With the growing number of social networks, it can be a pain to keep on top of them all.

Below I’ve highlighted three tools to help you manage your various social networking accounts from one neat dashboard.

#1: Alternion

Just recently out of private beta testing, Alternion packs a punch with the number of networks and social profiles you can manage.

Each profile or account is added by logging into the original site and allowing Alternion to access your account.

From blogging to bookmarking, image-sharing to shopping, Alternion will cover more of your accounts than any other dashboard I’ve tried so far. For business and marketing purposes, you’ll find most of the accounts you would need: Facebook, Twitter, WordPress, Digg, StumbleUpon, Delicious, Vimeo and YouTube are all here.

Alternion also places an emphasis on user privacy, with sharing options available for each linked account (perhaps having learned a lesson from Facebook’s privacy fumbles). You can decide whether to display a link to each account on your Alternion profile, and who can see your updates from a specific network.

Alternion's privacy settings are simple and easy to change.

The main dashboard page is a little reminiscent of Facebook’s once-simple layout—the blue and white design and clean structure make it easy to focus on your data and the task at hand.

Two sidebars keep your main news feed or message stream uncluttered.

Alternion offers three main viewing options: your social news feed, which pulls in updates from your social networks; messages, which allow you to interact with your various email accounts; and contacts, which is fairly self-explanatory.

One great feature that I was surprised to find is the ability to not only edit your Facebook and Twitter lists, but also to create brand-new lists from within the contacts tab.

Alternion also creates a user profile for everyone with an account. On your profile page, you can see updates you have made to any linked social networks, links to your various social profiles, photos and videos you have shared and some basic stats about your activity (number of profiles, number of updates, etc.).

The profile sidebar shows an overview of your activity from all accounts across the web.

#2: LiveGO

Unlike Alternion, LiveGO focuses on a smaller number of popular social networks like Facebook and Twitter. It also incorporates email accounts and instant messengers such as Gmail’s GTalk and AOL Instant Messenger.

LiveGO aims to be a simple way to communicate with others through email, social networks or instant messages.

LiveGO has several viewing options, allowing you to get an overview of everything at once or focus on a particular area. The standard inbox view shows your email inbox at the top, with mixed social network feeds underneath. Your instant message accounts live in a sidebar to the right, which can be hidden when not in use, giving you more space for other tasks.

Each of your accounts has its own button on the left, with a pop-up menu that makes it easy to switch to specific feeds; for instance, Twitter mentions or email drafts. A menu across the top of the main feeds panel offers different areas of each network, giving you full, integrated access to your account.

The Facebook-specific view has menu options for your news feed, photo albums, messages and more.

Each Twitter account has its own panel as well, showing your main feed, your own tweets, favorites, mentions and direct messages.

LiveGO's integration with Twitter includes the ability to favorite and unfavorite tweets, see conversation threads and follow or unfollow users.

A constant update box sits at the top of the screen, allowing you to update any of your social networks with ease. Choosing the account you are sending from is clear (something I have had issues with in other dashboard apps), and sending the same update to more than one account is an option.

Finally, a couple of unusual features that caught my attention: First, the ability to add special characters (music notes, hearts, arrows) to your updates. Admittedly, this is not something I use often, but is an interesting addition to the update box, especially considering an “add media” button is conspicuously missing. Second, a feature I have never seen before: an automatic collection of updates from the same person. See the image below for an example.

Two recent tweets by the same person were linked automatically by a bracket to show that they came from the same author.

#3: Netvibes

Netvibes is more of a monitoring dashboard than an integrated updating tool. With the ability to add several social networking accounts such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace (yes, really) and email accounts, it offers a good overview of your networks. Its focus is more on monitoring your brand across the web than communication, however.

Netvibes aims to be "everything that matters to you" collected into one dashboard.

With the ability to add several “dashboards” to your account, Netvibes offers a comfortable way to keep different areas of your work separated; for instance, personal and professional accounts or different brands you are monitoring.

Various widgets allow a huge degree of personalization to your dashboard.

Each dashboard view lets you choose widgets to add, which come as specific as the calculator, weather or to-do list widgets, and as indistinct as standard text or HTML widgets.

Social widgets allow you to monitor your email, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn accounts.

Each social networking widget offers standard functionality, such as replies, comments, retweeting and other sharing options. The email widget, however, is disappointing in its lack of features, offering essentially an inbox monitor and nothing else.

Adding widgets is a fairly simple process, with categories to browse at the top of the page. Each widget can fit into different areas of your dashboard, and change size and shape accordingly.

Widget previews show user ratings, image previews and the number of users who have installed the widget.

The one thing Netvibes really does differently is the integration of RSS feeds. With RSS widgets, you can quickly get an overview of recent headlines, and open these in a reader view to see the full article.

RSS feeds can be read without leaving the Netvibes dashboard.

This integration makes Netvibes the perfect place to monitor specific topics across the web, without actually “traveling” across the web.

If you prefer to view the actual website, you still don't have to leave your dashboard.

Netvibes also offers the most extensive personalization options of these three apps, with several themes available to choose from, and color options available for each separate widget.

The Verdict

As always with these roundup posts, your needs will determine which app is of the most benefit to you.

What do you think? Let us know which dashboards you’ve tried, and what you like best. What features would you like to see added to your favorite dashboard?

Right now Timeline is currently limited to personal profiles and with no schedule set or promised for brand pages.

However, given Facebook’s history with design changes and how changes of this sort first get released to users and later on get applied to brands, it’s likely that Timeline is on the horizon for business pages as well.

This article will explore what the timeline means for marketers.

Timeline for Users

User profiles have been completely overhauled into a sleek new page with large cover pictures, featured actions, certain aggregated information and more.

At its core, Timeline is a chronology of a user’s life on Facebook, with items automatically appearing based on an algorithm intended to capture a user’s most important life events.

A few things to keep in mind:

• Some objects are grouped together, such as all things a user Liked in a given month.
• The more engaging an action, the more prominently it will appear and remain in the Timeline.
• Users can manually add, remove, feature or de-emphasize Timeline events. In his keynote address at F8, Mark Zuckerberg enthusiastically demonstrated how a user can go back to the year of his birth and upload a baby picture.
• Although historically, major profile changes have often been followed by similar brand page changes, there is no official word yet on whether brand pages will also be redesigned.

Objects get grouped together at the end of the month, such as all the Likes I subscribed to myself in November, and the friends I added.

Open Graph and Custom Actions

Last year, Facebook rolled out Open Graph, allowing brands to connect to a user’s Facebook social graph. This year, it rolled out significant changes, allowing app developers to create custom actions using any verb and object related to the activity taking place on the app.

These so-called “lightweight” activities can be defined by the app creator and pushed throughout the Facebook experience.

Here are the highlights, and how the actions affect Timeline:

• The Open Graph integrates with the News Feed, Ticker and Timeline, making the app a key part of users’ and their friends’ Facebook experiences.
• As users engage, the custom action appears on Facebook News Feed, and remains on the user’s Timeline; e.g., Jane cooked a recipe from Best Recipes app.

Changes to the structure of permissions allow a user to give permission one time for an app to post about that user’s activity on the app thereafter.

This is how you’re seeing so many more postings about what your friends are listening to, for example, if they’re using a social sharing music app like Spotify. It even gets its own designated spot in the Timeline and displays a running list of what the user is listening to.

