YouTube is matching up members of Congress for debates on hot issues in a new channel launching Wednesday.

The channel, dubbed YouTube Town Hall, is filled with debates surrounding the budget, economy, energy, Afghanistan, education and health care. Initially topics were chosen by popularity on Google News and Google web search over the past year, but YouTube plans to accept questions from viewers in the future.

Each debate features two members of Congress who explain their points of view on the given topic in videos made especially for the Town Hall channel.

Sides are not necessarily drawn along party lines, and viewers only find out what party each debater belongs to (unless they recognize him or her, of course) after they choose which person’s perspective they support. Those votes will be tallied and displayed on a leader board to show who is “winning” the debate.

YouTube first started encouraging Congress members’ content in January 2009, with the launch of The Senate Hub and The House Hub. YouTube Head of News and Politics Steve Grove estimates that at that time, about half of the members of Congress had YouTube channels. Now, more than 90% have them, and several presidential candidates — including President Barack Obama — have used YouTube to launch their campaigns.

“Politicians are realizing that being on YouTube is not just a hobby,” Grove says. “It’s faster than other media, more ubiquitous than other media. It’s sight, sound and emotion all in one. It’s probably the most comprehensive way you have to get a message out there.”

YES! Connecting and building relationships with your clients is how GREAT SUCCESSFUL business is done, strong referrals are based on a client, knowing, liking and trusting you, the best way to do that, BUILD RELATIONSHIPS WITH YOUR CLIENTS!

How we help? we make it simple for you, an easy plan that is duplicated on all social media with your branding. How does that does that sound?

We begin by outlining clear goals for your social media marketing efforts and figuring out how you’ll measure success. Once we’ve outlined your goals, let’s look at 10 great ways you can begin to leverage social media for your marketing efforts TODAY!

1. Facebook

Facebook offers exceptional, low cost marketing opportunities for small business. Facebook now has over 300 million users, and while that seems like an outrageous number for small businesses to be targeting, Facebook offers a very powerful platform on which to build a presence. If you’re not already active on Facebook; you should get started right away.

Basic Strategy: If you haven’t signed up for Facebook yet, you absolutely should as soon as possible. Once you’ve signed up, you should also consider securing your company’s username. Be aware, however, that if you reserve your company name for your personal account, you won’t be able to use it for your Business Fan Page (more on those in the Advanced Strategy), so you may want to create a Page before registering your company’s name. Fan Pages have special rules regarding usernames, which I can go over with you when we meet.

You should do one other thing: search for your competitors and evaluate their Facebook presence. What types of Pages have they built? How many fans or “friends” do they have? Spend 15 minutes (per competitor) looking at their posts, photos and/or videos to understand how they’re using Facebook.

Advanced Strategy: You may already have a personal Facebook account, but how do you extend that presence for your business? You have several options. You can register a Business Account – which is designed for a very simple presence on Facebook. There are many limitations on such accounts (read the FAQ here), however, so you’ll most likely prefer to have a Business Fan Page. A Business Fan Page lets you create a page where customers or fans of your business can register as a “fan” — expanding the presence of your business (because your updates will also flow to their pages). You might also want to consider running hyper-local ads on Facebook.

2. Twitter

Twitter has grown tremendously over the past year. For some small businesses, it offers an incredible marketing platform. BusinessWeek’s recent profile of 20 ways businesses use Twitter might give you some ideas about how you can leverage Twitter for your business.

Basic Strategy: If you haven’t signed up on Twitter yet, you should sign up today and reserve an account in the name of your business. While you might ultimately tweet in your own name, you’ll want to have the option to tweet from a business account. More importantly, you don’t want your competitors to register your business name. Twitter has put together a simple guide to help you understand what Twitter can do for business.

Next, you should spend 15-30 minutes on Twitter’s homepage, doing basic searches to become familiar with the type of content available on the service. For example, if you are operating a small gift basket business, do some searches for various terms and phrases such as “gift basket,” “gifts,” “gift basket business,” etc. You should also search for the names of your competitors to see whether they’re on Twitter and if they are, how they’re using it. And don’t forget to search for your small business name – your customers may already be talking about you! Once you become comfortable with the content that’s already available and how your competitors are using Twitter, you can begin thinking about a strategy for how you’ll leverage Twitter for your business.

Advanced Strategy: To truly leverage Twitter, you’ll want to learn and use a few more advanced tools. This includes desktop and mobile Twitter clients like TweetDec, Seesmic , and Tweete. Desktop clients give you more flexibility and more control over your Twitter strategy than you’ll have on the Twitter website. Among other things, you’ll be able to pre-define searches (so that you can monitor certain keywords, including your business name) and group people you follow so that you can minimize the noise and focus on the real content. You might also consider using a web tool like Twitterfall, which will allow you to define (and color-code) various custom searches that you can review from time to time, and also to follow trending topics. For example, I use Twitterfall to identify helpful graphic design and industrial design resources to share with the crowd SPRING community.

