Review-<b>Social Media Marketing</b> All-In-One For Dummies

Social Media Marketing All-In-One For Dummies
by Jan Zimmerman and Doug Sahlin
Wiley Publishing
More info
ISBN: 978-0-470-58468-2
818 pages
$29.99 US, $35.99 CN, £21.99 UK      

Almost everyone is now active in the social media arena. Who doesn’t have a Facebook page to keep in touch with family and friends? How often are you making your thoughts known 140 characters at a time on Twitter? Do you listen to podcasts on your favorite topics during your daily commute? Facebook, Twitter and podcasts are all forms of social media, but can they also be used for social media marketing?

In their book, Social Media Marketing All-In-One For Dummies, Jan Zimmerman and Doug Sahlin go into great detail about how to use social media to market your business or service. The tome is divided into eight books, each addressing a different aspect of social media.

Book I discusses the Social Media Mix. Basically, this book talks about how and why you should use social media, how social media is a tool in your overall marketing plan, how to prepare for your social media campaign, and how to engage your audience. Using social media can be a free, or very low-cost way to get your message out to consumers.

Book II, Cybersocial Tools, goes a little deeper into search engine optimization and social bookmarks. Never heard of social bookmarks? If you use Delicious or StumpleUpon, for example, to get recommendations of web sites you may enjoy, or to share your favorite web sites with others, then you’re using social bookmarks. Wondering how it could help your particular business: read Book II, Chapter 3.

Book III is where the real meat and potatoes begin. If you ever wanted to know how to create a blog, podcast or vlog, this is the book to read. While there are other books and resources that go into more depth, just reading Book III of Social Media Marketing All-In-One For Dummies is enough to get your brand new podcast up on iTunes in a matter of days. If you’d rather skip the podcast and go right to blogging, everything you need to know, from finding a blog host to handling comments can be found in Book III.

Books IV-VI talk about the kings of social media: Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. How will Twitter help your business? Should you have a Facebook page for your business, and should it be linked to your personal Facebook account? Are there risks involved? Is LinkedIn worth it? Using Facebook and Twitter as marketing tools is a bit different from using them on a personal level. Zimmerman and Sahlin talk about these social media applications in a conversational way, making them a little less scary for those who are new to social media, and informative to those more experienced users. Did you know that using LinkedIn will help you meet people in businesses similar to yours, and can connect you to business professionals in nearly every industry?

Book VII, Other Social Media Marketing Sites, covers lesser known or used sites, including Flickr, Ning and MySpace. Just because they’re not as popular as Facebook or Twitter doesn’t mean they couldn’t have a place in your marketing strategy. The authors help you decide if these sites are right for your business, and if so, how to use them to their fullest potential.

Finally, in Book VIII, Measuring Your Results; Building On Your Success, the authors explain how to analyze if all your hard work is paying off. Here the concepts of metrics, analytics, integration, tracking, and social mapping are introduced and discussed. If your social media campaign isn’t giving you the expected results, Book VIII, Chapter 4 describes what steps to take to fix problems.

Social Media Marketing All-In-One For Dummies is an excellent book for people who want to expand their businesses by entering the social realm, or for people who are just curious about what social media is all about. The authors include links for resources based on each chapter: everything from social media dashboards to web hosting to Twitter metrics. A very nice feature of this book is the generous use of real-life examples of businesses successfully using social media. Read how luxury footwear company “Omelle” markets their products strictly through social media outlets, or how social bookmarking helped laptop sleeve/creator “Barry’s Farm” increase their business and online presence.

The Dummies series of books have always been a favorite of mine. They’re easy to read, well organized, and contain loads of information. This book is no exception.

MyMac.com rating: 10 out of 10

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Increasingly, companies hire only by <b>social media</b>

A couple of weeks ago, Josh Shea started a new job as a senior web developer with Brayton Graphics, a design firm in Schenectady. But if it weren't for Shea's use of social media, he never would have heard about the position. It, like many jobs these days, was advertised solely on social networking sites -- specifically Twitter and Facebook.

With more than 500 million users on Facebook, 160 million on Twitter and 75 million on LinkedIn, social media are a growing avenue for employers to reach out to fill open positions and for potential employees to find jobs. Those statistics, combined with the competitive job market and the 6.8 percent local unemployment rate, add up to a new mandate for career-minded men and women: Get a Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn account and learn how to use it.

"These social networking tools are no longer considered a 'maybe' when it comes to job search and are a must-have for being noticed, building visibility and credibility and for ongoing career management," says Diane Crompton, a senior career management consultant with Right Management in Atlanta. "At least 50 percent of our landed candidates are now using social media as a critical part of being noticed, getting introductions and leads for their next position."

Crompton says more than 80 percent of people now find jobs through networking -- including in-person and online. A recent survey from Jobvite, a maker of recruiting software, found that nearly 75 percent of employers now use social media in their recruiting efforts.

Shea has been using social media -- primarily Facebook and Twitter -- to build his professional brand for nearly three years. Facebook has opened several freelance opportunities, while Twitter led to his new position.

He and Elizabeth Delos, the owner of Brayton, connected on Twitter more than a year ago. They started following each other because of their shared professional interests.

"When I started following them ... I didn't know I'd end up working there," says Shea. "I follow people because they're interesting, not because of an opportunity, but because I want to read what they have to say."

Shea is careful about what he says -- and the images he posts -- on any social networking site. His motto: "You never know who your next client is or who your next contact is."

Having a positive professional presence online through social media sites such as LinkedIn can help a job seeker compete in a crowded candidate pool, says Allison Keibel, the assistant director at the Center for Career Development at Adelphi University. Employers, she says, can find more information online about candidates before bringing them in for an interview -- as Delos did.

This can work to job seekers' advantage, she says, helping them develop a marketing strategy and "brand" their image online by displaying samples of their work on a personal website or by creating profiles with recommendations from colleagues -- a feature that is especially popular on LinkedIn.

As for Shea, the web guru wasn't looking for a job when Delos contacted him. He was working for LifeChurch.TV as a web developer, and enjoying his work, but he was familiar with Delos and her company and admired what they did.

The admiration was mutual. Delos and Shea had been following each other on Twitter for about a year and, while they didn't "talk" regularly, Delos was familiar with -- and impressed by -- Shea's work. So, after Tweeting the position (for those of you who aren't on Twitter, this is the equivalent of standing on a mountain top and shouting to whoever may be listening at the time), she contacted Shea on the social networking site.

Twitter was the only means of advertising she used to fill the spot.

The last time Delos had an opening, she had relied on craigslist, but the influx of unqualified candidates ended up being a waste of time, says Delos, who has never used newspapers or career-specific websites in her searches.

With Facebook and Twitter, on the other hand, she can find potential candidates she knows, thanks to previous contact or interaction through the social networking sites. Using the sites also lets employers such as Delos get a feel for the personality of potential employees. She can gauge whether they may fit into the office culture, a key part of employee retention.

This time around, she received little spam and few unqualified or mistargeted applicants through her social media search. What she did get was a pool of about eight solid candidates -- a blend of people who contacted her, and those like Shea, whom she approached.

"A lot of businesses that are established and have been in business for 20 years are used to the print and see social media as an additional added benefit, but for me, this is the only way to go," says Delos, who is 27 and started her company four years ago. "I won't go back."

Kristi Gustafson can be reached at 454-5494 or by e-mail at kgustafson@timesunion.com. Follow her at Facebook.com/JustKristiOnline or Twitter.com/JustKristi

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Business success requires <b>social media</b>

The Churchill Economic Development Authority's Small Business and Government Contracting workshop covered the importance of social media.

“We're currently in a communication revolution,” said instructor Ben Tedore of the Nevada Small Business Development Center. “The way people are getting information used to be different.”

Attendees were surprised to see social media as one of the available seminars but with its popularity, several were curious.

