There’s always those weird headlines you see in your Twitter or Facebook feed that catch your eye and this was one of them:

Stumbleupon Drives More Than 50% of Social Traffic.

I didn’t believe it when I saw it on Mashable. I thought Stumbleupon was so 2008. But apparently, it’s still going strong, and its viral capabilities still pump in droves of traffic to blogs. Stumbleupon only has 12 million users compared to 750 million that Facebook has, but the difference is that all Stumbleupon users are doing is surfing the Internet based on their interests and receiving targeted results based on community votes.

So the question is, “Do you need to start paying attention to Stumbleupon again?”

Should Internet marketers include this in their strategy for building traffic to client websites?

These are all questions to consider, but it all depends on what your business has to offer. If your business doesn’t have a blog that’s integrated into your website, then Stumbleupon doesn’t make a lot of sense. Stumbleupon is about discovering great content that teaches you, inspires you, or makes you think. If you Stumble your “About Us” page, that’s not what people want to stumble on.

This brings up the importance of small and large businesses using their blog as their main source of producing original content. It builds credibility and it’s SEO gold these days. Having said all of that, I’m going to resurrect my old Stumbleupon account and start being more active with it, because I think it does serve the purpose bringing in a steady flood of new visitors that could be converted into regulars if you capture them with your content.

So Facebook and Google are now looking to flex their muscles and take down Groupon and Living Social for the business that’s growing faster than our national deficit, social group buying.

Google Deals

I don’t know much about the Google Deals, but the logical place for them. O be run is Google Places. It’ll be interesting to see how much they charge for the deal. A lot of companies are deterred by Groupon because they take 50% of the revenue.

I think Google could be successful with it simply because Google local listings have become so important. They now show up almost always for location specific search terms, and Google has put so much emphasis on them for a reason. It’s one of their few profit centers that has the potential to make them a lot of money.

Facebook Deals

The intrigue with Facebook deals is how they plan to implement it. The rumor us that they won’t charge anything to the retailer, and the consumer will have to pay with Facebook credits. The consumer will be charged a fee to buy the credits. This could be huge for Facebook because they’ll get a lot of interest from retailers to try it out since there’s no risk for them.

Both group buying programs are still in beta band only in select cities, so when I do one for one of my clients I’ll update you on whether they are worth the effort.

I hear all the time that people are still skeptical about investing time and money in social media marketing campaigns. I mean, seriously? What more evidence do you need? Stop throwing out the “But, how do we measure ROI with social media?”. Just ask Vitamin Water, JetBlue, Dell, and Southwest how their investment in social media has worked out for them. Increased SALES is how you measure the ROI, and just ask the local restaurant or retail store that’s running an effective social media marketing campaign how it’s working out for them. It’ll still take a couple of years for the dissenters who hold onto old-fashioned marketing methods, so for those of you who still need to be convinced, here are 50 ways why social media marketing is here to stay: (in no particular order)

1. It’s two-way marketing
2. It’s a great customer service tool
3. It gives the customer a voice
4. It eliminates the need to spend a ton of money on focus groups.  Your following IS your focus group
5. Ask a marketing research question, and you get instant data.
6. The only cost to produce it is hiring great talent
7. Complaint resolutions are documented for other customers to see
8. The viral nature of it is closely related to the viral nature of word-of-mouth marketing
9. It IS word-of-mouth marketing, but in a digital sense.
10. You can make mistakes and explain why you made it
11. Intimate contact with your loyal customers and target market
12. You can focus on a very specific target market
13. It sends traffic back to your website
14. It builds inbound links to your website
15. It’s great for search engine optimization
16. Facebook pages can be used like a forum
17. Ability to create multiple Twitter profiles for multiple uses
18. Allows you to respond to what’s being said about your brand/business
19. It’s more natural than traditional marketing channels
20. You control the message
21. Endless creative promotion possibilities
22. Allows customers to participate in product development
23. It has the ability to reach a large amount of consumers on a perpetual time line.
24. It can reach a large amount of customers and fans in real-time.
25. Customers can respond and react to new business information and products in real-time.
26. It has the ability to increase sales
27. It has to ability to attract new clients
28. It can help you establish yourself as an expert or authority in your industry
29. Allows you to respond to complaints before negative word-of-mouth takes place.
30. Allows employees to be brand evangelizers.
31. The technology is free and open source
32. Social media is now adopted by most age groups.
33. Allows a competitive advantage over your competitors that aren’t using it
34. Allows a competitive advantage over your competitors that are abusing it or not using it correctly
35. Gives the ability to update customers about promotions and specials in real-time.
36. It has more than just a monetary return on investment.
37. We are social creatures.
38. It helps you build trust with the consumer
39. Experimenting won’t cost you a lot of money
40. It’s not as time consuming as you might think
41. Your customer’s opinion counts
42. Did we mention the technology is free?
43. It spans across all media, including photos, videos, audio, and text
44. It’s SO MUCH LESS annoying than text/SMS marketing
45. Its effectiveness BLOWS text/SMS marketing out of the water
46. Did I mention text/SMS marketing sucks?
47. You’re building an army of loyal customers we affectionately call “regulars”.
48. Builds team/employee morale
49. It can be used as a recruiting tool
50. Facebook has over 400 million active users worldwide.  Twitter has over 75 million users.  YouTube and Facebook are the #2 and #3 most visited websites in the world. Every second a new blog is created. Need I say more?