3. Company Blog

Although there’s more attention focused today on social networks than on company blogs, blogs continue to offer great value for small businesses.

Basic Strategy: At a minimum, you should consider reserving a domain name for your blog – if you don’t already have a custom domain for your business. If you’re comfortable enough to set up your own blog, that’s generally the best way to proceed – although this requires a bit more technical knowledge (many hosting providers offer a 1 step easy setup for blogs that will automatically install WordPress. You can also setup a blog directly at WordPress.com (it’s easier to do, but you don’t have full control over everything that you would on your own site).

Advanced Strategy: Now that you’ve decided to start or improve your small business blog, how do you build an audience for it? It all starts with great content. Decide on a focus for your blog, and write awesome content that people will enjoy. For example, some months ago at my company, we decided that we wanted to write more about small business issues, so we’ve been writing original posts focusing on issues affecting small businesses. Think about your expertise and more importantly, think about the things that you’re interested in writing about. A blog requires a long term investment of time (and resources), and you don’t want to be stuck writing about things that bore you.

You’ll also want to consider how you can make it easier for your readers to help promote your content. For example, install helpful plug-ins, such as a TweetMeme button, which makes it easy for people to retweet your posts on Twitter. Don’t be afraid to experiment with plugins to add to the functionality of your blog, but keep it simple. You want to keep the blog focused, and easy for your readers to use.

4. LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a business oriented social network for professionals, and it’s huge, with nearly 50 million users from over 200 countries.

Basic Strategy: Once again, you’ll want to at least reserve your business name (or your personal name) so that others can’t use it. Similar to the way you might start exploring Facebook and Twitter, you should look around on LinkedIn to see how your competitors are using the service. You might also look up your customers and connect with them.

Advanced Strategy: LinkedIn has some powerful features that most people don’t use. For example, you can encourage your customers, clients or vendors to give you a “recommendation” on your profile. Recommendations are useful because they’ll make you and your business more credible with new customers. If you’re a roofer, for example, ask your customers to recommend you after a successful job. You’ll find such recommendations useful – particularly since your LinkedIn profile will come up high in search engine results. I recommend that you read Chris Brogan’s post from last year discussing the elements of a good LinkedIn recommendation.

Another strategy involves the many subject matter groups on LinkedIn. Find some groups that have a connection to your small business and become involved in the conversations. Answer questions when you can, and help to establish yourself as knowledgeable about specific topics related to your business. There are many small business and general marketing groups that will be very useful resources for you, and if there isn’t a group that interests you, consider starting one.

5. Participate On Other Blogs

It might seem counter-intuitive for you to spend your valuable time by participating in discussions on other people’s blogs, but the payoff can be very valuable. Remember that it takes time to build a reputation and establish your credibility, and you can’t always expect everyone to come to you. Sometimes, you have to go out and build your own credibility and reputation.

Basic Strategy: Identify 2-3 blogs in your industry, or those that focus on small business, and get into the habit of regularly reading the content and participating in the discussions. Whenever you can, try to add value by sharing a personal story about what has/has not worked for you. Get to know the writers – they’ll be valuable contacts for you. One strategy for identifying good blogs is to use Guy Kawasaki’s Alltop, which is a directory of popular blogs across many different subject areas. For example, for blogs focused on crafts, you might follow this page on Alltop. If you want to participate in blogs focusing on small business issues, you might start at Technorati’s list of the Top 100 Small Business blogs.

Advanced Strategy: Once you’ve spent some time on other blogs and have participated in discussions, you’ll find that you’ve built a level of credibility and trust, based on your participation. You should consider reaching out to the blog owners and asking whether they’d allow you to guest post an article on their blog (kind of like this post). This is a nice way for you to get in front of a bigger audience, and many blog owners will invite guests to post from time to time. Agree on a topic in advance and provide a draft of your post sufficiently in advance of the publication date to give them an opportunity to review.

Alternatively, ask if they would consider guest posting on your blog. Since you’re looking to attract more readers (and more potential customers), either option works well for that purpose. Don’t worry so much about going after the A-list blogs right away. There are many excellent blogs and it might take a bit of time to build your reputation to such a level that you’ll have opportunities to post in the top blogs. That doesn’t mean you should wait, though – make opportunities for yourself and offer to guest write whenever you can find a new audience. I recommend you read How To Guest Post To Promote Your Blog from blogging expert Darren Rowse.

