The report does not dive into what the money will be spent on or if the investment will be used to talk AT the conversation, IN the conversation or both.

Talking at the conversation is essentially a media buy, which is aimed at social media channels like Federated Media or social ads in Facebook). In this case, budgets would probably be spent on CPM, creative and CPC in some cases.

Talking in the conversation requires people. Hiring community managers, training them properly and empowering them to engage online is where the substantial investment would go. In my opinion, talking IN the conversation exemplifies the true essence of social media.  I feel it is very important for any company to communicate directly to their customers or clients.

Talking at the conversation should not be discounted though. Buying media in Facebook that will drive traffic to a Fan Page where community managers are ready and waiting to engage would be ideal.

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When Microsoft relaunched Live Search as Bing earlier this month, it said it was looking into ways to incorporate Tweets in the search engine’s user experience. Although it had given no indication that it was in much of a rush, saying that there were many ways to define what “real-time” results actually entailed. Since then, however, Google has given signs that it is on the verge of launching some sort of microblogging search offering that would index content from Twitter as well as other microblogging sites in real-time. Results would also be incorporated into Google’s main web results.

Microsoft emphasized that it was not indexing all of Twitter in real-time, only the Tweets of a “few thousand people” based on their follower count and tweet volume. And, indeed, the examples that Microsoft provided indicated that the Twitter results will show up independent from the main body of entries, much like the instant answers that Bing surfaces when someone searches for the weather or a sports score. Users will also have to search for someone’s name as well as “Twitter” or “Tweet” or “@” in order to see the results. That seems to take away a bit from the value of the feature, since many people search Twitter to get a sense of what’s going on at a given moment on a certain subject. But Suchter said in the post that it was just a start. “We think this is an interesting first step toward using Twitter’s public API to surface Tweets in people search,” Suchter said.

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To turn off this setting…

Click on “Settings” at the top where you see the “Logout” link. Select “Privacy”. Then select “News Feed and Wall”. Next, select the tab that reads “Facebook Ads”. In the drop down box, select “No One”. Then save your changes.

Make this your Facebook status if you want to spread the word.

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Local search engine results is something many look past because of the global reach the Internet brings. It is much easier to think nationwide or global rather than local. If you’re like me, you have used Google to find restaurants or local stores in your area. I have searched for Hauppauge Chinese restaurant or Italian or whatever. For that phrase there are about 20,000 results. A good number to stick with for a niche term is under 40k. You can use any method to build pages that will get ranked, (social networking will work just fine) you can easily get on the first page of Google for that three word phrase. There are many ways to accomplish that.

If the search results were over 40K, it would be tougher… but on the other hand, if there are 5,000 results then you will probably achieve all 10 results on the first page. Ok, now what? For your local cities, pick a phrase and take control of the first page of Google. Then promote a fake Chinese restaurant. Where the name of the restaurant would go, you call it “Your-Company-Name Chinese Restaurant.” You can also setup links to restaurant guides to help with linking. You should also link to your website where you describe your services.

Next, you contact all the local restaurants. The best way is to go down in person and show them what you have done and what you can do for them. Explain how their revenue can easily increase (look up facts on these numbers) by being on the first page of Google. 60% will not look past the first page of Google is very important.

You can also take this one step further and not charge anything until you can get them on the first page of Google. What can you charge for this type of service? You can charge a one-time fee, but I like to build monthly clients. I always felt that is the smarter way to go. But of course that is up to you. $97/mo I feel is a great place to start and even offer a better deal for paying 6 or 12 months in advance.

You can also go another route and allow a pizza restaurant to get the Chinese food listing. This can easily drive the price of your service up with the additional competition.

There are roughly 20,000 cities in the US alone and there are many categories (Chinese, Japanese, Italian, Irish, Sushi, Buffets, etc.) That’s over 200,000 potentials. Then of course you can go after stereo shops, fitness centers, dentists, you get the picture.