Changes to the structure of permissions allow a user to give permission once for an app to post about that user's activity on the app thereafter. This is how you're seeing so many more postings about what your friends are doing.

What Should Marketers Do?

Now that we know what changes Facebook has made, brands and marketers need to figure out what they mean for social media marketing.

Based on Wildfire’s extensive experience running over 150,000 social media campaigns, here’s our take:

• Likes are still very important. This is the way brands build their audiences, with whom they can communicate directly, and promotions are the best way to encourage Likes. Sweepstakes and instant-win campaigns are best for generating Likes; while contests, trivia, group deals and engaging pages are best for fostering engagement.
• News Feed vs. Brand Pages. There had been recent talk of apps/tabs/pages decreasing in significance. Now deeper, more engaging actions are the ones that will appear in Top Stories and Timelines and are therefore more persistent within the social graph. Now the “lightweight” actions have been removed to the fast-updating Ticker. In this way, the more “important” stuff, like meaningful interactions with branded content, will remain in the “Top Stories” and Timeline.
• Open Graph Connections are easier than ever. Facebook plugins, which are readily available for all domains, are easier than ever to use to increase your brand’s earned media.  Decide which plugin(s) work best for your domain and install them to all relevant company properties, like your website and blog.  Watch as visitors share the news of your brand for you on their own Timelines!

Having Facebook plugins well-integrated into your business domain increases the opportunity for brand advocates to spread the word about your brand, such as how Alain's Timeline reflects his activity on the Wildfire home page and blog.

Final Thoughts

Facebook Timeline is the newest development in Facebook’s quest to make over the Internet, integrating a social layer into every interaction and information node available. With Timeline, users have an increased ability to broadcast their lives (including any activity with brands, businesses, applications and services) to all of their friends.

These highly personalized interactions and the newly organized way of sharing them serve to lessen the friction among users and the connected Internet world. Preparing your brand to take advantage of Timeline is every savvy marketer’s first step in enhancing earned media potential.

Your Turn

Now that it is available to the public, what do you think of the new Timeline? Share your thoughts and questions in the comments box below. We’d love to hear from you!

In December of 2011, YouTube unveiled their latest design and navigational changes to the world.

Although it was met with unbridled criticism from a virtual mob of YouTube fanatics, these changes are here to stay.

Embrace YouTube’s recent makeover and their vision for the future of online entertainment. Change is good, right?

This article will only cover the three major changes that may affect your online strategy. If you want to stay on top of your video marketing game in 2012, these are the only three changes that you need to focus on.

Ready? Here we go!

#1: New YouTube Home Page

YouTube's new home page offers a new Subscription Feed function.

YouTube has changed their design to follow a much more clean and modern look.

A quick peek at the home page will reveal that quite a bit of rearranging has been done. Instead of showcasing the most popular and trending videos on the website, YouTube has now prominently positioned a “Subscription Feed” smack-dab in the middle of the page.

Note: You must be logged in to see this properly.

This “Subscription Feed” (which bears an uncanny resemblance to Facebook’s Live Feed), now features the latest video content and updates from your subscribers.

In an effort to provide a better, more relevant user experience for viewers, YouTube is behaving more like a social-networking site than ever before. But what does this mean for you?

Until now, the “cute baby” and “shockingly embarrassing caught-on-tape” videos have dominated YouTube with millions of views from your bored co-workers looking for a quick distraction from their day. Most of us have discredited YouTube as a legitimate traffic source or brand-builder for our businesses because let’s face it, creating randomly hilarious videos probably isn’t your forte! And that’s OK, because things are changing…

This “Subscription Feed” gives the smaller guy who doesn’t have “crazy-viral” content a fighting chance for more exposure.

As your viewers watch, rate and comment on your latest video, exposure for your content will spread to the followers and subscribers of each of your viewers through YouTube’s feed, creating a smaller yet more relevant viral effect.

Building your subscriber base is even more imperative than ever before!

To take advantage of the Subscription Feed, here is what I recommend:

•  Be active daily and consistently: Make sure to upload fresh content to YouTube weekly and follow up as many times as possible to comment, share and promote other videos that you enjoy watching. The more activity you have on YouTube, the more exposure you can get.
• Get your audience to take action: Using a call to action, get your viewers to subscribe, rate, comment and share each of your videos. The more activity and interaction that takes place on each of your videos, the more potential exposure you get on the home page of YouTube.

I don’t expect your 3-minute, content-rich video on how to get more leads in your business to suddenly go viral and compete with the likes of “Rebecca Black” & “Charlie Bit My Finger.” I do however see a mini-viral effect take place! Your videos have the potential of being shared and seen by more targeted viewers (quality views over quantity!).

#2: New YouTube Channel Page

The new channel layout may look different, but it still behaves relatively the same. However, as YouTube moves in the direction of becoming more “channel-centric,” it is imperative that you activate, update and optimize your new channel as quickly as possible for the best results.

In fact, YouTube is already making more of an effort to feature channels on search results pages for related keywords. Focus on using your main keyword phrase properly in your channel, and you can get found even quicker!

Optimize your channel with your main keyword phrase for more exposure!

Here is your action list for proper channel page optimization:

Step 1: Set up background image.

Depending on how your channel’s background image was designed before the big change, you may need to modify and upload a new image. The best background images reflect your brand and the services you provide through pictures and text on the far left-hand side of your background image.

To begin the editing process, simply click the “Edit Channel” button on the top right-hand corner of your channel page.

Step 2: Edit your channel details.

The next step is to make sure the title, description and tags for your channel are properly filled out using your main keyword phrase. (Note: Some users have experienced losing all the content they used in their previous channel description after making the switch. Don’t assume your description is still intact.)

Your title should be clear, concise and benefit-driven. Your description should detail exactly what type of value and benefits your audience will get when they watch your videos. And you can finish this by adding a bunch of your relevant keyword phrases (in quotation marks) in the Tags section.

Properly fill out your channel info and include your keyword phrase.

Step 3: Activate the “Blogger Template.”

The new channel page offers the choice to customize the design and layout of your channel with one of four templates. I recommend using the “Blogger” layout. It can be selected with the click of a button!

Select the layout that best suits your needs!

Step 4: Edit your featured video.

Similar to the old channel design, you’ll want to have a featured video that auto-plays when people view your channel. You can choose from any of your past videos or select the option to use your most recent video (recommended).

Remember to properly add your "featured video."

Step 5: Add your links.

The new channel design makes it fairly easy to add website, blog and social profile links to drive traffic to your other web properties. Make sure to take the time to add and edit this information and use compelling benefit-driven copy to encourage your visitors to click over to your website!

Include links to your website, blog and social networking profiles.

Most marketers will never take the 4.3 minutes to make these minor adjustments to their channel. Take this opportunity to optimize your channel page properly and focus on getting it ranked for your main keyword phrase!

#3: YouTube Analytics

My personal favorite change in YouTube’s most recent overhaul has been their introduction of YouTube Analytics. Previously called YouTube Insight, this extremely detailed and informative feature allows you to learn more about your audience, your videos and your activity on YouTube. In other words, you get to totally geek out!

Each statistic tells a story about the viewing habits of your audience. With proper deduction skills, you can effectively identify problems with your videos and make the necessary changes to improve your results.

