Michael: When someone says Mari what do you do? What are you?

Mari: I’m a Social Media Consultant, Teacher and Trainer and dubbed by FastCompany.com as the Pied Piper of the online world.

Michael: Is there some hype to this? Is it about a lot of people collecting friends and collecting followers and following? Is there some hype to the social media thing?

Mari: Well, I think the hype part – you’re in the right area, let me just say Michael - because the hype part is coming from the fact that people are in this frenetic, this frenzy, this gold rush kind of energy thinking that they’re off to mind for goal and that the goal is just getting gazillions of friends or fans or followers. And while numbers may be important and on some level where it’s more important that you’re talking to your target market you don’t have to be talking to everybody because you can’t be all things to all people. So it’s a matter of utilizing these platforms, the social media platforms like Facebook and like Twitter and YouTube and LinkedIn to reach your target market that maybe you have [inaudible 02:45] in other media because they’re hanging out, they’re enjoying being on these social networks. The one thing to keep in mind, though, is there’s a saying that I like to quote and that is with regard social networks when the marketers move in the members move out. In other words, we get fatigued as a member and we know as a member because we’re all bulls anyone who is in business is a member and a marketer but if you’re too emphasizing on the salesy, pushy, you know, come and buy my stuff, click on my links, that is really a turn off and it’s just better to be engaging in conversational and really demonstrating that you care about people. Another thing too is to be monitoring conversations, really, really rigorously monitoring conversations about you, your business, your brand,

Michael: My listeners a lot of them are business people and like you said when the marketers come in the users move out and from a selfish point of view I have a business and I have information products and I want to market and sell, you have consulting services that you want to be able to use the social media platforms to generate new relationships, forge new relationships and after that maybe possibly generate some new clients for yourself, so where is the big mistake that the marketers maybe making in these social networking sites? Are they coming on too strong and what advice would you have for them where they can use these sites to generate new clients without I guess offending the rules of the game but also leverage their time by doing it?

Mari: Well, one of the mistakes is just being too much of a broadcaster, you know, just being in a mode of pushing out messages without listening. In a way when you think of a regular networking function you walk into an in person live networking function and just start cramming your marketing message, your brochures and your business cards and going up to people and putting a sticker on their back buy my stuff, or whatever, without introducing yourself, shaking hands, saying hello and what kind of work do you do and, you know, what are some the things you’re working on right now, whatever the case may be, you’re going to be rapport and you’re going to engage in small talk even and there’s ways to do that with social networking and to not really coming across as an agenda and it’s just really showing that you care and you’re able to listen. But there are certain features like, especially on Twitter, because Twitter is an open system whereas Facebook is a closed system. In other words, on Facebook you have to be a member and logged in, in order to interact or access any of the information. But on Twitter you go on the Twitter search engine, Search.Twitter.com and that you can actually have keyword alerts you can setup these alerts that work exactly the same the same as Google alerts and it will let you know when certain keywords that you want to have monitored are being talked about.

Michael: Is that keyword alert setup through Twitter or another service?

Mari: There’s a couple of different services that do it and there’s one that I like that’s called Tweet Later and TweetLater.com is actually a whole suite of Twitter tools you can pre-schedule Tweets, you can monitor keywords, you can manage multiple talents, there’s a lot of different things you can do with Tweet Later. The other one is Tweet Beep, like B-E-E-P, beep, beep of a car and that one’s fun you can get like a daily digest or, you know, as it happens a real time alert. The other thing too though is just too really monitor rigorously that Search.Twitter.com. The index [inaudible 06:17] a few weeks I see often that not all of my tweets show up.

Michael: Let’s say, I sell an information product How to Be a Marketing Consultant? Show me how I can use Twitter I would go into Twitter search engine and I can type in maybe keyword marketing consulting I could look at the conversations going on in Twitter around that subject and then I can politely join in without promoting but join in on a conversation, just as if I were at a party and there were two people talking about consulting and I could join in on the conversation. Is that the power of Twitter?

Mari: You’ve got the jest of it but in actual fact initially one of the important things that you want to do is to start to build out your followers and you do that by following people because that’s how it works with Twitter its like subscribing to a blog, because essentially that’s what Twitter is it’s a mini blogger micro blog you got at 140 characters at every little post or the Tweeters are called and that goes out to whoever is subscribed quote/unquote “to your micro- blog” in the form of followers.