Again, this is just one of hundreds of ways to make money utilizing the Internet. It all starts with understanding basic Internet marketing and learning how to get high rankings. It is very easy to get high rankings for niche markets. I have gained the top spot on Google in minutes using certain techniques. But, in this case, going after niche markets… everyday marketing techniques will work. It just comes down to you being creative in the service you will provide.

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For Rick Bakas, these new communication tools helped him land his dream job.

Rick Bakas, a food and wine critic, was applying for a job at the Murphy Goode Winery. Bakas submitted a video to apply for a $10,000 a month job at the winery. The winery was looking for someone to blog, tweet and use social media to promote their wine.

Bakas’ entry for the Murphy Goode job gave him enough publicity to attract other wineries, and someone else hired him first.

Bakas leaves for Napa Valley with his wife next month to become the wine industry’s first social media director for St. Supery Vineyards and Winery, and he already is completely prepared for his job duties.

“If they send me a message on Facebook or Twitter and they say that they’re coming I’ll take them out maybe to the vineyard and we’ll have a BBQ and we’ll tweet about it while we’re drinking good wine.”

Bakas will continue hosting a weekly tastecasting on Twitter where his 25,000 followers can all taste the same wine at once and send their comments.

“There were over 715 tweets about this online tasting last night within an hour,” Bakas says.

Bakas also has an equally impressive number of Facebook followers and a huge presence on other social media sites.

“More people use social media as a form of communication than email so you can actually reach more people using Twitter or Facebook.”

Bakas says he’s happy with the job he has accepted because it’s a permanent position. The other position he was applying for with the Murphy Goode Winery lasted only six months, and only if he won the contest.

The way business is conducted has changed drastically over the past 10 years. There are many companies that never made the change, Tower Records is an example. They never imagined the Internet would change the music industry the way it did. For any business today, it is imperative to become an expert of these new communication tools. They can easily make or break any company.

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VinTank, in partnership with wine industry consultant Derek Bromley, has released a white paper profiling the impact of today’s social media companies on the wine industry. It has been offered as a valuable resource for wineries wading into Web 2.0. Researched and written with the intent of helping wineries make sense of a vast and confusing medium, the paper looks at the largest social media sites (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn) as well as the almost 30 wine social networks jockeying for the attention of online wine consumers, ending with an overview of the wine blogosphere, Paul Mabray, VinTank co-founder, noted.

The free white paper is available for download here.
The study allows the wine trade “to understand the Internet better,” Mabray added. He said the purpose of the analysis was to inform those working in wine of the far-reaching aspects of cyberspace. The examination of the Internet (through blogs and such) “shows it’s the perfect medium for the industry,” Mabray concluded.

“Consumer embrace of social media literally turns the tables on marketers,” said Tom Wark, publisher of the Fermentation daily wine blog and partner in Wark Communications. “With millions of consumers, particularly those of the Millennial generation, now frequently using social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and MySpace, brands are being built and defined as much by consumers and communities as they are by marketers and suppliers. The degree of change this represents can’t be underestimated.”

Mabray and his associates estimate that social media are generating twice the online content of traditional media, and wineries have been struggling with how to engage their current and potential customers in this medium.

Cruvee.com — a VinTank portfolio company and contributor to the white paper — estimates that each day in April 2009 there were 153 blog posts, 1,420 forum posts, and 7,896 microblog (Twitter) posts on the topic of wine. VinTank’s white paper offers some practical tactics, recommendations and best practices on how wineries can begin to engage in those conversations.

Key findings laid out in the white paper include:

• According to Compete.com, the top 20 wine bloggers in aggregate represent a larger audience than the Wine Spectator online, and are growing at a faster rate. However, the wine blogosphere is highly fragmented and difficult for wineries to navigate.

• Wine social network memberships number in the hundreds of thousands, although it is nearly impossible to determine how much overlap exists across networks.

• The two top-rated wine social networks, CellarTracker and VinCellar, started as wine cellar management tools that over time have added social networking functionality. This deeper level of value has paid huge dividends in terms of customer loyalty.