“I need to find out what social media has to do with government contracting,” said Leslie Martin, owner of MSE Welding and Fabrication LLC. “I'm kind of in awe of how much it's being used.”

Gail Kerr, owner of Squeezy's Cafe, agreed that it is important to pursue because everyone else is.

“I have a cafe where probably the (majority of my customers) are in their 50s, but it is amazing the number of people who are on the computer now,” Kerr said. “I'm sure there's some advantage for us if we find out about it. Economically right now you have to take advantage of everything that can work.”

New forms of advertising

Tedore said social media has changed the way people make purchasing decisions. He said consumers now learn about products and services from other consumers. Meanwhile, advertising seems less trustworthy.

“They want to hear what real people say about these products, not what the products say about themselves,” Tedore said. “They don't trust traditional marketing as much. People are becoming more self empowered. They trust their peers more than what businesses tell them.”

Information sharing occurs mostly through social networking sites, like Facebook, websites and blogs. Blogs are successful because they naturally rank high on search engines. Tedore said search engines look at different web pages and rank them based on key words, new content, content relevancy and the number of page visits. Tedore said blogs produce new content regularly, and they are full of key words on the related topic.

Getting started

Tedore said there are many social networking sites that use different methods to reach people. In addition to Facebook, there are sites like Twitter, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr, Yelp, LinkedIn, FourSquare and many more. Creating a page is as simple as visiting the website and following the directions to join.

To start a website or blog, Tedore recommended www.wordpress.org, which provides free website templates.

For those who are new to social media, Tedore recommended starting out slow by creating a personal page on a site like Facebook and looking at how other businesses use it.

“You can learn a lot just by watching what other people do,” Tedore said.

Once a business page or blog is set up, Tedore recommended people increase their fan base by advertising their presence on merchandise like coffee cups or business cards.

He also said it is key to provide relevant content that will benefit the reader, such as sales. He said advertising content will drive readers away.

“Don't spam,” Tedore said. “You always have to provide valuable content to the people who are following you.”

More change to come

Tedore added online advertising is already beginning to change. More and more companies are using personalized advertising software that reads a person's profile on a site like Facebook and tailors the ad to them. Tedore said there is talk of this technology moving from simple website adds to digital billboards.

He said there are also ideas like microchipping products to allow cell phones to scan for coupons. These are just some of the changes to come in the next 10-20 years.

“You can't wait for it to change or you'll be behind on that as well,” Tedore said.

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<b>Social Media Marketing</b> – Is It Right For You? | Social Marketing Tips

What Is Social Media And Why We Have It?

Social media, as the name implies, is a means through which people online can stay in touch with each other. Social media sites are gathering places where you can go, log in and instantly see all the news that happened to your family members. You can go to Facebook and find out your friend Marry’s new baby’s name, you can go to YouTube and actually see Marry’s baby walking around, you can go to twitter and tell all your friends about Marry’s new baby’s new adventure, etc.

Makes sense? Social media sites are there for us to be able to stay in touch with each other.

They Are NOT Intended To Be Marketing Tools

Although YouTube is a great place to do video marketing as it gives you free tools and virtually u[pnlimitted space to upload as many promotional videos as you want, it's not intended for you to use it to make money. Although Facebook is an awesome place to use for your new product launch as it allows you to get in touch with up to 5000 people all at the same time, it's not intended for you to make money. Both those sites are there to help you stay in touch with your buddies, so...

How Do You Use Social Media Marketing In your Business?

Well, don't get me wrong. People use social media to make tons of cash all the time, but there is one thing to remember: be very careful.

Let me put it this way: imagine that a long lost friend that you haven't seen for ages calls you up and invites you to dinner. You're way excited to meet with him and talk about the good old times.Mabe you'll get to refresh the friendship. You get to the restaurant. You guys sit down and start eating. Finally, half way through the meal, he starts selling you something.

You almost feel your steak lost its flavor, don't you?

You feel cheated. You feel used. If you're tactful, you finish the meal politely, say good bye and never get in touch with the guy again. If you're really upset, you say you don't want to talk to him anymore, get up and leave. In any case, friendship lost.

Do you want that to happen to you online? Do you really want to be seen as the "pushy salesman" type of friend? Not really? Then use social media marketing with caution. The same is true of video marketing of course.

Now, as I said, if you actually know what you're doing, social media marketing is perfect for generating additional income and traffic to your website or business. You just have to know what you're doing.

Here's an awesome place for you to go check out and learn how to use video marketing and social media marketing to make loads of cash. Enjoy.

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The Role Of Twitter In <b>Social Media Marketing</b> | Social Media Forum

Twitter is a social network, instant messaging and micro-blogging service that allows users to post “tweets”– 140 character updates that can be seen by other “Tweeters” who are following them. Users are prompted with the question, “What’s happening?” but tweets have evolved from descriptions of day-to-day life into conversations around popular topics, real-time news updates, shared links to interesting web content, photos, music and videos. For businesses, this ongoing dialogue makes Twitter a valuable social media marketing tool.

In order to successfully use Twitter in your social media marketing campaign, you have to post more than one-off advertisements and coupon codes. More than 50 million tweets are sent from Twitter each day, so hard work is required to make your business stand out. Stay afloat by gathering your target audience– the people who regularly tweet about your business’s subject. As well, if your posts contain popular keywords, people will also be able to find you. Once you have your preferred audience, interact with them. Pay close attention to their wants and needs and frequently post information they’ll find useful. After all, the most important part of social media marketing is being social.

Retweeting is crucial for a successful social media marketing campaign. Tweets that are exceptionally relevant and interesting have a chance to be spread and re-spread by other Twitter users, which allows your tweet to reach an infinite audience and possibly become viral. Posts that contain multimedia, such as links to videos, photos, fun articles, news and blogs have the best chance of being retweeted.

Tweetups, which are in-person gatherings of Twitter users, can easily bump your social media marketing plan to a higher level. You’ll have a chance to strengthen current relationships, make new ones and network with people who are just as passionate as you are. Afterward, participants will post followup tweets that contain valuable industry insight. Tweetups give your business a face and a name and close the gap between the virtual and physical worlds.

Twitter is a highly beneficial tool for social media marketing, but it still needs to be used in conjunction with other social platforms, such as Flikr, Facebook and YouTube. When used to its full advantage, Twitter will help create a far-reaching, robust social media marketing plan.

Before starting a social media marketing campaign, be sure to read this informative article on Twitter’s role in social media marketing.

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New Twitter Now Available for All

Twitter has finished rolling out the new version of its web interface (a.k.a. the “New Twitter”) to all users, the company announced Wednesday.

In a blog post, company spokesperson Carolyn Penner revealed that the New Twitter is now available to all 160 million of Twitter’sTwitter users in six languages. She also said that users will only be able to switch between the old and new versions of Twitter for the next few weeks, after which time only the new version will be accessible.

The company told us last week that the majority of users had access to the new interface (which many have viewed as an all-out attack on third-party Twitter clients), but today marks the official completion of a rollout process that began in September.

The New Twitter, the design of which is based on the proportions of the Golden Ratio, brings many new features to Twitter’s web interface. Most notably, the new version provides support for multimedia viewing directly on Twitter.com, which prevents users from having to click off-site to view images and video.

The new interface also displays a slew of new navigation controls, concentrated in a drop-down menu bar that runs across the top of the screen. Another favorite feature of MashableMashable readers is the ability to view threaded conversations more easily on the Messages page.

Now that everyone has the New Twitter, we’re eager to hear how you like it. Do you prefer it to the old version? Do you now use Twitter.com instead of a third-party client on your desktop?

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Three Tools for Hyper-local <b>Social Media Marketing</b>

With 500 million people on Facebook, 150 million on Twitter and every Fortune 500 company represented on LinkedIn, many marketers are overwhelmed and overspent trying to engage their customers and prospects. The answer is to think small, going after nano-markets using hyper-local social media marketing tools. A nano-market is smaller than a niche, and it's a group of people with a very specific set of interests.