Michael: Alright, I’ve got maybe 1500 followers and I’m following about the same.

Mari: Okay, good. Excellent. Excellent.

Michael: Okay, so I’ve built out my followers a little bit and vice versa and then what?

Mari: Well, in terms of finding conversations to join the very fascinating thing about Twitter as opposed to something like Google where you would go and do a keyword search and you might search for marketing consulting you go to flip it around and think about conversation. I don’t know about you but I don’t get up in the morning and say to my friends “Gee, you know, I’m really looking for some marketing consulting.” So you’ve got to think about what would your marketplace be talking about? They might well be talking about some problems that they have. So in terms of marketing consulting is a very, very broad area, a broad service, so it’s like what kind of marketing, what problems do you help your customers solve, what problems they might be having right now is that online marketing consulting is its traditional brick and mortars business.

Michael: Let’s say that they’re having a problem installing a web form on their Web site.

Mari: Great.

Michael: So let’s say that’s the specifics, how would you use Twitter for that? If we can identify problems how we can we get in there and market in a way that’s not frowned upon?

Mari: Well, the best thing to do is for me explain how I use it and then we’ll see if that fits with the scenario. But really it’s not a matter of like going out and looking for clients it’s more like what’s called an Attraction Marketing and new term called Curiosity Marketing. There’s a lot of moving parts to this. If somebody comes in and all they want to do is try to figure out how to use Twitter and figure out how to market using Twitter and figure out how to monetize Twitter, Twitter is only one piece of the marketing pie there’s all kinds of other things there’s teleseminars and public speaking and advertising and…

Michael: What piece of the pie is it?

Mari: Social media.

Michael: Give me an example of how you use Twitter.

Mari: That’s what I’m about to do. So the curiosity marketing, curiosity or attraction based marketing, my messaging, my tweets that I put out there they’re all apart of my Facebook status updates, my Facebook posts and links that I put out and my blog post are all around Facebook, Twitter social media, marketing, online marketing, you know, profiting from the internet, copywriting, email marketing it’s all in the same genre and I’m very, very, very focused which is one of my Number 1 secrets or strategies that I encourage my clients to do.

Michael: Your focus and your niche.

Mari: Yeah, basically because it’s a very, very noisy, it’s a noisy world in there in the social media or just noisy world period and so at the end of the day you want your voice to be the one that stands out the one that people remember not just hear it in the passing and it’s gone in one ear and out the other. So one of the things in terms of what you’re seeing in someone having a problem installing a web form they could very well be someone might be talking about right this second if we were to punch that into the Twitter search. What I would do is I would just follow them. I would follow them and I would look at their tweets from before and just even see if there’s somebody that I might want to do business with. I would look at their bio I would look at their previous tweet and just by following them if they’re fairly new to Twitter, especially, they’re actually going to be getting a notification. I had most all my notifications turned off because I’m up to almost 40,000 followers it just gets too much after a while but typically most people watch and monitor who just followed them because they’re pretty excited about having a big named person follow them, so then they’ll click through and they’ll see your bio and go wait a minute that’s what this person does they’re a web master or they’re an internet specialist, whatever the case is, and then you might take action in that regard and go ahead and start conversation with them. It’s interesting even this is insane to say, Michael, very rarely would I go after like one client. My strategy from the get go about two years now is to rule out this concept that I created called Radical Strategic Visibility. What that mean is the radical part is that you’re seen everywhere you’re commenting on the big A list blogger sites [inaudible 11:10] social network, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube frenzy, you name it all the big ones and then not only that is I’m seen a lot offline too I speak at events, I got to events, have my picture taken with celebrities things like that and this is not like this is for everybody this is my strategy. It’s your own version of what does radical strategic visibility mean to you and where are the eyeballs that you want to have on you? Where are the ears that you want to have listening to you to the point where people start to go wait a minute, she’s all over the place and all she talks about is Facebook, Twitter, social media, she does speaking engagements she must be the expert and on Twitter I’m known to give a lot of free advice because I think on the 140 characters it’s impossible to over deliver. So people will come to me often and gain with this establishment of myself as being so visible and so focused and so on topic that people would just come and seek my advice. Now, that can be time consuming and that’s one of the downfalls of social media you it can be a little time consuming.

Michael: Yeah if you had to turn your notifications off you got 40,000 followers.

Mira: Yeah. You’re listening to an exclusive interview found Michael Senoff’s HardToFindSeminars.com.