6. Mobile Social Networks and other Local Strategies

Yelp publishes millions of reviews about local businesses. Foursquare is a combination city-guide, friend finder and competitive game. It allows users to “check in” by cell phone at a local venue and announce this via other social networks such as Twitter.

Basic Strategy: Yelp, Foursquare, and other mobile social networks can be powerful marketing channels for small businesses. You should at the very least register accounts on the popular services and get to know them. If you have a restaurant or a retail store, for example, you’ll want to get to know Yelp pretty well. You can set up a business account on Yelp (no cost), which will let you answer questions about your business, track how many Yelp users view your business page, add information about your business, and announce special promotions. Similarly, you’ll want to sign up with Foursquare to take advantage of local advertising opportunities. Using Foursquare, you’ll be able to push promotions to potential customers who’re in the vicinity of your business.

You should also consider other local strategies. For example, you can add your business to Google Maps, or update your listing to include additional details. You can do the same on Bing.

Advanced Strategy: If you believe that your business can truly benefit from a presence on Yelp, Foursquare, or similar networks, you’ll want to do more than just register accounts with those services. For example, Yelp allows you to include a website URL for your business. Nearly all sites will let you upload photos to your profile, and photos will make your profile more trustworthy.

You can also proactively use Yelp and other similar services to promote your business. Ask your customers, friends and family who have used your services for a review on Yelp. You can encourage reviews by running promotions or discounts – offering free appetizers, for example, to a customer who will write a review about their meal at your restaurant (or to one who already wrote a review), or a small discount to a customer who hires you for carpentry work and mentions that they found you through Yelp.

Similarly, you can find ways to promote your business using Foursquare and similar networks. If you have a TV display in your store connected to a computer, you can display the people who are checking in. You can offer specials or discounts to the person who visits your location the most (this is similar to frequent buyer cards that many businesses have used for years).

Don’t forget to also consider how you can improve your use of other basic local strategies. For example, many small business websites are optimized for specific keywords or subject areas, but are rarely optimized for local searches. If you have a gift basket business, you’ll want to be sure that users searching for gift baskets in your geographic area will find you.

7. Comments and Conversations About Your Company

Whether or not you are a party to the conversations, people will talk about your company. How do you monitor and, when appropriate, join those discussions?

Basic Strategy: There are five simple steps you can take today to begin paying attention to conversations about your business.

First, set up Google Alerts. Google Alerts are free email updates from Google search results about any topic you’re interested in tracking. For example, I track, among other alerts, the names of our competitors, the name of our company, and certain other terms I believe are important to my business. Anytime Google adds something to its index that mentions my company or the other terms I’m tracking, I receive an immediate email notification with a link to that item. Alerts can be set up for web, blog, news, video, or groups searches.

Second, review the results in your web analytics data. At my company, we use Google Analytics, Google Analytics is a free tool from Google that provides detailed and very useful information about your website traffic and the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. When we run social media campaigns, we’ll often attach tracking tags to those campaigns so that we can properly monitor them in Google Analytics. This is important because without such data it will be nearly impossible for you to evaluate the success of your social media marketing efforts. But analytics are important for another reason: they’ll tell you which sites are sending traffic to your site.

Third, search Facebook. In August, Facebook rolled out a real-time search engine. One effective way to take advantage of Facebook search is to search for your company’s name to see who is talking about your company and what they’re saying. In several months, you’ll be able to search Facebook updates directly from Bing, which will be integrating Facebook public updates into Bing’s search results.

Fourth, search Twitter. You currently can search Twitter for real-time results (if you’re not logged in, just go to Twitter’s homepage). One easy way to monitor conversations about your company is to search for your company’s name. You can also currently do this on Bing, which is indexing Twitter updates. Very soon, you’ll also be able to search Twitter updates (and other social media content) via Google’s Social Search (Social Search was rolled out to Google Labs. You can also use Twitter clients like TweetDeck or Seesmic to save searches and monitor in real-time whenever someone uses a specific word or phrase in a tweet.

Finally, take advantage of services that will, similar to Google Alerts, push data to you. I use and like BackType, which is a real-time search engine that indexes online conversations in thousands of blogs and social networks. I use BackType primarily to keep up with conversations in blogs. Every day, I receive emails from BackType with links to comments that include the keywords I’m monitoring. Without these alerts, I would be unable to monitor so many blogs, and my ability to respond to posts about my company would be very limited.