Previously, these people were hard to find, and communicating with them was costly. But hyper-local search and social media have made it easier to target nano-markets, and most of the tools required to be successful are free or nearly free.

You can't outspend the big brands, and you can't put more hours in than them, either. What you can do is play the game differently by focusing on nano-markets. There are many social media outlets that can help you do this. I'd like to discuss three of my favorites.

Twitter Search
Twitter Search is already the second most used search engine on the internet. More than 1 billion twitter updates are created and indexed monthly; this puts 150 million Twitter members at your fingertips.

Too many people miss the "Advanced" search button. And that's too bad because one of the most important features is the location-based search option. You can drill down and search for people only in your immediate area who are tweeting about topics related to your business or industry and engage them in real-time

One great example of this is Blenz Coffee in Vancouver, British Columbia. The company found people within 10 miles of each of their locations who were tweeting about coffee, lattes, Starbucks and other coffee-related terms, and then engaged them by inviting them to its locations. George Moen, CEO of Blenz, also created a short list of influential bloggers and Twitter personalities and booked one-on-one meetings with them.

According to Moen, the strategy has increased store traffic and sales of online gift cards significantly. The Blenz strategy also helped them achieve the status of one of the top Ambush Marketers during the 2010 Winter Olympics, according to The Global Language Monitor, an independent media monitoring organization.

Meetup
According to founder Scott Heiferman, the purpose of Meetup is to "use the internet to get off of the internet." With more than 18,000 organizers and a growth rate of 500,000 members a month, it has proven to be a powerful tool. For less than $100 per year, you can start your own Meetup on a specific topic. Members in your region who indicate an interest in this topic will receive notifications of your group and upcoming events. Additionally, you can search for people within other Meetups.

By holding Meetup events that build community, share best practices and improve people's lives, you can elevate your organization and be seen as a trustworthy community hub -- versus a vendor or salesperson. It will also give you real insight into how you can help your clients and prospects.

Contact complementary Meetup group organizers and hold quarterly joint events. This exposes each of you to the other's market. It also will accelerate the growth of both respective Meetups.

Another strategy is to target Meetups that interest your prospects. Many of these groups have forums and complete member profiles that allow you to connect with them through Facebook, Twitter or their personal blogs. Be sure to gain consent, and don't send unsolicited pitches to these people. Instead, look for opportunities to contribute to the success of their Meetup groups and communities. This contribution could be in the form of providing sponsorship, guest speaking or even finding a venue for the group.

FourSquare
Some might describe FourSquare as a social game. Users "check in" to a business with their mobile phone and whoever checks in the most times at a business will be named Mayor of that location. Often, users post this information on Twitter and Facebook. Many businesses offer incentives and rewards to frequent visitors, and with more than 3 million users globally, most major cities have several thousand users.

One savvy independent Apple retailer in California monitors who is checking into the other local computer stores and corporately owned Apple stores. He then follows them on Twitter and FourSquare. On Twitter he watches their conversations for opportunities to provide relevant advice. Many of these people have come to his store as a result of their online conversations.

Particularly for retail and service-based businesses, filling out a complete FourSquare profile is vital. You might also add FourSquare-only specials. People will see your special offers when they check in at your business or a nearby business.

Blenz Coffee encourages check-ins by giving a $5 gift card to a new Mayor at each location weekly. According to Blenz, this immediately increased and sustained the number of check-ins at its major locations.

These are only three of the guerrilla social media weapons available. While your larger competitors fill the marketplace with noise, you can connect purposefully with your nano-markets and win the marketing battle one customer at a time.

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Washington Post Tells Journalists Not To Engage on Twitter

The Washington Post sent a memo to its staffers telling journalists not to answer critics from Post-branded Twitter accounts or to use their personal accounts to “speak on behalf of the Post.”

The memo comes after the Post published a controversial guest article online, “Christian compassion requires the truth about harms of sexuality,” by Tony Perkins.

The article was published after a number of suicides by teenagers, who were bullied for being gay. The article argued that homosexuality is a mental health issue, which prompted GLAAD, a gay activist group to complain about the article via Twitter and on its site. Responding to GLAAD’s public tweets, a staffer from The Washington Post tried to defend the publishing of the article as giving a platform for “both sides” of the debate. The response only fueled more frustration from GLAAD, which took to Twitter to say that there aren’t two sides to the issue at all:

As a result, the following memo was sent to staff by Post Managing Editor Raju Narisetti, who is no longer on Twitter after offering his thoughts on more spending for health care:

This week, some Post staffers responded to outside critics via our main
Twitter account. At issue was a controversial piece we’d published online. The intent in replying was to defend the decision to publish the piece, but it was misguided both in describing our rationale for publishing the piece and as a matter of practice. It shouldn’t have been sent.

Even as we encourage everyone in the newsroom to embrace social media and relevant tools, it is absolutely vital to remember that the purpose of these Post branded accounts is to use them as a platform to promote news, bring in user generated content and increase audience engagement with Post content. No branded Post accounts should be used to answer critics and speak on behalf of the Post, just as you should follow our normal journalistic guidelines in not using your personal social media accounts to speak on behalf of the Post.

Perhaps it would be useful to think of the issue this way: when we write a story, our readers are free to respond and we provide them a venue to do so. We sometimes engage them in a private verbal conversation, but once we enter a debate personally through social media, this would be equivalent to allowing a reader to write a letter to the editor–and then publishing a rebuttal by the reporter. It’s something we don’t do. Please feel free to flag Marcus, Liz and me when you see something out there that you think deserves a response from the Post. As we routinely do, we will work with Kris Coratti and her team to respond when appropriate.

The Post is clearly trying to do some damage control, but in a time when it is often difficult to encourage traditional journalists to embrace social media and dialogue with readers, this will only discourage it further. News organizations should be encouraging dialogue and debate, not stifling dialogue between readers and journalists.

Sure, it makes sense that they should rein in who manages the Washington Post-branded Twitter account, as that could be seen as an “official” response of the company and not an individual. But putting a stop on engagement and conversation regarding Post stories from journalists will only distance those reporters from the very community they are a part of. Perhaps a clarification to “speak on behalf of the Post,” could clear up what is okay for journalists to engage in dialogue. But it is also likely that some journalists will now avoid it altogether. There also seems to be a disconnect in what journalists are encouraged to increase audience engagement with Post content, and not the journalists themselves.

The memo goes on to explain why this sort of response or rebuttal for a story should not come from a reporter at the Post, with the reasoning pointing to an old model of dialogue that distances the reporter from the community. Basically, what Narisetti points to is the current process of dialogue and conversation in the controlled environment of “Letters to the Editor.” If readers have something to say, they can respond through that avenue and reporters are not able to write a rebuttal back.

Of course, this varies from news organization to news organization, but this model is broken. It only reaffirms the old model of “we publish and you listen,” and a model that had a disconnect from the news process and the former audience. It is not a model of conversation and dialogue around news that has become increasingly social. Why not encourage reporters to have a dialogue around the news? Around the stories they cover, producing and giving more transparency to the process?

It does appear that some dialogue will still take place from the Washington Post account, but the process seems overly bureaucratic at a time when responding quickly is important.

Thumbnail courtesy of iStockphoto, fotosipsak

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Upcoming Workshop: Marcus Evans <b>Social Media Marketing</b> Conference <b>...</b>

Welcome to the Gauravonomics Blog for Marketers, Entrepreneurs and Activists! Follow the blog on RSS, Twitter or Facebook and you'll never miss a post again!

I’m delighted to share that I’ll be conducting a half day workshop at the Marcus Evans Social Media Marketing Conference 2010 at Novotel Mumbai on Novermber 18-19, 2010.

I’ll demonstrate the possibilities of a strategic social media program with the Dell case study, illustrate the 18 social media use cases around conversations, campaigns and community using short examples and close by arguing for my 360 redux approach to integrated marketing, with the Pepsi Refresh case study.