Michael: You’re maxed out on Facebook, what’s the max on Facebook friends?

Mira: Five thousand.

Michael: You got 5000 friends have you turned those notifications off?

Mira: Yeah, everyone. Yeah, I only get my email.

Michael: Okay. So before you turned them off what did it look like for Mari as far as juggling all these people? Didn’t these names become almost blurred? You couldn’t really keep track of who all these people were and the conversations that must have been just endless. Do you have an assistant to do all that for you?

Mira: I have seven assistants.

Michael: Tell me about how you set that up.

Mira: My seven assistants they each have different roles and responsibilities. I have one that all she does, her full time job is managing email because I get an enormous amount of emails coming in. And this is good this is a good problem to have because there’s money, there’s an abundance of money in boxes.

Michael: When an assistant replies to an email it’s coming from Mari’s Assistant.

Mira: Correct, absolutely. And I glad this came up because my philosophy with assistants and delegation and ghost writers is I never delegate my voice, I do not ever want anybody speaking as me. They can speak on my behalf they all know that, and I never delegate my Tweet because I think that on Tweeter the relationship is so intimate and the world that we live in now especially social media is so transparent and authentic it would be completely inauthentic in my opinion to have anybody thinking that they’re engaging conversation with me and it’s not really me.

Michael: Good. Okay. Alright, so you got seven assistants each one has roles one handles just your email, and you’re right, people are contacting you and there is money in those contacts because you have products to sell coaching services, resources, free advice and such, right.

Mira: Yeah, exactly. So monitoring emails is one thing you’re managing my calendar you get booked up a lot in interviews and speaking engagements but initially - let me wind the clock back two years because some of your listeners might be just kind of getting started with Facebook or Twitter and you know social media and everything that I do is very strategic and I was on Facebook, you know, within the first couple of days I saw a lot of [inaudible 14:10] not quite to the degree that MySpace is, I never did get into MySpace it wasn’t my cup of tea, but with Facebook I thought oh my gosh, something really, really amazing happening here because I love the layout and design, the white space the ease of navigation, and right about that time the Summer of ’07 a lot of big name people were coming on actors and authors and speakers and celebrities, people that I’d wanted to meet for a long time wealthy, you know, internet marketer things and I was very strategic about reaching out and adding them as friends, you know, I wasn’t confirming everybody. And I was having no problems whatsoever with removing friends if they were pushing out rubbish into my stream or was inviting me to play any kind of violent Facebook games, mob wars or vampire bites or rubbish. So I just ignore all that and I used it very strategically about choosing who am I friending, who am I accepting as a friend, and what are my regular activities, what are my daily activities, even if the only thing that I did all day was to update my Facebook status is to say – use things like name dropping and things like was always an integrity and just to let people know these are some of the things that I’m up to right now. And if we go back to that piece I mentioned about curiosity marketing let me give you a difference here and this is whether it’s Facebook or Twitter or maybe LinkedIn, say I’m doing a teleseminar and I’m getting some people signed up for so in my tweet or Facebook status update, I wouldn’t be going to an traditional marketing message of saying, you know, doing the teleseminar How to Make Money on The Internet. Click here to sign up now, here’s a link, you know, as a typical call to action. I would be seeing something like - this is my style because you got to do your own style and I’m very expressive and I use a lot of fun playful language and expressions and I will go Whoo, Whoo- hoo or Yippee or I’m so excited the 500th person just signed up for this call and there’s a link, that’s called curiosity marketing. It’s like there’s a particular party going on for the people who are extraverts and they like a lot of people around them and they’re going to go wait a minute what’s this called? What’s Mari up to now? She’s got 500 people on a call or 5000 or whatever the number is, obviously you know it’s integrity but it peaks their interest and you pathologically what’s called Ambient Awareness because following 40,000 on Twitter I can’t possible read all those tweets but in any given day and any given moment and given nanosecond something will come into my ambient awareness like the peripheral awareness, you know, I’ll catch it and then I’ll follow through and click and find something that’ll be of value to me or my followers. So that’s what I’m striving to do as well it’s just to peak someone’s interest enough that they would click through and they do, they do I get more sign-up through social media than I do even my email but you have to use both because I get significantly higher click throughs and sign up rates for any promotions I’m doing when I use a combination of email marketing have a very loyal list for many, many years all for my future friends and following me on Twitter so it’s all blended together.