Most of the features in YouTube Analytics have remained the same; however, there are two features that I would like to call special attention to:

1: Audience retention

Previously labeled as “Hotspots,” this improved function allows you to see just how engaging (or unengaging!) your videos really are. Identify the exact moments that are causing your viewers to run for the hills or making them perform a “digital double-take,” rewinding your video and begging you for more! Want to see more results with your videos? This function tells you exactly what you need to do!

Two exciting features to play with inside YouTube Analytics.

2: Playback locations

This new function allows you to see exactly where your videos are being watched. As mobile devices become predominant in our lives, you’ll notice a greater percentage of playback locations coming from “mobile.” This feature will also allow you to see exactly who is embedding your videos and which blogs/websites are giving you views! Find out what is working and you can do more of the same!

Why Change Is Good

Even though this round of changes was met with harsh criticism from the YouTube community, it’s our duty as business owners to embrace the change and understand YouTube’s ultimate vision.

As the third-largest website in the world with an audience that rivals any major television network, YouTube is an absolute powerhouse! It has big plans for blurring the line of offline television and online entertainment, and we can expect YouTube to continue to evolve and morph into something new and different.

What do you think? Do you understand the rules of YouTube’s game? Embrace the change and you can see results for a long time to come! Leave your questions and comments in the box below.

Recently, Twitter got a complete revamp that changed things drastically. Interestingly, it didn’t pump the social network with more and more features.

Ryan Sarver, Twitter’s head of API, explained it crisply: “In a world where Facebook and Google are competing on features, Twitter wants to focus on being simple.”

This article will review all the changes, from user interface changes to Twitter brand pages, what the new changes mean and how you can best use them.

#1: Easier and More Streamlined Navigation

The first thing you’ll notice with the new Twitter is that navigating has become a lot easier and more streamlined. With just one click on any update, you can now get all the information you need from a tweet.

It will show you the number of retweets, replies and favorites, without going anywhere else.

This means you can jump into the conversation right from there. It also gives you a great overview of how well that particular tweet has performed. While some Twitter tools offer this already, it is very helpful to have it right inside Twitter.com.

You can see all the information you need right here.

Another feature that might just have become very useful is the “Who to follow” box on the left. This is a fantastic new way to discover people close to your network whom you might not know about. You can click the “x” on any person who is not suitable, and browse endlessly through this tool to find people.

The little note below each of the suggested people tells you who from your network is already connected to that person. This makes expanding your Twitter tribe much more focused. I like this, as you aren’t stabbing in the dark when connecting with new people.

See who's following these people before deciding to follow them yourself.

I am immensely impressed with the new “Discover” area in the new Twitter. It surfaces content much more intelligently now and becomes a very powerful place to find new articles.

With one glance, you can browse through the hottest stories on the web and get updated on everything, without having to search endlessly through past tweets. This area also has a complete “Who to Follow” stream ready for you that you can explore:

It's now easy to discover the hottest stories.

How to Make the Most of the New Twitter.com in 10 Minutes a Day

These new design improvements mean that if you are super-busy handling all of your business activities, the new Twitter allows you to expand your network in a very short and focused stretch of time.

Here are a few tips on what you can do:

• Browse your new and improved stream for great tweets and conversations. Click “open” on any tweet to get the full context more easily.
• Spend 5 minutes browsing the “Who to Follow” stream and expand your network easily and in a focused way.
• Hop over to the new “Discover” area to find all of the latest stories from your network in one glance.

Bonus Tip: The new Buffer browser extension has been updated to work inside the new Twitter. Click “Buffer” on any tweet next to “Retweet” and easily schedule your retweets to be posted at an optimum time.

#2 and #3: Twitter Brand Pages and Embeddable Tweets

Evidently, one of the biggest changes coming for businesses is Twitter brand pages alongside the new embeddable tweets function. While only 21 brands were given access to creating their page, it is said to soon roll out to everyone else.

What is most notable about brand pages is that they allow you to pin the top tweet, so it is not cluttered with replies. This means you can find one of your top-value tweets and have it ready whenever a new visitor arrives.

Secondly, you are also able to customize a banner slot right beneath your account information. You can fill it with a promotion or special deal for your followers. Here is an example from Best Buy’s brand page.

Check out Best Buy's Twitter Brand Page.

With the new embeddable tweets function, Twitter has also given a major incentive to bloggers and publishers to come back to Twitter.com. To get to the embed function, just click “Details” after you have expanded the tweet once. Then simply click the “embed” link to get all of the options to include the tweet in your next blog post:

Notice the "Embed this Tweet" link at the bottom.

The great thing is that you can customize the styling of the embedded tweet right from there. This means you can control the position and text wrapping on the page. Once you are happy with your changes, just copy and paste the code into the HTML of your next blog post.

You can customize the Embeddable Tweets.

Here’s how this looks (note: what you see below is active, NOT a screen shot):

Top 10 Facebook Apps for Fan Engagement and Building Community bit.ly/sy33DR via @smexaminer

— Cindy King (@CindyKing) December 14, 2011

Four Quick Tips to Make the Most of Embeddable Tweets

Personally, I believe this feature can be an extremely powerful blogging tool for anyone using Twitter. The fact that it places a Follow button on the embedded tweet alone is very attractive for giving any Twitter account a lot more exposure.

• If you’re writing about an event, try finding relevant tweets to embed so you can give your article a more lively appearance.
• Add credibility to your articles by embedding tweets from experts talking about the topic. Simply search Twitter for some keywords to find relevant tweets.
• If you are reviewing a product or service, place a few tweets from across the Twitterverse at the bottom of your post to show more varied opinions.

Bonus tip: Whichever tweet you embed, let the person who tweeted it know, as you are providing them with additional exposure. They might just help you spread your content even more.

#4: The New, Much Faster TweetDeck

Another equally significant announcement from Twitter is that the new TweetDeck has been unveiled. As a heavy TweetDeck user myself, there is one most important improvement I see right away: TweetDeck is no longer an Adobe Air app, which means it is less sluggish to use.

Since TweetDeck’s acquisition by Twitter, it is evident that a lot of effort has been put into making the dashboard simpler and imitating the Twitter.com experience more closely. You’ll realize this quickly as there is no bar at the top to add your tweets, but only a box similar to Twitter.com.

The improved TweetDeck is easy to use.

However, my feeling is that these changes have taken away some of TweetDeck’s previous flexibility and functionality. Clearly, the new TweetDeck is geared toward more mainstream usage and less focused on providing the go-to dashboard for power users.

#5: The New iPhone and Android Apps for Twitter

Twitter’s new mobile clients for Android and iPhone I would like to call huge successes. The experience, much like the new Twitter.com, has been greatly improved and streamlined for you.

You can access your #discover area with top stories in the exact way as on Twitter.com. Also the @mentions and news stream have received a major design update. They are much easier to browse and interact with. Especially whenever there are unread updates in one of your streams, it displays a little line beneath the icon like you see below:

The improved mobile Twitter news stream.

Here's the improved mobile Twitter @mentions stream.

What I also greatly enjoy is that on the home tab, you now have a notification counter of how many direct messages are in your inbox. At the same time, it’s very easy to access your Twitter lists right from there with just one tap. It makes focused reading of news a lot easier for you.

It's easy to see the number of unread Direct Messages waiting for you.