Other speakers at the conference include senior executives from Yum International, Viacom18, Cadbury, McDonalds, Taj Hotels, Nokia, Mahindra & Mahindra and Unilever.

Do consider joining me at what promises to be one of the most important conferences on social media marketing in India. More details here.

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6 Free Web Tools for Managing Time Differences

This series is brought to you by UPS. Discover the new logistics. It levels playing fields and lets you act locally or globally. It’s for the individual entrepreneur, the small business, or the large company. Put the new logistics to work for you.

Conducting business with international clients can mean more than just a language barrier — there can be a time barrier as well.

With 24 standard time zones, it can be overwhelming to keep track of all your clients’ business hours, and scheduling tasks across time zones can be a challenge.

If your business depends on knowing what time it is everywhere, don’t worry, as there are plenty of free online tools to help you coordinate, and ensure you never unwittingly call a client at 4 a.m.

World Time Zone is a handy, at-a-glance map that lays out every region. Divided and color coded, you can quickly see which areas fall into which time zones. It also displays local times for each of the world’s capital cities.

If you want to focus on a specific region, the site is broken up by continents, so you can view an easy-to-read chart with all the time differences.

Another handy feature is the highlighting of which areas are observing Daylight Saving Time. Also, take a look at the Sun Clock feature, which (as the name implies) allows you to see in what regions the sun is still shining.

This website is pretty much as straightforward as it gets when it comes to calculating time differences. There are two clocks. The one on the left displays your local time. The one on the right will do the conversion for a number of major cities. If you simply need to know the time elsewhere in a hurry, this easy-to-use website has you covered.

If you don’t want to use an external web app, you can keep tabs on international time zones right in your GmailGmail inbox. Simply select the “Labs” icon (the little green beaker) at the top of Gmail and scroll down to enable the “Sender Time Zone” feature. This will allow you to see what the recipient’s current local time is when you send them messages, and allay those worries about why they haven’t answered you yet: They’re probably asleep.

If you need a quick way to keep track of multiple time zones right from your inbox, you can add a Google Gadget to your side bar that displays the relevant info. You’ll need to enable this feature in Gmail Labs, so click that green beaker and enable the “Add any gadget by URL” option.

In a new tab, head over to the Google Gadgets Directory and type “Time Zones” in the search bar. There are a variety of time zone gadgets (of various quality), but a good option is one called World Time Zones.

Back in Gmail, click “Settings,” and you’ll now see a tab marked “Gadgets” has appeared. From the “World Time Zones” Gadget page, you’ll need to grab the second URL (which starts after “&url=” in the address bar, and ends in .XML). Paste it into Gmail’s gadget dialog and hit “Add.” Now, if you scroll down the left side of you inbox, you’ll see the gadget has appeared, and you can flip through all the world’s time zones without ever leaving Gmail.

The World Time Server is another helpful resource for all your international planning needs. The site shows you the current time and date for any city, country or time zone, and has a self-maintained database that adjusts for Daylight Saving Time.

Here too is a time converter, but with twist that’s great for planning long distance interactions in real time. If you were planning a meeting with a client via SkypeSkype, or if you were to live stream a presentation that you wanted clients in different cities to be able to watch at the same time, then this time converter might be of use.

After you’ve set the time for your event, you’ll be sent a link that you can then e-mail to clients or post on your blog or TwitterTwitter profile so that people can figure out at what local time your event is starting.

There is also a meeting planner that allows you to choose up to five states, provinces or countries so you can organize the best time to have a conference call for all the parties involved. The site also offers local news and weather updates — because it never hurts to show a client that you know what’s happening in their neck of the woods.

Time and Date has the same features as the sites listed above, plus a few extras. Calendars and holiday observances are listed here and broken down by country. They are particularly helpful for scheduling important deals or conversations since each country has its own civic holidays or widely observed religious ones that differ from the North American schedule.

The site is updated regularly with news on any changes countries have made regarding their daylight saving time schedule. Another useful feature is a pull down menu of international dialing codes, since it’s not always as simple as dialing one and then the phone number to call out.

Every Time Zone is a simple, nicely designed site that is perfect for quickly accessing time zones and date changes. Your local time is generated from your IP address and is displayed as a fluorescent green bar. Other regions are listed above and below your local time, giving you an instant look at the time difference. You can drag your local time tab forward or backward to measure specific time differences as well.

With these tools, you should be more than able to manage your international meeting times. Let us know in the comments below what works best for you and how you manage working with companies in different time zones.

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- HOW TO: Build Your International Business Network Online
- 5 Lightweight CMS Alternatives for Small Businesses
- HOW TO: Optimize Your Mobile Site Across Multiple Platforms
- 8 Funding Contests to Kick Start Your Big Idea
- 4 Tips for Writing SEO-Friendly Blog Posts
- How CEOs Will Use Social Media in the Future

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<b>Social Media Marketing</b> by SearchReadySeo | Underground Research <b>...</b>

SearchReadySeo is located San Francisco Bay Area and serves the greater part of East Bay, Fremont, San Jose, Berkely, . We offer top-quality professional Social Media Networking/Internet Marketing at globally affordable packages.

Social Media Networking in Bay Area is more popular than ever in the online space today. People communicate, socialise and network increasingly online. Marketing in forums, social networking and social bookmarking websites can be more difficult than it seems. Normal marketing and advertising rules do not apply as communities are sensitive to their unique code of conduct that needs to be respected at all times. Adding value and building trust will be the key to our approach.

SearchReadySeo offers social media networking on sites like facebook, twitter, linkedin, yelp, digg, myspace & many more to all of our Bay Area clients.

Our consultants can help to introduce your company to these spaces and also advise you on how to better add value and rip the benefits of a well-positioned product or service.

Whichever method you choose, there are usually four main goals:
Increased brand awareness. You’re interacting with others on the social media channel in order to build awareness for your personal and business brand. You’re increasing your visibility in the right areas and trying to stick in the minds of others through active interaction on many different levels. From this perspective, networking also works to drive traffic back to your website.

Improved reputation. You want to improve how others think about your website so you hang out in forums or networking sites, in order to respond to feedback. You want to keep the communication channels open on all social media fronts. You may also want to improve your reputation as an expert by being consistently involved in discussions on topics that are relevant to your business or website.

Relationships with benefits. One can network with others with the aim of extracting future benefits such as testimonials, links or recommendations. Others are more likely to provide you with a benefit when you’ve taken the effort to interact with them. Networking is a way to build relationships that can be mutually beneficial.

We offer social media marketing services on a great number of networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, StumbleUpon, Twitter, Flickr, Delicious, Bebo, Digg, MySpace and others. We also offer viral marketing services for marketing in video sharing sites. The work carried out by Social Media has a structured approach of strategy, creative thought, analysis, close monitoring and timely execution. The experience of working in social media spaces since beginning days to maximize their presence and create a viral buzz about their brands with highly effective ROI. The cost of a social marketing campaign can vary but the basic packages still deliver outstanding value for the advertiser.

Social networking allows you to maintain light and more in depth contact with both acquaintances and established friends. Goal for SearchReadySEO is to establish “Web Presence” for websites. Any Website is more likely to get a higher returns in the future than the immediate present.

SearchReadySeo is a professional Search Engine Optimization and Website Design company based in the San Francisco Bay Area. We have been offering our clients one-on-one service which our clients will agree is second to none. We at SearchReadySeo Design believe a company stands or falls not just by the quality of service offered, but more by the continued success of our clients.

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Tags: Advertising Rules, Amp, Berkely, Brand Awareness, Building Trust, Code Of Conduct, Communication Channels, East Bay, Francisco Bay Area, Internet Marketing, Main Goals, Marketing, Media, Myspace, Networking Internet, Reputation, San Francisco Bay, San Francisco Bay Area, SearchReadySeo, Social, Social Networking, Socialise, Visibility, Yelp

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4 Myths about <b>Social Media Marketing</b>

This is a guest post by Jennifer's co-worker Britt Brouse

Would you say no to a free ad for your freelance business on television or in a local magazine or newspaper?  Then you better be doing social media marketing!