Michael: Do you have a favorite out of all the social media's like Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Plaxo, Flickr, Diggs, Stumble Upon, any one personal favorite?

Mari: Well, I like this question and I do get asked that a lot people will say, you know, if you had to choose one what would it be, but I really don’t have one because Facebook and Twitter are the top two that I use I use Twitter everyday, I use my mobile device a lot I have an iPhone and I love the tweeky apps – it’s called Tweeky like Squeeky. I’ll actually enjoy using it better than some of the desktop apps – but Facebook takes a little more time to cultivate so you have kind of more of a leisurely relationship or conversation and you can take time to get to know people. It’s not a fast moving, in other words, like I go to my Facebook and I can see the same information on my Feed for several hours if I go to my page on Twitter like my own Home Page where the stream of my 40,000 people going by that like changes every split second it’s very fast moving.

Michael: So have you tweeted today?

Mari: Oh gosh, of course.

Michael: Okay, so from your iPhone. So when was your first tweet today?

Mari: Well, I pre-schedule I don’t do mornings very well I’m a night owl so I pre-schedule my morning tweets.

Michael: So does that mean you did tweet this morning or no?

Mari: Pre-scheduled.

Michael: Pre-scheduled, what does that mean?

Mari: You go to Tweet Later and you tell it what time you want your tweets to go out.

Michael: Okay, so your tweets were pre-written and you wanted them to go out in the morning.

Mari: Yes.

Michael: When you’re pre-scheduling your tweets through the service Tweet Later how many tweets do you have in the 12 hour day from morning to night? How do you pre-schedule it and what’s your strategy on that?

Mari: Well, you know, there’s different things I’m very conversational – I known to be very conversational I’m probably about 60/40, 60% conversational tweets that means that they’re At Replies you get the persons At name and then you talk to them first maybe 40% contact. I tend to be probably no more than 2 an hour I mean in any given day there probably would be about 10 to 15 regular tweets unless – when I say regular tweets I mean not an At Reply straight tweets – but unless I’m going to an event I’m either attending an event or I’m at an event online a virtual event. I’m participating in a huge four week summit right now I’m not sure when the speakers, so like Tuesday night we have Gary Veneer try keynoting for us and I was tweeting like crazy because I had my followers my tweet volume was about to go up but they love it because I’m tweeting nuggets from a seminar that maybe they couldn’t attend. But with the pre-scheduling it’s not really down to a science and an art, I would like it to be, I mean one of the people that every morning at 7:00 am, 7:30 am, 8:15, whatever there’s certain content that goes out but it just doesn’t work that way for me. I probably find some content the previous night and then just pop it in there.

Michael: So like what’s an example of a tweet that went out today that you pre-scheduled last night? What would it say?

Mari: You’re really putting me on the spot.

Michael: Okay, you can’t remember.

Mari: Frankly, I think that most days – today’s probably one day that I didn’t pre-schedule and I’m looking at my tweets here, but I just know off the top of my head that the tweets that I would send out will be valuable information related to my niche. One account that I follow very, very closely is Pete Cashmore and his site Mashable. So Mashable.com and I just know that he puts out terrific content and it’s always kind of that new – he really has his finger in the pulse. He’s a massive team of bloggers and they’re always writing on that Mashable.com. Pro blogger Darren Rowse in Australia is another good one ProBlogger.com.

Michael: You’re given value you’re tweeting about hey, check this out this is really cool and, you know, things that you find valuable you’re giving to your followers.

Mari: Yes, correct. So let me make that clear, I am not the kind of person that’ll say I’m eating a sandwich, I’m petting my dog, I’m taking out the trash, that’s just complete nonsense and it’s a waste of the space in my opinion.

Michael: And I think that when people look at these social media sites that is the perception they get it’s just a bunch of people just wasting space I mean it’s ridiculous and it gets a bad name.

Mari: Well, you know, it’s interesting because I just noticed in the last couple of weeks on the trending topics of Search.Twitter.com you can see at any give moment what are the Top 10 Topics being talked about right now a really good way to take the pulse on the world if you will. It kind of leans into the hash tanks that go around the hash tanks is you put a pound sign in front of an acronym or a word or a phrase and it groups all the tweets from that particular subject or event together, but also those names are just nonsense they’re just trivial until sometimes the trending topics is not as useful as it could be. But to be perfectly frank it’s every marketers dream to get to the Number 1 or at least get into the Top 10 trending topics because most everyone on Twitter know that the trending topics are watched vigorously people see what’s going by.