Tips to Make the Most of the New Twitter Mobile Clients

There are quite a few hidden tricks and features on your new Twitter mobile clients that might just make your life a lot easier. Here is a list of the top three things I found:

• Whenever you’re writing a tweet and you don’t want to send it just now, hit “Cancel” and then “Save as Draft.” This is a great way to space out your tweets and avoid flooding your followers.
• You can easily connect multiple Twitter accounts from the home tab and switch between them conveniently. Just click on “change accounts” and swap over to your business or other Twitter account.
• For better monitoring, save some Twitter searches, as you can now easily access them right from the home tab too. This is a great way to stay up to date with your most important keywords about your business.

How do you like the new Twitter?

Overall, I believe Twitter has done a fabulous job with their updates on the new Twitter. The one point I feel might need some improvement is the new TweetDeck. But I understand that this particular revamp happened more likely because of Twitter’s overall “focus on simple” strategy than anything else.

What is worth noting is that Twitter is making a huge bet on bringing users from various clients back to Twitter.com. Looking at the changes above, I have to say that for me this has definitely been true. I find myself browsing Twitter.com far more often. The brand pages especially can be a big reason for business owners to engage more on Twitter.com itself.

Over to you now. What do you think? So much has happened to Twitter recently. How do you like it? Leave your questions and comments in the box below.

We asked 12 experienced social media professionals to share their best tips on Google+ for business with you.

Here are 12 ways you can use Google+ to promote and market your business.

#1: Personalize your page URL

Ben Pickering @bpicks

Carly Simon’s 70′s hit “You’re So Vain” gave vanity a bad name. But using a so-called “vanity URL” can be a smart move when it comes to your online presence.

While Facebook allows page owners to create vanity URLs of the structure facebook.com/YourName, Google does not currently do the same.

By default, Google+ page URLs look like this: https://plus.google.com/103145815507039304597/posts. It seems likely that at some point Google will allow for personalized page URLs, but until they do, there is a service that can help.

At http://www.gplus.to/, you can create a custom URL like http://www.gplus.to/strutta, which will redirect a user to your page. This link is more user-friendly and branded for your business or organization. When it comes to branding yourself on social channels, a little vanity is OK!

Create your vanity URL for your Google+ page.

Ben Pickering, CEO of Strutta.

#2: Craft an eye-catching mini-bio for your hovercard

Mari Smith @marismith

Get creative with your “Employer” field and use that to craft an eye-catching “mini-bio.” This then shows in your hovercard, which is often the only information someone on Google+ has in front of them to decide whether to circle (follow) you or not.

Make it really easy for more people to circle you by having a bio somewhat similar to what you may have on Twitter.

The field is not obvious at first, but it’s under the “Employment” section and has to be your current employer. You have plenty of characters to write what you wish there. I would caution against writing something like “self-employed,” as shown in the screenshot below—that doesn’t really tell anyone anything about you.

I’ve written a bio similar to the one I have on Twitter and included a link—though it’s not clickable.

Don't do this.

Do provide an interesting mini-bio to appear on your hovercard.

Mari Smith, a widely-recognized social media speaker and trainer, author of The New Relationship Marketing, and coauthor of Facebook Marketing: An Hour A Day.

#3: Create a great first impression

Kristi Hines @kikolani

I think one of the most important things that businesses need to do with both their personal profiles and Google+ pages is fill out all of the details. Don’t think of Google+ as just another social profile. Think about it as your first contact point with a new client.

With that in mind, make sure you have a great description in your introduction, all of your contact details, and links to your most important online properties including your website, top pages on your website (products or services), blog and main social profiles (Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn). Also be sure to use the photostrip underneath your headline to display the photos that best represent you and your brand.

Add a compelling description and all useful contact information.

Kristi Hines, author of the popular blog, Kikolani.

#4: Promote your Google+ page

Debbie Hemley @dhemley

It’s important to remember to promote your Google+ page from your website and other online presences. A recent BrightEdge study  found that of the world’s top 100 brands that had scurried to create a Google+ business page, 61 of them had not displayed a link from their website to their new Google+ page.

Businesses should tap into features such as Google Badges. To do this, you need to sign up at the Google+ Platform Preview and then create and customize your badge at the Google+ configuration tool page. The page will generate a script that you’ll code into your website to enable and display the badge.

Check out Social Media Examiner's Google+ badge in the sidebar to the right.

I’d also suggest adding the +1 button to your company’s website or blog, which allows visitors to recommend it with a single click. HubSpot reported that websites that use Google’s +1 button generated 3.5 times more traffic from Google+ than websites that don’t have the button installed.

You can read more about my tips in my post, “The Marketer’s Field Guide to Google Plus Business Pages.”

Debbie Hemley, social media consultant and blogger.

#5: Create a suggested circles list

Jeff Korhan @jeffkorhan

My favorite Google+ marketing tip is to create a prioritized list of suggested circles you should be placed in at the top of the About tab of your profile page, both for your business and personal profiles.

Visitors can then quickly and easily determine your business focus, which will encourage further exploration of your descriptive bio or company introduction, and lead to more connections.

Jeff gives his audience suggestions on where to place him.

Jeff Korhan, professional speaker, consultant and columnist on new media and small business marketing.

#6: Leverage photos to connect with your audience

Jamie Turner @AskJamieTurner

If you’re like a lot of people, you’re using Google+ as a tool to build awareness for you or your business. If that’s the case, you may want to update your Google+ profile to include photos that provide helpful facts and figures about your industry.

In my case, I wanted to provide my Google+ followers information about social, mobile and digital media. I did this by creating graphics that were 720 x 720 pixels and uploading them to a scrapbook on my Google+ profile.

Check out how Jamie used the Google+ photo feature.

The result is that visitors to my profile are greeted by 5 short factoids about marketing. This is helpful to my followers and also positions me as a thought leader in the industry.

Jamie Turner, co-author of How to Make Money with Social Media and Founder of the 60 Second Marketer.

#7: Establish your presence and wait for your audience

Nichole Kelly @Nichole_Kelly

Depending on what business you’re in, it’s quite possible that your audience isn’t actively using Google+ yet. This represents both a challenge and an opportunity.

The challenge is to find time to be engaging and relevant on yet another social network. The opportunity is for you to establish yourself as a thought leader in a space where your competition may not be actively participating.

To balance resource constraints with opportunity, I recommend that businesses establish their presence and listen for openings to engage. When you start seeing your audience adopting Google+, take the time to recognize what they like about the platform that they aren’t getting on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn.

Rather than trying to figure out how to do everything on Google+ that you’re doing on other social networks, look for how Google+ can help your business fill a unique need for your audience and build a strategy around that.

Nichole Kelly, publisher of FullFrontalROI.com.

#8: Get to know your audience on Google+

Stephanie Gehman @airport_girl

When considering your content for the Google+ platform, remember that although there may be some overlap with other social media, this is a new and different platform and potentially an entirely new and different audience.

Get to know them by asking questions, polling, sharing content and interacting. Do not presume that what works for your business on more established social channels such as Twitter and Facebook will have a cookie-cutter fit with your Google+ audience. Tailor your message and content to their needs.

Stephanie Gehman, marketing manager for Harrisburg International Airport in Pennsylvania.

#9: Use brand micro-circles for repeat business

Carla Dewing @CarlaDewing

To get the most out of Google+, concentrate on creating circles on a micro level. Work on a business-by-business basis, adding names to client businesses and brands, each of which has their own circle. You can also add names to “influencer” circles, which will help you connect with people in your field whom you want to meet online.

Using Google+ as a business knowledge base improves communication with your clients and your project management ability as you chat, video-conference and connect with new people through these micro circles.