If you haven’t embraced social media for your business yet, then you’ve been living under a rock.  It’s here, and it’s here to stay.  It has a real return on investment, it WILL grow your sales if done right, and it DOES require someone who knows what they’re doing to run a successful campaign.  Are you convinced yet?  If so, check out my company’s website at Presence Media, and give us a call or contact us to discuss starting a social media marketing campaign for your small business.

My buddy Tim created a comprehensive list of the best iPhone applications to download. One great thing about this list is that he lists mostly free applications. I can’t stand paying money for iPhone apps!

Some of my favorites that he lists: Snaptell, Reqall, Evernote, Shazam, Urban Spoon, and Pandora.

The one I haven’t tried yet is Star Walk. It’s an application that finds and names the constellations, galaxies, and planets in the sky using your phone’s GPS and the direction your facing. This is a great application to have when you are outside with your kids at night. You’ll blow them away with this app!

Tim plans on doing an in-depth post for each one of these iPhone apps in the future. He’s an expert with using Facebook for business marketing, an Apple application guru, and a life-hacking maven. So make sure you check out his blog!

I have been complaining for a while now about how Facebook’s iPhone application really sucks. You can’t update pages with it, can’t upload video, can’t change profile picture, can’t become a fan on a page, can’t upload camera photos to an album other than mobile uploads, and the list goes on. Well, Facebook has listened to the criticism of their crappy iPhone app, and if what they say is true, it’s going to blow away its previous verions. Here is a laundry list of new features from their Facebook page:

- See your upcoming Events and RSVP
- See your friends’ birthdays
- See Pages and post updates and photos to Pages you administer
- Write Notes and read your friends’ Notes
- Upload videos from an iPhone 3GS
- Upload photos to any album
- Complete photo management (create albums, delete albums, delete photos, delete photo tags)
- Change your Profile Picture
- Zoom into photos
- Like posts and photos
- See the same News Feed as the Facebook website
- Visit links in a built-in web browser
- See all of your friends’ friends and Pages
- See mutual friends
- Easily search for people and Pages
- Make friend requests
- Become a fan of Pages
- Quickly call or text your friends
- Create shortcuts to your favorite friends and Pages
- Friends sorted by first or last name according to your settings
- Chat friends sorted alphabeticaly

Will it include all of this stuff? And the better question, will it all work seamlessly at launch of the new application? Only time will tell. You’d think that a company with 250 million users would have enough personnel to churn out an application like this like a YEAR ago, but beggars can’t be choosers.

The social media news wire was on fire today, as Facebook and Google both announced big news today. Facebook acquired Friendfeed for $50 million dollars, announced a real-time search engine feature, and Google announced that a new version of their search engine will be rolled out soon, and my guess is that it will include faster indexing, so it feels like real-time searches of content.