Advanced Strategy: If you’re having trouble keeping track of your various search strategies, you should consolidate your efforts and leverage one of the many applications that will help you monitor the social web. I have not personally used these services, but they appear to be held in high esteem by knowledgeable people who have. For example, truVOICE provides keyword monitoring of the social web with an emphasis on blogs and forums, while Radian6 pulls in a lot of information from the social web, analyzes it, and provides consumer sentiment ratings for your brand.

In addition to monitoring, you’ll need to decide how, when, and where you’ll engage in conversations. It’ll be very difficult for you to engage in conversations everywhere, so you should spend some time learning the various networks and deciding where you should focus your efforts. Looking at your website analytics data — if you own an online business — will help a great deal because it’ll help you to better understand where your traffic is coming from. If much of your traffic originates from Twitter and Facebook, for example, you’ll want to spend more time on those services.

8. Multimedia

Multimedia (video, photos, audio) is a bit more complicated for many small businesses to execute, but can provide excellent social media marketing opportunities.

Basic Strategy: YouTube has been constantly evolving and adding features that make it an attractive social site for small businesses. Although you don’t have to produce videos to participate on YouTube, you should consider whether simple videos can help your marketing efforts. For example, if you’re already posting videos to your blog, you can upload them to YouTube to reach a broader audience, and embed the video content in your blog posts. YouTube has also been adding more comprehensive activity updates for its users and has made pretty powerful analytics tools available so that you can evaluate the effectiveness of your video content.

Similarly, you could start a Flickr account for your business and post photos of your customers or your products (or both). Flickr offers a place where people can share photos with others, but also has discussion groups, many focused on local markets, that offer additional opportunities for you to market your business. You can also consider setting up your own Internet radio talk show using BlogTalkRadio, which is another way to use multimedia to speak directly to your customers. Get creative with it — own a restaurant? Start a call-in show for people to ask cooking questions. Are you a piano teacher? Perhaps you could start a show to talk about classical music.

Advanced Strategy: Advanced strategies using multimedia are complicated and typically benefit from using experienced consultants. One effective way to leverage video, for example, is to create content that has the potential to become viral. While I don’t believe you can set out to make a viral video (an incredible amount of luck is typically involved), there are a number of things you can typically do to build awareness about your small business using viral video (these strategies are beyond the scope of this post). Once you’ve created good content, you’ll want to distribute it using as many social networks as you can.

When you consider how you can leverage social networks, think about whether each network provides an audience or a technology solution (or both). For example, YouTube provides both a huge audience and a solution for uploading video files. Flickr can also provide both an audience and a technology solution, but not for every business. While your customers might not be on Flickr, you can still use Flickr as a place to store and tag your photos, and then distribute those photos to other social networks where you prefer to invest more time and effort.

9. Maintain Brand Consistency

We’ve discussed only a small handful of social networks. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of others, and new ones spring up every day. That means that your customers will have many different ways to find you. But they won’t find you if your brand is scattered across social networks using different usernames and profiles. Let’s review some strategies for making sure that your brand is consistent across social networks.

Basic Strategy: Usernames and user profiles are already showing up in search results. Do a search for your company’s name on Google right now — if you also have a Twitter account with the same name, odds are pretty good that the Twitter account will appear very high in the search results. This means that having a consistent username across the various social networks is very important. At a minimum, if you haven’t registered your company name on the major networks (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.), you should do that today. For many small businesses, their user accounts on social networks will be the highest ranked pages in search results.

You should also evaluate your email and web presence strategies. For example, are you using a Gmail, email address when you can very easily be using a custom email address with your company name as your domain? Compare: restaurantname@gmail.com with john@restaurantname.com — which looks more professional? Similarly, are you hosting your blog at WordPress.com instead of on your own custom domain? Little details can make a difference.

Advanced Strategy: Things get a bit more complicated when you consider that there are many different social networks, and it’s tough to predict which of them will become popular and which will fail. Use a service such as namechk or KnowEm to see whether your username is available on dozens of popular social networks and if it’s not, to see which username could be registered across all social networks.

Maintaining name consistency is important, but isn’t enough by itself. You’ll also want to make sure that your brand speaks with a common “voice” across the social networks. This may be easier said than done. Social networks differ in significant ways from one another and present unique challenges for interacting with customers and potential customers on those networks.

Speaking with a common “voice” doesn’t mean that only one person should execute your company’s social media marketing strategy, but it does mean that everyone who speaks on behalf of your company in social media reflects your brand in a consistent way. I recommend you read Shel Israel’s recently published book “Twitterville,” for excellent tips and stories focusing on how large and small businesses can develop a consistent voice in social media.

10. Leverage Combinations of Social Media Tools

One of the best ways for small businesses to leverage social media marketing is to use various social networks in combination with each other.

