Earned Media is basically free media. Earned Media specifically refers to publicity gained through editorial influence and has become the backbone of many social media initiatives and social content development strategies.

With so much user generated content these days, it would behoove an organization not to take advantage of the magnitude of earned media – integrating an earned media strategy during content conception into execution.

Definition

To get the definitions out of the way, those in the marketing and agency world are privy to the buzzwords “paid,” “earned” and owned.” Traditionally, they stand for the different types of media and can be easily broken down like this:

• Paid: Buying a 30-second Super Bowl spot
• Earned: Coverage on Mashable (aka user word of mouth)
• Owned: Your company’s website

The business case for Earned Media

Don’t forget all content — whether it’s text, a video or a microsite — will be “reduced to a link” for social spheres making Earned Media an easy thing to do. There were 500 billion word-of-mouth impressions made by Americans online according to Forrester. Such volumes of word-of-mouth marketing can spread awareness of a product incredibly quickly, and it’s why earned media has become so important to a marketing campaign.

Understanding its usage

Let’s run through a scenario. Earned Media, for example, is what you get when you develop a connection with someone that’s compelled to write a Yahoo review, a blog post, a comment or a tweet, sharing their thoughts on your brand with their social network. It sounds simple but it does take forethought.

Specifically, you will need to develop a strategy at content conception and then filter everything through its earned potential. That is, did I get the right audience, is the content compelling to share (good or bad) and do we make it easy to ‘syndicate’ the efforts (share tools, icons, other channels and formats) and, most importantly, does it integrate nicely as a natural springboard from traditional paid or owned media?

More on Earned Media:

For Social Media Marketing, Earned Media Rules -- MediaPost

How Social Media is Changing Paid, Earned and Owned Media -- Mashable

Defining Earned, Owned And Paid Media – Forrester Blogs

Best

Denice MacDonald

Fast and furious - that is how all users want to access AND consume content. QR codes are being used to make that possible.

What is it?

Quick Response code is a type of matrix barcode or two-dimensional code consisting of black modules arranged in a square pattern on a white background.

When you scan or read a QR code with your iPhone, Android or other camera-enabled Smartphone, you can link to digital content on the web; activate a number of phone functions including email, IM and SMS; and connect the mobile device to a web browser.

Aligning and integrating lots of cross-channel initiatives:                  

Digital strategists like myself LOVE this new and evolving technology. The ability of QR codes to connect people with each other and to multimedia digital content is very useful for businesses and consumers alike. From locations, to hours to freebies, QR codes can engage all types of buyers readily and without distraction (less friction and more interaction).

Of crucial excitement is the ability to really integrate offline initiatives to measurable online actions. Consider adding QR codes to your print, name tags, event material, advertisements, door signs and more.

Want to create your own QR Code? Simply go to this website http://keremerkan.net/ where you can create any or all of the following code to:

• Browse to a website.

• Bookmark a website.

• Make a phone call.

• Send a short message.

• Send an e-mail.

• Create a vCard (v2.1 or v3.0) with coordinates to add a contact to your device.

• Create a meCard to add a contact to your device.

• Create a vCalendar event to add to your calendar.

• Create Google Maps URLs.

• Create Bing Maps URLs.

• Create raw geological coordinates.

• Create iTunes app and review URLs for iOS devices.

• Create market:// URLs for searching for publishers or packages on Market app for Android.

• Create Foursquare venue URLs.

• Create special youtube:// URLs for YouTube app on iOS.

• Obtain and encode the latest tweet of a Twitter user.

• Overlay a Twitter profile image over the code.

• Create a mobile URL to tweet on Twitter.

• Initiate a chat to a particular Blackberry PIN on Blackberry Messenger.

• Connect to a WIFI network on Android devices.

• Read plain or free formatted text on your device.

As you can see, the ideas are endless. Take advantage of this new technology now and make it a staple in your digital and offline marketing campaigns and initiatives!