Segmentation and attention are often vital when you’re shooting for repeat business. Google+ has handed you a way to do this neatly and efficiently, without having to use multiple platforms or media!

Carla Dewing, content marketing expert and part-owner of Contrast Media.

#10: Capitalize on Google+ search to show you’re there

Jason Miller @JasonMillerCA

Search Google+ for mentions of your brand and industry-related keywords. Save your searches and they will appear on your left sidebar for quick reference. Monitor your saved searches daily and respond to mentions, comment on threads and reshare people’s posts.

Use the Google+ search feature and save your searches.

Even if you have nothing to say, a +1 lets them know that you’re paying attention, as a great social brand should be.

Jason Miller, Programs Manager, Social Media & Content at Marketo.

#11: Use Google+ hangouts to communicate with customers

Tom Martin @TomMartin

Brands should be looking forward to hanging out on Google+.That’s right. No key benefit required, just communication. The power of the hangout is truly (for me at least) THE big differentiator of Google+ over other social platforms.

Need some insight into how consumers are thinking? Ship a bunch of them a bag of M&M’s and a calendar appointment for your next focus group.

Want to make your consumers feel special? Call them with an invitation to hang out with someone interesting: your CEO, a famous spokesperson or maybe the head of product development. No script, no questions. Just a chance to talk with someone they’d really like to meet.

Invite your customers to hang out with you and make it interesting.

Or best of all, be the campfire that your customers want to visit and teach your customer (who probably doesn’t have a clue about Google+, much less a hangout) how they can get on Google+ and join a hangout to meet with other like-minded folks and make new friends who share a common interest. The list can go on and on, but suffice it to say, the ability to create real-time, multi-user video chats is ripe for innovative marketing.

Tom Martin, founder of Converse Digital.

#12: Join others’ hangouts

Marc Pitman @marcapitman

If you’re really going to learn how to effectively use hangouts, you’ll need to participate in some (as a person, not really as a marketer). Taking the time to learn the norms of hangouts will make your first hangout as a business far more successful. If you use the Chrome browser, there’s a plugin called “Hangout Canopy” that allows you to see what live hangouts are happening at any given moment. (Go here for more on how to hold a hangout.)

Marc Pitman, author and speaker dedicated to making it ridiculously easy for people to get nonprofit fundraising training.

What’s your experience with Google+? What marketing tips do you have to share? Please share your questions and comments in the box below.

When you spend a lot of time online, you’ll inevitably come across too many great things to keep track of.

Whether it’s handy infographics, informative articles or just a hilarious video, it can be a lot of work (and sometimes impossible) to find them again later.

If you’ve been in this situation before, looking for something you saw somewhere online, you’ll love these three tools. Each one offers a different take on collecting your personal information and content you share online into a searchable database.

egoArchive: Everything you see online

egoArchive focuses on everything you read or look at online. It works as an in-depth, searchable dump-bucket of every site you visit.

egoArchive is "your memory in the cloud," so you don't need to remember anything.

egoArchive collects your data in two different ways. Connecting your Twitter, Facebook and Delicious accounts allows your activity on these services to be archived. Browser extensions are also available for Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer. With the browser extension installed, egoArchive can see and archive all of the pages you visit.

Before you decide this is a little too close to an invasion of privacy, there are some safety measures in place. By default, no pages with a secure connection (https://) will be archived, nor will any pages visited while you are using your browser’s incognito mode. There’s also a blacklist feature, which lets you add any URL that you don’t want to be archived.

So, once you’ve got your accounts connected and your browser extension is up and running, you can use egoArchive to search through your data.

Your egoArchive homepage lets you browse the last 24 hours, last week, favorites and shared items.

Searching can be as simple or complex as you like. As well as entering keywords into the search box, you can sort your results by relevance or date, and choose which services to search: web history, Delicious, Facebook and/or Twitter.

Each search result will show a thumbnail of the site, a link and description, and the date and time you viewed it. You also have the options of deleting a result or saving it to favorites, searching only that domain and sharing the link with friends.

Comprehensive search results make it easy to find what you're looking for.

egoArchive is the perfect tool to find blog posts you’ve read online, status updates from Twitter or Facebook, or news articles that you can only vaguely remember. With the comprehensive search options, it can make finding items much faster than a traditional search engine.

egoArchive is currently in private beta, but the founders have been kind enough to offer an invite code for Social Media Examiner’s first 50 readers. Just click this invite link to sign up!

Memolane: Everything you share online

Memolane takes a more personal approach to archiving by focusing on items and content you share online. Known as “the timeline of your life” or “the scrapbook that writes itself,” Memolane is all about organizing and curating the content and updates you are already sharing online.

Here’s a short video to introduce the service:

Memolane offers connections to many social media accounts, from Facebook and Twitter to YouTube and Instagram. For each account that you connect, you can choose a separate privacy setting—private, public or “friends only.” Your updates are then pulled into a “lane,” where they are organized by date.

Updates from all of your connected accounts are aggregated into your personal stream or "lane" and organized by date.

Within a lane, each “memo” (or update) can be viewed specifically, with options to share, change privacy settings and add or remove the memo from your lane. Links in your memos are preserved, so you can revisit links you have shared previously.

Each memo includes the date and time it was posted in the grey bar at the bottom.

In addition to pulling all of your updates into one searchable feed, Memolane offers a similar service for Storify, by allowing you to create separate lanes around specific themes or events. You can then search or browse these lanes, which are limited to updates you have chosen.

Specific lanes can be singular or collaborative efforts, using updates from your choice of networks and time periods.

Memolane is a useful tool to search through updates you have posted and shared. If you like looking back over your activity online, this is a great way to do so, by pulling in updates from many (or all) of your social profiles. Creating separate lanes is a handy feature if you want to curate updates relating to an event, project or short time period.

Memolane accounts are free and you can start building your lane by visiting the sign up page.

Greplin: Everything that’s yours

Unlike Memolane and egoArchive, Greplin isn’t limited to your public updates and activity. Greplin works like Memolane, in that you need to connect the accounts you want to archive before it indexes all of your content. Available connections include Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Gmail.

Several options are available only with a premium account, such as Highrise, Basecamp and Evernote.

Once your services have been added, Greplin will create an index of all of your content, including private items like emails. You can then search separate services, file types or everything at once.

Icons in the bar to the left show which services are being indexed and whether they're up to date.

Searching for content is a quick process. A drop-down box offers each of your accounts to be searched, as well as result types, such as links, events, messages and people. For a quick search of everything, you can leave this set to “all.”

Search results are counted into separate categories such as people, files and streams.

Search results are separated into categories, making it easy to find what you are looking for. Each category shows the first three results with options to show more, each result linking to the original content. Greplin’s clean and simple layout makes it easy to interact with the search functions and find items quickly.

Stream search results offer links to the original content, as well as profile links for the authors.

Integration is a highlight of Greplin, which adds optional search functions to your standard Gmail search bar, and offers browser extensions to search on the go. For a comprehensive search of your public and personal content, as well as items shared on your social networks, Greplin is a winner.

Bonus: Trunk.ly and the future of Delicious

When I began this post, I had planned to highlight one of my favorite archiving apps, Trunk.ly, which Social Media Examiner briefly mentioned in a previous post. Trunk.ly archives all status updates you share online that include links. It’s a fantastic (and passive) way to collect the links you share on social networks and find them again later.