Social media marketing is a free way to advertise, yet only a handful of freelancers are using sites such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to market their services and increase web traffic. The only cost to doing social media marketing is the time you invest in creating a profile, crafting messages and engaging with other users.

The more time and creativity you put into social media, the more leads and new business you'll get out of it. Below are four of the most common social media marketing myths, and how to overcome these falsehoods.

Myth No. 1: I don't have enough time

In order to start an active Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn presence you'll need about an hour a day for about two weeks. Once you have connected with enough followers and friends, the time investment drops to 15 minutes every day or 30 minutes three times a week. Hootsuite.com, is a free tool that aggregates all your social media profiles into one dashboard. The software saves time by eliminating the need to login to each site separately, and it allows users to schedule updates in advance. So by checking into Hootsuite for 15 to 20 minutes once each day, you can set updates to go out hours or days later.

Myth No. 2: I don't know where to start

On all of the leading social media sites, there are built-in tools to help you find your friends and colleagues. Facebook and LinkedIn are pretty easy to use in this respect; however, it's a bit more challenging to build a Twitter following. The best way to build a Twitter following is to follow other graphic designers and industry thought-leaders, and they in turn will follow you. Look at graphic designers’ Twitter profiles and click on the list of people they follow. Then go ahead and follow any of the users who look relevant to you. Use Twitter search to find contacts by keywords and even ZIP code. As you get more advanced at using Twitter, you'll find that lists are a great way to sort and manage all the incoming updates.

Myth No. 3: Nobody cares about what I'm doing

OK, it might actually be true that nobody cares what you're doing. Leading social media marketers actually say you should promote other peoples links and content 12 times more than your own content.

One way to develop content to post is to visit Alltop.com where you can find lists of the best blogs in graphic design and other areas. Then create a Google Reader or a profile on a social bookmarking site such as Delicious.com and add those blogs to your list. This way you can check in with what's being posted in the blogosphere and select a handful of sites to link to and share with your followers.  On Twitter, the retweet button is a powerful tool, because it gives you content to push out to your followers and it’s a way to compliment and build a relationship with another user.

Myth No. 4: Social Media Wont' Pay my Bills

Business networking is happening online. LinkedIn.com is a powerful search tool where companies can find local experts and make contact with them for projects and jobs. A LinkedIn profile, complete with recommendations from past clients or employers, is becoming a new form of the cover letter. On Twitter and Facebook, you'll need to take a subtler approach to marketing your business. Let's say you are working on design for a nonprofit marketing campaign. If you share an update on Twitter or Facebook about what you are doing, then maybe another nonprofit client out there will notice and contact you. It never hurts to toot or “tweet” your own horn a little bit.

Britt Brouse writes for the PsPrint Design & Printing Blog. She has been writing about marketing, graphic design and online printing for more than five years. You can find PsPrint on Twitter and Facebook.

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Valley arts embracing <b>social media</b>

by Kerry Lengel - Oct. 1, 2010 01:18 PM
The Arizona Republic

From the top institutions to the grass roots, Valley artists and performers are jumping on the social-media bandwagon, using Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to interact with their audiences, and maybe even to grow them.

But for Jennifer Spencer, marketing director for Arizona Theatre Company, the latter would just be icing on the cake.

"I don't care how many followers we have or how many people 'like' us," she says. "People who are liking us or fanning us on Facebook already know us. They're already interested. So it's not always just a sales message. You want to get them talking."

Conversation is the buzzword. ATC, with nearly 1,200 friends on Facebook, uses the platform to link to videos or photos taking fans backstage for its next show or to invite patrons to chat about news bits from the theater world.

"It's so easy to just throw a generic marketing message up there, but how do you have a presence without being boring?" Spencer says. "It's exciting when this conversation gets going. It affirms the fact that we're doing something that people care about. And we do pay attention to what people say."

That's exactly the right approach, says Lorrie Thomas, CEO of Web Marketing Therapy, a California consulting firm.

"Social media is a way to serve and to support," she says. "You may get some sales off it, but if you enter the social Web with the idea that you're going to push propaganda, you're going to fail. You use the social Web as a way to offer quality information.

"We live in an era of mass collaboration, and we're looking for things that are useful and relevant."

Over at Phoenix Theatre (750-plus friends), public-relations rep Theresa Dickerson agrees that interacting with audiences is key, but she's convinced networking technologies have been gold for good old-fashioned sales as well.

"Word of mouth is one of our biggest tools to sell tickets, and social media makes that so much easier," she says.

The Valley arts group with the largest social-media following has to be the Phoenix Art Museum.

"We had a Facebook page for a while and it kind of sat there," museum director James Ballinger says. "So we went to a much more casual kind of language in our postings. We solicited feedback, so we've tried to have an active voice with our audience on Facebook. We try to change the message every few days, and the result is, over the past 12 or 14 months, we went from over 1,000 Facebook friends to over 16,000."

Furthermore, he's confident that online success has strengthened the institution's bottom line.

"I can't tell you that 7 percent of our attendance last year came from Facebook interaction," he says, "but I can tell you . . . it's clear that we have a much younger audience than we used to. Visibly, on a daily basis, you can tell. And attendance went up 10 percent last year, 10 percent again this year."

Individual artists are having success on social media as well, such as female impersonator Richard Stevens, better known as Barbra Seville, who is on Facebook throughout the day to keep her 3,000 friends amused.

"It's an extension of what I do onstage," Stevens says. "It's entertaining my audience."

Having a sizable online following helped Seville "go viral" with a video spoof of Gov. Jan Brewer last month that has racked up more than 67,000 views on YouTube. And that in turn brought more interest to the Facebook page.

"I was picking up five friend requests an hour for a while," Stevens says. "It was really crazy."

 

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Boston Globe to Launch Separate Paid Site

The Boston Globe announced Thursday that the online version of its newspaper will be moving from Boston.com to BostonGlobe.com, and that it will begin charging for full access to the latter beginning the second half of next year.

Print subscribers will automatically have full access to all of The Boston Globe’s daily published content at the new site; others will have to purchase a print or digital-only subscription. The price for the latter has not yet been determined.

Boston.com will transition into a free, local news site, pulling in breaking news, sports, weather and more from a variety of sources — including, of course, some from The Boston Globe. The paper is also developing a number of branded apps and other digital products for smartphones, tablets and other devices, the company announced.

“Our research shows that Boston.com currently attracts several different types of user,” Publisher Christopher Mayer said in a statement. “Some are readers whose main interest is breaking news and things to do, while others want access to the entirety of The Boston Globe. These two distinct sites will allow us to serve both types of readers with maximum effectiveness, while continuing to provide advertisers the large engaged audience they have come to expect from Boston.com,” he declared.

The strategy jumps on two emerging trends in the news industry. The first is a growing propensity among traditional print news organizations to charge readers for full access to content. A number of newspapers have placed or plan to place some or all of their content behind paywalls, including The Wall Street Journal, The London Times and The New York Times, the latter of which is owned by the same parent company as The Boston Globe.

Boston.com follows a different movement: The recent proliferation of free local news sites like ChicagoNow, owned by The Chicago Tribune and TBD.com, the content for which is sourced from other providers. These sites are filling in the void of local newspapers, more than 100 of which shut down in 2009 alone.

While the decision to split into two distinct properties may strike some as odd, it’s a wise move in a transitioning market. Faced with rising costs, falling print circulation and declining or flat advertising revenue, newspapers have been forced to explore new business models. Although digital advertising revenue is growing, the web offers nearly infinite ad space, and newspapers simply cannot command the same rates for online display ads as they could once charge for print.

