in social media channels, hold off on trying to offer social media marketing to your clients to avoid damaging your reputation. You first need to start using the sites, tools and tactics for yourself, and even if you master them to market your own company, that doesn’t necessarily mean you can now provide similar services to others.

Stick to your core competencies and instead consider partnering with someone who is truly engaged in social media marketing consulting. Form a mutually-beneficial relationship where you can refer new business to one another and both work within your areas of skill.

What are your burning social media marketing questions? I’ll be sure to answer them here over the next few months.

stock.xchng image by immrchris

Related GigaOM Pro content (sub. req.): The Dos and Don’ts of Social Media Marketing

Soho OS has some similarities to 5050biz, which I talked about a while back. Soho’s navigation system is more cohesive than I found 5050biz.com’s to be, although it still has its quirks. The main menu consists of three enormous buttons (“Business,” “Networking,” and “Services”) on the left, which then display section submenus at the top. The home page includes widgets that can be moved around, but can’t be edited or removed.

Soho’s business management and development functions include:

• A calendar and to-do system that allows one to share and assign items.
• A CRM system.
• A section for tracking marketing campaigns. Integration with AdWords is lacking, and is definitely needed.
• Fairly sophisticated invoicing and inventory systems, although several of their functions weren’t yet operational as of this writing. There are apparently plans for a full-fledged financial management system.
• Systems for creating and managing trouble tickets and FAQs.
• Tools to create and manage access to Soho. Internal and external users can be assigned to groups, and given different levels of access.

Soho’s contact management and networking tools include:

• A “Social Stream” reminiscent of private microblogging solutions like Flowr.
• An IM function, controlled from a bar that looks very much like Facebook Chat.
• An address book, in which contacts can be shared among group members, and which allows imports and exports of CSV files.

Soho also offers services (free during the beta period, but premium options later):

• Tools for making outgoing VoIP calls; sending SMS, faxes, and mass emailings; processing credit card transactions; and creating voice messaging campaigns.

Soho’s strength is its integration, so those who only need certain of its tools will probably be better off using stand-alone apps. Having one customer list that all of its services can access is potentially its most useful feature. But while it has a lot of useful tools, the whole is less than the sum of its parts. And it assumes that business owners are going to be willing and able to entrust a huge amount of business data to single system. Until it offers ways of interacting with the tools that business owners are already using, its usefulness is probably limited to the smallest of companies and those that don’t have a lot of information already stored elsewhere. Soho is still in invite-only beta, and it’s definitely rough around the edges; many features aren’t yet working or are incomplete.

Editor’s note: If you’re interested in working in the cloud, check out our Structure conference in June.

Who said that the advertising models of print and yesteryear would be sustainable online? Everyone just hoped they’d translate, because porting old models onto new platforms didn’t require much innovation or effort. I’d argue that any publisher that has their eggs completely in the ad banner basket is missing the boat and is in for a Titanic-sized rude awakening.

The good news is that I’ve seen inklings of integrated campaigns online from some forward-thinking advertisers who are realizing that the old advertising methods don’t work so well online and that ad banner fatigue hit consumers in about, oh, 1999. Kudos to the companies who may not yet be getting it right, but are fighting the good fight to bust out of the old models and create some new ones.

So what are the new options for advertisers to reach potential customers? I don’t have a magic bullet for you, sorry, but I do have some wild and wacky ideas about advertising (hate it) versus social communications (love it).

• integration — think of how you can integrate your brand appropriate into conversations. Hint: Strategic social media marketing.
• placement — find interesting ways to place your brand into someone’s information stream. Hint: Virtual goods and gifts.
• overlay — develop ways to put your content into new places and spaces. Hint: Augmented reality.
• cross-platform — don’t just think Mac/PC or Firefox/Safari/Chrome. Hint: Hybrid online/offline.

I’ll leave you with these final thoughts and then let you ruminate — or argue with me, if you like. Most people do not want to consume ads. Many just barely tolerate them. A growing number of people completely reject them. If you look at the trends in communications over the last two decades, the patterns are clear. Learn from our past mistakes. Don’t be afraid to be different. Just make sure you have a strategy, some patience, and a flexible plan.

And please…don’t be an ostrich.

What is the future of advertising on the social web?

Photos by stock.xcnhg users flaivoloka and josecarli respectively

Related GigaOM Pro content (sub. req.): Social Media in the Enterprise

Some of the tactics people use to generate online buzz are understandable enough. There’s the Twitter contest, which has become very popular of late, in which a company will give away a free product or service everyday to one random person who’s tweeted their message. And then there’s the virtual Facebook event, usually at launch or in celebration of some other milestone, like a certain number of units sold.

I’ve been invited to a number of Facebook events in my time, the majority of which I couldn’t actually “attend” per se, short of just marking the time on my clock at home and being done with it. I’ve attended a few, too, but mostly when I was already quite excited about the product or service in question, and more than willing to buy it when it became available.

A case in point was the Asus Eee PC 1000HE (the first netbook with all-day battery life) Facebook launch event. I attended it, but I was going to buy that machine on launch day anyway, so I only signed up for the event in order to get updated about release date information. The event didn’t sell me the product, but it did ensure that I was as informed as possible about when and where I could buy it.

I’ve used events myself before to launch publications, but again, the value of the virtual event as a sales tool was questionable. In all cases, almost anyone who RSVP’d to the event did so either because they had contributed to the publication in question, or because they were being good friends. The problem with a virtual event is that you can RSVP without consequence: no one is making appetizers or arranging seating based on your promise to come or stay home.

So as a sales tool and as a gauge of consumer anticipation, Facebook events aren’t ideal. But even if they aren’t ideal, are they worth the effort? And how much effort is required? On the surface, making an event seems like an easy enough thing. Just set a time and date, choose an image and enter a description and you’re done, after you invite some people and encourage them to invite others.

But that’s not really all there is to it. You have to encourage discussion on the site in order to keep people interested, which is one of the hardest tasks anyone working on the web can do. You also should consider sending out updates to draw people back to the event page, and to keep everyone up-to-date. The problem is that if you do this too frequently, you can quickly become a pest, and the threshold of what constitutes annoyance will vary person to person.

In the end, I’ve decided not to continue trying to use Facebook virtual events to help with my marketing efforts. It’s true that they have some advantages over Twitter marketing (they are stable, non-repetitive and discoverable), but the effort required doesn’t seem to justify the payoff. Better, I think, to just wait until something launches and send out a notice then, although you won’t generate any kind of buzz ahead of launch using that method. But it might depend on the level of anticipation to begin with; my experience has mostly been with extremely niche products, where it’s hard to generate much fervor outside of a core demographic anyway. Maybe Facebook marketing is best left to the big boys.

What’s your experience with Facebook virtual events, both as an administrator and as an invitee/guest? Do you think they are an effective marketing tool?