Deltina Hay is a social media consultant and principle owner for the Independent press, Dalton Publishing. Her online presence includes social media sites like PlumbSocial, Social Media Power, and her publishing company Dalton Publishing.

Deltina Hay has presented for many social media and web 2.0 events. She’s also a regular contributor of social media news articles to many online news sites. She has a book on Amazon that you can check out:

A Step-by-Step Guide to Social Media Marketing and Web 2.0 Optimization

Now for the Meat and Potatoes:

I originally emailed Deltina with a whole list of Social Media questions that I had. As someone who knows a lot about social media, blogging, and internet marketing I was questioning if I had the skillset to consult companies on their social media optimization. I wanted to get to the heart of what it takes to be a successful social media consultant so that if I don’t have the skillset, I can cultivate the skills necessary to compete.

I’m very greatful to Deltina for her answers to these questions as they have been very insightful. I ask all those who enjoy this article to stumble, digg, retweet it, and share it as much as possible – and I also recommend that you visit Deltina’s social circles and get to know her better, if you don’t already follow her.

What exactly is a Social Media Consultant, and why would a business need one?

A social media consultant is a professional who knows how the Internet is evolving, and can help a company evolve with it by implementing, optimizing, and recommending the tools of Web 2.0 that are the best fit for that company.

What education is required?

This is a tricky question, since social media means different things to different types of businesses. Some companies may use the Social Web more for PR, others for marketing, others for SEO. Still others may need social applications, or want to build their entire presence

A well-rounded education then, may require marketing, PR, and SEO basics, as well as familiarity with HTML, PHP, CSS, and Web design.

What is the day to day grind for a Social Media consultant?

Setting up and keeping clients’ accounts up to date. Researching new tools and new features within existing tools. Building CMS sites and themes, coding PHP applications, creating HTML, PHP, or CSS skins for social tools. Reputation management, blog posting, blog commenting, etc.

How did you get started in social media?

As a veteran Web developer, writer, business owner, and book publisher, it was a natural transition.

What should a new social media consultant look to make in the first year?

This depends on their background. If they have the skills to do basic CSS and PHP – building themes and such, they can make $100k out of the gate. But if they need to hire most of the skilled labor out, they are more likely looking at around $30k to $40k.

What are the top three tips you’d give a new social media consultant?

• Educate yourself before heading out of the gate – don’t just stick up a shingle.
• Do not call yourself and Internet marketer, and don’t spam!
• Build your own optimized Social Web foundation first.

What are the most important things to get recurring social media traffic to a site?

Offer quality, original, relevant content. Write content that will help people, not fluff full of links to other people’s posts. Establish yourself as an expert, and they will come to you…

How do you manage to get social without seeming like a spammer?

Transparency and authenticity. Social media is not a “take one pill” solution. Like any good campaign, it takes time to build a reputation. If you go out there inundating people with promotions, events, and branding, then you will get tagged as a spammer. However, if you take the time to build a solid and consistent presence, respecting submission guidelines and only posting items of interest, then you will be well received. Just because you have a business message does not mean you are spamming – just be transparent about it.

How important is video & audio to your success in social media? Is it necessary or can a person be as successful sticking to print?

My main focus has been print, but I still believe in a well-rounded Social Web presence. If it makes sense to produce podcasts, I encourage it. And even if a company has no video of their own, they can still build and embed video galleries of other’s work.

Who in the industry inspires you the most?

Innovative people who get things done and give things back, like Matt Mullenweg, J.D Lasica, Todd Defren, and Seth Godin.

How do you sell social media to non-believers who think it’s just about tweeting info about your latest bowel movement?

The first step is that I never tweet about my own bowel movements. People come to me because they have already been sold on the Social Web. I never do hard selling – they get it or they don’t. I do tell them, though, that the Internet has evolved, and if they do not evolve along with it, Darwin’s theories will do the rest for them…

Does being a Social Media Expert also entail SEO practices?

Yes. SEO as we know it is not going away yet. If you call yourself a Social Media expert, you should already be an SEO expert.

What social sites do you use the most often for your consulting business?

Facebook, Twitter, Delicious, Digg, LinkedIn, and Squidoo.

What is the most important thing for a new social media consultant to learn?

That you can’t use old methods on the new tools. Forget what you know about old-school marketing, and learn how to be authentic and transparent. Also, do your homework. Do not represent yourself as something you are not.

Will social media be around in 5 years – and will it still be called social media?

Yes, it will be around in 5 years, and from here on out. It may not be called anything, however, other than “the Internet.”

A company is wanting to tap into social media – what are the steps you take to make them more social?