Basic Strategy: At a minimum, you should do several things today to cross-market across the various social networks you’re most likely already using. Here are three suggestions:

First, connect your Twitter account to Facebook so that your tweets will appear in your public updates on Facebook. This will let you leverage your time on Twitter to also update your Facebook fans.

Second, connect your LinkedIn profile to your WordPress blog. LinkedIn allows you to publish, in your profile, synopses of the most recent blog posts on your blog. This application will automatically update your LinkedIn profile with your most recent blog posts.

Third, integrate Twitter tools into your blog. I like and use the TweetMeme retweet button on my blogs to make it easier for users to tweet about the blog posts. I also use the ShareThis tool to enable readers to quickly share content on multiple social networks.

Advanced Strategy: Advanced strategies require careful planning/execution and appropriate tools. In nearly all cases, your goal is to maximize the value of your content. For example, if you’re posting videos on YouTube or Vimeo you can blog about those videos on your company’s blog. Then, you can tweet about the blog posts on Twitter (which I assume is integrated with your Facebook account). This way, you’ve taken one piece of content and found a way to leverage it across multiple social networks.

You’ll also want to consider ways that you can optimize the distribution to multiple social networks at the same time. Leverage tools to help you do this. For example, Ping.fm lets you update multiple social networks all in one go. Keep in mind that not all social networks will make sense for every business. Learn which networks are best for your business and find ways to leverage combination of those networks to make your marketing more effective.

Conclusion

Social media marketing can be a phenomenal marketing channel for small businesses. I hope that the strategies I’ve outlined above provide a starting point for you to explore how you can leverage social media marketing for your small business. Cal us directly at 772-285-2119 to see what social media can do for you and your business.

Consumers have grown immune to big budget advertising, but marketers that expend a bit of time and effort — rather than piles of money — can generate effective results with inexpensive, small-scale stunts.

Take a look through our gallery of guerrilla and street marketing examples, where promotions costing no more than a few dollars can have a big impact on the consumers.

Nike



Absolute



Dirty Water Today?

What if someone bottled the water that millions in developing countries drink every day and offered it on the streets of New York?

For just a buck, during World Water Week (March 22-29), New Yorkers in the Union Square Park area were able to enjoy the benefits of DIRTY WATER. It was available in a wide variety of choices like MALARIA, CHOLERA or even TYPHOID DIRTY WATER — and currently has 900 million consumers. Over 4,200 children die of water related diseases every day and millions of people around the world lack access to clean water resources.

New Yorkers were startled to find YELLOW FEVER or HEPATITIS DIRTY WATER bottles. They looked at the vending machine in disgust. Though no one drank Dirty Water,many did donate to the cause. This idea of “selling” dirty water was inspired by UNICEF’s promise that every dollar donated would provide safe drinking water to 40 children for a day.

This eye-opening DIRTY WATER initiative from Casanova Pendrill New York, goes beyond collecting funds for UNICEF in a unique active street effort. The goal was to shock the media and the public with this alarming issue.

The campaign is currently active since people can continue donating online at tapproject.org or via text message. Text TAP or AGUA to UNICEF (864233) to make a $5 donation.

This effort is part of a much bigger pro-bono Spanish/English campaign that Casanova Pendrill executed within UNICEF´s Tapproject.org. This is first time the campaign expands to Multicultural. Casanova has managed to secure half a million dollars in donated media and developed TV spots, Radio, Outdoor, web banners and outdoor events.

“Dirty Water© is not an actual product, but a real problem for millions of children around the world.”

For more information, to see photos, and to watch the Spanish-language version of this video, visit:

http://www.Dirtywaterinfo.com

Super Glue Street Marketing



Ikea Guerilla Manhattan

Thanks to http://mashable.com/2010/10/06/guerrilla-marketing-videos/

Do you have a free LinkedIn account? Have you considered upgrading to a paid account? Wondering if it’s worth it?

There are several options to choose from. Which one would be right for you?

In this article, we cover what you actually get for your money and how you might use some of the enhanced features.

Let’s take each area of the business upgrade in turn and run through it.

Here’s what you get for your money, but what does it all mean and how are you going to make use of it?

#1: InMails per Month

An InMail is simply an email that can be sent to anyone on LinkedIn, whether they’re in your network or not. Before you say, “Why don’t I just call and get the person’s email address and use that for free?”, the LinkedIn InMails work much better. In fact, LinkedIn actually states that InMails are 30% more effective than using regular emails.

They’re more successful because they’re less of a cold, spammy email, the person to whom you’re sending it instantly knows that you’re part of the LinkedIn community and the receiver can also simply click on your name and check you out very quickly. If they like what they see, they may respond favorably.

