Social Media Marketing Resources

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If the Internet community didn't know its place in politics back in 2004, it certainly does today. Its "place" is to engage and educate us, promote candidates, help with fundraising and more... all through the use of new social-media tools that are increasingly vital to a candidate's overall marketing strategy.

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Despite all the talk, the mainstream media coverage, the conferences, courses, and books on social media marketing, there's quite a bit of ambivalence, fear, and (sometimes) outright hostility directed toward social media by CMOs, CEOs, and CFOs. All of this leads to the dreaded "we just want to stick our toe in the water, and see what this stuff is all about" and "we want to do a small, low-budget social media project and track the ROI."

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Marketing with Twitter, Google Docs for SEO, who the Connectors are and why you need them... all that and more in this Marketing Over Coffee, a weekly audio program sponsored by MarketingProfs that covers classic marketing tactics as well as what's new on the technology front.

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Are you LinkedIn? Do you Spoke, Ryze, Jigsaw, or ZoomInfo? In 2008, will you get a Second Life? If these social-networking concepts are not on your radar, you are ignoring a dynamic trend that could have a profound impact on key areas of your business, such as revenue growth, talent acquisition and development, and operational efficiency and effectiveness.

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Learn what Metcalfe's Law has to do with marketing and networking, hear some best practices with PURLs, and why January is Tech Geek Nirvana. All that and more in this Marketing Over Coffee, a weekly audio program sponsored by MarketingProfs that covers classic marketing tactics and what's new on the technology front.

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In the face of mounting competition and hype from rival networks Facebook and MySpace, LinkedIn has stayed true to its mission of creating a network for business professionals. I've been a member of the service for years, but until recently it had not had the critical mass necessary to get traction. Over the last six months, however, I've seen a flood of people using the service to connect professionally. As I said, LinkedIn doesn't pretend to be MySpace or Facebook. The design is clean, but a little stark, and it could use a little more personality to make it more engaging. In this video tour, I focus on what LinkedIn does well within its network and how you can apply the same logic to your own community.

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There's a new air of excitement behind the mobile Web. Initiatives like Verizon's recent announcement to open their network, Google's Open Handset initiative, new wireless auctions, and the iPhone have energized users. For the intelligent marketer the question must be, "Is mobile the right medium to reach my constituencies?"

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Work of any kind requires an understanding of the appropriate tools for the job, and social media is no different. Here are some suggestions for a starter set of social media tools. The actual applications will change, over time, because technology tends to do that. But the basic functions should evolve a little more slowly.

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Customer conversations are everywhere today—social networks, blogs, forums, and other social-media outlets. These are unbiased, unfiltered interactions that can deliver rich information about how your customers talk about topics that are relevant to your company and brand. Though it would be nice if people were to use your company's messaging in their everyday interactions, the reality is that for the most part they don't. Social SEO—tapping into how they talk about you and your industry so that you can determine how they will search—is the most effective and foolproof way to master that art/science/guessing game of picking keywords.

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Whether or not you completely understand social media or social networking sites, the one aspect you must understand is that they are going to change the way businesses advertise. Facebook, in particular, is constantly evolving and improving its users' experience with new features and applications. As a result, Facebook is trying to change the way businesses market and advertise their products and services to potential consumers.

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What do you get when you combine video, social networking, micromedia, and a very savvy French entrepreneur? You get Seesmic. Seesmic is a social network where the primary content is video. Users record video, post it to the site, and other users reply in video. It's new and it's red-hot. It's also a glimpse of the future.

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LinkedIn doesn't pretend to be MySpace or Facebook. In the face of mounting competition and hype from rival networks, LinkedIn has stayed true to its mission of creating a network for business professionals. In this video tour, Matt Dickman focuses on what LinkedIn does well, and how you can leverage its strengths.

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In a recent blog post, Cymfony's Jim Nail wrote about a study that provocatively proclaimed that spending on conversational marketing will outpace traditional marketing by 2012. Is that even possible? To find out, Paul Dunay chatted with Jim and Pete Blackshaw, executive vice-president at Nielsen Online Strategic Services. What ensued was a very lively debate about whether marketers are prepared to support conversational marketing—and the answer isn't very pretty. As Jim and Pete point out, not only are marketers not using Web 2.0 tools to create a conversation, but to even listen effectively they need to overhaul their infrastructures—big time.

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Podcasting can give your company a new image and personality. And, increasingly, podcasting offers the promise of being another highly effective way to reach and develop potential customers. That's only if you can produce compelling, "buzz-worthy" content, of course.

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If you are someone who is partially or wholly responsible for the long-term direction of your Web site, or the Web sites of your clients, you have to be able to explain Google's OpenSocial in clear and concise terms. So what is OpenSocial? And why does it matter?

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Is microblogging the latest fad or the next big thing? Microblogging is just like regular blogging, except it's limited to 140 characters. The leader in the space is Twitter. To get a better sense of this emerging social media tool, we assembled a micro-panel to discuss it: Jeremiah Owyang, a senior analyst on social computing at Forrester Research and a fan of Twitter, and David Berkowitz, director of emerging media at 360i, who is skeptical about Twitter's application to business. We hope you enjoy the lively debate!

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What is Digg? And how does it work? This pair of videos about social-network site Digg.com is a look at the site from the inside-out... with the goal of educating marketers on this social network. Learn why you should (or shouldn't) care about Digg.

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Should a marketer simply start blogging or wait instead until all of the blogging policies and procedures are established before beginning? In other words: Which comes first the policy or the blog?

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These 18 concepts will give you an edge on your competition—or an edge, period. So if the same old left-brain thinking that everybody else is using just doesn't get you where you want to be, try these creative concepts on for size.

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At a time when business and marketing strategy changes at the speed of light, and competitors, partners and customers have instant access to information, the days of the handler the publicist are numbered.