The Boston Globe currently attracts about 5 million unique readers per month, making it the eighth largest newspaper website in the U.S.

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New <b>Media Marketing</b> Summit Helps Business Owners Attract and Engage Quality <b>...</b>

West Palm Beach, FL / Orlando, FL (PRWEB) October 3, 2010

South Florida's most respected online experts come together to provide two opportunities to attend the New Media Marketing Summit organized to inspire marketers, entrepreneurs, and small business owners. This event includes one day, five speakers, a live website review, and an excellent chance to network with successful leaders in your industry.

The speakers are a group of experts that work with small businesses in all different areas of online marketing and created this event in order to help others keep up with the changes and fast-moving trends in the marketing industry. One will gain insights into the latest trends to optimize your online presence with topics such as how to use popular social media sites, ways to build relationships with your target market, and how to use search engines to your advantage.

A common theme among entrepreneurs and business owners that have attended the summit in the past is that they have heard of certain tools or websites, but do not know where to start and often feel too unprepared to begin promoting their business. Participants will get fully emerged into specific concepts and learn from real life case studies shown by the experts. The speakers will be explaining relevant topics and give concrete examples to prompt others to have their own success stories.

Guests can take advantage of group brainstorming and learning alongside others at the same level without the distractions of being in the office. Participants will be focused on the concepts and will be interacting with the experts to ask questions and get instant feedback on their concerns.

The speakers will include Jeremy Pound, co-founder and chief strategist of Juicy Results, an online marketing firm. Pound will reveal the real reason your website isn't getting your desired results. Klaus Heesch, creative director and co-founder of Juicy Results will also be attending. His expertise is creating strategies that combine appropriate technologies with consistent branding. Jennifer Hampton, owner and CEO of Superior Virtual Services and author of "The Art of Social Media" is recognized for her social media training and will give secrets on how to manage your own social media plan. Brie Wolf, founder and president of YOUnited TV, has extensive experience working with major publishers and PR firms. She will be discussing how to create effective videos that people actually want to watch.

If you are interested in this opportunity, now is the time to act in order to receive 100 dollars off your admission. To take advantage of this special price, register for the West Palm Beach summit by Friday Oct 15th or register by Nov 1st for the Orlando conference. The West Palm Beach summit will take place at the Hilton Palm Beach Airport and the Orlando location is yet to be determined.

To register for this event, see details on specific summit topics, or read testimonials from past attendees, visit www.newmediamarketingsummit.com or contact Jeremy Pound at Jeremy(at)juicyresults(dot)com for questions.

Contact:
Jeremy Pound
Juicy Results
Jeremy(at)juicyresults(dot)com
www.juicyresults.com

###

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10 Tips for Aspiring Digital Marketers

Over the next few years, digital marketing budgets are expected to increase steadily, according to Datran Media’s Annual Marketing & Media Survey, which reaches out to more than 5,000 marketing executives from Fortune 500 brands, top publishers and leading advertising and media agencies.

This is good news for those of you hoping to break into the digital marketing industry. Whether you’re passionate about search, affiliate, social media, or another area of marketing, there are a few things you can do to prove your worthiness to prospective employers.

We asked five industry insiders about their top tips for aspiring digital marketers. Find their suggestions below and add your own in the comments.

While a degree in marketing or communications can take you a distance, most employers are looking for candidates with marketing experience, whether that’s via a previous job, internship or side project. If you already have work experience in the marketing world, congratulations. For the rest of you, internships or other projects will be key.

“Any hands-on involvement with campaign creation, analytics, or optimization can be extremely beneficial to aspiring digital marketers,” says Traci Kuiphoff, online marketing manager at BareNecessities.com. “If you’re in school or a recent grad, the best way to gain experience is to do an internship at a company or agency that has a department or focus in online or digital marketing. Not only do you get real world hands-on experience, but it’s also great to put on your resume when you’re ready for a full-time position.”

If you are in college, look for paid or for-school-credit marketing internships at your college’s job fairs, via job search sites, and on social media sites. You could even land your next gig through Twitter.

If you don’t land an internship or find a position of interest, create your own project or enter a marketing contest. While studying marketing and international business at NYU Stern’s Undergraduate School of Business, a classmate and I entered the John Caples Student Campaign of the Year contest, and created a digital marketing campaign for Pentel. Our campaign included a mix of digital, social and direct marketing communications, along with thoroughly gathered success metrics. Not only did we win first place, which included summer internships and a cash prize, but we also met a lot of industry experts who have since acted as mentors to us.

Being able to analyze marketing campaigns and understand what worked or didn’t is the key role of a digital marketer — in order to do that, you’ll need to know (and love) the industry jargon.

“Understanding metrics on the web is key,” says Naishi Zhang, assistant marketing manager at Barnes & Noble. “The internet provides so many ways of analyzing user behavior, and knowing how to gather and interpret data is important for success. Read widely and learn the lingo, so when someone asks about the CTR of a banner ad or the number of page views a landing page received, you’ll be ready.”

Mastering marketing terminology and metrics, as well as what they mean, will take time and practice, but you can get a basic knowledge by picking up a marketing 101 textbook or attending an introductory course. Check out local college or continuing education courses. If that isn’t an option, the InternetInternet is at your disposal. About.com’s glossary of marketing terms and HubSpot’s glossary of social media marketing terms are both very useful for beginners, and you should also read some of the top marketing blogs to get your daily fill of information.

Rick Bakas, director of social media marketing at St. Supéry Vineyards and Winery believes that a person’s online presence can be a major deciding factor on whether an aspiring digital marketer makes the cut for a job. “If an employer is deciding between two candidates,” he notes, “they might go with the person with the strong following online. Build your personal brand online. You have to show you can build your personal brand if you’re going to build someone else’s.”

“Your online clout is sometimes referred to as ’social currency,’” he continues. “In other words, there’s a value associated with your online personal brand. Increased value carries as much weight as a great resume. A high Klout.com score for example, will help you stand out and validate what your resume says about you.”

Your Klout score is a number between 0 and 100 that measures the size of your engaged audience, the likelihood that they will amplify your messages, and your overall influence within your network. Bigger isn’t always better. Bakas explains, “Aspiring marketers would do well to grow an engaged online following, not necessarily a large online following. Again, Klout.com is a great tool to evaluate the strength of your online presence.”

There isn’t just one career path in marketing. You can choose to work for an agency, with an in-house team, or start your own firm. There are multiple marketing disciplines, including affiliate, search, social media, e-mail, mobile, and display marketing, to name a few. Teams come in all sizes — some in which teammates specialize in certain areas, and others where a team can be composed of just one stellar know-it-all.

The best way to get a taste of all of the options is to dabble in a bit of everything. Kuiphoff advises, “Digital marketing agency experience can be extremely valuable — at an agency you can be exposed to all avenues of digital marketing from paid search, social media, mobile and everything in between. Most likely, you’ll touch a number of different accounts which can help you choose a vertical focus or specialty.”

Once you have a base knowledge in each area of marketing, you’ll be better equipped to choose a more specific path to focus on. Having a specialty enables you to hone your skills in that area and become an expert, which is a valuable asset to potential employees.

“Put the ’social’ in social media and spend time engaging with people in the real world,” says Bakas. “Go to lots of events to create or nurture quality interactions that can later continue online. Use plancast.com to see which upcoming events are worth going to. These experiences are ripe with opportunities to meet other digital marketers. The strongest relationships are the ones nurtured online and offline.”

Kuiphoff adds, “Digital marketing conferences not only provide a great networking opportunity, but most offer in-depth workshops that can enhance your skill set.”

Some worthwhile conferences to consider include SXSW, Search Marketing Expo, Web 2.0 Expo, Ad Age Digital Conference, ad:tech, and Pivot.

