Twitter is without a doubt one of the fastest growing social networking channels on the Internet today.  Nielsen reported that Twitter had a massive 1,382 percent growth rate from February 2008 to February 2009.

As people are jumping on Twitter to join the conversations, many are not only faced with the challenge of answering the question, “What are you doing?” in 140 characters or less, but they are often overwhelmed by the terminology that is unique to Twitter.  To help ease some confusion, here’s a list of some of the most commonly used terms and communication shortcuts on Twitter:

Tweet
Starting with the basics, a tweet is a 140-character message or update sent via Twitter. Tweets can be sent by various means including your mobile phone, the Internet, or third party applications. Tweets are public and can be viewed by any Twitter user, with the exception of Direct Messages and Protected Tweets, both of which are mentioned below.

RT @username
Also known as “retweets”, RT @username is a way to re-send a tweet. Through retweets, you are able to send someone else’s message to other Twitterers who are following you.  Retweets are very similar to forwarding emails and out of courtesy, it’s best to credit the original creator with the @username.

@username
These can be used to reply to a tweet, mention another user, or direct a tweet to someone. When replying to a tweet, the @username typically appears at the beginning of the tweet and when using the @username in the middle or near the end of the tweet, it’s often used to mention or direct the tweet to another user. It’s important to note that these replies can be viewed by anyone on Twitter and the @username is a way for others to know who you are “talking” to. 

Direct Messages
Direct Messages are tweets that are sent to a specific user and are not viewable on the public timeline. They are similar to Messages on Facebook, for those who are more familiar with that social networking channel.

Favorites
Favorites are essentially bookmarked tweets.  They are a way for you to share your favorite tweets with Twitterers. In addition to the short bio that you can provide about yourself, favorites enable you to showcase the type of information that is most interesting to you.

#hashtags
#hashtags (where the topic or keyword is used in place of the word “hashtag”) are used to group tweets by topic or keyword. To have your tweets grouped with others about the same topic, include the #hashtag in your tweets.   For a look at the most popular hastags, visit http://hashtags.org/.

Now that you know the basics, you’re ready to jump in and start tweeting!

A long, long time ago in 2004, two social network sites began; Facebook and MySpace.  Who would have foreseen the dramatic impact both of these networking portals would have on our lives in a short span of five years. 

Since their foundation in 2004, each of these social networks has experienced dramatic changes, not only in the way they function, but also in the amount of user interaction.  For several years, MySpace rode on top of the social media phenomenon; until recently.  In May of2009, Comscore reported that Facebook has exceeded the amount of MySpace users in the United States.  With a shrinking number of users and more advertising dollars being allocated to Facebook, MySpace has been forced to layoff 30% of employees, as well as reduce its payroll to only 1,000 people.  With over 60 million Facebook users in the United States alone, Facebook has made it possible for teens, adults and seniors to connect in a simple, easy to navigate arena.  Capturing the baby boomer users, Facebook has been able to exceed the amount of MySpace users.

So the question is what’s next for Facebook? With Twitter gaining momentum and nipping at Facebook’s heels, only time will tell.  Although, both platforms are very different in some aspects, both offer users the opportunity to connect with other users and share information.  Could Twitter be the Facebook killer?  Without adapting to current trends and listening to user feedback, Facebook could experience what MySpace is struggling with right now.

Recently, most people made the switch to digital TV. It was either, buy a converter box, a new TV or switch to some form of cable television. However, for those who have a quality computer and a good internet connection, the switch may not have been necessary. Websites like Hulu and YouTube allow users to watch TV shows and movies online and I’m sure there will be more websites in the near future that will provide these same offerings.

Hulu launched last year in March. According to Wikipedia, “Hulu is a website that offers commercial-supported streaming video of TV shows and movies from NBC, Fox and many other networks and studios.” They were one of the first sites dedicated to showing full movies and TV shows. Hulu is becoming increasingly popular and it won’t be long before the technology comes out for people to view Hulu on their cell phone. People who own an iphone are already watching YouTube.

YouTube continues to add more offerings. Originally, it was a place to upload funny home videos as well as music videos. Now, companies can have their own YouTube channel and promote their products online. In fact, YouTube may be giving Hulu a run for its money because YouTube now offers a movie and a TV show channel.

Both YouTube and Hulu manage to have commercial(s) play at some point during your movie or TV show watching. At present, the YouTube movies seem to have the least amount of commercials. So far, YouTube only has 1 forced commercial (no option to skip or fast forward past the commercial) at the beginning of a movie. Hulu on the other hand has several forced commercials that play throughout the movie. Either way advertisers are incorporated.

Hulu and YouTube are only the beginning of TV watching on the internet. For big time advertisers and companies, this means that more TV advertising dollars will start shifting toward the internet. For smaller advertisers and companies, now is a good time to learn about video ads and participate while the price is low. Eventually, I think people will watch shows via the internet instead of on a television. It might sound strange, but one day our grandchildren may say, “What is a television?” Don’t laugh, I’ve asked people,” What’s an 8 track player?”

