Last week, I presented at SMCUV with some great friends and incredibly smart marketers, Seth Jenks and Nate Kartchner. We presented strategies and tools to help build a reliable social media strategy and manage your online reputation.

Here’s a look at Nate’s presentation on tools to use to build solid a social media presence, as well as Seth’s list of tools to create an awesome listening tool to help you manage both positive and negative feedback being posted about you on the web.

I had the privilege of speaking on having a cohesive online and offline marketing strategy.  I’m a firm believer that if you want to get the most out of an online social media campaign, you must be practicing the same mentality in the analog world.  Empower your clients and employees to talk about you however they see fit. Give them reasons to talk about you positively. Make them your advocates.

Andy Sernovitz gives some great ideas on the principle of empowerment on his blog. If more companies followed his lead on this, they would have so much more success and loyalty it might just blow their minds.

It’s also important to know who your target audience is.  If you are selling hearing aids, Twitter may not be the best forum for you, as the majority of your market has only heard of the micro-blogging platform at random moments from their favorite Fair and Balanced news station.

You need to make sure you’re paying attention to the right people with the right influence, as Janet Meiners-Thaeler explains on her site. Find your niche of advocates who are willing to talk for you, endorse you and especially trust you. If you’re willing to do this, even if the group is small, your efforts will be rewarded.

Slides from my presentation are forthcoming…

Special thanks to Costa Vida Fred for sharing his time and expertise with us in the Q&A session. What a champ!