The really cool thing here is if you don’t get a reply within 7 days, you get the credit back to your account where it can sit for up to 90 days. In effect, you get a refund.

I’ve used InMails very successfully and my secret to you is keep the content light and be yourself. No carefully crafted company content here. You may simply want to send a message of congratulations to a CEO who just won entrepreneur of the year, or some other little snippet that you’ve picked up in the news.

You can then put a quick one-liner at the end to say something like “Now you know I exist, if you ever need any help with (insert industry), you know where I am.” All you’re trying to do is put yourself on their radar for the future, so don’t overdo it! Remember, they can very easily just click on your profile and see what it is you do.

#2: Profile Organizer

This is a great tool if you’re doing a lot of research on LinkedIn. Ideal for recruitment, or simply prospecting, you can create folders and add profiles to them.

You don’t have to keep rerunning a search and wondering where you are with the search results, as the profile organizer also allows you to make notes and add contact details only visible to you about each profile. When you go to your profile organizer, you can see what messages you’ve sent as well as the notes and what folder they’re in.

Makes it easy to “file” people.

#3: Premium Search Filters

With the upgrade, you can find exactly who you’re looking for in half the time, view their full profile and then make contact with InMail. With the free version, your search is limited and you’re much more restricted. It can be time-consuming to check through each profile for criteria you’re looking for.

You get the extra search functions (highlighted with the gold logo).

#4: Profiles per Search

With a pro account, you’ll get up to 1000 search results. This is very handy if you use LinkedIn a lot. In the free version, you get a maximum of 100 results per search, even if there are thousands to choose from, and LinkedIn will automatically pull to the front people within your network. By network, I mean your first-, second- and third-degree connections. The search function will then look for profiles outside of your network if it needs to.

#5: Saved Search Alerts

Another labor-saver that you can set up is when someone either changes their job role or joins LinkedIn and matches the criteria you’re looking for, you get an email. Almost like a Google alert, you simply get the information in an email.

Set up an alert to make search easy.

#6: Introduction Requests

Introductions are available with the free account also, but with the upgrade, you’re allowed to have 50 outstanding at any one time.

Introductions simply allow you to send a message to someone you’re not connected to, via someone you are connected to. You can write a note for the person you’re trying to contact (person A), and write a separate note for the person you want to pass it on (person B). The beauty is that person B can see what you want her to pass on to person A, and make a decision whether she’s happy to do so. Person B then has the option to send it on or decline.

You can send an introduction to people in your second- and third-degree network. The only thing I don’t like about this is the message doesn’t appear in your regular email box (i.e., in Outlook), it only appears in your inbox in LinkedIn. So you need to visit your inbox on LinkedIn regularly.

#7: Profile Stats

Now I really like this as it gives you a good insight into how people are finding you. You can see who has viewed your profile (as long as they’ve not opted to be known as “anonymous user”), the keywords that were used to find your profile and the number of times you appeared in the search. That’s great to know so that you can tweak things on your own profile if necessary.

How often do you appear in someone’s search?

#8: Expanded View

Sometimes you may do a search and the results come back with PRIVATE. This happens when the person you’re searching for is out of your network. Even with the upgraded version, you won’t get to see the expanded profiles of everyone on LinkedIn.

What you will get though is the full name of your third-degree connections; whereas the free users will only see their third-degree connection’s first name and last initial. You can’t ever see the full name of those people out of your network unless you’re searching via their name.

A workaround is to simply Google the current position information and, very often, you’ll find your answer. You can then search for the person in the usual way on LinkedIn and send an InMail.

No more secrecy.

#9: Open Link

Allow people to contact you.

Another option to consider is whether to use the Open Link icon or not. On my profile I want people to contact me. So by having this little icon present, it allows anyone on LinkedIn to get in touch with me without having to use an introduction or an InMail, so it’s free and easy to do.

#10: Sneak Peeks

When any new features are due to come out, you get a sneak peek of the upcoming features. Very cool.

The beauty of the upgraded version is that you can simply try it out to see if you like it. There’s no contract, so if you change your mind, you can revert back to the free version. Although you may wish you hadn’t. You get quite used to the extra functionality.

How do you SEARCH?

With Valentine’s Day coming, jewelers are gearing up for sales of engagement rings. This year, the hottest trend is blue sapphire rings, the kind Prince William presented to Kate Middleton last November.

“Almost immediately we saw increased traffic, increased phone calls, asking about blue sapphires,” says John Baird of Blue Nile. His company quickly began creating special rings to cash in on the royal wedding craze, like this $7,500 ring weighing just under three carats, and this massive, 20-carat ring for $130,000. “This is a blue sapphire inspired by Kate Middleton’s ring,” Baird says, “actually, it’s a little bigger than her ring.”