• A key challenge for all wine social networks that have achieved any kind of scale is data quality. Duplicate and incorrect data affect all of these sites to varying degrees.

• Online advertising models for the wine industry have more challenges than other verticals because of outdated alcohol regulations.

Co-founded by Mabray and Eric Hsu, VinTank is the first digital think tank for the wine industry, providing expertise and analysis where technology and the wine industry intersect. With these tools, VinTank provides strategic consulting and business development for companies looking to add wine to their offerings and for wine companies looking to succeed online.

Consultant Derek Bromley has spent his career innovating in and around the wine industry. A former sommelier, co-founder of “Web 1.0” e-business, BevAccess, and winery sales/marketing executive, he advises a select group of wine industry clients on strategy, branding, marketing, sales, channel management and online tools including web, e-mail and social media.

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Present.ly is a communication tool that benefits any company that wants their internal communications to be efficient, easy to use and private. Security is important for any business. If a company allows their employees to use Twitter to discuss private information, it will not be secure.

One of the major benefits of Present.ly is its ability to allow employees to communicate, while sharing work related updates, helping each other and giving organization wide broadcasts. A great deal of functionality that Present.ly swanks is taken directly from Twitter. Although, Present.ly is similar to Twitter in both use and functionality, it is more refined for the use of communication within organizations.

With a secure and private platform, a user can share private as well as group updates, short messages or media with any other user without any fear of the messages being viewable to the outside world. Present.ly gives a unique opportunity to its users to share knowledge.

With its public stream broadcast, users can gain knowledge from co-workers that normally would take hours. Users can ask questions, get organization wide updates, read urgent messages and see system broadcasts.

The interface allows a user to share a wide range of media with ease. The platform allows a user to share images, documents, videos and audio clips. Present.ly can be accessed through Blackberry, iPhone and Windows mobile compatible devices for on the move access to important communication.

What are the differences to other applications?

Present.ly comes from a growing range of web based applications that cater to business needs. Like micro-communication platforms, Yammer and twitter, Present.ly makes it possible for people to communicate with short texts. While Yammer is a direct competitor, the only difference between Twitter and Present.ly is the focus on business needs.

What does it cost to use the application?

Present.ly offers services that are both, free and paid. There are various plans available in Present.ly to cater to the individual needs of organizations. Although, Present.ly has a free plan with capability of 5 users, this is not enough for many organizations. The paid plans are available in 4 categories namely, Basic, Plus, Premium and Enterprise. Apart from the Enterprise plan, all other paid plans are limited by the number of users and do not have internal deployment, Enterprise integration and phone support.

Who would you recommend the application to?

Although, Present.ly is made by keeping the corporate audience in mind, it can be used by anyone who wants to communicate. In business, with its ease of use, private conversation features and good explanation of procedures, Present.ly can easily be used by any employee.

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One way Twitter has changed things is how we have been able to get so close to celebrities. It is amazing that I can find out what Ashton Kutcher is doing right now, plus there are websites that provide a full list of celebs like Celebrity Tweet. Just in case you wanted to know what they were eating for breakfast or what they think about the current events.

But how about businesses? I have been asked plenty of times, how can I use social networking to get more business. Now it is, how can I use Twitter to get more business. How can we all put ourselves in front of potential customers.

Here are four ways that businesses are using Twitter:

Direct — Companies are using Twitter as a marketing or public relations channel

Many companies have established Twitter identities as part of their corporate communications strategies, much like corporate blogs. They Tweet about corporate accomplishments, distributing links to press releases or promotional Web sites, and respond to comments about the brand. This approach should be used with caution because uninteresting or self-serving Tweets could hinder the brand image as much as it could help. Responding to comments can be particularly risky, as the anonymous nature of Twitter can easily descend into a negative spiral. Companies should register Twitter IDs for their major brand names to prevent others claiming them and using them inappropriately.

