Source:  TopRankBlog.com

Plenty of bloggers are talking about the inevitable intersection of social media marketing and search engine optimization. Heck, we’ve been blogging about SMOsince 2006! Keyword optimized social content and channels of promotion provide abundant signals to search engines for improved visibility on standard, social and real-time search.

The changing nature of social media marketing and optimization create the need for tools whether for research, marketing and promotion or analytics. Here are 11 social media and SEO tools you might find useful:

• howsociable.com – Social visibility score
• knowem.com – Profile building tool
• Social Media for Firefox – Build a powerful social profile on social news & bookmarking sites
• semrush.com – Find competitor organic search rankings
• Google Insights – Keyword demand trends
• Page Inlink Analyzer – Analyze inbound links, their Delicious bookmarks & keyword tags
• majesticseo.com – Historical back-link tracking
• trackur.com – Social media monitoring
• socialmention.com – Real-time social search & scoring, social keyword research
• bit.ly – Search friendly URL shortening with analytics
• analytics.postrank.com – Track social engagement with combined Google & social analytics

Below are continue reading

Source:  NewMediaAge / www.nma.co.uk / By Sean Hargrave

Ever since MySpace and Facebook launched mobile sites in 2007, social networking has been tipped as the killer app that would get people using their phones to go on the mobile web. With February’s news that Facebook receives 100m visits a month through mobiles, that optimism appears well-founded. Indeed, figures from ComScore suggest a third of all internet activity initiated on a mobile phone is bound for Facebook, with Bebo on 3% of visits and MySpace and Twitter each on 2%.

However, ComScore’s senior mobile analyst, Alistair Hill, believes the huge opportunity this offers the social networks to raise revenue by allowing brands to interact with this massive mobile internet audience isn’t being used. “It’s surprising that Facebook doesn’t have a mobile sales offering,” he says. “You could argue it’s building the audience and refining what it does online first. But it means there’s a huge amount of traffic which isn’t being as well monetised as it might otherwise continue reading

Source:  SmallBizTrends.com / By Susan L Reid

How’s the first quarter of 2010 — and the rest of the year — looking for you and your business?

Are you primed and ready to make money this year?

Have you put a plan in place to promote your business and maximize your success?

Here are ten quick, easy-to-implement things you can do that will guarantee your online business will be making you money this year:

Write down your personal affirmation for the month and the year.

The goal here is to help you step back from the hustle and bustle and stay focused on what’s important to you.

Get your story, idea, product, or service announcement out into the marketplace seven different ways, all at once.

Choose from these options to make a powerful impact:

1. Press release
2. Blog post
3. Facebook
4. E-zine blast
5. Email announcement
6. Videocast
7. Downloadable audio snatch
8. Free e-book
9. Podcast
10. Teleseminar

Use free classified ads to continue reading

Unlike most of my other “How To” Videos, this one is not targeted for the beginner.  We’ll categorize this one as Intermediate/Beginner.  If you know what an FTP client is, and if you know how to gain FTP access to the web server that your blog sits on, then you won’t have any problem.

If all this makes you nervous, you might try a WordPress Automatic Upgrade Solution.

If you have a WordPress.com Blog – don’t sweat a thing, upgrades are taken care of for you.

The reality is, many folks have someone else set up and install their WordPress.org Blog.  But what happens when an update is necessary?  Watch this video on How To Update Your WordPress.org Blog.  If you have any questions, let me know and I’ll help you out.

Source:  WebPronews.com / Chris Crum

Familiar Marketing Tactics can also work for Journalists

When businesses think about search and social media, a great deal of the time, they are thinking about traffic, customer engagement, and brand awareness. While these are all good things to consider, there may be more to that last one that you have spent much time thinking about.

Brand awareness goes beyond just having a random customer find your site in a set of search results or through a link from their Facebook news feed. Have you considered how channels like search and social media are used by media outlets and journalists? The fact of the matter is that journalists and bloggers alike utilize both to a great extent while covering their beats.

Search and social both play significant roles in PR. This is a topic that WebProNews recentlydiscussed with TopRank Online Marketing CEO Lee Odden. Odden calls journalists customers, and in many ways they should be treated as such when it comes to getting your product or site in front of their eyeballs.