Best,

Denice MacDonald

BTW: Here's the MacDonald Consulting Services QR Code:

Marketers are under constant pressure to measure and demonstrate marketing’s ROI and impact on overall revenue. With compelling graphics and real-life examples of Marketo’s own metrics and tactics, the new Definitive Guide to Marketing Metrics and Analytics offers best practices and techniques for harnessing data to not only prove, but improve ROI.

This 70 page guide will teach you:

1. The right metrics for understanding and interpreting marketing results
2. Why measuring marketing programs is difficult, and how to do it correctly and efficiently
3. Revenue metrics that get the executives' attention and prove marketing ROI
4. The critical elements of a marketing dashboard
5. And much, much more!

Marketo requires some basic information for download - but well worth it!

Best,
Denice MacDonald

[Source: Marketo Website]

With social media on the rise, many marketing professionals are in the midst of explaining, emulating and selling social media to management and/or clients. Why not consider infographics - visual representations of social information, social data or social knowledge?

Specifically, infographics provide statistical relevance, digital integration not to mention future payback that words cannot convey.

The following are great links with various infographics:

35 Great Social Media Infographics by Pat Dyer of Pamorama – 35 great infographics that have been cropped down for viewing – linking to the original graphic.

10 Beautiful Social Media Infographics by Grace Smith of Mashable – Similarly to Pamorama’s collection, this grouping concentrates on both social networking sites and twitter – also linking back to the original graphic.

Social Media Infographics from Slideshare – Tons of infographics – 50 in total.

These social media graphics will help convey your message – quickly.

[Infographic courtesy of Elliance]

Enjoy!

Best

Denice MacDonald

Whether it’s starting a social media campaign, integrating social media into your advertising or simply setting up a Facebook fan page, it is always wise to seek out experts who have proven experience (and metrics) to help guide you in your social media initiatives.  

Here are some great resources you should bookmark or subscribe via RSS: 

Learn How Human Business Works — Beyond Social Media
http://www.chrisbrogan.com/

Web Strategy, Social Media, Web Marketing
http://www.web-strategist.com/blog

Brian Solis
http://www.briansolis.com/

Social Media Strategy Blog and Social Media Consulting — Convince and Convert
http://www.convinceandconvert.com/  

Social Media Explorer — Social Media Consulting, Public Speaking and Education
http://www.socialmediaexplorer.com/

Seth Godin’s Blog
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/

Conversation Agent
http://www.conversationagent.com/

PR-Squared
http://www.pr-squared.com/

Online Marketing Blog
http://www.toprankblog.com/

Social Media Examiner, Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle
http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/

Social Media Today
http://www.socialmediatoday.com/

Web Ink Now 
http://www.webinknow.com/

MarketingProfs Daily Fix
http://www.mpdailyfix.com/

Hubspot Internet Marketing Blog
http://blog.hubspot.com/

Search Engine Land — Search Marketing & Search Engines
http://www.searchengineland.com/  

And lastly, Top 100 FREE Social Media Marketing Resources from my LinkedIn group "Social Media Marketing": http://tinyurl.com/6esq5kp 

Best
Denice MacDonald

When online community building first hit the scene several years back, I was one of the first marketers to encourage clients to comment (blogs, communities, chats, interactive sharing sites). Reason simply, not only do you get to participate and share your thoughts with others, but you have the opportunity to generate exposure for your own brand simultaneously.

The downside to this is quite a few SEO companies have exploited the comment feature by providing non-topic related responses and obnoxious links to websites that have nothing to do with the subject at hand in order to create SEO relevance for their customers. 

This erosion has depleted the opportunity for real brand marketers to establish an ongoing dialoque or resource sharing that could actually help organizations promote their product or services.

Today, I read an article from my favorite publication, Website Magazine, on the nuances AND guidelines for commenting. Website Magazine breaks the strategy into “Five Rules of Engagement for Commenting” as follows:

Participate in the Conversation: Provide a response and the reason you are responding. 

Reward Positive Contributions: This one is self-explanatory – ensure that you recognize the ‘good’ contributors.