Michael: Have you been able to get into the Top 10.

Mari: Oh sure, sure. Yeah, different events I’ve gone to. Absolutely.

Michael: So out of all of Twitter you may be in the Top 10, so what does that mean for your traffic?

Mari: Most of them are followers.

Michael: Can you get a flood of them once you hit that Top 10 like in a short amount of time?

Mari: Well yeah, and especially like if you make it into the Top 10 Topics with a particular treat that maybe is a really good content that pulls them back to your blog you’re going to get more blog subscribers, you’re going to get more sign outs for your Ezines or your free whatever eCourse download, free teleseminar, whatever it is you’re promoting. But the thing is to get into that because Twitter is now up to about 19 million users and it’s probably easier a year ago to get to trending topics but now you have to really have quite a concentration of people tweeting about the exact same subject as at the exact same time.

Michael: What is the best way, other than you just hope that your followers are going to read your tweet, but if they’re following another 1000 people are they really going to read it? Can you broadcast to your followers in a way other than just tweeting on Twitter specifically?

Mari: Tweets are broadcasted that people follow you and every tweet you put out is either a broadcast or a conversation.

Michael: But do they have to be online? Let’s say, they’re following a 100 other people and these 100 people are all tweeting, how can they follow everyone? Do you know what I’m saying?

Mari: So you’re going to use an application like Tweet Deck TweetDeck.com. Tweet Deck is a desktop client based on Adobe Air. You can control your tweeting experience much more in terms of setting up what are called safe searches so that you can have groups, you can monitor specific groups like 10 or 12 of your favorite people that you just always whatever they tweet, you know, they’re going to read it. For more exclusive interviews on business, marketing, advertising and copywriting go to Michael Senoff’s HardToFindSeminars.com.

Michael: And you can see all of their tweets in order.

Mari: Correct.

Michael: But following on Twitter.com on the URL is much more difficult.

Mari: Well, once you get over about 50 followers 50 people that you personally are following then it does get neon impossible to stay on top of that tweet stream.

Michael: Okay. What I mean broadcast let’s say you’re Facebook, I’m sure you have a Facebook group, right.

Mari: Groups are kind of weaning in their attraction I recommend fan pages.

Michael: Fan pages, okay. With a fan page can someone sign up on your fan page on Facebook and let’s say you have 5000 people who are signed up on your fan page when you make a post or something can an email go out to those 5000 fan page subscribers? That’s what I mean by broadcast I guess if you compared it, if you have 5000 people on your email list and you send out a broadcast email through Awebber and then an email gets to them. Are you able to do something like that on some of the social media sites?

Mari: With Facebook you get several different choices. On a personal profile people who are asked this question, you know, how do I blast all my friends, you know, without slamming them? You know it’s a valid question especially from a marketer’s standpoint, but basically you cannot message all your friends and your personal profile you can do them in groups of 20. You want to actually email them 20 is the max you can send and I personally do not like that, I call them multiple recipient emails just so not to be confused with group emails. You know unless all 20 of those people know each other or if the purpose of your email is to introduce them then it really is Spam because there’s no way to opt out, default is reply all and you end up getting caught in this long thread that you’re not interested in and you can’t get off of it. So there’s no way to blast all of your friends but a couple of things you can do is setup a special interest group, you can email right into the personal, right into the Inbox, the Facebook Inbox emails send messages to all group members. I have to advice those and I actually truncated advice those, that means as soon as you go [inaudible 25:08] those into one members in your group you can’t manage it any more. In my opinion, the fan page really comes into its own because first of all the fan page gets indexed by Google it’s the only feature in the whole of Facebook that gets Google indexing meaning the people outside of Facebook, whether they have an account or not whether they’re logged in or not they can find your fan page through Google searching. Now, you can actually have unlimited fans there’s no limited fans you can have in your fan page. There’s a tour feature called Updates so you can send an update to your fan, it doesn’t go right into their inbox it’s goes a slightly separately place, a slightly different place, but still a lot of people read those updates.

Michael: Alright, let’s talk about Google SEO juice with some of the big social media sites. You just explained Facebook the fan page is the only one that’s getting SEO outside of their system. What about Twitter is any of that getting outside SEO?

Mari: Absolutely, every single tweet is an individual web page with a unique URL that gets indexed by Google and I think that the people that are tweeting about I just ate a sandwich and I’m petting my dog, I’m taking the trash out, those people do not realize that they are completely and utterly wasting got tweets. If they want to tweet use your keywords.

