Now that the dust has settled a bit, here are 5 quick tips from Rich Shefren’s offering “The Attention Age Doctrine” for those of you that haven’t had time to read it. (No affiliate link included…)

While Rich’s report is great for “social media motivation”, there were a few golden tips that could be put to practical use. By the way, I have nothing against motivational stuff… when I get a bit behind in my SMM work or when I am disappointed by a specific social media marketing campaign, I reach for reports like Rich’s.

However, this post, and for that matter, Web2Center.com, is here to give you practical social media marketing strategies and tactics. We assume you are already motivated when you get here.

Attention Age Doctrine 2 - Practical Tips

1. Tread carefully when joining your prospective customers in the social media space: As we said in our post about “fitting-in” to social media sites, don’t just barge into a social media site and start blasting comments or forums with calls to action and product benefits. Your entrance into each social media site needs to be planned and executed with style and sincerity. Start well and strive to be a REAL part of the community. Otherwise you will be sunk before you start.

2. Check your facts: Everything you say and do on your blog will be permanent public record and easily researched by people who have nothing better to do but scrutinize your success. Don’t jeapordize your long term success by inventing or embellishing “facts” in an effort to make a quick buck. It will catch up to you. This may seem obvious but I have seen a couple product offers (in the internet marketing niche) from self-proclaimed “experts” who I know have about 1 month’s worth of experience. This was quickly sniffed out by the marketplace, their products flopped and their former customers turned in to cautionary evangelists. (To be nice, I won’t name names here…)

3. Let your customers market for you: If you get your social media marketing strategy right, your customers will spread the word about you, your product or your services for you, virally. Your job is to offer so much value that they are compelled to share. Simple, right? Of course not! it is actually frustratingly difficult to come up with a campaign that is so valuable and appealing that a stranger wants to share it with a friend. But, if you can crack the nut on this one you are in for a wild, and potentially profitable, ride.

4. Bookmarking, tagging and commenting are only the first step: Many online marketers new to social media have quite a shallow view. They assume that all they need to do is bookmark their content at a few social bookmarking services, offer up some carefully researched tags on their posts and then do some selective commenting on related blogs. But, actually, there a lot more to a successful social media campaign. Instead of focusing on creating backlinks, the focus must be on “engaging” your readers (and potential customers). In other words, putting more emphasis on your content and your community than you do on generating backlinks will get you further.

5. Pay-per-Click (PPC) and Press Releases (PR) are over-reated: Of course both PPC campaigns and PR have their place but many online marketers rely way too much on just these two strategies. They are missing out on the massive amount of traffic that is swelling around true social media and viral marketing campaigns. Don’t “pause” your AdWords campaign but, if you haven’t joined a social media site and browsed communities related to your niche, you are way behind and are in danger of being leapfrogged by the new social internet.

So, in summary, Rich says that it is harder than ever to get the attention of prospective customers and using social media is the way to do it. Focus on the practical tips above and you’ll be putting the latest “guru” wisdom into practice.

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