Punish Disruptive Behavior: As I indicated at the beginning of this post – you may need to ban IP addresses that are spamming your website. Unfortunately, I had to turn off my comments section altogether.

Provide Supporting Data/Arguments: The sole purpose of commenting is to provide interactive dialoque with visitors – in response, it is always good to provide data in the form of links or websites that substantiate a point of view or your stance on a particular subject or topic.

Declare Personal Interest: Transparency is critical in creating authenticity. Do not use masked emails or other means to disguise who you are.

To read more about the aforementioned Rules of Engagement, go to “Optimizing the Comment Experience” by Website Magazine.

More Resources

How To Tackle Negative Comments While Managing Community In Social Media from Social Media Today

The Positive Side of Negative Reviews from ERExchange  

Best
Denice MacDonald 

B2B firms led the first wave of social media adoption five years ago with aggressive blogging initiatives. More recently, Twitter, the simple yet powerful micro-blogging service, has lowered the barriers to social media entry for B2B entities almost to zero – allowing organizations to deliver sizable traffic to corporate and product Web content.  

Moreover, HR and legal departments are happy to see the ‘tweet’ alternative – diminishing any opportunity for users to provide inappropriate content with only 140 characters to get their message across.  In fact, Twitter has become a tool to point followers to safe corporate content – a means to monitor and listen to customer complaints before they get out of hand. 

Let’s not forget LinkedIn, the social network for professional adults – growing to 50 million+ users. The social network has become a popular destination for B2B companies in search of top talent or business professionals with areas of common interest. Moreover, LinkedIn claims its member demographics outpace those of The Wall Street Journal. 

With more than 500 million members, Facebook is the 800-pound gorilla of social networks. While it has been less popular with B2B marketers than other alternatives, companies including Ernst & Young, Forrester and IBM have built sizable fan bases there. Facebook is particularly popular with corporate recruiters trying to reach young job-seekers.  

Here are a few B2B social applications that will aid with integrated social initiatives – providing mechanisms to syndicate content, share content and monitor activity for future refinement:

SlideShare translates the popularity of PowerPoint presentations as a conversational medium into a membership that is reportedly approaching 10 million.  

BrightTALK takes the complexity out of managing an ongoing series of live and pre-recorded webcasts by consolidating them all into a single destination ‘channel’. It’s where you create webcasts and where your audience goes to see them. 

PRESSfeed, a social media newsroom, makes it easy for journalists, bloggers and site visitors to find and share your content. Content syndication through trusted channels is the next large wave for B2B social marketers. 

In the coming year, B2B marketers will turn their attention to expanding and optimizing the channels they use. Companies such as Jive are bringing tools to market that enable enterprises to manage large-scale social conversations while publishing simultaneously to multiple destinations.  

Great Resources: 

Social Media Will Change B2B Distribution Channels by Social Media B2B (Check out the entire site!)

9 Social Listening & Tracking Tools by Connected Marketer 

B2B Spending on Social Media to Explode by eMarketer

It's Official: Facebook Passes 500 Million Users by Mashable

Best

Denice MacDonald

According to Mashable, Google's now making some monumental changes to Google Social Search, and it is announcing three new websites that will appear prominently in social search results.  

The first major change is that Google Social Search results will no longer appear only at the bottom of the page, but will instead be "blended" throughout the page. This is good news for anyone looking to be part of a level playing field relevant to social search results. 

The second update to social search will be results for any content shared by your friends on Quora, Flickr and Twitter. This is not only good for consumers but anyone wanting to increase their social presence within the B2B environment. 

The final update focuses on increasing the control users have over what gets displayed in social search. Google has revamped its options page to give users the ability to both publicly and privately connect their social profiles to their Google accounts. Again, a win/win for both B2B and B2C social strategies. 

One thing this update doesn't include is Facebook "Like" data, a prominent feature of Microsoft Bing. Unlike Google, Bing has access to instant personalization and Facebook user data. 