Facebook acquires Friendfeed

I had a Friendfeed account, but I never used it. It was mostly a tricked-out status updater, but the one nice thing it had was a real-time search engine that far surpassed Twitter’s search engine in terms of functionality and features. However, it wasn’t near as valuable, because it didn’t have the content volume of Twitter. Add Facebook’s 250 million users and all of their content, now you’ve got something. So, it was only natural for Facebook to immediately announce a real-time search engine, because they will take Friendfeeds and make it their own with a few modifications to integrate with better with the Facebook infrastructure. I think this will be a good acquisition for Facebook, and it will position them as more of a leader in the social media world of heavyweights.

Google’s New Search Engine

It’s not a coincidence that Google announces their new and improved search engine the same day that Facebook announces their real-time search engine and acquisition of Friendfeed. According to the Mashable article, they believe it is faster, more reliable, and finds performs more real-time searches.

To test the new versions: GO HERE

Here’s another article from Mashable comparing the new Facebook search engine to the new Google search engine.

They call it the new “search war”, but I really don’t think anyone can go to war with Google on searching. Facebook has been behind in terms of technology in the past, so for them to hit a homerun this quickly makes me a little skeptical. Only time will tell.

After experimenting heavily with Facebook and Twitter marketing, I now have pinpointed which social media outlets to use based on the product/service and the situation. This is what I have found out so far.

Starting and Holding Meaningful Conversations

Winner: Facebook

Are you looking to get feedback about your business? Do you want to interact and start discussions with prior and current customers? Facebook is the best medium. No matter how many platforms there are to organize Twitter, I have such a hard time keeping up with all of it, plus I am not constantly staring at my @replies the entire day, so it’s tough to go back and forth with conversation. Facebook’s commenting features that work like a comment thread on a blog are great for holding conversations, because it’s easy to keep track of, you don’t want to make your statement with only 140 characters, and Facebook is good about alerting you when someone replies to you.

News And Information About Your Industry

Winner: Twitter

Twitter does a great job at giving you real-time information and news regarding any subject matter you want to keep up with. All you need to do is identify the quality twitter accounts that can deliver this information to you. Then, you can choose what to read, when to read it, and so on. Facebook’s platform is not good for consuming massive amounts of information and finding new article recommendations from trusted sources.

Reaching Out To Young People

Winner: Facebook

The Guardian and others have written about why teens aren’t on Twitter. It’s true, the majority of them haven’t embraced Twitter. They are more into Facebook, because they feel more like a community, they can choose who they are friends with, and they can control who sees their updates and photos. With Twitter, anyone can follow you and start reading your stuff. Sure, you can block them, but that’s Twitter suicide if you block everyone.

Building Brand Awareness:

Winner: Facebook And Twitter

This is why both should be part of your social media marketing campaign. Both allow you to tap into a different market segment and demographic. Both give your brand more exposure and allow people to learn more about your company and recognize the logo. Both require interaction on your part. You can’t be one-sided and pump out marketing information. The strategy I like when using Twitter is to send Tweets that could be valuable to your followers. Send out valuable links from blogs and news sources other than your own. Give out a tip or trick pertaining to the industry you are in. Ask questions that don’t require long answers. Think of Twitter as a sophisticated information stream. Then, use Facebook to connect more intimately with your customers or potential customers.

I have been so pissed off at social media lately. Every social media outlet eventually becomes a cesspool of advertisements and get-rich-quick schemes. Why do humans always make an effort to destroy good things? Twitter needs help, or it will die quickly. Tomorrow, I will post my grievances toward Facebook and Twitter. But for those of you who actually care about social media and don’t intend on abusing it, here are some tips to help bring value to your social media contributions.

Post Relevant Content

Whether it’s your blog, facebook stream, twitter stream, friendfeed, youtube, or social bookmarking account, make sure that what you post is relevant and interesting to others. People follow you for four different reasons: they are your friend, family member, co-worker, or because you are an expert in your field. Ask yourself this questions before you post a link, video, or article: “Will my audience find this interesting and/or entertaining?” Post content that you are passionate about, because you most likely have a group of friends who are passionate about that, too.

Stop Updating So Much

Honestly, put Tweet Deck away. I follow hundreds of people that I follow, and I must use user lists to filter the people that I want to read on Twitter, because there are a handful of people that I follow that post every 2 minutes, literally. And it’s not even a batch of automated tweets. These are real tweets from ADDICTS. Maybe I am just jealous because you somehow find a way to update social media more often than me, but just take a minute to realize that Twitter and Facebook are not a stream of consciousness.