Michael: Alright, how about LinkedIn?

Mari: LinkedIn, you know, it’s interesting LinkedIn is not a strong area of expertise for me but I have taken many different courses I was just in a conference call yesterday in this big summit I’m involved with and it turns out LinkedIn Advance, if you’re actually doing any kind of a conference, a seminar, a teleseminar you can post it up there on LinkedIn Advance and you get some great Google juice with that.

Michael: How about Flickr, are you using Flickr?

Mari: Yeah, we use Flickr a little bit but Facebook is actually the Number 1 photo sharing app in the whole planet.

Michael: Facebook is more than Flickr.

Mari: Forty million photos a month are uploaded. Now, this isn’t indexing but the Number 1 reason people like Facebook for photos is the tag ability.

Michael: How about Digg any experience with Digg?

Mari: A little bit I use StumbleUpon.

Michael: Have you ever hit the first page of StumbleUpon?

Mari: That’s not something I strive for, but if I did I wouldn’t even know. I don’t monitor it.

Michael: Alright, you talk about when marketers move in and users move out, what trends have you seen over the last two years, specifically related to this and bring me down to the future? What do you see happening in social media down the road?

Mari: Well, down the road I’m seeing niche social network will become more and more popular. I have a client and a friend Ellie Drake, Ellie and Charlie and they have just launched a new site it’s called BraveHeartWomen.com it’s a specific social network for women but women with a heart with a purpose women who are maybe a little more spiritual more into, you know, consciousness and transformation span and it’s beautiful, it’s really beautiful done it’s been a lot of resources building a platform. So I think we’re going to see more and more sites like that where it’s around a specific user base or niche. Another example, Circle of Moms, Circle of Moms got launched last fall and it was one of the most successful launched at 800,000 members joined within the first I think it was like three months or something.

Michael: Alright, so this is a Web site launch.

Mari: Oh yes.

Michael: Circle of Moms. These are moms who joined a social network.

Mari: Well, yeah because see on Facebook and Twitter and social network in general the numbers are a little more like 60/40 you can have 60% women on it women tend to be more relational more conversational.

Michael: What’s Circle of Moms? Circle of Moms was a Web site or…

Mari: CircleofMoms.com is like Facebook for Women.

Michael: Oh, I got you. It’s a niche social networking site for moms. Got you, and they have 800,000 people sign up.

Mari: A lot more than that now, but yeah.

Michael: They have a good promotion or is it real viral.

Mari: Viral was a big part of it but it’s very, very nice, we’ve gotten a UI User Interface is the most critical component. You see when I got involved with Facebook two years ago I knew that they were going to do so well. They were already starting to do well, they were already just starting to break into the mainstream and get accepted by businesses and whatnot, even more so now obviously, but there’s just something about uniformity and the white space and the ease of navigation and making people only click one time when other sites make you click three times. That’s why I don’t use LinkedIn as much it takes you like five steps to accept new contacts.

Michael: You’re right. So UI User Interface, you determine that there’s going to be a huge success because of the ease of use, in fact that’s how it grew so fast.

Mari: Yes.

Michael: So the Circle of Moms had a great UI.

Mari: Yeah, and then a great marketing campaign and then they used existing social media like Twitter, Facebook, whatnot, and YouTube to do some of their promotions.

Michael: Can you think of a student of yours who has really taken some of your consulting, whether it’s your home study courses or listen to some of your recordings? Give me a start student tell me a story about that person.

Mari: One of my start students would be Coach Eva, Eva Gregory who calls herself America’s Feel Good Coach and she did sell my training 15 months ago she did fairly well but she really didn’t fully get the power of Facebook and how it could be utilized and all about Twitter as well and really helped to build up with her Twitter. And through using a Facebook group is some of the strategies that I taught her she was able to make $19,000 from one group and we actually have her own record saying that she now earns in one week what she use to earn in a month.

Michael: So how did she do it?