For more information, continue to follow Mashable – they continually have the ‘in’ to any updates for Google Social Search!

You can also learn more by going directly to Google here. 

More Buzz:

Social Links Get Higher Billing from CNET

Greplin's Social Search Open its Doors to All from TechCrunch

Best

Denice MacDonald

I have several hundred true blog followers to my website and they have been thirsty for knowledge on social media, search engine optimization and anything metrics – 30,000 page views to be exact.  

Therefore, I feel it necessary to provide the following links that represent the most clicked, viewed and downloaded blogs from my website for 2010 – just in case anyone needs these resources again. 

Top 2010 Blogs (ranked in order by page views) 

Staying Nimble: Social Media 2010 - According to several leading experts, social media has been the number one priority in 2010. Social media will be used by organizations to lift their brand, stay connected to customers while using networks to grow their lead-gen pipelines. To learn how your organization can capitalize on what others are doing, check out these ‘top’ resources, articles and blogs from leading subject matter experts.  

Don’t Miss This One: Connecting Social Media and Email - I find it interesting that most organizations don’t realize that e-mail marketing is the original ‘backbone’ of social interaction and should always be part of the social mix.  Simply adding some ‘integrated’ content will aid in elevating your brand – not to mention ROI for your social campaigns. 

Get it here: Search Engine Optimization Blogs - Great post by Hubspot on a few dozen SEO blogs everyone should read or minimally have in your arsenal.

Social Media Resources You Can’t Live Without - Whether it’s starting a social media campaign, integrating social media into your advertising or simply setting up a Facebook fan page, it is always wise to seek out experts who have proven experience (and metrics) to help guide you in your social media initiatives. 

Social Analytics: The Next Frontier - Let’s face it folks, social analytics is a new frontier – not anything like the analytics and metrics tracking we’ve used for advertising, direct mail or other one-way channel marketing.

Get It Right The First Time: Web Metrics - Many organizations are obsessed with volume – measuring their web metrics strategy by how many web pages that were viewed or by how many people that have visited. In many cases, this type of information is meaningless as it is not directly linked to a web plan or strategy.  

Writing for Social Media - If you want consistent social media success, you have to understand what social media users crave. For social media content, that means understanding the type of content social media users want.

Your Entire Organization Benefits From Web Analytics - You finally launched a much-anticipated Web 2.0+ web site and you can’t wait to hunker down and review your analytics. How do you gauge if your analytics for your site are appropriate, measurable and definable? And most importantly, who in your organization would benefit?    

As we move forward in 2011, it will be fun to watch the exploding world of social media and how it will affect all channels in the marketing mix.  

Happy New Year to all my blog fans and a hearty welcome to all new visitors. 

Best

Denice MacDonald

Thanks to my colleague James Davidson for an incredible link to social media resources underwritten and posted by Colin Welch titled Making the Most of Social Media Marketing – Links.

The link provides access to all types of tips and guides, tools and analytics, trending tools, social tools and applications as well as twitter tools. 

The listing is comprehensive and spot-on.

Learn more now>>

Enjoy

Best,

Denice MacDonald

My favorite web resource, Website Magazine, has just posted the top 20 books for web pro’s for 2011. With a mix of social media, SEO and metrics, the list is quite rich with resources for everyone -- including programmers and web designers. 

A special thank you to Website Magazine for this list and all the other knowledge they share throughout the year! 