Google just launched a new site, www.allforgood.org, which allows people to find volunteer activities throughout the US, thus creating a “social media search engine” of sorts. Bringing communities together in this form was encouraged by President Obama when Serve.gov was launched earlier this year. Allforgood.org now even powers the search tool on serve.gov.

All users have to do is enter the type of volunteer work they want to do and then specify their location. With that, a slew of results are given to the searcher via the Google powered search engine. This has many ramifications on the world of social media. For one, I think that the other major search engines, Yahoo and Bing, are more likely to get involved if allforgood.org takes off. Also, with the technology that Google is innovating (Google has launched an API to allow developers to use the data in their own applications); other social media websites will likely follow suit making their own websites as advanced as possible.

Lastly, another really nice feature to the new website is that you are able to log in via Google Friend Connect. This tool gives users the ability to use their Google, AIM or Yahoo password to gain access, making it as community friendly as possible. This will no doubt inspire people across multiple social media platforms to participate in this unique social media experiment.

Facebook has recruited yet another Google AdWords executive after recently receiving a $200 million subsidy at a $10 billion valuation. It’s been speculated that the social media champion could hit $400-500 million in revenue this year as sited by The Business Insider.

Facebook hired ex-Google Adwords executive Grady Burnett to help beef up their self-service advertising unit. What can he bring to the table? Optimistically, Grady’s experience from both DoubleClick and Google will aid him to develop an improved self-service advertising platform for Facebook. Facebook has been steadily pulling in higher amounts of advertising revenue.

Facebook has said that their advertisers are beginning to see an increasing return on their investment. On the contrary, advertisers have been discussing how social media sites like Facebook and Myspace have not been generating conversions. Expectantly, advertisers need to see the return in capital in order to spread the word about how well demographic targeting deliveries results. Generating converting traffic is a goal that Grady can hopefully help his new Facebook team achieve.    

There is no doubt that Facebook has the audience. They have advertisers ready and willing to allocate funds toward their network because of their highly targeted demographic. But, now its time for Facebook to determine what is going to help advertisers get conversions. Once Facebook overcomes this challenge, it will help obtain new advertisers as well as retain current ones in their network. Some advice from a Google mogul may help; now they have it.

From time to time clients express to me that they are scared of social media. I am not kidding. They have literally said those words to me. Either they do not know enough about it, or it’s the exact opposite; they know too much and recognize how much time, effort and manpower it takes to establish an effective social media strategy. The key word here is “effective”. Anyone can join Facebook, or Twitter. Uploading images on Flickr is simple enough and writing a blog is also relatively easy. That being said, what many companies seem to have issues with is doing the above mentioned social media platforms correctly for businesses.

Even the most savvy social media user can become overwhelmed by all of the options available and the list is rapidly growing. Here is an idea as to how you can implement a social media strategy correctly, without becoming overwhelmed and the best part is that it won’t break the bank!

With summer upon us, a large percentage of college students are available and willing to work as interns. Why not employ a few to manage/maintain your social media efforts? If you utilize this cost effective approach, the most important thing to keep in mind is that you ought to have a game plan in place. A few things to ponder: What will your interns be doing exactly? Who will oversee their efforts? How often will they tweet? What will your Facebook corporate page/profile look like? Will a knowledgeable person train and guide them to ensure that they are well versed? Just because they know all about Facebook from a personal and/or social perspective, does not equate to them having knowledge from a business standpoint. All of that being said, it will be money well spent to engage in a social media training program of some sort.

It doesn’t have to be scary to dive into social media, although, it is mission critical to make sure you are doing it right! Good luck getting social!

With the ongoing growth of Social Media, new websites and tools, aimed at making it easier to update your many profiles, are emerging everyday. We all face the same issue: We have a Facebook page, a Twitter account, a StumbleUpon toolbar and have no time to keep all three updated with content. Many businesses feel these same pains. TweetDeck is just one of the new tools that has been developed as a result of this need. Using TweetDeck, you can update your Twitter account and your Facebook status in one interface.

Keeping along this same line of thought, StumbleUpon, a free service that helps you discover and share websites with others, has announced a new feature that will go one step further. The feature will allow for simultaneous posts to Facebook, Twitter and Stumble Upon. Since many of us, both personally and professionally, don’t always have the same friends, fans, followers, etc. on each channel, this is a great way to make sure that your posts are reaching a wider audience. Of course, the advantage to StumbleUpon is that it will get more people back to their site from these other Social Media Channels. It’s a win-win for everyone.

Okay you really can’t hide on Facebook.  It is, after all, a social media site whose sole purpose is to help you share information.   You purposely connect to other people and invite them in to view a piece of your life.  That said, there are some tools available to help you separate your friends from your “Facebook friends.”