Mari: Yeah, and this is what’s worked for some other people as well that some contacts of mine and she was some of my secrets that made as much as $40,000 dollars in one week, and so this would be like - you set up a group and people are more likely to join a group around a special interest and keep coming back to that group if you setup some ground rules about it like no Spamming and you give them some good value, you give them some content versus now the fans were right on the cusp of shifting, it’s really like earlier on we were talking about groups and then I brought up fan pages instead because now you promise could achieve the same results of the page versus the group, but let’s just focus on the group for now. Setup this group it’s under special interest, you get some members going, the tipping point is going to be somewhere around 500 to a 1000. The tipping point I found was pretty much all these networks same with Twitter followers, Facebook fans, group members friends, so you’re looking to get somewhere around 500 to 1000 and once you started that group going you got some content in there videos, discussions, blog posts. Then you offer an event, you setup an event, you do a free teleseminar and you’re going to make people sign up. They’ve got to come off of Facebook and out into an Opt 10 Page and they’re going to Opt 10 and they get the phone number and they sign up. People know the drill they’re use to the drill. You could do it paid some of my client’s do it paid. We did this one that’s only $20 dollars for the call and that included the MP3 and then it was $30 dollars upgrade to get the transcript and we sold 300 hundred tickets. So my $6000 grand on the front end and then we made an offer and made some money in the backend as well.

Michael: Alright, so if someone wants to learn this system you have some home study program, but really who is your training for? I would think it’s not for the person without a business is for maybe information product marketers, publishers, people who have something to sell, right?

Mari: It really is, yeah, because people will come to me – currently in Michigan like 18 months, 2 years ago they would always be coming to me saying, you know, how do I make money on Facebook, how do I make money on Facebook? People are starting to realize now that it’s not just one site you use just kind of one site and start making money they’re marketing mediums, they’re conversational mediums, there’s relationship building mediums, and I would say to people, you know, let’s press the pause button on that question I’m going to ask you some questions, what is your business model? What’s your profit model? What are your goals? What do you want? What are your objectives? If we could wave a magic wand what would you do all day everyday even if you didn’t get paid for it? What’s your passion? So we get tapped into some of these questions and make sure that people are on the right track because if they were to experience explosive growth could they handle that growth and would they want to. Are they really doing their passion and is it monetizable? To get really clear on that I do, do some work like that I have a student going through a certification program right now I’m actually certifying them as a Social Media Consultant, so it’s just a lot of clarity about what is their niche. But I think [inaudible 32:43] to come to me that really do have a very, very solid and established business they’re in their niche, they’re in their passion, they’re looking to use social media and all these different online, not just social media, but just more of the Web 2.0 and like blogs and all the different widgets and things like that in order to increase their traffic, their clients, their sign outs, their joint venturing, their media attention, their exposure, and obviously their bottom line. It’s all about, you know, it’s funny because I’m not about the money and yet it has to be about the money because not that it’s only about the money that’s your key distinction because your Number 1 purpose for being in business is to be profitable, if you’re not profitable forget it you’ve got a hobby.

Michael: So you’re in the world of social media how to make money from it by building relationships, what percentage would you say in the social media universe that people are in that specific focus make money from social media compared to the use of social media for issues unrelated to making money? There’s still a huge user universe in that realm, is that right, that doesn’t have anything to do with making money or selling or marketing? Does that make sense? How about the use of social media just for purely social, you know…

Mari: Oh God, yeah.

Michael: That’s what I mean. Where is the majority use of these social media sites? Being social and making friends has nothing to do with making money.

Mari: No, I know, we’re talking about business.

Michael: Yeah, that’s right but I’m just curious how big of a universe is not about making money.

Mari: It’s probably bigger. We are the minority, I will tell you that Michael we are the minority. Right now we are anyway because see Facebook has 225 million active users headed toward 500 million by 2011 or sooner at the rate they’re going, definitely sooner. Now, you’re going to have 5000 friends we’ve been talking about they are going to lift that limit but that high rich number of friends that any given Facebook user has is about 125 it’s high school buddies, it’s their mom, it’s their siblings, it’s people who know that they met while they were traveling and they used it for sharing photos and really sharing their lives and not trying to do any marketing or anything whatsoever. You know even like seniors, you know, you’ve got a lot of baby boomers on there reconnecting with lost friends and family. I’m sure there’s even more high school reunions treated – all the previous years since Facebook got so popular.

Michael: How does Facebook and Twitter, you know, the executives and such, how do they view your world? The people who want to come in and build it out for profit and making money and marketing? Are they skeptical of that universe?