Website Magazine's list of 2010's Top 20 Tomes for Web Pro's

Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics (2nd Edition) - Brian Clifton
Search Engine Optimization: Your Visual Blueprint for Effective Internet Marketing - Kristopher B. Jones
Marketing in the Age of Google: Your Online Strategy IS Your Business Strategy - Vanessa Fox
Ultimate Guide to Pay-Per-Click Advertising - Rich Stokes
The Zen of Social Media Marketing - Shama Kabani
The Social Media Bible: Tactics, Tools, and Strategies for Business Success - Lon Safko
Advanced Google AdWords - Brad Geddes
Conversion Optimization: The Art and Science of Converting Prospects to Customers - Khalid Saleh
Content Rules - Ann Handley, C.C. Chapman, David Meerman Scott
Data-Driven Marketing: The 15 Metrics Everyone in Marketing Should Know - Mark Jeffery
Social Media Marketing: Strategies for Engaging in Facebook, Twitter & Other Social Media - Liana Evans
Brains on Fire: Igniting Powerful, Sustainable, Word of Mouth Movements - Robbin Phillips, Greg Cordell, Geno Church, Spike Jones
The Web Designer's Idea Book, Vol. 2: -  Patrick McNeil
White Space is Not Your Enemy - Kim Golombisky and Rebecca Hagen
Professional Web Design: Techniques and Templates - Clint Eccher
Dreamweaver CS5: The Missing Manual - David Sawyer McFarland
Simple and Usable Web, Mobile, and Interaction Design (Voices That Matter) - Giles Colborne
Undercover User Experience Design (Voices That Matter) - Cennyd Bowles and James Box
Clout: The Art and Science of Influential Web Content (Voices That Matter) - Colleen Jones
Mobile Marketing: Finding Your Customers No Matter Where They Are - Cindy Krum 

Of course, do remember that the best way to improve your chances of success (this holiday season and beyond) is to request a PRO-level subscription to Website Magazine.  

For a limited time, they're offering a 25% discount on subscriptions (that's 60% off the newsstand price).

Learn more about Website Magazine's Holiday Promotion here.

Best to you this holiday season!
Denice MacDonald

This year, Mashable is concentrating on websites that: stretch the boundaries of our technologies’ capabilities in interesting, useful and beautiful ways.

Here are a few of the websites they think showcased excellent design work this year, both in terms of form and function.  

They range from video and music showcases, to media troves, to high-volume social media apps, but they all have one thing in common: a focus on digital multimedia content. 

1. Best Social Media App Design: The New Twitter
2. Best Media Website Design: Vogue.com
3. Best HTML5 Website Design: TheWildernessDowntown
4. Best Music Website Design: Thesixtyone.com
5. Best Design Shop Website Design: Wonderwall  

To view the entire article as well as Mashable's commentary on each choice – go here. 

About Mashable 

Founded in 2005, Mashable is the top source for news in social and digital media, technology and web culture. With more than 30 million monthly pageviews, Mashable is the most prolific news site reporting breaking web news, providing analysis of trends, reviewing new Web sites and services, and offering social media resources and guides.  

Mashable’s audience includes early adopters, social media enthusiasts, entrepreneurs, influencers, brands and corporations, marketing, PR and advertising agencies, Web 2.0 aficionados and technology journalists. Mashable is also popular with bloggers, Twitter and Facebook users — an increasingly influential demographic.

Subscription options for Mashable are available here – get yours today!

Best

Denice MacDonald

[Source/Credit: 5 Website Designs That Blew Us Away (Mashable Awards) by Jolie O'Dell]

With social networking, twitter, blogging and web page content creation at an all time high – how do we evaluate the quality of content that we are posting and syndicating? In most cases, we are writing content that is too technical, only makes sense to internal personnel or blatantly boring. 

The following are resources to help identify the quality of content and if the content is being written so everyone understands it. 

20 Tips for improving your web writing: http://www.cmswire.com/cms/web-content/20-tips-for-improving-your-web-writing-005409.php  

10 tips for improving web writing (same, but different angle plus a lot of links to more content usability tips): http://webdesign.about.com/od/writing/a/aa031405.htm    

3 checklists for web content and intranet authors: http://www.contented.co.nz/Contented-writer-checklists.pdf  

According to the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level test, we should be writing content at a seventh or eighth grade level. To help evaluate what level your content is set at simply update Word and Outlook as follows: 

MICROSOFT WORD

Click the Microsoft Office Button, and then click Word Options.

Click Proofing.

Make sure Check grammar with spelling is selected.

Under When correcting grammar in Word, select the Show readability statistics check box.