1. First, an RSS feed (usually in the form of a blog) – that is the backbone of their Social Web presence.
2. From there, an optimized presence in media communities like Flickr and YouTube.
3. Then, I may recommend a couple social networking sites – not too many.
4. Then, on to social bookmarking and crowd-sourcing, social calendars, social pages – specifically what makes the most sense for their business.
5. Then, on to integrating all of them.
6. The last thing I do is train them to do the upkeep on their own – I do not believe that anyone need be dependent on developers or consultants to maintain a healthy presence if they do not choose to be.

What defines success on the social web?

Measuring success in the Social Web is like measuring the success of any marketing or Web venture. You first must define your goals and begin with a base line. Only then can you measure what it was you set out to accomplish.

What Books do you recommend for those wanting to become Social Media Consultants?

I would recommend reading Chris Grodin’s book and my own, A Survival Guide to Social Media and Web 2.0 Optimization.

What should a business look for in a Social Media Consultant?

Look for someone with an already optimized presence themselves. Do not choose someone who wants to put you everywhere out there – look for a consultant who wants to understand your business needs and limitations. Ask to see their portfolio or case studies. Social media should not be a hard-sell. If someone is pushing you into something, they are probably not a good fit for you. Also, most of the social tools out there are free, so be clear on what you are being charged for.

Copyright 2009 by Deltina Hay.
A Survival Guide to Social Media and Web 2.0 Optimization

www.socialmediapower.com, www.plumbsocial.com, www.daltonpublishing.com

Related articles by Zemanta

• A New Guide to Social Media Marketing (terrywhalin.blogspot.com)
• A definition of social media (martinspalette.blogspot.com)
• Social Media for Civic Leaders and Community Builders (slideshare.net)
• Tweeting 9 to 5: The Social Media Work Routine (beth.typepad.com)
• The brilliant advantage and weakness of social media (broadcasting-brain.com)
• Social media loners and outsiders are real (broadcasting-brain.com)
• Diva Marketing Talks About Social Media Communities With Liz Strauss & Nancy Whie (marketing.blogtanker.com)

Image by AJC1 via Flickr

The past few months I’ve been doing some big experimenting with bringing in new people to this blog. I’ve been focused big on writing for google trends, over writing real deep informative articles on social media, marketing, and making money.

I’m planning on making some changes to that in the upcoming weeks. I still plan on having at least 1-2 google trends related posts every day or so, but I will also have a lot more blog posts to help you – the reader.

One thing I have learned from this experiment is that if you can write posts that are related to happenings of the day, you will get a lot in search traffic.

I’m planning on adding some keyword related content for Thanksgiving, and the Holiday Season as well.

If you haven’t already subscribed to this blog – please do me a favor and subscribe now!

Related articles by Zemanta

• Tool Tips: 10 uses for Google trends
• Google Trends is Behind the Curve
• Hot Niche Trends
• A new layer to Google Trends
• Which matters most: Quantity of posts, or Quality of posts? Let’s Discuss…

Twitter’s death is imminent.

Twitter has been great to me. I’ve met many wonderful people. Build wonderful relationships. But Twitter is now dead to me…

Apparently Twitter’s new spam measures are blocking a number of users from following other Twitterers. Being able to follow others on twitter is what the service is about. The brilliance behind twitter is you can block/unfollow anyone that you don’t want to listen to. So my question: Why have spam rules?

I’m not saying I’m a spammer – far from it – but I’ve been blocked for no good reason, except that my follower to followee ratio is not the way they want. In other words my growth and reach on Twitter is now dead.

I still plan on posting all my blog posts to twitter, and following up on conversations via friendfeed. But it really saddens me that Twitter is doing this crap. I’d advise everyone to jump ship and find a better network, I think Plurk may be that better network, which is why I’m inviting you all to follow me on Plurk.

Other places to follow me besides Twitter:

• Friendfeed.
• Plurk
• Rejaw – This one’s new but looks pretty darn awesome.
• Tumblr – My new fave after Plurk.
• Bebo.
• del.icio.us
• Digg
• Facebook
• Flickr
• LinkedIn
• Ma.gnolia
• MyBlogLog
• MySpace
• Pownce
• Reddit
• Sphinn
• StumbleUpon
• Technorati

UPDATE: Here is a link to the Twitter faq page about the new limits in place. Also Note ALL the info following this paragraph is an update to this post – so check it out!

Here is what twitter says about these:

What are the limits?
We’re starting with a few limits based on various parameters, and we’ll be adding more as time goes on. We reveal some limits only when you reach them, and tell you about others in advance. Twitter applies limits to any person who reaches:

• 1,000 total updates per day, on any and all devices
• 250 total direct messages per day, on any and devices
• 100 API requests per hour
• Maximum number of follow attempts in a day

Follow limits are based on several things, one of which is our belief in a person’s good standing and intention. The behind-the-scenes portion of follow limiting varies by account, relationship, and changes over time. Based on current behavior in the Twitter community, we’ve concluded that this is both fair and reasonable. While we figure out what works best for everyone, the limits may change occasionally, but this is the nucleus and future limits will be based upon the success of these.