Unfortunately, Trunk.ly is no longer accepting new sign-ups, and will close in the next two months. The good news is that it has been acquired by AVOS, the new owners of Delicious.

So hopefully this means that Delicious will soon offer a similar service. If you already have a Delicious account, I recommend keeping an eye out for this, as it has come in handy many times for me in the past.

What are your thoughts on archiving your online activity? Is it a handy service, or an invasion of privacy? Do you use another tool to back up and search your content? Let us know by leaving your questions and comments in the box below.

Are you using LinkedIn to get the word out?

Why LinkedIn?

LinkedIn, the largest professional social network now with over 135,000,000 members, has been busy lately updating features to help professionals and companies.

The LinkedIn Events Tool is the most recent application to receive an overhaul as millions of members have been increasingly utilizing the tool to source and sign up to attend local or industry-related events. The new features of the LinkedIn Events Tool benefit event organizers, marketers and professionals alike.

You must be creative and target your promotional efforts to your core audience, and the new LinkedIn Events Tool can help you do just that!

One of the new features of the LinkedIn Events Tool is the ability for people to easily search for relevant events. LinkedIn will automatically showcase a handful of events related to your network connections, industry and geographic location, but the search tool can uncover many more events that you may be interested in.

With the search tool, you can home in on specific industries and geographic locations, and include “past events” in the search results.

A search for "upcoming marketing and advertising events in California" produced 27 results.

When creating an event on LinkedIn, don’t limit yourself to traditional events and conferences! Roundtables, breakfast meetings, workshops and even virtual webinars are all appropriate for utilizing the LinkedIn Events Tool. In fact, hosting a regular monthly event is a great way to consistently build visibility and value with your target audience!

5 Tips for Creating and Optimizing Your LinkedIn Event

#1: Upload an event logo

One of the first things I noticed when doing detailed event searches was that almost none of them include logos. This causes all of the events to look alike! It’s important to optimize your LinkedIn event to ensure that it will stand out among all of the other search results, and an event logo will provide a substantial boost to differentiating your event!

#2: Get creative with your event title

Think of an exciting way to describe your event that will appeal to potential attendees. What’s in it for them? What will they gain from attending your event? Developing a creative title will help your event stand out in search results and also capture more attention as you share it online and attendees share it online with their networks!

#3: Include a short but powerful event description with a strong call to action

Many events on LinkedIn have long and detailed descriptions. I would recommend saving that for your offsite event registration page perhaps. Keep your event description on LinkedIn focused on the high points.

Use capital letters and bullet points to highlight the benefits of attending the event and don’t forget to instruct visitors to click the I’m Attending or Follow buttons so that their network connections will see this action!

#4: Consider using an offsite registration page to capture attendee information

When you create your event, you will be asked to enter the URL where attendees can sign up. Using an offsite event registration tool such as Eventbrite or Go to Meeting  will allow you to have greater control over your attendees’ information and enable you to communicate with them via email.

#5: Don’t forget the details

Be sure to include event date, time and location, and if it’s a virtual event, check the “virtual event” box! Also, take advantage of the Labels section and include keywords that describe your event.

An example of an event that is properly optimized with details, logo, highlights and labels.

5 Tips to Successfully Promote and Share Your LinkedIn Event

Once you’ve created your event on LinkedIn, the real work begins. Now you will need to drive visibility and grow your attendance!

If you create an event on LinkedIn and neglect to do any promotion, you most likely will have an empty event. Promoting your event is the key to gaining traction and visibility.

In addition, the more attendees you can capture through your LinkedIn Events Page, the more opportunities they will have to meet new people and network with other attendees. The new LinkedIn Events Tool will showcase the “Attendees You May Want to Meet”!

The LinkedIn Events Tool produces a valuable onsite networking benefit for your attendees.

Remember, when promoting your event, you must also encourage attendees and potential attendees to click the I’m Attending button on your LinkedIn Events Page in order for it to show up as a status update in their respective LinkedIn connections! Tell them what you want them to do.

In your event description, I recommend using a strong call to action to encourage visitors to click the I'm Attending or Follow buttons.

#1: Promote your event on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook

On your LinkedIn Events Page, you will have the ability to grab a link to the page and promote it on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. Always promote your event by stating the primary benefit that your target audience can expect to receive from attending the event! How is it going to help them grow their business or be more successful?

Encourage attendees and non-attendees alike to also promote the event for you. Simply stating something like, “Please help us spread the word” can go a long way in social media promotion efforts!

Grab your LinkedIn Event link and share it on social networks.

#2: Promote your event weekly in relevant LinkedIn groups

I ran a LinkedIn event several months ago and primarily focused my promotional activities on highly relevant LinkedIn groups. These are the places where clusters of professionals hang out together and discuss mutual topics of interest. It is the perfect place to promote events that may be of interest to those members.

I would recommend promoting your event weekly until there is a day or so left to register, and also promote it at that time, offering one last opportunity to sign up. People tend to act when time is running out!

If members are receiving weekly or daily digests from their LinkedIn groups, your event will show as a current discussion!

#3: Promote your event on your LinkedIn Company Page

If you have a LinkedIn Company Page for your business, you can now add status updates that will be visible to your Company Page followers. Review this recent article for more information on how to leverage the new LinkedIn Company Pages to grow your business.

#4: Send direct and personalized invites

When you choose to share an event on LinkedIn, you can send a direct message about it to any of your connections. This is a great way to get the event directly in front of attendees who may be interested in attending with a personalized message. It’s also an excuse for you to reach out to connections with whom you may have lost touch.

Send personalized invites to your connections.

#5: Run ads on LinkedIn to promote your event

Running targeted ads on LinkedIn is proving to be quite effective. Depending on your budget, you may want to consider developing a targeted social ad strategy to drive attendance to your event!

Don’t limit your promotional efforts. Take advantage of all of the opportunities available to you for leveraging your event with social tools and channels. Here are 12 ways to market and promote your event through social media and 15 awesome ways to “socialize” your events!

Find Related and Relevant Events to Follow or Attend

Keep in mind that by following events that your connections are attending, events in your industry or events in your geographic area, you can network with other professionals involved in those events without physically attending. You can also share information about your event on other event pages! 

There are a number of events I’m interested in attending but for one reason or another may not be able to make it. In these cases, I will follow the event to stay in the loop and also network with the people who are planning to attend, perhaps by asking their opinion about the event or their experience from attending in the past!

If you’d like to see all LinkedIn Events at a glance, check out the LinkedIn Events Directory; an aggregate web page that organizes events by industry, geography and event name: http://events.linkedin.com/. I suspect that more events will be coming online on LinkedIn as companies and professionals realize the opportunities available to them by using the LinkedIn Events Tool.

LinkedIn comprehensive online events directory.

What do you think? Now that you know more about the new LinkedIn Events Tool, will you use it to create, promote and grow your events? Leave your questions and comments in the box below.

These top 10 Facebook apps are, in my opinion, some of the most useful ones for pages when it comes to encouraging fan engagement and giving value to your community.

They are also very easy to use. Some may be familiar to you, but you may find some new gems to try out.

By the way, check out Top Ten Facebook Apps for Building Custom Tabs & Pages. If you are looking for a more comprehensive list, check out the one by Mari Smith: Top 75 Apps for Enhancing Your Facebook Page.

#1: Fan of the Week for Pages

Your fans like to be recognized. This application keeps track of participation on your Facebook page and then automatically posts a “shout out” to your fan of the week.