OUTLOOK

On the Tools menu, click Options.

Click the Spelling tab, and then click Spelling and AutoCorrection.

Click Proofing.

Under When correcting grammar in Outlook, select the Check grammar with spelling check box.

Select the Show readability statistics check box.

After you enable this feature, open a file that you want to check, and check the spelling. When Outlook or Word finishes checking the spelling and grammar, it displays information about the reading level of the document. 

BTW – the grade level for this blog is 8.1 – not too bad. 

Best

Denice MacDonald

If you want consistent social media success, you have to understand what social media users crave. For social media content, that means understanding the type of content social media users want.        

Next, determine who your audience is—are you going for success on big social media sites or are you looking to engage customers on niche sites within your industry?

If you want the full scoop on how to develop consistent, relevant, eye-catching content, check out a recent SlideShare by Sara Meaney of Comet Branding.

The SlideShare presentation covers the gamut from creating compelling headlines to call to action scenarios that get users coming back for more.

Best,

Denice MacDonald

I’ve just begun following Chris (thanks to ace social guru Augie Ray). Chris has posted an exceptional blog on 50 Power Twitter Tips.   

Chris breaks down the tips into five categories: intent, technical, business, integrated usage, and off-twitter.  

Lastly, check out the great comments from others on the blog post web page. Amazing responses. 

Feel free to repost all or any of this, but if you do, please give credit to this link. 

About Chris

Chris Brogan is President of New Marketing Labs, a new media marketing agency. He works with large and mid-sized companies to improve online business communications like marketing and PR through the use of social software, community platforms, and other emerging web and mobile technologies.  

Chris is author of the recently released Social Media 101 (Amazon affiliate link). 

For more information on this, please contact Chris directly. 

Likewise, follow Chris on Twitter.

Best

Denice MacDonald

fring is a free mobile application that lets users communicate with friends on popular networks over their mobile phone's internet connection.

fring users make free mobile calls, video calls, live chat & more, from their mobile phone with all their friends on fring & other internet services like Skype®, MSN Messenger®, GoogleTalk™, AIM®, ICQ® , Facebook® and Twitter, all through one central, integrated phone book. 

           See the full feature list here.

fring is completely free. It's free to download and free to use to make calls, video calls, instant messages and more, all via your mobile phone's internet connection (over 'IP').

fring has millions of users on 1000s of supported mobile devices across approximately 200 countries, and is growing exponentially – adding more than half a million new users every month. Start fringing today!

Download fring free now.

Best,

Denice MacDonald

According to several leading experts, social media has been the number one priority in 2010. Social media will be used by organizations to lift their brand, stay connected to customers while using networks to grow their lead-gen pipelines. To learn how your organization can capitalize on what others are doing, check out these ‘top’ resources, articles and blogs from leading subject matter experts.   

Social media on marketers' menu for 2010 by Helen Leggatt, Biz Report   

"It looks like social media is on the menu for most marketers this year. A survey of almost 2,000 MediaPost subscribers found that over half plan to have "a presence on social networks" as part of their marketing mix in 2010..."  

10 Ways Social Media Will Change In 2010 by Ravit Lichtenberg from Ustrategy.com

"It is impossible to separate social media from the online world. Facebook reached 350 million users last month -- 70% of whom are outside the US -- and it accounts for 25% of the Web's traffic, according to Pew nearly one in five people on the web use Twitter or some other service to check status messages, and 94% of enterprises plan to maintain or increase their investment in enterprise social media tools. The social media conversation is no longer considered a Web 2.0 fad -- it is taking place in homes, small businesses and corporate boardrooms, and extending its reach into the nonprofit, education and health sectors. From feeling excitement, novelty, bewilderment, and overwhelmed, a growing number of people now speak of social media as simply another channel or tactic..."

Why You Need A Social Media Policy in 2010 by Vanessa DiMauro, Customer Think   

"Policies are dull. No one wants to create them, no one likes to read them and certainly, few desire the job of enforcing them.  But they can play an important role in outlining the rules of engagement around a particular set of online behaviors and have a strong role to play in the face of new situations where the there are no standards.  This is especially true with the wild west world of social media in business..."  