Odden says to look at what it is you can do as a marketer to make it easier for the journalist to do their job. Optimize your content for what a journalist is looking for. This is one way you can continue reading

Source:  MarketingProfs Daily Fix / Mario Sundar

Since my last post on corporate blogging here, a lot has changed. I’ve had a chance to practice many of the concepts I preached, as LinkedIn’s corporate blog editor. I’ve also had the acquaintance of other corporate bloggers whom I greatly respect. So, it was a thrill to be able to bring together four of my peers for a dream panel at Blog World Expo, which I moderated. The topic: 7 Habits of Highly Effective Business Bloggers.

The panel included my friends Lionel Menchaca from Dell, Nicki Dugan from Yahoo!, Carolyn Abram from Facebook and Thomas Hoehn from Kodak. We had great participation from our audience but I’d be remiss not to share our learnings and presentation with you.

Given below are the key lessons that we shared with the audience members. continue reading

Source:  Saleshq.monster.com

Building great relationships with clients is a cornerstone of a successful career in sales. Achieving this means more than just a benefit for your customers in knowing that they can count on you for the very best in product knowledge and advice, plus after-sales support. You stand to gain as well when those satisfied customers tell their friends and colleagues about you. Referrals have a unique capability in that they have the potential to generate new clients for you without you having to seek out those clients first.

Given that kind of power, you’d think that everyone out there would be making good use of referrals, right? Surprisingly very few businesses out there capitalize on word-of-mouth from their existing customers. I’ve found this to be the case in my discussions with groups during Engage sales training exercises, and I’m not alone. Business guru Tom Peters recalls how he once polled executives at a workshop and asked them what percentage of their customers were giving their businesses all they could, including referrals. He was stunned by the answer: “I knew they would be quite a bit lower than 100%, but I’ve found that most executives estimate that only somewhere between 0 and 25% of customers are giving them all the business they could. The numbers are even lower for referral sources.”

There are a few reasons for this. Among them is that classics mistakes are often committed when asking for referrals (I will be addressing that in the next engaging ideas). Another is that many simply aren’t persistent enough and referrals end up being more of a piecemeal exercise than something methodical and focused. This is why I recommend that sales people and business owners consider developing an in-house referral program. You have a great story to tell about your company, your products or services, as well as the way you work with customers. So you owe it to yourself to make sure everyone gets to hear that continue reading

Source:  Mashable

The University of Maryland’s Smith School of Business looked at the relationship between social media and small businesses and found that the technology adoption rates in the U.S. have doubled in the past year from 12% to 24%.

The data comes straight from the university’s third installment to its Small Business Success Index report and is based on a December 2009 telephone survey of 500 small business owners. Adoption rate calculations are compared against a baseline report conducted in December 2008.

continue reading

Wal-Mart makes streaming push with Vudu buy

Wal-Mart has bought digital-streaming service Vudu, which will give Wal-Mart the capability to sell and rent high-definition movies that consumers can receive online. Wal-Mart’s digital-download offerings are currently limited to music, but the Vudu purchase gives it rights to more than 2,000 downloadable high-definition movies.

ClipSyndicate/Bloomberg (2/23) ,The Wall Street Journal (2/23) , Bloomberg BusinessWeek (2/22)

Source:  WomenInTechnology.co.uk

Beloved children’s doll Barbie has joined the illustrious ranks of role models in IT after consumers voted for her 126th career to be a computer engineer.

The iconic toy’s new career was unveiled last week (February 12th) at the New York Toy Fair after an online poll which captured the attention of women in technology around the world, including Microsoft technical recruiter Janelle Godfrey.

In a statement from Mattel, the makers of Barbie, the toy manufacturer said that they hoped having such an iconic figure as “an ambassador from female computer engineers can help inspire a new generation of girls to hone in on their computer skills and become a part of this growing profession”.

Equipped with a smartphone, Bluetooth headset and stylish geek-chic clothes, Computer Engineer Barbie‘s accessories were created in conjunction with the Society of Women Engineers and the National Academy of Engineering.

Continue reading