Today we’re starting a new weekly post identifying great stories and blog posts by others focused on social media and business.  We hope you get as much out of these as we did.

Top 10 Lessons Small Businesses Can Takeaway from Smart Content Marketers – by @newtbarrett

Newt Barrett provides 10 lessons that apply to companies of every size, but will bring outsized benefits to small companies when they use marketing brains to outmaneuver marketing brawn

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5 Basic Tips for Video Optimization by @MichelleBowles at TopRank

Michelle Bowles from TopRank shares SEO tips to get the most views for your videos.

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Why Social Search Is THE Justification Of Social Media For B2B by @kbodnar32 at Social Media B2B

Kipp Bodnar from Social Media B2B explains social search, shares a video from Google giving an example, and then goes on to share how social search will impact B2B companies

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10 Small Business Social Media Marketing Tips by @rosskimbarovsky

Ross Kimbarovsky’s guest post on Mashable suggests basic and advanced strategy tips for your business to make the most of your social media marketing efforts and achieving your goals.

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Does Your Website Inspire Trust In Your B2B…or Send Buyers Away? by Bill Gadless at B2B Web Strategy

Bill Gadless discusses how company websites have a short time frame to make a good first impression and what factors of a website can make a difference towards a positive reaction.

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EMarketer put out an article Tuesday about what Americans want from brands. Their results give businesses some great knowledge points to think about when creating marketing campaigns. Stuff to keep in mind.

Two things that Americans want from brands:

1. Constant information and brand updates
2. Discounts!

When it comes to buying, Americans look more positively on word of mouth than any other advertising strategy. The data even showed that Americans will be more likely to buy when they are told face to face about a brand than in an online community, which is fascinating considering the amount of time we all spend on our social networks and online personas.

But, in the same realm, people are also far more likely to trust bloggers and social media contacts who they read or follow regularly about brands, than celebrities or news reps (keep that in mind when looking for people to pitch a product).

So how do you implement new strategies knowing this information? Does this information change who you are going to connect with in the future, and the strategy you will use to implement brand announcements?

Connecting with customers is getting harder. Marketing and sales has been making dramatic shifts in the past few years as traditional ad strategies become more and more obsolete, and those changes are going to have to continue in the months and years to come.

(Photo With a Little Help From My Friends by Herodoto)

A recent study by BIA/Kelsey’s shows that more small to mid-size businesses (SMBs) plan on using social media/Web 2.0 in the next 12 months. While the current usage reported in this study seems low with only 23% using social sites and blogs and 29% using ratings and reviews sites, if we were to apply these percentages to the 29.6 million SMBs in the US, that’d be around 6.8 million and 8.5 million respectively.

Participants in the study said that 32% of them expected to start using social sites and blogs and 39% of them expected to start using customer ratings and reviews within the next 12 months.

Companies in the study that were three years old or less had a much higher percentage of those using or planning to use social media while more established businesses that were 11 years or older were more hesitant.

There are many studies out there regarding business and social media and many show different percentages of use.  The biggest factors for the difference in results tend to be the people surveyed and the actual focus of the entire survey.  Surveys on social media use given to marketers will have much higher percent of those saying they use social media then a survey from a bank focused on overall costs to small businesses in general.

While you take each one with a grain of salt depending on those and other factors, the key trend among all of them is that the use of social media and content to build brands is increasing.  Whether it’s those already started doing more or those that are a little hesitant looking to start, companies’ marketing resources are moving away from traditional direct marketing to social media.

Does your company fall within this trend?  If not, please share why.

There are tons of great books on business, but to make this easy, I’m offering my top five intriguing reads. Give them a skim!

1. Purple Cow, By Seth Godin: Seth Godin’s new book, Purple Cow is about transforming your business by being remarkable.
2. How to Win Friends and Influence People, by Dale Carnegie: “There is only one way under high heaven to get anybody to do anything,” writes Carnegie, “and that is by making the other person want to do it.”
3. The Art of the Start, by Guy Kawasaki: What does it take to turn ideas into action? What are the elements of a perfect pitch? How do you win the war for talent? How do you establish a brand without bucks? These are some of the issues everyone faces when starting or revitalizing any undertaking, and Guy Kawasaki, former marketing maven of Apple Computer, provides the answers.
4. Nuts! Southwest Airlines’ Crazy Recipe for Business and Personal Success, by Kevin Freiberg and Jackie Freiberg: Twenty-five years ago, Herb Kelleher reinvented air travel when he founded Southwest Airlines, where the planes are painted like killer whales, a typical company maxim is “Hire people with a sense of humor,” and in-flight meals are never served–just sixty million bags of peanuts a year.
5. Your Marketing Sucks, by Mark Stevens: When Mark Stevens’ bestselling book, “Your Marketing Sucks,”hit the bookstores, Entrepreneurs and CEO’s across the globe called Stevens and said, “My marketing sucks – I need your help!” Why? Because the only effective marketing is marketing that SELLS!

(Photo My Favorite Bookshop by Lochaven)

One of the great opportunities that social media allows us is to find and connect with people and companies with similar interests and reach out to them with an efficiency we’ve never seen before.  While many join social networks with the thought of “I’m here new customers. Come to me!” we’ve found that one of the best uses of social media has been in connecting with companies or people that we would have struggled to meet with otherwise. We then take those online introductions to build solid offline relationships.

Social media trumps the Contact Us form

How much luck have you had trying to connect with a company via their Contact Us form?  Same here.  However, we’ve had a great experience connecting by genuinely commenting on a person or company’s blog post when we could add value or share an experience.  We’ve also had a lot of luck Direct Messaging someone via Twitter.  The main reason for both is that with social media, the person you’re trying to reach can look at your profile, blog, and social media comments to see what you’re really about. It’s easy to filter out the legitimate connections. One mistake people make is to blindly comment on a blog post without adding any helpful input and making a blatant plug for their company.  This is the fastest way to get ignored by the blogger as well as everyone following that post.

It’s much easier to meet someone in person that you’ve already met online

For those attending conferences and networking events, sometimes it’s hard to make that initial introduction and connection to someone you’ve never met before.  However, when you’ve been following a person’s blog or their Tweets for the last few months(and hopefully, they’re doing the same), you’ll be amazed at how easy it is to walk up the person, introduce yourself, and immediately start talking about your topic of mutual interest. The additional bonus is that you will both tend to help each other out more in the future and show some social media love after you’ve met each other in person.  It’s human nature to help those you know and like.

To date, we’ve used social media to introduce ourselves and build relationships with; multiple startups, other companies in our industry, industry bloggers, venture capital firms and investors that focus in our area, industry trendsetters, and our company advisor.  It’s all been genuine and hasn’t happened over night but it’s been powerful and gotten us farther then any Contact Us form ever did.

If you have any examples of how you or your company have used social media to start and build relationships, please let us know.

(Photo “to put the rest aside” by crysb)