Social media tools are really a time-saver…and they can help you avoid getting side-tracked. Website Magazine released some data regarding the most popular Twitter clients available. Without further delay, the list:

As I have said in previous posts, I am partial to TweetDeck. Although not uncommon anymore, TweetDeck allows management of multiple accounts, Facebook status updates, pictures and videos, easy RT, direct message and more. My favorite “tool” on-the-go is still Zannel. Although not considered an actual “tool”, it is very easy to update your status from a mobile device while including pictures and video with Zannel. Picking a tool for your social media marketing campaign is an important, but fun step!

In the past, social network demographics were mostly made up of 18-25 year olds, but those days are quickly changing. While the 18-25 demographic still has the highest rate of users, others are quickly growing. Check out these recent statistics provided be eMarketer.

What does this mean for marketers? I think many businesses have put social media marketing on the side burner because they did not believe their target demographic was active on the sites. It turns out that these businesses are most likely wrong. Although these statistics show changes over the past 30 days, the older age demographics have been turning to Facebook for the past several months.

Aside from age, businesses also avoid social media marketing because it is difficult to monetize its effectiveness. It is important to look outside the box with social media marketing. Companies are often set on seeing hard conversions because they can see the money coming in immediately, but soft conversions are key in the social networks. Pay attention to activity, followers, re-tweets, etc. Like never before advertisers can communicate with their audience on an extremely personal level. And while they may not turn into immediate sales, your company is building brand awareness, trust, loyalty and you will receive constant feedback from your customers.

If your company is staying away from social networks because of either of these reasons, it is time to reconsider. With an appropriate social media marketing strategy, this type of inbound marketing can pay off tremendously down the road. Start building your strategy today.

As you probably know, people spend a lot of time online. More importantly, these people are likely your customers. As the popularity of user generated content grows, the more chance your customers will have the chance to find reviews of your product or service. The bad news? People are more likely to post their comments of feelings if they had a bad experience than if they had a good experience.

You can’t stop them from creating the content, so the key is to monitor it. Anything has the chance to go viral, if it does and you haven’t taken the proper steps to resolve the issue, things can get ugly. Last month the Marketing Pilgrim made me aware of a video that went viral on YouTube. A music video called ‘United Breaks Guitars’ portrays an experience musician, Dave Carroll, experienced while flying United Airlines. Currently there are nearly 5 MILLION views for the video. This does not look good for the Airline. Also, it is important to understand, you don’t have to be a business the size of United for someone to make a video or post a blog about you. Even if it doesn’t go viral, you still may be losing business over bad product reviews.

So how do you handle something like this? First you have to be aware of it. Make sure you set up Google Alerts for your brand name or product name. This is an easy and free step in monitoring your online presence. Also make sure you monitor your brand name and products on micro-blogging sites such as Twitter. It is quite probable that before something goes viral there will be a Tweet about it somewhere. Second, make sure you handle the situation itself properly. In this case, United Airlines refused to pay for the broken guitar. David Carroll already had the attention of viewers and decided to post a follow up to the video. I’m not convinced that United understands the power of a viral video…and now a viral figure. This will not put United out of business, but a video like this could have enough power to force a small or medium size business to close their doors.

Bottom line is a business must monitor their online reputation. For a small business it could take less than 10 minutes a week, while companies the size of United will have to provide much more time to online reputation management. Comcast began monitoring their online reputation in the early stages of Twitter. They obviously recognized the importance and handled the situation in a timely and professional manner. Instead of further negative exposure, the blogs posts about Comcast quickly turned positive.

It is important to understand you can’t resolve every single issue that is posted online about your product, but a quick response to serious ones can certainly help. For more information about online reputation management contact us today.

People are always asking how search relates to social. Bing announced  that they are going to show actual tweets in search engine results. They are going to start off small, only showing tweets of about a few thousand Twitter users. They are considered the most prominent and prolific users of Twitter.

User profiles of several social media sites have been appearing in search engines for awhile...but they were/are not shown for keywords, just names. Bing does not say in the announcement whether or not the tweets will pulled by keyword, but give the example of searching for ' Kara Swisher' or '@karaswisher'.

Google shows tweets to a certain degree...by keyword/key phrase even. Here is an example:

I searched for 'jcurcio twitter' and Google pulled a fairly recent status update as well as my profile. My Zannel profile also shows up.

Below I searched for the phrase in the previous listing 'Eliana caught her first fish'. When searching for this phrase both my Zannel and Twitter status posts show in the search results. This is slightly different than bing, as they are almost creating a social media app right in the search engine.

It brings me to an article in the latest issue of SES magazine which talks about the future of search. Right now search is technically not real time because everything is not being indexed in real time. Sure, you can get some real time news stories and up to date Wimbledon scores, etc., but SERP's are generally not considered real time. At some point engines may be able to take these tweets and use them for some real time search results. Who knows...just a thought.

Note: I am a twitter user http://twitter.com/jcurcio and the company http://twitter.com/protocol80 tries to keep up on tweets, but I personally do not want my search engine results consumed by too many tweets. I am sure this is something the engines will ensure doesn't happen, hopefully.

I strongly believe social media and search are going to have some relationship for years to come. For now, people and businesses should take the time and explore the opportunities available. As long as you have a  social media strategy in place, you can be successful.

There is a lot of search news out there...it can be tough to make it through the good stuff. I gathered some articles together for a client and thought I would share.

· Does Including A Physical Address On Your Website Help Rankings? – Including the physical address of a business may help with organic search engine ranks. This article compares several auto repair businesses to determine whether or not the physical address plays a factor.

· Is Your CAPTCHA Killing Your Business? – CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) is great for reducing bots, spam and unwanted computerized visitors, but are websites losing business because of it?

· 33 Reasons to Use Twitter - A Guide to Finding Value in the Service! – You can’t go anywhere without hearing Twitter this and Twitter that, but many people are still having problems grasping a purpose for Twitter. Here are 33 reasons to Twitter.

· Why SEO & Usability are like two peas in a pod – Many SEO professionals forget about usability…but it is important in a quality SEO strategy. This article explains why SEO and usability are essentially the same.

· Microsoft Bing Goes Live – What is up with the new Microsoft search engine? Will it catch on? Will it compete? Does anyone care? Try it for yourself at www.Bing.com.

Please enjoy the articles. You can always find more search marketing info at our website.

As far as social media marketing goes, it is a very new channel. There are many CEO's who are not willing to try...or even learn about social media marketing. Their thought? Social media is a time waster. Can you argue with them? Of course it is easy to waste time on the social media outlets, but if your company has a social media marketing strategy, your staff will remain productive and your company can reap the benefits of social media marketing. The most important things to remember are:

• Define your goals
• Create a plan
• Utilize Tools
• ping.fm
• Seesmic Desktop
• TweetDeck
• Zannel
• Participate through your social media channels
• Interact
• Offer coupons
• Improve customer experience
• Social Media Press Releases (SMPRs or SMRs)
• Measure effectiveness
• Adjust

Please check out our new white paper regarding social media marketing. We can help you implement your own social media strategy, visit www.protocol80.com.