Mari: Not so much see because Facebook and Twitter have not fully figured out their revenue model. Neither one of them are making and great amount of money. In fact, Facebook has just received another round of funding, another 200 million dropped into their bank accounts this week with a Russian investment; previously they had Microsoft money Bill Gates has got stake in the company. So they’re very well funded, in terms of actually cranking out some solid profits that’s yet to come for both companies, but advertising is most definitely one area and the fan pages – see because of this magnitude of the user base users, the 225 million, with Target on there or Victoria Secret, you’ve also got actors like Vin Diesel he seems very, very active under the actor the actor and fitness guy, he’s got like over a 1 million fans last I looked. So they have these platforms where it’s very easy for absolutely free for the users and Facebook loves that because Facebook figures that if you got a celebrity or a big brand coming in – I mean Coca Cola, oh my gosh, Vin Diesel is up to almost 4 million [inaudible 36:08] so he is cranking – but that’s a lot of traffic. Facebook loves someone like him because he’s bringing tons of people in and, not just in, but they’re sticking it’s his stickingness, his eyeballs and eyeballs are sellable, eyeballs are sellable to advertisers.

Michael: Let me ask you this, have you ever advertised on paid advertising on…?

Mari: No, I’ve tried it a little bit it’s not something that’s been that successful for me. I don’t even need to because I’ve got so much free…

Michael: But when you tested it, it didn’t work.

Mari: Not so far. I recommend advertising to my clients because you can purchase very, very targeted demographics, targeted traffic.

Michael: You can measure the click throughs and all that.

Mari: All the metrics are there working very, very similar to Google adwords. One of the secrets of the ads was actually not to try to advertise but do direct selling and get people off of Facebook into your site and buying because you’re like missing a few steps but if you advertise your fan page and so you’re getting awareness, but then you’re getting people to come over and be your fan. Now, you’re jut going to start working on building that relationship.

Michael: Are you into YouTube at all?

Mari: YouTube, I have three channels over there, um-um.

Michael: So you got three channels and you do videos there.

Mari: I do some videos. What I tend to do because of the very nature of the technical aspects of what I teach as well is I do screen capture videos. So we’re using Camtasia so now I actually do tutorials and things like that.

Michael: Right. So what’s the model with YouTube you’ll do screen captures around your niche and then in the description you’ll have a URL that connects into your Facebook page?

Mari: Or my Twitter page or my blog.

Michael: Now, you said something when the marketers come in the users leave, what did you mean by that?

Mari: What I mean by that is an example would be on Facebook if every given moment you’re friending them up and then you write in their wall and then you leave this big fat signature block it’s all about you and come into my blog and sign up for this, it’s just more hardcore push marketing, even though the person’s attempting to do some relational tactics and write a friendly greeting on the wall. But, you know, in my opinion you just do not need a signature file on your Facebook wall post because everywhere you go your picture and your thumbnail and your name is hyperlinked right back to your profiles, people can come click through and see everything they want to see about you. Same as Twitter, you know, your link is clickable you can go and find out, you know, anything you want about you on your Twitter page.

Michael: Give me your best recommendation for any of our listeners who want to maybe take baby steps to learning a little bit more of what you’ve learned over all these years. What would be a good baby step for someone to maybe dip their toe in the water for a product or a service that you have that you’d recommend?

Mari: Well, I have a couple of different things with absolute baby steps. I have a relatively new membership program that’s called Fed and it’s basically to get monthly calls, they get drip fed and then they get access to me. One of the most affordable ways to access to me once a month we do a live call and it records in archives. The other thing that I have is what I call my quick start social media, it’s a kit a quick start social media kit and it comes with 62 short video tutorials anywhere from two to twelve minutes and then there’s a guide book with that, the 15 precise steps that you can follow them all, you implement them then you will definitely see measurable results. It comes with an online version it’s also shipped in the mail in a DVD version.

Michael: This has been great we’ve covered a lot of stuff.

Mari: Outstanding, yes. Good, good well I’m glad I was able to contribute to your piece.

Michael: No, I really appreciate it and then I’ll get this cleaned up and I’ll share it with my list.

Mari: Okay, Michael.

Michael: Alright, take care. You too.

Mari: Bye.

Michael: Bye. From baby steps for the beginner to tips for the seasoned pro, Mari’s got social networking down to a science. Her approach, which she calls Radical Strategic Visibility, combines social networking with more traditional marketing tactics for both online and offline exposure. And in this audio you’ll hear all about it. For more info on Mari go to her kick but site at http://www.facebookseminar.com or you can check out http://www.twittermarketingtool.com Thanks for listening