I’ve heard some great responses since my panel, Getting Noticed FAST, at Affiliate Summit East 09, and I wanted to share some of the major points.

Getting Noticed Fast is about effective networking using your personal brand, social media, and face-to-face. My fellow panelists were Trisha Lyn Fawver (@trishalyn), Jen Goode (@JGoode), Stephanie Lichtenstein (@StephARC), and the panel was moderated by Lisa Picarille (@lisap).

Personal Brand
Be consistent with the photos and avatars you use. Avatars appear in blog comments, your Twitter profile, your Facebook page, MySpace, FriendFeed, Disqus, and other social network platforms. Update them when necessary, but remain consistent. If your goal is to look professional, then present yourself that way.

Social Media
Retweet (RT) Tweets you like or mention and credit Tweeters in your Tweets. Join a Twitter directory like WeFollow.com or use it to search for others in your favorite topics and follow them.

Sharing your experiences and expertise will make others want to follow and engage with you. Giving before you get will get you a lot in return.

For Facebook, get your name, brand, or something easy to remember in the URL of your profile. You can find me at Facebook.com/mikebuechele. If your friend lists starts getting out of hand, you can organize them into groups.

Some of my groups are Old Friends, Business Contacts, and Co-workers. Use search to view topics your friends are posting and then comment and share your ideas. Stay at the “top of people’s mind” by wishing your friends a happy birthday from the list on your home page (thanks to Peter Shankman for the idea). Other ideas are to start a fan page and link your blog’s RSS into your profile.

Face-to-Face Networking
I don’t think anything is better than in-person networking. It leaves the best impression on people. Have unique business cards, or give swag like thumbnail drives, stickers, and buttons.
Wear a T-shirt with your blog URL or Facebook/Twitter name on it and give some out to people. There’s a good chance they will blog about you. Make an impression. Nothing beats a handshake.

Bonus Tips
Always say yes to an interview or guest blog post. Stay on top of your niche and blog or share links over Twitter and Facebook.

Follow people already known within your niche and comment on their blogs. There are other social communities like LinkedIn, Blip.fm, Ning, and many more, so find the ones right for you.

Create content in different media. You can use text, audio, and video. Some helpful resources are TubeMogul, Seesmic, and 12seconds for video; and TweetDeck, Seesmic Desktop, and HootSuite for Twitter.

Mike Buechele is an affiliate marketer, and he can be found at MikeBuechele.com and on Twitter at @mikebuechele.

Download the entire FeedFront issue 8 here – http://www.scribd.com/doc/20220412/FeedFront-Magazine-Issue-8
FeedFront issue 8 articles can be found here as well: http://feedfront.com/archives/article00date/2009/10

It is the classic “church and state” argument; brand advertisers in TV, print, and outdoor advertising and direct response marketers in infomercials, catalogs and direct mail. Very seldom have the two worlds collided, traditionally.

Early in online marketing, measurement, tactics and mindsets were simply ported over from the offline world. Branded advertisers would pay high CPM rates for premium inventory on premium sites (akin to a billboard in Times Square). Direct response advertisers would run and evaluate campaigns based on CPA or CPC, with less concern over whether inventory was “premium”, just that it worked (akin to direct mail).

One side was Madison Avenue-sexy; the other was not. It was supposedly “neat and tidy” since this hierarchy was what worked for decades, offline.

Beginning only recently, we have started to see an unprecedented shift. A myopic view would suggest that the impetus behind this shift is tied to the overall economy, with “fluffy” ad dollars simply being pinched more than ever.

A broader viewpoint might indicate that advertisers and agencies of all types are taking proactive steps in educating themselves and spending more effectively.

Why exactly is this shift taking place? It is that both brand-focused advertisers and direct response advertisers are moving ad money online, and that the business models ported from the offline world are changing.

For performance marketers who make their living in front of a machine, this isn’t exactly “news” – you know the power, scale, efficiency and measurability of the medium and how to leverage it.

But traditional offline marketers and brand marketers (who still hold a majority of overall ad dollars) are beginning to take a closer look at performance-based campaigns, or at least “hybrid” campaigns.

We will continue to see branding and customer acquisition lines blurred, compounded every time you read about CPM rates declining. I’ve long held the notion that the best way for brand advertisers to extend their brand was to gain more customers, make them happy, keep them, and communicate with them.

Uniquely in the online world, a consumer’s use of social media, blogs, forums, discussion groups after interacting with a brand can be powerful – and measurable. Some large advertisers finally understand this and are surprised at the increased insight they can have into user’s interactions with their product or service.

Is Online there yet in fully satisfying all types of advertisers in peaceful coexistence? Not yet. There is more education needed across the entire advertising ecosystem, measurement techniques can be improved and the economics of the marketplace have to stabilize further.

But for the first time, I’m seeing advertisers and large brands beginning to address the medium internally, push more advertising dollars online and take steps to become more educated. The next few months will be fascinating to watch as this shift presumably becomes more apparent.

The takeaway is that there could be real opportunity for responsible performance-based marketers and affiliates as more ad dollars are funneled online.

Michael Sprouse is the Chief Marketing Officer for Epic Advertising, and is based at the company’s headquarters in New York, NY.

Download the entire FeedFront issue 5 here – http://feedfront.com/feedfront-issue5.pdf
FeedFront issue 5 articles can be found here as well: http://feedfront.com/archives/article00category/issue-5