If you’re not into the hustle and bustle of industry conferences, you can consider a more toned-down approach by attending or organizing your own Meetups. There are thousands of marketing Meetups around the world. The NY Entrepreneurs Business Network and San Francisco Entrepreneur Meetup are two of the largest.

Because of the nature of the Internet, digital marketing is ever-changing. If you don’t keep up with the latest trends and news, it shows in interviews and on the job. Sarah Hofstetter, SVP of emerging media & client strategy at digital marketing agency 360i says it well:

“Remember that standing still is going backwards. Yes, it’s an adage that has been used for years to inspire ambition, but it is blatantly obvious in the digital landscape. Not only does that technology evolve at a lightening pace that transcends Moore’s law, but consumer behavior is shifting at a radical pace, and media consumption becomes more and more fragmented.

“Being on top of consumer behavior –- understanding what they’re doing online, what motivates them and their social and mobile behavior –- and staying ahead of that by learning what’s in the market and what’s on the come, will help ensure you don’t get stuck on the sidelines when interviewing for jobs in digital marketing.”

Kuiphoff recommends subscribing to industry blogs and newsletters to stay on top of the latest news. Some of my personal favorites include Ad Age, ClickZ, eMarketer, BrandWeek and AdWeek.

While you won’t be coding programs or building full websites as a digital marketer, you will need to work with developers and designers or other web specialists to communicate your marketing design needs. A basic knowledge of how the web works, HTML, and one or two programming languages, such as PHPPHP, JavaScript, CSS and Ruby, will help you understand the current boundaries and opportunities that will affect your marketing campaigns.

“It’s important for anyone working in the digital world, whether it’s marketing or designing features for a product, to have a basic understanding of coding,” suggests Dharmishta Rood, a research assistant at Harvard Business School and fellow at the Center for Future Civic Media at MIT. “There are great experiential benefits from understanding the underlying technologies that shape what we do online — it’s easier to understand how users can interact with content, what is possible for design with things like CSS and JavaScript, and understand the nuances of basic technical terminology.”

Everyone needs a resume — what you do with it is up to you. To help you stand out, here are a few tips from our digital marketing experts:

“Demonstrate that you can produce results and work in a fast-paced environment, whether you’ve had previous digital experience or not. Don’t be afraid to include things about yourself that may not be directly related to the job. Resumes get scanned quickly, so it always helps to inject something creative and clever.” — Naishi Zhang, assistant marketing manager, Barnes & Noble“One way you can make your resume stand out is to get certified. GoogleGoogle has a certification program for Adwords. If you have a paid search marketing focus this can help assure a client/employer that you’re proficient in the system.” — Traci Kuiphoff, online marketing manager, BareNecessities.com“I’m a big believer in making sure your resume is on LinkedInLinkedIn, and to have recommendations on LinkedIn. Start asking for recommendations soon. LinkedIn is like your digital resume. Make sure the facts match up. Also, Google your name to see what comes up — your prospective employers will.” — Rick Bakas, director of social media marketing, St. Supéry Vineyards and Winery“Use keywords to describe your previous experience that make sense for the specific job you’re applying for — if the job description or department does “social media outreach” and your description of all those TwitterTwitter @replies, FacebookFacebook messages and moderated blog post comments is currently called “customer service,” this does not play up your strengths as a digital marketer. Use common sense though. If their keywords don’t match your experience, don’t write anything untruthful, and consider doing things to get the types of experience for the jobs you want, such as volunteering to help with the social media of a non-profit whose cause you support.” — Dharmishta Rood, research assistant, Harvard Business School

To showcase your skills alongside multimedia and other online assets, check out some digital alternatives to the paper resume, including video resumes, VisualCVs, social resumes and LinkedIn profiles.

“Sure, it’s great to know about Facebook, iAds and whatever is coming next from Silicon Valley,” Hofstetter points out, “but when we’re looking for key talent at 360i, nothing matters to us more than intellectual curiosity and passion…In a business where answers and solutions aren’t always obvious, you need to be innately curious (about everything) and obsessed with the ‘why’ behind the ‘what.’”

It may sound cheesy at first, but she has a point. Without inquisitiveness and zeal, we’re just work drones on a mission to take over the Internet. Plus, these traits have a positive effect on the way we work, Hofstetter says:

“People who have these qualities can innovate and identify trends from seemingly ordinary data — they’re the first to try new things (platforms, tools, technology) and think about how marketers can benefit from them. They don’t always have the answers, but when you’re being asked to do never-been-done-before things, there isn’t a rulebook. That’s why when we’re recruiting, we look for people who know how to ask the right questions.

Staring at a computer screen all day long can take a toll on your body, mind and social life. Get away from that monitor and breathe for crying out loud!

Bakas advocates getting out every once in a while to work on who you are as a person outside of work. “Because transparency is important, it’s important to be a good person in the real world,” he says, “It’ll translate into the digital world — you can’t fake being a good person if you’re a jerk in real life. Unplug for your own sanity, but also to continue growing as a person in life.”

I second that. Now, get out of here and get a job.

Every week we put out a list of social media and web job opportunities. While we post a huge range of job listings, we’ve selected some of the best digital marketing jobs from the past two weeks to get you started. Happy hunting!

- 5 Tips for Aspiring Social Media Marketers
- 10 Tips For Aspiring Community Managers
- 5 Tips for Aspiring Copywriters and Art Directors
- HOW TO: Land a Career in Digital Public Relations
- Top 5 Tips for Aspiring Music Bloggers

Image courtesy of RICEinteractive; iStockphotoiStockphoto, track5

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Video SEO Basics - Whiteboard Friday

Video SEO isn't something we always think about when optimizing, but we really should. In this week's Whiteboard Friday, Danny Dover reviews some of the video SEO basics that every SEO should know about. After all, it's a largely untapped market, unlike the Canadian maple tree market. Which is very tapped. (The Canadian maple tree video market, however, is quite untapped, but based on my scientific and extremely boring research in YouTube, I don't recommend you pursue that market at all).

Anyways, we have a very special visitor this week, what with all of Danny's meta discussions this month. Great Scott! That's what happens when you get all meta and self-referential on us, Danny.

Hello, everybody. My name is Danny Dover. I work here at SEOmoz doing SEO. For today's Whiteboard Friday we're going to be talking about video SEO. Now, last week I mentioned that was the most meta video we'd ever done. It was optimizing SEO resources, right? Now, this one is a video on video SEO. So this one, this one is the new champion of the most meta video that we have ever done here, and possibly the most meta video that you have ever seen. If there is some kind of disruption in the space-time continuum, totally my fault. I apologize.

--1.21 Gigawatts!?!--

That was unexpected. That was Doc from Back to the Future. A poor impression of it. Totally derailing my Whiteboard Friday. You're killing me.

All right. Now, video SEO, huge opportunity here. This is more of a serious thing. Video SEO has low competition. You see in the universal results that video thumbnails show up about a third of the way from the top, right. You're seeing little thumbnails. A lot of times it's YouTube, but you also see Vimeo and lots of other video providers showing up. You are seeing those in lots and lots of SERPs, and increasing so actually. There is a huge demand from people because, you know, Google is doing A/B testing or multivariate testing. They're seeing people are clicking on those. But, at the same time, you'll have low competition. You'll see a lot of times for very high competition keywords that have video results that the video results will just be kind of mediocre. They just kind of showed up there. Part of that is because it is new. Not a lot of people are optimizing for video, which is becoming extremely important. So, a lot of opportunity there.

The other part of this, I guess I can only talk for the United States, where I live, but the way that people are starting to consume media is changing drastically. We've all seen YouTube. We've all seen Vimeo. Now the devices people are using and the places they are watching video are different. You have things like the iPhone, the iPad, and the iPayWayTooMuchForGadgets and I am an Apple fanboy, kind of thing. You're seeing these all over the place. There is the Android model, the operating system that is running lots and lots of things. system. You're seeing the way that people are consuming media very differently. The market is growing. Based on that, the demand is high but the competition is really low. Lots of opportunity. This smells like money to me. This is huge. This is a big deal.

