The 40 Most Useful Social Media Tools and Posts

Tools
1. The ULTIMATE list of 29 top tools for competitive intelligence
2. The 39 Tools I (Jay Baer) Will Use Today
3. 11 free tools for social media optimization
4. 5 online tools making social media easier in 2010
5. 10 essential design tools for social media pros
6. The one-stop social media toolkit shop
7. The top 10 re-tweet measurement tools
8. 9 tools that will help you livestream your newsroom
9. A list of social media management systems
10. 20 Free Social Media Tools To Help Find Your Brand's Social Media Mentions

Social Networks
11. The 11 Commandments of Corporate Tweeting

12. How to retain Facebook fans

13. The complete Twitter 'follow / unfollow' guide

14. Top 10 ways to drive blog traffic using LinkedIn

15. The 7 news ways to use Twitter

PR
16. How To Write Media Releases That Google Will Love / Get Page Rank
17. Designing a Social Web Marketing and PR Strategy
18. PR crisis management in the 'Twitter Age'
19. Blogger relations: 5 tips to hone your approach
20. The PR 2.0 Checklist

Blogging
21. 12 things to do before launching your Blog
22. The Key Traits Of A Successful Blog / Blogger
23. 10 tips for making your Blog posts more del.icio.us
24. 22 Linkbait Headlines That Almost Every Blogger Can Use
25. 10 Ways To Get More Blog Comments

Content / Interaction
26. Planning a content strategy
27. 5 easy steps to creating reusable social media content
28. How to write for search engines without knowing SEO
29. 5 'unorthodox' ways of fixing your social media
30. The anatomy of fruitful online conversation(s)

General / Other
31. How to use Bit.ly (advanced) for spying, link building and happiness
32. 10 great tools to create a mobile version of your site
33. 4 simple ways to integrate analytics into your daily marketing efforts
34. How to manage your online reputation
35. Social Media's top 'how to' blogs
36. Understanding the participatory news consumer (PEW study)
37. Justin Timberlake and the art of presenting well
38. 7 online video tips every B2B marketer should know
39. Simon Mainwaring's Top Ten Trends for 2010
40. Einstein's guide to social media


source SocialMediaToday.com

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What Is the Future of Social Media?

FEBRUARY 12, 2010

Change is the only constant

In the few short years that social media has been a marketing vehicle, it has already had an enormous effect on the way companies do business. In the coming years there will be even more changes, as social media marketing extends from the marketing department to nearly every aspect of a company’s business.

In the Insight Brief “The Future of Social Media Marketing,” eMarketer senior analyst Debra Aho Williamson outlines several trends to watch in the coming years.

“Advertising—which some might say has already failed as a business model for social media companies—will not be the primary revenue driver,” said Ms. Williamson.

Instead, the strongest business models in the future will incorporate analytics, as social media becomes truly integrated into all marketing efforts. In addition, TV will become more social, as will search.

Location will become more important to social media, and brand monitoring will increase in sophistication so that companies can begin to understand the “why” of consumer chatter as well as the who, what and when.

“Naturally occurring conversations will be utilized in product innovation and design, and companies will create incentives for people's attention and engagement while repurposing and analyzing content and engagement in new ways that will deliver valuable input.”

—Ravit Lichtenberg, founder and chief strategist, Ustrategy.com, in an article in ReadWriteWeb.com, December 11, 2009

What will not change is the source of social media transformation today: the users.

“The voice of the consumer is only going to get louder and stronger,” said Ms. Williamson. “It will shape what social media is and what it will become. Not too long ago, a company might have made major changes to its products or services based on a few focus groups, some financial planning and a degree of gut instinct. Social media has already changed all that. And more changes will come.”

Sourcs: http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007513

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Social Media Marketing: How Pepsi Got It Right

Social media marketing campaigns are proving to be goldmines rich with customer engagement and insight that companies wouldn’t likely have otherwise. Companies like PepsiCo are going to extensive lengths to foster this type of collaboration with fans, and the payoff has been big.

The company’s Mountain Dew division is several stages into its DEWmocracy campaign — a plan to launch a new Mountain Dew flavor with the public’s involvement at all levels of the process, and PepsiCo also just launched the Pepsi Refresh Project on January 13th. Rather than spending money on Super Bowl television ads this year, the company is spending $20 million on a social media campaign.

Jay Baer, founder of the social media strategy company Convince & Convert, said brands are realizing they need to market for the long haul. “I do think it’s a good move for Pepsi. I don’t know if every brand can pull it off,” he said.

The Pepsi Refresh Project and the DEWmocracy campaigns are part of a crowdsourcing effort that’s part of the larger PepsiCo plan to more closely integrate consumers with the brand. “Driving consumer interest and engagement takes imagination and often a certain amount of reinvention, so it’s fair to say we’re rethinking everything we do from product development to marketing campaigns across our entire portfolio,” said Bart Casabona, a Mountain Dew spokesman.

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A Closer Look at Mountain Dew’s Social Media Campaign

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The first DEWmocracy campaign launched in 2007. This inaugural DEWmocracy effort let consumers choose Dew’s new flavor, color, name and graphics, and resulted in more than 470,000 people voting and an overall 1 million people taking part in some phase of the process, according to the company’s DEWmocracy media site. The winning new flavor, Voltage, hit store shelves in January 2009.

Brett O’Brien, Mountain Dew’s marketing director, said that for the first campaign a site was built for people to interact with, which made sense at that time.

Fast forward to July 2009, when the second DEWmocracy campaign launched. The multi-stage effort tasks die-hard Mountain Dew fans to narrow seven sodas down to one final new flavor that will become a permanent part of the Mountain Dew family, using social media platforms 12seconds.tv, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube in the process.

O’Brien said that with the explosion of social networking, they felt it was best to interact with people where they are.

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Flavor Nations Play a Large Role

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The second iteration of the Mountain Dew campaign is fueled by the 4,000-strong DEW Labs crew, an online community of die-hard fans. The DEW Labs are divided up into three Flavor Nations for the three Mountain Dew soda finalists: Typhoon, WhiteOut and Distortion. Once the three flavors debut in April, the Flavor Nations must talk up their flavor and get people to vote for it to become the permanent new Mountain Dew soda. That one winning new permanent soda flavor will debut on Labor Day, according to the company’s DEWmocracy media site.

O’Brien said the several stages involved are really part of the normal product innovation process. He said if they were going to be totally transparent the whole time in launching a new Mountain Dew flavor, they needed their customers to be there the whole time.

Every part of the campaign involves the fans and the public — from picking flavor names, to voting on the best user-submitted ad campaign.

Read More....

How Twitter Can Help--or Hurt--Your Business

Razorfish recently released a study of people who follow specific brands on Twitter. A whopping 97 percent of the study's survey takers said that their online experience with a brand "influenced whether or not they would purchase an item or service" from the company. 65 percent indicated that their online interaction with a brand changed their opinion of that brand. What do these results mean for your business? Even if you're a small company, the way you relate to customers online has an impact, so you'd be wise to have a strategy in place. Read more on the study here--and see us below for more advice on helping your business succeed. Visit http://FootPrintStrategies.com



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