Engage In Conversation

It’s called SOCIAL media, but the social part is often forgotten by people who just want to advertise themselves and their products. I think that social media is a great way to market a brand or product, but it’s not effective if it’s annoying and one-sided. Use social media to meet new people and engage in meaningful conversations. Large corporations are finding that outlets such as Facebook and Twitter far better marketing tools for existing customers rather than attracting new customers. This is because social media gives corporations a quick, easy, and free way to communicate with customers and get their feedback about a product or service.

Go through your last 100 tweets and count how many were @replies. It might surprise you.

Don’t Be a Jerk

I still can’t believe that many people haven’t realized that your social media presence directly correlates with your reputation in the “real world”. Before you write anything, remember that anyone and everyone has the ability to find it and read it. I love discussions and debates on Facebook about political and social issues, but I don’t ever write anything that would make me sound like a 10 year old. I also don’t bully people or blatantly make fun of them (other than old buddies that know I am joking around). It’s so much easier to be bolder on the internet than it is face-to-face with someone. Make sure you choose your words carefully and no one likes a jerk on social media.

Are You A Giver?

With social media, we tend to fall into the mentality that everyone should want to comment on our blog or status updates. Everyone should want to re-tweet our tweets or post a link of my article to their Twitter stream. But what have you done for them lately? Are you participating in their social media lives? Remember, you must always give in order to receive.

Do all of these things, and you won’t have to read a 100 different articles about how to increase your following on Twitter or Facebook. You’ll naturally gain a following that is interested in your life and what you are passionate about. You’ll also build your personal brand, build contacts for potential job offers, and gain leads to clients for your small business. Social media is like anything else in life, use it the way it was intended to be used, and you’ll be the most benefit out of it.

In the world of social networking, we are bombarded with hundreds of links to interesting articles around the web from various different sources. Twitter and Facebook have become extremely popular for posting links that bring value to one’s fans and followers. I am a total sucker for clicking on a link and getting wrapped up in an interesting article or website. Before I know it, I’ve spent a half an hour reading web articles when I should have been doing other stuff during the middle of the day. I’ve known about Instapaper for quite a while now, but I never gave it a chance until my best friend explained to me how he uses it. Instapaper is a simple, yet effective bookmarking tool that is used best for bookmarking web articles to read later. What I like about it is that it doesn’t require a tagging system or anything else that takes too much time to set up. You just tap on its bookmarklet, it saves the link to the article, and keeps the links stored on the web for you to check out later.

For Web Surfers

If you are a blogger, freelancer, or anyone else that spends a lot of time in front of a computer throughout the day, you know how easy it is to get caught up in an interesting article. Here’s what you need to do to set it up:

1. Visit Instapaper’s website, and sign up for an account. You don’t even need to use a password if you are sick of remembering passwords, and who cares if someone hacks into it. It’s just virtual paper!



2. Drag the “Read Later” icon into your Firefox or Safari bookmark bar.
3. When you follow a link to an article but realize that it’s a lengthy article and you don’t have time for it, click on the “Read Later” bookmark and Instapaper will save

For iPhone Users

1. Follow Step 1 Above
2. Download and install the Instapaper iPhone App from iTunes. Search, “instapaper” from your iPhone while in the “App Store” app on your iPhone.
3. Save the Instapaper bookmarklet in your Safari or Firefox bookmarks, then sync your iPhone bookmarks with your browser bookmarks.

How I Use Instapaper

When I stumble across an article from a link on my Twitter or Facebook stream, I bookmark it using Instapaper. When I have some free time later in the day or week, I open up my Instapaper iPhone app, and I have dozens of articles to read at my leisure. Here are some good times to get reading done without invading in your work time:

• While you are on the toilet
• While you are waiting in a long line
• While you are waiting in the doctor’s office
• While you are at the gym doing a cardio workout
• While you are walking your dog
• While you are eating lunch by yourself

Don’t let social media be a distraction in your life. It should complement your life, not consume it. Being efficient with social media is an effective and efficient way to utilize its benefits.