How do you take advantage of this? Well, there are different metrics the search engines use to look at video content. When the search engines crawl normal content, they can get some kind of idea of what text is trying to say by using their natural language processing algorithms. They can get some idea of what this text says just simply because they put so much time and so much energy into developing these algorithms to get some kind of semantic feeling for what text means. Now, this doesn't translate directly into video because, part of the reason at least, is video is much bigger files. It takes a lot more processing to get an understanding of it. It is a lot more zeros and ones. With these Google and the search engines have provided Meta information that you can do about a video.

The two most important ones here are the title of the video -- what do you title your video. That's probably what people are going to search for, right. If it is the shoes video on YouTube or whatever it may be on YouTube. Those are a lot of times what people are searching for. That information turns out to be very important for video SEO.

Likewise, the description is also very important because it gives you more than whatever may be the character limit, probably around 140, I would guess for the title. But it gives you more text to describe it in more depth. This helps the search engines understand the video without having to go through all the intensive video processing.

Now, as video SEO is maturing, we're starting to see more and more metrics start to affect the algorithm. So, let me be totally straightforward with this. This is just my speculation. I have not done tests on these ones. But they seem very likely to be impacting the video search results. My guess would be that they'll be more impactful going forward. So, they are something to start paying attention to now.

The first one I see here is engagement stats. The most obvious one here is views. How many times is a video viewed? I know that when I go to YouTube and I search for something, after I look at the text, the title and the description, I then look at the views. Has this been watched 30 times or has it been watched 10 million times? It seems very, very likely to me that click-through rates are going to correlate with high view rates also. So, I think views are becoming increasingly important and are something that you should keep an eye on.

Number two is ratings. So, on YouTube they offer a five-point scale. On things like Vimeo and other things, they use a thumb up and a thumb down. That's more similar to the Reddit system. These are actual humans who are giving their opinions and their expertise on video content. This is very helpful because search engines are designed to provide results for humans. Any imput you can get from humans is helpful for getting output for humans. This is something that Google figured out very early and is something that is very important.

Number three, comments. What could be more human than commenting on videos? In YouTube's case, it is some of the lowest thresholds of intelligence we've ever seen on the Internet, which is really saying something. You have floor chant, below that you have YouTube comments. It is kind of rough, right. But this is a metric of actual human beings engaging with content and with the author or producer of the video. This seems like a very important metric to me. I don't think it is the content of the comments, because they are awful. But I think it is the volume of it and the kind of themes that people are talking about. Are they saying, "this is awesome" or "this sucks?" I think that does have some kind of impact on it.

The last one is social metrics. Really, I think this is universal. It is not just the video vertical; I think it is the other verticals as well. By social metrics, I mean things like the amount of tweets or what people are saying in tweets, Delicious popular saves, or submissions to Reddit or Digg or any of those other things. How are people talking about this with their friends? So, you have things like the QDF algorithm, which is Google's Query Deserves Freshness algorithm. What this does is it will artificially inflate the ability for something to rank based on temporal metrics. So, if lots and lots of people are linking to something or tweeting about it, then it can artificially rank higher than things that normally wouldn't just because it is very important. You see this a lot of times with natural disasters. Things will just rise to the top when normally they wouldn't. Michael Jackson stuff. We saw lots and lots of QDF stuff really blowing, making things rank when normally there was no way they would. This is something to keep in mind also. These social metrics.

Now, duration. I think is the last one. This one is more about the extremes, finding the outlier. If a video is three seconds long, it is probably not something that Google, Bing, or Yahoo will want to rank highly. At the same time, if it is something that is multiple hours long, they might want to rank it, but it is probably not what people are going to look for when they are doing video. One of the things about video and content on the Internet in general is that people want to consume it quickly. They like bulleted lists. They like quick pictures, inforgraphic types of things, and they like short videos. I should probably take my own advice and get to the end here. So, I'll try to do that.

The last one we have for you is tactics. I have expressed that there is a huge opportunity here. I have talked about some of the metrics that are important. Now, tactics, the search engines have given you several tools on how to do this. Video sitemaps is, not new, because video sitemaps have existed for a while, but the protocol was recently revamped by the major search engines and the people who are involved with that protocol. They've added a couple of things that are interested. They've added the location of the thumbnail of the video. They've added things like if it is family friendly or not. They've added the URL of where the video is embedded. So, from an SEO perspective, this is really interesting. We don't want links going to YouTube anymore because YouTube has plenty of links. Instead, with the new video sitemap, you can provide the URL of where it is embedded and then when the search engines index that content they'll link back to you. So, it's not so much that you get a link from it per se, but you get the click-through. So, someone clicking on the SERP, clicking that thumbnail, is going to go to your blog, where you embedded the video, rather than to the hosting provider. This is a big win for us SEOs and for us content producers.

The other one is transcriptions. So, what could be easier than just going back and using the old tactics you already have for creating content? With transcriptions, you take video, you take the audio from the video, and you turn it into plain text. This is something that the search engines can then use and interpret just like they do a normal web page. This is important for search engines, but it is also important for human beings as well. People with hearing impairments who can't hear this video right now can then go through and read it. They can understand it that way. International people who are speaking different languages can then go through the content and read at their own pace. They can do whatever tools they need to translate it. It helps spread it more. It is both good for humans and for users, which is a win-win and that's always the situation I try to get when I do SEO.

I recommend that you always try to go for those win-wins, because ultimately what the search engines are doing is chasing after the idea of getting the best information to human beings. I think that's what it really comes down to, crafting your content for human beings. It is harder to do with video SEO, but it is becoming more and more possible to do it.

I appreciate your time today. I will see you next week.

If you have any tips or advice that you've learned along the way, or if you came back from the future, we'd love to hear about it in the comments below. Post your comment and be heard!

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Digg’s Decline by the Numbers: Plummeting Traffic, Waning Power [STATS]

When it comes to releasing a new product, users and pundits’ opinions only count for so much, but numbers — including revenue and traffic– don’t lie.

We’ve been watching DiggDigg closely ever since we got wind of its fourth version, a.k.a. “New Digg,” last month.

While we’ve gathered plenty of anecdotal evidence from power users and average users alike, we’ve yet to publish anything definitive about how the site is doing traffic-wise.

Users have “revolted” against the new version of Digg since Day One of its public launch. We knew loyal Diggers were complaining, so we decided to poll our own readers about the situation. It turned out that Mashable’sMashable own readers preferred the old version by a huge margin — 78.4% of respondents, all told.

But this kind of evidence only showed the New Digg was unpopular, not necessarily faring badly in reality. After all, FacebookFacebook users “revolt” over new features all the time, but that site’s growth continues at a mind-boggling rate.

This week, the web analysts at Hitwise gathered data showing a 34% decline in visitors in the U.K. and a 24% decline in the U.S. in the past 11 weeks.

What could have caused this drastic drop-off?

For one thing, Digg hasn’t made any truly significant changes for around four years. Unlike Facebook, which we used for comparison earlier and which makes incremental changes on a near-monthly basis, Digg dumped on its users an entirely new interface, a new algorithm for story popularity and a new paradigm for power users all at once.

Digg’s traffic was reportedly shaky before New Digg was revealed, but the new version of the site seems to have nailed the coffin, to an extent.

The other issue is that one of Digg’s main benefits for users was its ability to direct traffic. But we’re hearing from site owners and content producers around the web that as Digg’s onsite traffic drops, their Digg referrals are tanking, while TwitterTwitter and other sources are on the rise.

We recently postulated what Digg needed to do to survive. With both inbound and outbound traffic on the decline, and with this decline being so precipitous, we wonder if Digg’s “do or die” moment hasn’t already come and gone.

What do you think of Digg’s chances these days? Or, more to the point, when was the last time you visited Digg.com? Let us know in the comments.

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