The application is free for the basic message, but in this post, Club D’Ville has upgraded to the paid version to post a custom message that rewards the fan of the week even more with some free passes.

Reward your fans with recognition or go a step further and give them some free goodies.

The fan of the week application also adds a custom tab to your sidebar that features that week’s fan on the tab.

To add it to your page, just go to http://apps.facebook.com/fanofthe/ and then choose the page to add it to. The app will automatically post to your page wall at the same time every week. Make sure you add the app to your page at the exact time you would like it to post.

Enabling the Fan of the Week for Pages app is easy.

#2: Booshaka

Booshaka is another application that will highlight the fans who are participating on your page more often. When you install the application, a custom tab called Top Fans is added to your page.

Fans get the most points for posting to your wall and they also receive points for comments and likes.

Booshaka gives points for participation.

You can view the stats of each fan listed to see how they have participated. The app gives a complete history of the fan’s activity on your page.

To install Booshaka, just go to www.Booshaka.com and click the blue Install button. They also have a Top Fans Pro version that rewards the top fans with perks.

#3: NetworkedBlogs

Facebook has changed the news feed algorithm, so it can be hard to keep track of what’s working and what’s not.

But in recent news, Facebook appears to have changed its algorithm again so that third-party posting applications such as NetworkedBlogs, HootSuite, TweetDeck and others will not be hidden in the news feed.

I have done my own research and have not found any collapsed posts from these applications, which is good news.

Even though it’s always best for engagement and EdgeRank purposes to post manually on Facebook, sometimes a little automation can be helpful. NetworkedBlogs is an application that automatically posts your new blog posts to your Facebook wall. You can use it to post to your personal profile, your Facebook page and Twitter accounts.

The application will pull in the title of the blog post, the first picture in the post (or a screen shot of your entire blog if there isn’t a picture) and the first few lines of the post. When someone clicks on the post, there are Share buttons at the top of the post to allow readers to easily share it with their networks.

NetworkedBlogs automatically posts your new blog posts to your wall.

I find the setup and navigation of NetworkedBlogs a little challenging, but there are help files. The easiest way to add NetworkedBlogs to your fan page is by going to http://www.facebook.com/networkedblogs and clicking on the Add to My Page link on the left sidebar.

#4: Post Planner

Sometimes you need to schedule your posts to your Facebook page. There are some scheduling tools such as SocialOomph, HootSuite or TweetDeck, but none has the capability to schedule posts with pictures or video. Post Planner can help with that.

The tool does cost $4.95/month to post to pages, but having some peace of mind that you won’t forget to post at the perfect time can help. Always make sure you are engaging and checking back into the conversation.

Post Planner also has a White Label version so you can customize the app name and send people who click on it to your website instead of to an application.

Post Planner can schedule posts with pictures.

The easiest way to install Post Planner is to go to www.postplanner.com.

#5: YouTube

If you have a YouTube channel, I recommend integrating it into your Facebook page so that people who come to your page can easily access your videos. There are many YouTube applications, but my favorite is YouTube for Pages by Involver. It’s easy to install, the layout is nice and it offers easy sharing.

Your most recent video is automatically displayed as the largest. The application will not automatically post your newest video to the wall, but you can easily post it with just two clicks.

The YouTube for Pages app prominently displays your most recent video

The application is easy to install from http://www.facebook.com/YouTubeApp and then click the Add to My Page link on the left sidebar.

#6: Livestream

Livestream is a great way to bring live video events to your Facebook page. The chat feature can make it more interactive with the audience. You can record the events for later viewing.

Mari Smith's recent Livestream broadcast.

To add Livestream to your page, go to http://apps.facebook.com/livestream/ and click the green Get Started button.

#7: ContactMe

Make it easy for people to get in touch with you with a contact form on your Facebook page. With the ContactMe app, you can add many different fields and customize the form to suit your needs. Install the ContactMe form at http://www.facebook.com/contactforms.

Customize the fields or just keep it basic with a name, email and message.

#8: Constant Contact

Many people wonder how to add a newsletter signup to their page. There are lots of ways that include iFrame apps and design.

What I like about the Constant Contact application is that it is very simple to use. But it doesn’t allow for a lot of bells and whistles. You can add text to talk about your newsletter and even a picture as shown in the figure below.

But for people who are intimidated by code and too much customization capability, this application can be just the ticket to add a newsletter signup if you use the Constant Contact email service.

The Constant Contact Join my List app is easy to use.

Get started at http://apps.facebook.com/ctctjmml/.

Note: MailChimp also has a Facebook app for newsletter signup if you use their service: http://apps.facebook.com/mailchimp/.

#9: Scribd for Pages

Scribd is a document-sharing service that makes it easy to upload and share PDF, DOC, XLS, JPG and PPT files. People often want to be able to share a document with their Facebook community.

While you could upload the document to your website and share the link, the Scribd application allows people to easily view the document right in the tab and download it if they wish.

Involver also developed Scribd for Pages, and the easiest way to install it is to go to http://apps.facebook.com/involver_epdmxwnq/. You can also access it by going to www.Involver.com.

Add PowerPoint presentations, PDFs, pictures or Word documents that your audience can download.

#10: Ecwid

To open a storefront that operates within Facebook, add Ecwid to your page. Ecwid integrates with PayPal, Google Checkout, Authorize.net and several other payment processing options.

Setting up a store is a little more involved than the other apps listed here, but can easily draw attention to your products and services. Ecwid has forums and very good customer support to help you on your way to becoming a social e-commerce pro.

To get started, go to www.ecwid.com.

Easily create your own storefront that integrates with your Facebook page.

Applications can and should enhance your community’s experience with your Facebook page. They can also make your life easier with a little automation.

What do you think? Have you tried these applications? What has been your experience? Share your questions and comments with us in the box below.

Even the most prolific writers can find themselves with a serious case of “blogger’s block.”

When blogger’s block strikes, some basic keyword research can provide a fresh batch of blog post ideas.

A series of posts written around related keywords can also look good in the eyes of the search engines or prospects.

Using Keyword Tools to Brainstorm Blog Post Topics

#1: Google Related Searches

There are a number of tools that can uncover related keywords and ideas for possible blog topics.

One of the first and easiest places to start is on the Google home page. Start by searching for a phrase that you’d like your blog to rank in on search engines.

After conducting the search, click on “More search tools” in the left column and then “Related searches.” Google will return a list of related searches for the keyword or phrase for which you just searched.

Opening Related Searches on Google provides a list of possible blog post ideas.

For example, let’s say I wanted to write about blogging and needed blog post ideas. I would start by searching Google for “blog” and looking at the related searches. As you can see in the image above, related searches for the term “blog” include terms and phrases such as “free blog,” “create blog,” “blog software,” “WordPress,” and “Technorati.”

Each one of these terms could be turned into blog posts with titles such as:

• Five of the Best Places to Start a Free Blog
• Three Things You Must Do to Create a Successful Blog Post
• Why I Like WordPress
• How to Get Your Blog Post Listed in Technorati

#2: Google AdWords Keyword Tool

The Google AdWords Keyword Tool is another place to brainstorm topics for your next blog post. A search on Google AdWords will bring up a much bigger list of search terms and will also provide insight into how often the term is searched and the competition for the keyword or phrase.

