There is a difference between being a part of a community and leading your own community-driven website. We all know what the word “community” means, but an online community is more than just a feel good concept. It is a business model and it’s one that works.

There are several successful online communities with different business models:

• Facebook is an online community that allows people to connect with their friends online and establish you social and business contacts.
• LinkedIn is a similar type community focused more heavily on professionals.
• YouTube is an online video sharing community.
• Flickr is an online photo sharing community.
• Ning is a community of social networks.
• Twitter is a community based on simplicity of delivery and one-to-many communication.

I think you’re starting to get the idea. Even Google has its own community features. Some blogs, many well known and many more not so well known, are themselves little communities of like-minded people.

An online community is just that – a social connection between members of a like-minded group. It can be business related, political, geared toward a hobby or interest or merely social. Any way you look at it, the members all have one common interest.

So how does this relate to you? Well, you could build a successful business around a community of like-minded people within your niche. And you can establish that community as a separate business entity from your everyday business, complete with its own monetization plan and marketing plan. You could, but will you?

TechCrunch seems to think so. CNET doesn’t. But you have to give them credit for trying.

Actually, the verdict is still out. The problem I see with Google Buzz is that it is open only to Gmail users, which isn’t exactly open. After all, not everyone has a Gmail account and not everyone wants one. But for those who do have one and use it often, Google Buzz may actually be a worthwhile social tool. But what if you have friends who are not Gmail users? Then, I guess, you’ll have to connect with them somewhere else.

To me, that doesn’t exactly spell success. If Google Buzz does end up being a successful social network it will be despite is flaws, privacy concerns included. But I wonder just how many people will actually use it? And will anyone prefer it to Twitter or Facebook?

I just finished Twist Image President Mitch Joel’s Six Pixels of Separation, aptly subtitled, “Everyone is Connected. Connect Your Business to Everyone.”

The title is a clever twist on the “six degrees of Kevin Bacon” theory that we are all connected to each other through 6 or less people we know. In a time where you are now much more likely to discover your most important business connections on LinkedIn than not, the title expresses a fact: we truly are all connected.

Throughout the book, Mitch makes the case for using social media as a strategic business tool, and he offers great examples of how business owners from a variety of industries are doing just that.

My favorite part of the book is where he addresses mobile marketing and gives us a glimpse of some amazing examples of what’s coming just around the corner for small and mid-size business owners, through the new geo-location enabled applications coming out, and much more.

For anyone who wants a very readable book about why social media is so critical, how you’re going to participate (one way or another) and for a glimpse into the future of where all this “connectedness” is taking us, I highly recommend it!

Full disclosure: I received Six Pixels of Separation free from Hachette Book Group as a review copy. Even if I’d paid for the book, my thoughts would be the same – it’s a great book that is bound to open your eyes to how we really are all connected, and what that means from a business standpoint.

The great news is – you can get a free copy of this book for yourself, too! Hachette Book Group has made 3 copies of this book available to me to offer to my loyal readers. To let me know whether you’re interested, head on over to my Facebook Business Page and become a fan anytime between now and March 15th. Everyone who becomes a fan of my page during that time will be entered into a drawing for one of the 3 free copies.

So, don’t delay – head over to my Facebook Business Page, become a fan and then cross your fingers.

The lucky winners will be announced on March 16th here on the blog, and books will be shipped to the winners directly from Hachette Book Group.

Good Luck!

If you operate a business in the Twin Cities area and have any interest whatsoever in online marketing – or even if you don’t (because you know you should, wink wink) – then you’ll definitely not want to miss Your Social Media Road Map, a seminar on using online social media to promote your business.

The featured speaker, of course, is yours truly. However, the event is sponsored by law firm Daniels Wymore and Stone Creek Financial.

The presentation will cover the following need-to-know essentials of social media marketing:

• Why “Marketing As Usual” no longer works
• How social media helps you rank higher in the search engines
• How to strategically implement a social media plan for your business that eliminates wasted time and gets results
• Creative ways you can tap into the Twitter craze to market your business
• Specific social media take-aways you can use to find new customers and increase your sales right away
• and Why waiting to get started with social media is costing you money right now

I’ll give this FREE PRESENTATION on Friday, March 26 at 7:30 a.m. at Stone Creek Financial located at 301 Carlson Parkway, Suite 300 (in the 3rd floor conference room) in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Space is limited so register early. If you have any interest in social media marketing or have heard about social media marketing, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or any of other hundreds of social media sites online and would like to know how you can tap into this powerful 21st century marketing method to promote your business and grow your sales more than ever then sign up at http://www.SocialWebTraining.com

Did I mention it’s a free event?