According to that it says that they are imposing a maximum follow attempts per day limit, which I’m fine with, facebook has the same limits, but I and others I’ve read about have been blocked completely from following others..which is completely unacceptable.

I’m not the only one apparently having frustrations:

• Twitter Follow Limits are Jacked
  This is from Brad Williams Ceo of WebDevStudios.com and an adviser on Sitepoint forums.
• Even the Blog StopTwitterSpam.com thinks it’s jacked. This blog supports anti twitter spam and they even think its wrong.

Here are some comments on the twitter forums backing my claims:

Hi Crystal and Ev -

Thanks for posting on GSFN about this. I’m glad you’re putting limits in place to discourage spammers.

However, there are many of us who are using Twitter in a legitimate and respectful manner who are being blocked from following.
I didn’t receive any notification that I had reached any following limit. I got the “Something has gone wrong” message repeatedly until I surmised what was happening.

I’ll email Support to discuss this, but I wanted to point this out here since a discussion was already in place.

We have such a fun Pandora community going on via Twitter, I’d hate for it to be hampered. In terms of proving I’m not spammy, I’m happy to provide previously-twittered testimonials regarding how “useful” and/or “fun” my 2,000 twitter followers have found my twitterstream.

I’m very careful, as a Community Manager, about how I use Twitter. I hand-pick who to follow. My followed-following rate has always been close to 1-to-1. I only tweet a few times a day. I’ve repeatedly posted my personal email address in the stream, for conversations that require more than 140 characters.

Thanks very much for your attention, and for all your hard work!
I hope this gets sorted out soon. I’ve been enjoying the community of Pandora-lovers who have been bonding via your service.

Sincerely,
Lucia Willow
Pandora Community Manage

Comment 1:
Nice way of putting it. But I’m really much more frustrated than this at this point. I’ve been a HUGE advocate of Twitter despite many issues. I spent my time blocking and advocating the blocking of those ‘gaming’ the system. In return, I’ve always respected Twitter boundaries and have a 1-to-1 following ratio – but now I’ve got 50 people who have followed me in the past few days that I can’t follow back. This is very annoying – given that I gave an Unconference Panel on it at BlogHer on Sunday that lasted 2 1/2 hrs and got many of these users to sign up. If I can’t follow back the people that are following me – twitter becomes useless for me. – GeekMommy, 16 days ago (Delete or Edit for 15 minutes)

Comment 2:
I already have an issue with how you handle it: You post your e-mail so people can have private conversations, or do you post your e-mail for conversations that SHOULD be public, i.e. handled in a public place like for example get satisfaction? If they should be public, you should direct users to make threads on GSFN so more than just you and the other person can participate. – Thomas, 16 days ago

Here’s a thread by StopTwitterSpam on the issue:

#

stopthespam replied 12 days ago
Twitter – you guys have said many times that you will be continually reviewing your approach to fighting spam and refining yout tactics over time. I’ve been tracking the new follower limits very closely and I can’t imagine that you guys were targeting @pandora_radio, @comcastcares, and dozens of other legitimate businesses and individuals with these limits. And telling them to just wait a few days to add new followers is asking for a tremendous amount of patience from some of your most loyal users. Please tell us that you guys are looking closely at whatever algorithm is behind the follower limits to insure that only the *real* bad guys (like the6figureteam.com spammers) are being flagged, not the good guys.

# Comment_1
I totally agree. While Twitter isn’t *just* blocking/targeting comcastcares, pandora_radio, etc, the limits are for everyone and not just flagged users. They should update their system so that only the actual spammers get caught, as you said. – Chris Thomson, 12 days ago (Delete or Edit for 15 minutes)
# Comment_2
Very well said – and much more rationally than I could’ve put it. Thanks. I completely agree with this and hope they respond to you. – GeekMommy, 12 days ago (Delete or Edit for 15 minutes)
# Comment_3
How about watching to see which accounts are getting the most “blocked” votes and limit their following ability? Anytime I find a spammer, etc following me, I block them. Track that, and let people who have large accounts like Geek Mommy, Scoble, etc do what they do.

You can follow the rest of that thread here: What if I hit a Twitter Limit; and if you look it over you’ll see I’m not the only one with a lot of angst, apparently many of the top twitterers are frustrated at this.

Related articles

• Antispam bot goes sentient, tries to save us from Twitter [Social Networks]