Six Social Media Trends for 2010 by David Armano, Harvard Business Review   

"In 2009, we saw exponential growth of social media. According to Nielsen Online, Twitter alone grew 1,382% year-over-year in February, registering a total of just more than 7 million unique visitors in the US for the month. Meanwhile, Facebook continued to outpace MySpace. In 2010, social media will get even more popular, more mobile, and more exclusive — at least, that's my guess. What are the near-term trends we could see as soon as next year..."

Best,  

Denice MacDonald 

Merging Twitter and blogging can simply be done by using these simple tools:

Add to Any: Get your posts shared on Twitter by using Add to Any on your WordPress blog.  

TwitThis: Make use of this plugin to send Twitter messages about your blog post.

MyTwitter: Use the MyTwitter plugin to display your Twitter status on WordPress.  

Twitpress: Twitpress will send out a Tweet every time you post a new blog entry. 

TwitterCounter: With this plugin, you can display the number of followers you have on Twitter.

TwitterFeed: Announce your blog post on Twitter with a customized message using TwitterFeed. 

TwitterButtons: Just as you want Twitter to send visitors to your blog, you’ll want your blog to send visitors to your tweets. 

More Resources: 

10 Ways Twitter Will Change Blog Design 

Twitter Versus Blogging

Twitter and Blogging: Tips and Tools

Best

Denice MacDonald

As Twitter continues to dominate the Internet, we can naturally conclude that users are adding more and more followers each day. How will you stand out as a differentiated brand amidst all the noise and thousands of other tweets?

1. Elevate Your Brand Name

Smart brands use Twitter in meaningful ways, and most of them use their brand name as a way to make sure customers can find and recognize them. See how these top brands are elevating their presence through creative use of their unique 'twitter' value proposition.

Resource: 40 of the Best Twitter Brands and the People Behind Them 

2. Custom Twitter Backgrounds

Most Twitter follows scan their tweets quickly to find what is of interest to them. In order to standout, you can begin to use images or custom backgrounds to get noticed.

Customer Backgrounds: TwitterImage 

3. Build Your Twitter Brand with Memes

Hash tags are ways to denote an important tag word used in a Twitter update. The purpose in doing so is to build a community around a given tag word, which encourages more activity around a topic of interest. Search engines and dedicated Twitter memes can pick up on these hash-tagged keywords and provide a streamlined, niche set of Twitter updates relevant to that topic of interest. It can also help you build your brand.

Global Tags for Twitter (Updated Daily): Twemes 

Great Resource:

50 Useful Twitter Tools for Writers and Researchers 

Related Posts:

Twitter Can Be a Real Tweet

Can't Get Enough of Twitter: It's Become Universal!

Best

Denice MacDonald

Website Magazine's March, 2010 cover story is about social media for business. And, as an educated audience of Web professionals in the industry, they want your input!

Please take just a couple of minutes to take their 2010 Social Media Initiatives survey. They want to know how social media is affecting your business, and what some of your objectives might be in 2010.

The survey is very brief, and they will share responses (anonymously, in aggregate) with all of their readers in the upcoming issue of Website Magazine. 

Take the survey now.  

Why should you care?

Social Media is getting quite a bit of hype – but is anyone truly doing it correctly?  With a lot of chatter and just plain noise – web strategist may need to get back to the basics: who is the intended audience and is the organization creating the right conversation that invokes engagement and sharing? I’ll be anxious to share the results of what others are doing in 2010.

More About Website Magazine (Denice's favorite web resource)

Website Magazine is the one magazine to focus exclusively on the business of running a website: tips for successful websites, solutions for enhancing website traffic, the latest Internet industry trends and statistics, as well as news analysis on the Internet industry.

Subscriptions (complimentary and professional/print and online)

Advertise (lots of opportunities and great pricing)

Best

Denice MacDonald