Greg Sterling mentions that social media presence among small businesses is up to 24%. Before you say “Wow, that’s impressive!” let’s define the difference between presence and marketing. According to Sterling, small businesses in the category of small business presence are using Twitter as a service channel, Tweeting about their area of expertise, maintaining a blog, monitoring feedback about their business, building a network through social networking sites like LinkedIn, posting status updates or articles on social sites, and/or maintaining a page on a social media site.

That sounds like social media marketing to me, but Sterling says only 19% of SMBs are engaged in social media marketing, which requires a higher commitment level.

This brings up the question, do you have a social media presence or are you involved in social media marketing? Do you know the difference? In my mind, the difference is that a small business with a social media presence may have social media profiles but no one is really active in using them. Social media marketing implies that you are engaged with your audience on at least one social media site.

While 24% is nothing to sneeze at – we’ve made a lot of strides in the last couple of years – there’s still a long way to go.

Far be it from me to argue a point with an industry leader like Pace Lattin, but is Conan O’Brien really the innovator he is suggesting here?

I mean, other famous personalities have achieved a level of success with social media long before Conan: Congressman Ron Paul, President Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey, Ashton Kutcher, just to name a few. True, Conan’s audience is younger and more Web-savvy than Jay Leno’s, but it wasn’t exactly a social media breakthrough for the entertainment industry.

That said, I do believe Conan’s viral buzz following the Jay Leno-NBC fiasco illustrates the power of social media incredibly well. I’m not buying that it was a planned effort, although it could have been. But whether planned or a grassroots spontaneous outpouring, one thing is clear. Social media has a kind of power than TV can only dream of. How are you going to tap into that for your business?

Yahoo!, like Bing and Google before it, have entered into a partnership with Twitter, but it seems that the Yahoo! partnership might actually go a step further. This is the part that is the extra step forward:

(Source) Coming Soon: Read your personal Twitter feeds directly from Yahoo!’s many products and properties, including the homepage, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Sports, and others — anywhere you can see Yahoo! Updates across our network.

But the part that I think is the most interesting and exciting is this:

Coming Soon: Whenever you produce social actions on any website (like comments on articles, ratings, buzzes on Yahoo! Buzz) that you’ve allowed to appear on Yahoo! Updates, those actions can also be shared automatically with your friends on Twitter.

For those of you who have written Yahoo! out of the picture, not so fast. It may be losing ground, but it isn’t dead. My gut feeling is that Yahoo! has bowed out of search, but that it is attempting to cast its future on social media. If that is the case then we should begin judging Yahoo! on how it implements these types of user services from here on. This actually looks like a good opportunity for publishers to expand their user base and drive more social traffic to their websites.

What do you think? Could this Yahoo!-Twitter deal outdo the Google-Twitter and Bing-Twitter deals?

For those of us who have used Facebook we don’t need the survey results to tell us how effective Facebook is for marketing, but a new survey shows that is very effective.

I’m particularly encouraged by the following paragraph in the above article:

“The fact that only about 5 percent of the firm’s 13,000 customers became Facebook fans within three months indicates that Facebook fan pages may work best as niche marketing programs targeted to customers who regularly use Facebook. Social-media marketing must be employed judiciously with other types of marketing programs.”

Five percent is nothing to sneeze at. That’s 650 new Facebook fans in three months. For some small businesses, that would be fantastic growth. And 650 new fans could lead to a few good sales. Just a 1% conversion rate on that would be about 2 new sales a month with zero expense. If your average sale is $100 then you have a $200 return on investment per month.

The size of the numbers don’t matter. Some will be larger and some will be smaller. The fact is, Facebook fan pages can be effective marketing. Even if effective as niche marketing programs, which can often be more effective marketing programs anyway, Facebook fan pages work. The evidence is in.

For three days now all we’ve heard about is Google Buzz. That is, if you are keeping an eye on social media, search engines and all the industry news. If so, that’s probably all you’ve heard about. But it seems that someone has shot the Buzz.

Unfortunately, that someone was Google and the shot was in the foot.

Here’s a lesson on new product/service roll out. Make sure that you give your users a choice. Don’t assume that they are going to like the product or service because it’s got a cool feature that you enjoy. In Google Buzz’s case, the cool feature turned out to be a big privacy issue for many users. That’s not a good way to start a relationship.

To me, Google Buzz doesn’t look as interesting as Facebook or Twitter. It makes you wonder what they were thinking.

If you’ve been watching Facebook over the years then you know it grew from relative obscurity to the second most trafficked site on the Internet. It didn’t happen overnight.

From its childhood years when it was only the province of college students keeping up with each other to today when it enjoys being a business haven, Facebook has grown into one of the most popular sites by offering a way to connect and network with like-minded people. Social networking has come of age.

I think it’s just a matter of time before Facebook overcomes Google as the Internet’s most used site. It could happen. And if you haven’t started using the site yourself for some business networking then you are behind the curve. Facebook is soon to do something powerful and it’s going to shock the world. I’m watching, are you?