He let me try it on.

Then he made me give it back.

Blue Nile’s stock price is up 35 percent since the day of the royal engagement. Baird says sales of blue sapphire rings are up 40 percent from a year ago. The company changed its key search words on Google to capture as many customers as possible. “We started looking for words that we wouldn’t normally use, like ‘royal wedding’ or ‘Kate Middleton’ or “Princess Diana sapphire’.”

Retail Director, Dan Schock, says searches for sapphire engagement rings are up 25 percent from a year ago. He worked with advertising partners to make them awared of the increased interest so they could best use Google’s tools to capitalize on it. “As an example, HSN took advantage of that by creating a royal engagement replica ring, and then advertising that ring on searches for engagement rings, royal engagement rings, Princess Diana rings, etc.”

Ray Galeotti at Eve’s Addiction says his online jewelry company jumped in, immediately making a $56 knockoff. “Additionally, to broaden our visibility on the internet and obtain a larger audience, we included the ring in images that are served on the Google Content Network,” Galeotti tells me. “These ads are targeted to sites that main focus on celebrities and fashion.”

Interest in the rings peaked in November after the engagement was announced, then tapered off after the holidays. “It’s picked up again,” says Google’s Dan Schock. “As we go into Valentine’s Day, we see about a 10 percent increase in searches for sapphire engagement rings, so it seems to be the ring that people are going to be buying this Valentine’s Day.” When I asked him if he’s bought one yet, he laughed, “I already bought one a few years ago for my wife.” Good man.

Thansk to CNBC

Another big bonus is that the framework of a CMS site can have an effect on the search engine optimization (SEO)-friendliness of a website. “Cleaner code” like that used in a CMS site allows the search engines to “crawl” your site effectively (something they like to do when they are trying to rank a website). With a good CMS website designed and working for your business, you don’t have to worry about “bulky code” that can slow things down or hinder a search engine crawl, making it much easier to plan and execute effective SEO strategy that works to get your site ranked higher in searches.

Top 10 Reasons to Use a CMS

1. A CMS makes it easy for clients to update content, including adding pages, photos, video, files, etc. Limited coding knowledge? No problem with a CMS.
2. A CMS enables blogging, which keeps content fresh and search engine spiders returning.
3. A CMS takes much of the legwork out of SEO, as pages/content/code are set up to be SEO-friendly out of the box.
4. The CMS tools we work with are easy to integrate with social networking sites.
5. A CMS allows multi-user access with varying levels of permissions, so employees can edit/manage the website.
6. A CMS makes it easy to integrate other functionality such as shopping carts, image galleries, discussion boards, and much more.
7. Scalability is easy without having to redesign or rebuild your site.
8. A CMS is cost-effective since you don’t need your designer to make most changes.
9. A CMS offers fast development time since you work with reusable templates.
10. With a CMS, you can manage multiple websites in one location.

There are a lot of obvious elements you need to include to make a blog reader-friendly: quality, compelling content, good navigation, a contact page, an about page, focus and clarity about the subject of the blog… and there’s a lot of not-so-obvious or overlooked things that can really help make a blog stand out if they’re implemented.

While I do have my own list of do’s and don’ts included, I decided to get input from other smart, savvy bloggers. I posted a request on LinkedIn Answers and received many great do’s and don’ts. I’ve grouped the tips into five categories: Planning, Content, Design, Marketing and Engagement.

#1: Planning Your Business Blog

Do: Know your “Big Why” – Why are you in business? What is your purpose and ultimate goal for serving others? Clarity about your purpose, your goals, your ideal client and how you transform people’s lives will help guide all the content on your business blog.

Do: Know what you mean when you say successful. Are you trying to get more sales? Develop relationships? Inform current customers? Having a specific goal for your blog will shape the rest of your strategy. From Cordelia Blake

Do: Keyword research before starting a blog. First, compile a list of keywords (and, more importantly, keyword phrases) you think your business should rank for. Then, go to Google Keyword tool and type in those phrases to find out how many actual searches are done per month. You would be surprised how different Google’s list may turn out from your own. Use the list Google suggests as your starting point. From Boris Mahovac

Too Read More click here…

Next year, 80% of companies with 100 or more employees are expected to use social-media tools for marketing, up from 73% in 2010 and nearly double the usage rate in 2008, according to eMarketer. Surely that means big budget increases for next year, right?