For example, a search for the phrase “how to blog” brings up phrases such as “YouTube blog,” “funny blog” and “blog calendar.” All three have a high monthly search volume yet low competition for the keyword. Blog post titles using these keywords might include:

• How to Create a YouTube Blog Post
• Five Things to Consider When Writing a Funny Blog Post
• Schedule Your Posts With a Blog Calendar

Google AdWords returns a list of related search terms that can be used to generate blog post topics.

#3: Wordtracker’s Keyword Questions

Wordtracker’s Keyword Questions is a powerful tool designed to help with content brainstorming. Enter a keyword and Wordtracker returns a list of 100 questions asked by search engine users that include the keyword.

For this example, let’s say that a realtor is trying to come up with a list of possible blog post ideas. Entering the term “Home” into Wordtracker’s Keyword Questions brings up a list of possible blog topics including:

• “How leasing a car affects qualifying for a home mortgage”
• “Home security systems and which one is the best one”
• “How do I calculate the value of my home”
• “Do it yourself home remodeling”

The search above also provides a number of topics not related to real estate to sort through such as “Can I make holy water at home or do I have to go to a church,” but who knows, there might be an interesting blog post in there somewhere. When it comes to writing blog posts, don’t be afraid to think outside the box.

Wordtracker provides actual questions asked by users searching their search engines. Many of these can be directly used as the title of a blog post.

Along with questions, Wordtracker Keyword also offers search results based on keyword connections, random trigger words and the top searched keywords. Each of these options pairs your keyword with various other search terms and provides results based on actual searches conducted through Wordtracker’s partner search engines. The results can provide a wide range of blog post ideas and topics you may not have considered.

#4: Google Analytics (or Other Traffic Analytics Program)

Analyzing the incoming traffic to a blog can provide a number of ideas for blog posts and highlight the opportunity to build upon popular posts and search terms that are bringing traffic to a site.

If our realtor notices that searches for a particular neighborhood are driving traffic to her site, she can capitalize on the opportunity by writing a series of posts about community resources and the real estate market in the neighborhood.

If you discover that an unusual or unexpected keyword is driving traffic, the brainstorming methods above can help unlock potential blog posts related to the keyword.

Google Wonder Wheels

Although Google has taken down their Wonder Wheels tool, I have to mention it because it was such a great brainstorming tool and comments in the Google help forum have left the door open (if ever so slightly) for its return.

Wonder Wheels provided a graphic display of related terms that could be clicked and searched in an ever-growing web of related keywords. As I wrote in an earlier post on Social Media Examiner, it not only provided a great brainstorming tool for writing blog posts, it also gave insight into the way Google connects keywords.

Hopefully Google will find it in their wisdom to bring it back in the near future because I personally feel that it blew the above tools out of the water.

Create a Resource

When done well, a series of posts written around keywords can give your blog a nice jump in the search engines. Always remember, though, focus on content first and let the keywords follow.

By providing a resource of topically related articles, you create a reason for others to link to your site and quality incoming links are key to top search engine rankings.

What do you think? Leave your questions and comments in the box below.

If you want to spruce up your page, there’s an app for that.

For example, Facebook apps can automatically showcase your YouTube channel, but they can also do much more.

You may have seen the post Top 10 Facebook Apps for Building Custom Pages and Tabs, but let’s take a step back and talk about what apps are, where you find them and how you install them on your page.

Defining Applications

When you first start your Facebook page, there will be some basic Facebook apps in the left sidebar. These Facebook apps include Photos, Videos, Links, Events and Notes. Any other app you install will be a third-party app, which means that someone other than Facebook made it.

Click Edit Page from your Facebook wall and then Apps to see your installed apps.

So how do you get more apps than just the basic ones provided by Facebook?

First you find them and then you install them. Even though that might sound simple, both of those steps are not very straightforward. Finding apps on Facebook can be particularly challenging because the Facebook search feature is notoriously bad. Then steps used to install the app can vary.

Some apps can be installed from within Facebook, others are easier to install by starting on the app website first.

Sometimes it’s even difficult to tell an Application page from a regular Facebook fan page.

An Application page will still have a Like button, a wall and sometimes its own apps installed.

There are a few key ways to determine that it is actually an application. The page may have a Go to App button right next to the App button. Underneath the name of the app at the top, you will see the App classification. And then on the left sidebar you will see the Add to My Page link as you see in the figure below.

Note the different ways to distinguish a Facebook app from a regular Facebook page.

An indication of how well the app is established is the monthly active users. In the figure above, you see NetworkedBlogs has 990,000 monthly active users, which can indicate that it is a useful and well-established app.

Facebook applications also include games such as CityVille and Mafia Wars and some of the other apps you may have seen such as Give a Hug or the Birthday Calendar.

Since applications are developed by third parties, not all of them work very well and not all of them are reputable. You may have had an issue on Facebook where you click on some post and all of a sudden you start posting strange things on other people’s walls without your permission, maybe telling them to “check out a new diet” or “see who is viewing your profile.”

If your Facebook profile starts posting strange things, you probably have clicked on a bad application.

Finding Facebook Apps

If you know the name of the application you are looking for, finding the app can be easier. You can use the Facebook search bar or go to www.facebook.com/search. Using the search tool is better because you can filter by People, Pages, Groups, Apps and more as shown in the figure below.

Filter by Apps in the left sidebar to search for apps only.

You can also find a Facebook app by taking a look at how something is posted within your news feed. Some apps will post into the news feed and you can find out more about the app by looking at the link underneath the post as shown by the HootSuite link in the following figure. If you click on the HootSuite link, you will be taken to the HootSuite app.

Apps can be found by looking at the way they are posted.

If it’s an app that only resides on a page, you can sometimes find out what the app is by looking at the bottom of the page. Many apps have either a link to their external website or a direct link to the app within Facebook as shown in the next figure. Not all apps have this feature and some are custom apps created for a specific page only.

Check at the bottom of the app on the Facebook page to find out how the custom tab was created. Not all apps have this attribution.

Another tool you can use to find Facebook apps is www.Appbistro.com. They don’t have every app listed but they do list a good cross-section of business apps.

Installing Facebook Apps

Once you have found a Facebook app, installing it can be challenging. Some apps install easier from their external website, and some are very easy to install from within Facebook. Many apps’ external websites will tell you exactly how to install it and make the installation process quite easy.

Once you click Go to App, you will need to give the app permission to access your information.

If you are installing the app from the Facebook App page, the steps will often be different if you click on the Add to My Page link on the left sidebar versus clicking on the blue Go to App button at the top of the page as shown in the NetworkedBlogs figure earlier. Usually you will eventually end up in the same place, but that Facebook “feature” makes writing directions on Facebook apps a challenge.

I usually prefer to click the Add to My Page link on the left sidebar. When you do, you will see a pop-up box where you can select the page where you want the app added.

First click the Add to My Page link on the left sidebar, and then click the Add to Page button to add the app to your page.

Now you will navigate to the page where you added the app and find the app listed on your left sidebar.

Find the app on your left sidebar after you have installed it.

After you click on the app, there may or may not be added steps to configure the app. Follow the steps as listed and you are all set with your fancy new app to dress up your page!

If you would like to move the app position on your left sidebar, click on the Edit link under your complete list of apps on your left sidebar and then you will be able to drag the app to the position you want. When you have the list organized the way you want, click Done and the new position will be saved.

Edit the position of the app with the Edit link.

So now you have the big picture on what Facebook apps are and how to find and install them.

What about you? What are your favorite Facebook apps? Leave your questions and comments in the box below.