Indirect — The company’s employees use Twitter to enhance and extend their personal reputations, thereby enhancing the company’s reputation

Good Twitterers enhance their personal reputation by saying clever, interesting things, attracting many followers who go on to read their blogs. As people enhance their personal brands, some of this inevitably rubs off on their employers. Twitter provides a way of raising the profile of both individuals and the organizations they work for, which elevates these companies that want to be seen to employ influential leaders.

Internal — Employees use the platform to communicate about what they are doing, projects they are working on and ideas that occur to them

Problem with this is there is no guarantee of security. It is crucial that employees understand the limitations of the platform and never discuss confidential matters, because as a seemingly innocuous Tweet about going to see a particular client can tip off a competitor. Other providers, such as Yammer and Present.ly, provide Twitter-like functions targeted at enterprise microblogging with more security and corporate control.

Inbound Signaling

Twitter streams provide a rich source of information about what customers, competitors and others are saying about a company. Search tools like search.twitter.com or the twhirl application can scan for references to particular company or product names. Savvy companies use these signals to get early warnings of problems and collect feedback about product issues and new product ideas.

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1. Identify the main competitive keywords (4 or 5 for organic, 200 to 400 for PPC). These can be found via Wordtracker, which offers one day worth of detailed keyword information for $8. You can look at keywords from log files.

2. Create a website title that grabs attention. Most successful titles use important keywords and should be descriptive and provocative.

3. Add in a description of the website before the company name in the Page Title Syntax.

4. Include H1, H2 heading tags. Search engines often look for clues in headings and subheads, plus you can use keywords as well in those tags. You can also put keywords in the “alt” tags in images as well.

5. Remove frames from websites because search engines cannot see them. Also, flash and javascript can hurt you as well. You can use SSIs for menus instead.

6. Start to employ the use of links. Google has started to weigh the use of links heavily when determining rank. Link your site from industry hubs, and others that have a high page rank. Request reciprocal links from other websites.

7. Get listed in directories. dmoz.com and others are free while Yahoo charges $299/year but it could be worth it to get faster results.

8. Start to build links submitting article and press releases, blogging, build an online forum, submit videos… basically anything that can build back links.

9. Setup an A/B testing service so that changes to your website can be tested to see if the conversion rate goes up or down depending on the specific changes. Several companies offer this for $20/month.

10. Put more time into building back links than anything else. SocialMarker.com will make your life a lot easier.

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Basic SEO Health Check and Analysis:

1. Website Grader by Hubspot – Website.Grader.com is a free SEO tool that measures the marketing effectiveness potential of a website. It provides a score that incorporates elements such as website traffic, SEO, social popularity and other technical factors. It also provides some basic advice on how the website can be improved from a marketing perspective.

2. Content Duplication finder by Virante – Virante’s content duplication tool can diagnose common causes and effects of duplicate content penalties such as server headers, Google index issues and more.

3. Builtwith by Gary Brewer – BuiltWith.com is a website analysis tool, providing technical analysis and SEO optimization information to assist in your website’s SEO effectiveness.

4. Quarkbase – Quarkbase.com is the great way to find website information including social bookmarking stats, Alexa ranking, related sites and domain information.

Basic Back Link Analysis:

5. Yahoo Site Explorer is a fantastic tool for basic back link information, to view the most popular pages from any site and to dive into a comprehensive site map.

6. Google Browser by Touchgraph – TG Google Browser is a free Java application which you can use to explore the connections between related websites.

Basic On-Page Analysis:

7. SEO Browser by Anduro Marketing and McAnerin International Inc – SEO-Browser.com is a free tool which lets you see your website like a search engine sees it. Useful to find image with no alt text, to ensure drop downs are crawlable and much more.

8. Image Analyzer by Juicy Studio – Image Analyzer will highlight images without alt text, long image names and much more. Because image optimization is essential for successful SEO, image analyzers are an absolute must.

9. Server Header Checker by SEO Consultants – Server Header Checker allows you to analyze your non www homepage version and other pages to check that the server header is returning a 301 redirect response, 200 OK response etc.

10. Popuri by Xavier Larrea – Popuri.us allows you to quickly check your link popularity across social bookmarking sites, Google Page Rank and much more.

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