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Situation: You run a social media program at a corporation, and you need to measure to improve your program, but more importantly to show to your bosses that this 'new media' program is worth it's weight. Challenges: You see the immediate value of a community program but your management is unconvinced. Furthermore, the brand police and the traditional hard-liners don't like your 'open-thinking' type of revolt. There may be other challenges too: lots of activity but few people, or you simply don't know where to start. Goals Deliver a report that demonstrates the value of a social media program as well as helps you improve the program over time.

Great overview on how to measure the social media aspect of your business's web strategy...

At a recent social media workshop a participant asked me to reveal my social media routine - how I track, converse, communicate and otherwise curate all my various social media activities. I paused to think about it for a while because I never really considered what I do a routine, but it occurred to me that, in fact, I do have a systematic approach to social media. (No surprise really, I'm a systems thinker and I just do it habitually - ask my wife, I have a system for making the bed and loading the dishwasher.)

It's a great idea to create social media systems, or "processes" that allow you to automate some research and setting time and tasks for different aspects of social media - whether listening or interacting.

Hyperlocal search strategy is an often underlooked market for many local businesses - especially the local service industry. If you are a plumber in Des Moines, IA and you aren't in the "local listings" when you search "des moines, ia plumber" - than the people companies listed are stealing business from you... Even if you are the #1 organic search result

The top web search results are buried by three local search results. If you're a local business, and you want to get traffic, you'd better get placement in that 'three box' (or in some cases, 'ten box') that shows local results. On the bright side, this version of universal search gives you yet another way to hop, skip and jump right past all the other web search results. All you need to know is how to best position your site for a local search listing.

This post is part of a series examining some oft-neglected online customer touch points and exploring ways to optimize them. Today, I'll look at a type of page very similar to thank you pages - the logout confirmation, or logout thank you page.

Great point - Every touch point matters.. Use your logout/login/thank you/subscribe pages for good. Use them as content outposts. Use them to upsell. Use them to pull people back into your site

We are always talking about building a community. It's the first thing we recommend for many reasons... This is a good overview on how to find, build, and grow your online community

In social media, who you know - or who knows you - can certainly make all the difference. That's why figuring out who to connect with and taking the time to build relationships with these people is key to leveraging the power of social media.

Great social media strategies for resaurants

The financial crisis is likely to hit the fine dining industry very hard. Already there have been reports of exclusive London restaurants slashing their prices in order to maintain a steady flow of clientele and therefore subsequent cashflow. Competing on price, however, is never a wise, or usually profitable, strategy, so dining establishments need to look for alternate ways to bring in the customers. One easy way is to develop a social media strategy to connect with your customers and create a community of regular diners.

Well, you can't specifically track the exact position of the keyword that was clicked like you can do with AdWords. But it is possible to determine the page he was on. A ranking tool can tell you over and over again that a certain keyword is around position 15 in Google while Google Analytics claims he is on page 1 (position 1 to 10). This effect can come from 'personalized search' or 'local results' that can influence the Google rankings dramatically. People see other results than you see with your ranking tools. And therefore you need Google Analytics to do the real ranking.

This is an AMAZING digest of internet marketing posts from 2008 covering SEO, Social Media tools and strategy, twitter, facebook, friendfeed, blogging etc. This is a must read for any internet marketer from beginner to advanced.

Here's how this works: In the Internet Marketing Best Posts "series," I take posts that are typically timeless - they're not confined to a specific event or news occurrence - they're valuable for the long haul in terms of Internet Marketing and creative strategy. Hopefully, you'll see that these posts are still relevant in a few years down the road. These posts range from beginner to advanced with a greater emphasis on the more intermediate posts. I'd argue that if you're starting your Internet Marketing business with not much know-how, you should check out the 2007 posts; in fact, most may still find them relevant regardless of the skill level.

Now, a new breed of companies is trying to tackle all of those options and determine what ad works for a specific audience. They are creating hundreds of versions of clients' online ads, changing elements like color, type font, message, and image to see what combination draws clicks on a particular site or from a specific audience.

14 killer tools to help you evaluate the user experience of your website.Excellent tools to help you figure out who your audience is, what they are doing, and most importantly - why they are leaving your website.

Here's a big problem with web design: If you want to make your website better at turning visitors into customers (or subscribers), you need to understand why most of your visitors are leaving! But those people come and go without trace! How do you know what they wanted? How do you know what would have persuaded them to take action? If you owned a real-life bricks-and-mortar store, this would be easy: You'd hear their objections. You'd be able to ask questions. You'd hear what they muttered as they headed for the door. Capturing the voice-of-the-customer is more difficult with the web, but it can be done. Here are 14 free tools to get you started!

A great tool to build social media press releases

PitchEngine shakes up the PR industry making it possible for PR pros, brands, and agencies to build and share digital, social media releases with their contacts for free. Our PitchEngine SMR takes the press release to the next level, eliminating the need for antiquated email attachments, word documents, image CDs, and more. Upgrade to a customized newsroom for your brand or client and we'll host a full archive of your PitchEngine SMRs for your corporate website and share them with our database of media users. Save money, save time, and step up your PR to the next generation with PitchEngine.

You're responsible for the direction of your online strategies for your company or organization, specifically using social media and computing tools to reach, connect, and build communities around your brand. Most folks at your company know this space is important, but don't know how to do it, they are relying on your expertise to think holistically, integrated, and strategically.

Twitter is one of the most satisfying ways to spread your website or idea. In addition to referrals, you can also gain loyal users, expert opinions, and possibly friends. It's unlike any other medium in its ability to propagate interesting things. Word of mouth has always been the best advertising and Twitter is the best vehicle on the internet for word of mouth.

Spreading your links and ideas virally with twitter

Learn what bounce rates are, how they affect you, and what you can do to improve your user's experience.

Bounce rates can be an important measurement for your website and web pages. They can help determine whether a certain ad campaign is successful, whether you're targeting the right keywords, or whether changes you make are improving your site. Knowing the bounce rate of your site and individual pages can give clues about what is and isn't working for your site.

The influence of search visibility as well as word of mouth on social media sites (the social web) is too significant for companies with any kind of brand equity to ignore. Lucky for readers of this blog or those you pass it on to, there are two upcoming opportunities to learn in depth about how to tackle online reputation management.

It continues to baffle me why any small business wouldn't use the internet as an essential sales, marketing and customer relations tool. Establishing and maintaining a web presence is incredibly cheap and easy these days. And web advertising is much more powerful than most traditional print or broadcast advertising in that it enables the business owner to engage customers in a two-way conversation and gain valuable feedback on their products and services.

Here are some basic and core factors to optimize a web page that could be your index or landing page. No worries about that. SEO

BuddyPress will add a social networking layer to a new or existing installation of WordPress MU

If you pay close attention to the source and the type of traffic you get in your blog, you should be able to find if the majority is from direct referral or organic traffics from search engines. Organic traffics from search engines convert good to CPC, but visitors who visit your site on regular bas