So log-in to your Facebook account, go to “Settings”, select “Privacy Settings”, and let’s get started!

You’ll have four options here and I’ll take them one at time — with the exception of Applications — which I’ll handle in another post.
 
1. Profile

There are a lot of options here and they may not all be obvious.  To combat that, Facebook gives you a great tool to help you determine the impact of any changes. 
See that box on the top that reads: “See how a friend sees your profile.”  You can enter any friend here to see your profile as it would appear to them.  Now you can tweak the settings and have a real world example of how it impacts your friends or “friends of friends” and your network. 

One important item here is the link to “Edit Photo Album Privacy Settings”.  Once you enter here, select “customize” and you can prevent friends (or your boss, mom, etc.) from seeing that photo from your party on Friday night.

2. Search.  

If you are in hiding, then this is the tab that you’ll want to focus on.  Facebook allows you to determine who can find you on Facebook and whether or not people can find your listings in the search engines.

So if you have a stalker or are in the witness protection program, uncheck “create a public search listing” and the box to share your picture in search results.  You’ll also want to select “search visibility” and limit who can find you in an internal search by selecting “Only Friends”. 

3. News Feed and Wall

If you like to post comments that are private and meant for one person, then compose a new message via your mailbox!  But if you want to comment on a thread or photo and don’t want everyone to know via their updates and notifications, then you’ll want to come here and uncheck the options for the highlights section.

Facebook does provide some useful tools to help you manage your privacy, but it’s important to remember that you (and some of your information) are visible in the search engines and internal searches on Facebook by default. So if you’d like to be a share a little less of your life online, use the privacy settings and make adjustments until you are more comfortable with what you show your Facebook friends.

A few months ago I touched on why blogging can be good for SEO.  Today I want to offer a few tips on the social media aspect of blogging.  One of the biggest pitfalls that we see related to blogging is that many blogs are not maintained regularly.  Typically the first few months that a blog is up and running are great, but then the posts start to reduce in frequency, sometimes only to once a month or less. This not only prevents you from making use of the blog to supplement your SEO efforts, but it can also cause your website to look out of date.  Additionally, if your blog is pulled into your social media channels or pages, those too can end up looking poorly maintained. So with that said, I want to offer a few blog post ideas that can help you to formulate future blog posts ideas. 
Identify a need of your audience. Are there common questions that are asked by your customers?  If so, try compiling the most frequently asked questions into one blog post.

What is going on in your industry right now?  Finding something topical to write about will afford you the opportunity to have your blog post position in the search results for those popular search terms. Google Trends or a Google Blog search may help you identify what is being talked about. You can then comment on those topics from your own perspective.

Provide “How-To” posts. These are a great way to offer easy instructions that help your readers.  If you have complicated/technical products, this may be especially beneficial.

Make recommendations.  The best way to engage your audience is to offer value, and the only way to offer value is to provide something that is useful to your readers. Making recommendations about other companies, products or services that compliment what you have to offer is just one way to do this.

Has a popular book recently been written by someone within your industry? Showcase an interview with the author on your blog or do a review of the book within a blog post.

Lastly, create an editorial calendar. Formulate the topics that you want to write about and spread them out over time accordingly.  This will make posting less stressful and will enable you focus on offering valuable content to your readers.

Social Media is all the talk these days.  With marketers jumping on the social wagon, it is important to note that engagement in social media channels shouldn’t be considered as something to do just because everyone else is. There are many benefits your website can receive by engaging in social media channels.  One of the benefits relates directly to your Search Engine Optimization efforts.  Most SEO initiatives involve some kind of link building campaign and social media can really aid that cause.

Utilizing social media channels is a great way to enhance your link building campaign and there several ways to make this a successful effort. Whether you post a really interesting tweet, update your Facebook status with a compelling message, or involve yourself in the answers forum on LinkedIn, each social media channel has the potential to have your content reposted and shared through the community.  Each time your content is reposted or shared, there is an opportunity to increase links back to your website, therefore aiding your link building efforts.  No matter which social media channels you are involved in, you should consider link building as a part of your strategy. You’ll make some great Organic gains.

There are some pointers that I would like to highlight.  First, in order to have your content shared, it has to be interesting enough for people to want to read it, and then share it with others.  Social media is online word of mouth marketing, and people love to share funny or compelling content.  Avoid posting mundane info, like “just got to the office,” or “I’m starving can’t wait for lunch time.”  These posts don’t serve any benefit. Instead try getting creative, or use humor to capture your audience’s attention.

Whenever possible make sure the content you post has links back to your website. This way as your content is redistributed, you are increasing the number of links back to your website and therefore building up your backlinks in a very natural manner.  The more links back to your website you have out there, you increase the likelihood for the search engines to find their way back to your website over and over again.  The more this happens, the more search engines will view your website as a reputable source, and over time, you will begin gaining stronger organic positions.