In some cases the answer is yes. But for a lot of marketers, the budgeting question is getting harder to answer, not easier. If there’s one thing I learned from researching my new report on “Social Media in the Marketing Mix,” it’s that many marketers have no idea how much they’re budgeting on social — or no good way to tabulate it. Here’s why:

Too many cooks. As marketers continue to ramp up their social-media efforts, they are still using multiple resources, both internal and external, to create Facebook pages, manage Twitter feeds, develop viral videos and, of course, measure the impact.

Businesses remain torn over whether the best strategy is to manage social media through their corporate communications group, their marketing department, or a separate social-media group. Adding to the complexity: marketers are inundated with pitches from ad agencies, PR agencies and social-media vendors — all hungry for new projects for 2011.

Social media is free, right? In some business sectors, the thinking still holds that social media is free, or nearly free. Although earned media — the value that companies get when their marketing messages spread virally — is indeed free publicity, there is almost always a cost associated with it, whether it be staffing, creative development or monitoring the results.

The good news is most marketers say they are increasing social-media spending next year. But the actual dollar amounts are all over the map.

In a worldwide survey by SEOmoz, a search-marketing company, more than half of the 9,000 respondents said their budget for outsourced social-media marketing was zero. Only 2.9% said they spent more than $5,000 per month.

On the other end of the spectrum is Altimeter Group, which surveyed 140 social-media strategists at major businesses for a report on the corporate social-media strategist function. One-third of respondents indicated that their company was spending between $100,000 to $500,000 in 2010, and 23% had a budget of $500,000 or more. These companies can be considered among the leading adopters of social media.

There are few benchmarks. Marketers don’t agree on how much of their marketing budgets they should spend on social media. Surveys indicate that marketers spend 4% to 11% of their online marketing budgets on social media. This wide divergence is indicative of the fact that social-media marketing budgets are spread across multiple departments and groups, and that some types of companies and industries are more advanced than others.

What does this mean? Even if companies find it impossible to set a specific budget for social media, they can still take a holistic approach, incorporating it into their marketing planning from the start. At General Motors, budgets for social media next year will come from the brand marketing groups, according to social media chief Christopher Barger.

That means GM will do a better job of aligning its social strategy with the rest of its marketing strategy. And by shifting management to the brand groups, it does something more important: it gives social media a place at the adults’ dinner table, not the kids’ table.

That, in the end, may be a better strategy. Maybe marketers should worry less about how much they are spending on social media, or whether there should be a separate budget, and more about whether those dollars are working as hard as they can, producing real, quantifiable results. To read original….

The co-founders and managing partners of Chocomize (from left to right: Erick Heinbockel, 24, of Moorestown, N.J.; Nick LaCava, 23, of Princeton, N.J.; and Fabian Kaempfer, 24, of Nuremberg, Germany) experienced growing pains at their chocolate business after being featured in a magazine article.

Nick LaCava and his two business partners got sweet news this spring: O, the Oprah Magazine planned to tout their candy bars in the June issue.

The ensuing write-up was a mere 30 words. But its description of Chocomize’s “luscious chocolate” whetted the appetites of thousands of people across the country. The small, New Jersey-based confectioner was hit with a dramatic rise in orders and an influx of calls and e-mails. Before the article, “we were probably getting around 15 e-mails and 15 phone calls a day,” LaCava says. “After the magazine came out, we would get anywhere from 50 to 100 e-mails and phone calls a day, which made things really stressful.”

The founders of Chocomize had anticipated a sales uptick, but they weren’t prepared for the fivefold increase in orders. Then one of their chocolate-making machines gave out.

“It was like, ‘Oh my God, we’re not really sure about what we’re going to do,’ ” LaCava says.

With some fast driving (one partner found a new machine and drove two hours each way to fetch it), and some quick thinking (they brought on college interns to answer calls and e-mails), they managed to survive the weeks of tumult that followed.

“We really had to really figure stuff out in terms of efficiency,” says LaCava. “When things were pretty chaotic, we thought, ‘We’ve got to try new things.’ To Read More…

Too Much To Handle?

From smartphones to souped-up servers, a plethora of technological tools can help small businesses as they expand. Yet with so many options — and so many business demands that need to be met — technology can be daunting for even the most experienced entrepreneurs.

“It’s this feeling that you’re falling behind constantly,” says Todd Thibodeaux, CEO of the Computing Technology Industry Association, the country’s largest IT trade association.

“There is so much change out there,” he says, and business owners often have much “fear and frustration” as they try to keep up.

There’s the cost: Growing businesses often have to shell out big bucks for equipment that could quickly become obsolete. There’s also the time factor: 43% of business owners spend more than two hours a week on technology problems, according to a National Small Business Association (NSBA) survey to be released this week. To Read More…