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

In October 2008, Affiliate Summit had a niche one day show at Baruch College in New York City focused on the different aspects of social media in affiliate marketing.

Lots of exciting buzz around Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and making videos but how can you make money from them? How can you use social media effectively within your business? How do you get started? The keynote and breakout sessions tackled these topics head on and gave the attendees lots of useful tips and ideas.

Don Crowther, social media guru and blogging expert, delivered the day’s keynote setting the tone with electrifying energy. He captivated the audience with stats, tips and ideas. This is definitely a session you can watch multiple times and learn something new each time.

Kudos to Kukral. Jim kept the show moving along as the Emcee and panel moderator. He did an excellent job engaging the speakers, keeping them on their toes and on task. Shawn Collins and various other tweeters kept everyone connected with live twittering throughout the show up on the big screen. Good stuff!

The first panel of the day was Gain Friends and Influence, With Video featuring Steve Rosenbaum, CEO/Founder, Magnify.net and Melissa Salas, Director of Marketing, Buy.com. They concentrated on tailoring videos to your audience and selecting the right content while using lots of first-rate examples.
Next up was Social Media Case Studies, presented by Michael Jenkins, CEO/Founder, MarketLeverage; James Keating, VP of Marketing, ShopWiki; and Jivan Manhas, President, Advaliant. These gentlemen detailed the fundamentals of their own successes with social media – how they got started and what makes them profitable.

The third session was Making Social Media Make Money featuring Larry Bailin, CEO, Single Throw Internet Marketing; Shashi Bellamkonda, Social Media Swami, Network Solutions; and Jay Berkowitz, CEO, Ten Golden Rules. They addressed what blogs and podcasts you should be following, as well as increasing return visitors and how to make them want more.

The last session Leveraging Social Networks with Sachin Agarwal, President/CEO, Dawdle.com; Zac Johnson, President/CEO, MoneyReign, Inc.; and Adam Alter, Head of Network Management at Epic Advertising. They talked about setting up ad campaigns, custom banners and creating landing pages. The panel also discussed how to find what works for your site and building profitable relationships.
Thanks to Platform-A for sponsoring the cocktail hour. It was a nice way to wrap up a fruitful conference day.

To cap the night off, folks headed over to Room Service NY for a party hosted by ShareASale to continue networking. What a terrific venue.

I encourage you to check out the videotaped sessions from the show. Don’s keynote and all of the panels are available on AffiliateSummit.tv.

A special thanks to all of our sponsors, including oneNetworkDirect (Platinum Sponsor) and NextWeb Media (Gold Sponsor).

Thanks to everyone that attended, we appreciate you coming out. It was a lot of fun to have a smaller focused show with attendance capped at 300 and only one track of sessions. Next up… Vegas!

Amy Rodriguez is the Conference Director at Affiliate Summit.

Download the entire FeedFront issue 4 here – http://feedfront.com/feedfront-issue4.pdf
FeedFront issue 4 articles can be found here as well: http://feedfront.com/archives/category/issue-4/

It’s been said over and over that the key to success as an affiliate manager is maintaining good relationships with your affiliates.

The foundation of any good relationship is communication, enforcing the need to be available across multiple channels for your affiliates to get in touch with you.

Making yourself available for your affiliates will increase your effectiveness as an affiliate manager, assist you in preventing fraud, and help to create a lasting bond with your affiliates.

People are all different, and so are their preferences in communications. Broad availability is your best bet. Make yourself available across more than one medium. In your communications to your affiliates, make sure they have multiple ways to contact you at their fingertips.

Your e-mail address, phone number, and physical address should append all messages and correspondence you send to the affiliate so they know immediately how to reach you.

When calling and leaving a message, remember to always leave your phone number – never assume they already have it. If affiliates know how to contact you easily, they will be more likely to get a hold of you before making any wrong moves.

This will help you to keep your affiliates on the straight and narrow with immediate feedback on their promotions ideas.

Communication is dynamic, and in this day and age the number of communication venues is increasing exponentially. Try to stay on that trendy wave and add new ways for affiliates to connect with you as the tide changes.

Create accounts across the popular Instant Messenger channels (AIM, Yahoo, MSN) and across the various microblogging ventures like Twitter, Plurk, and Pownce.

This quick way to get someone’s attention is incredibly easy to monitor with the right desktop applications, and provides affiliates with a way to instantly ping you if they need help. That kind of instant access to you will win over their business.

Social Networks are also a great way to connect with people and interact on a level that’s more human than corporate.

Networks like Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn allow you to connect with your affiliates and share your interests and other ideas. A secure personal relationship with your affiliates will benefit both parties.

As the affiliate manager, your insight into the affiliates’ hobbies will help you to understand how they run their business, and might just give you some unique ideas that you can pass on to them to help you both grow their promotions of your program.

Their insight into your interests will also allow them to make a personal connection and extend some trust to you when you do make those hair-brained suggestions after learning they collect 1970′s McDonalds Happy Meal toys.

Keeping channels open for your myriad of affiliates to contact you will make you an affiliate manager to be trusted, and reckoned with!

Trisha Lyn Fawver is the Marketing Manager for PsPrint.com.

Download issue 2 of FeedFront at http://feedfront.com/feedfront-issue2.pdf
Articles from issue 2 of FeedFront will also be posted at http://feedfront.com/archives/category/issue-2/