8 Creative Ways Posterous Groups Can Bring People Together
Are you looking for an easy way to foster internal social communications at your company? Perhaps you’re seeking a simple way to build a community with your customers?
Here’s the good news: A new (and free) tool may be just the solution you’re looking for.
Looking for Something New?
Collaboration, innovation and communication—all three have become corporate buzzwords. But they are also critical components to any company’s success. These are three areas where organizations are constantly looking for new ideas and social media tools are increasingly playing a larger role in that process.
Businesses have a need to communicate. They’re always looking for new and different ways to foster collaboration among employees and ways to innovate—faster and more efficiently. “How can we come up with new ideas while using the least amount of resources?”
The list of tools that can fulfill these needs is long, but Posterous Groups, a recently launched social media tool (that’s free), should be considered as a way to meet these business needs. 
How LinkedIn Apps Can Promote Your Business
If I were going steady with any social networking site, I would have to call LinkedIn my main squeeze.
Ahhh yes, the lovely LinkedIn.
She warms me up with friendly introductions to powerful decision makers. She brings a smile to my face from the absurd amount of targeted traffic to my websites. And she goes WAY over the top with the number of direct sales referrals she gives me.
It’s a digital romance we have, and I’ll profess my love for her ’til the end of time. 
In all seriousness, I’m a big fan of LinkedIn because of the direct business I receive from it. And although I’ve written books about LinkedIn, given webinars and presentations on the topic and written articles like Top 5 Ways to Market Your Business With LinkedIn, I’ve never done a dedicated article about the advanced applications… until now.
How to Gain Competitive Insight With Social Media
Are you looking for that competitive edge? Want to know what your peers are up to?
Using social media to research competitors can provide useful information for any business looking to create a smart strategy. Learning about your competitors’ activities can give you insight into what works and what doesn’t.
The beauty of social media is that there’s a ton of information about your competitors that is public. And not only is their strategy public, but the reaction to that strategy is public as well. Let’s take a look at some of the things you can learn about your competitors through different social networks, search engines and other outlets.
This Week’s Important Social Media News
Welcome to our weekly edition of what’s hot in social media news. To help you stay up to date with social media, here are some of the news items that caught our attention.
Please take Social Media Examiner’s 2011 Social Media Marketing Industry Survey (participants get a free copy of the final report)
What’s New This Week?
Foursquare Supports Brands Without Physical Locations: Up to now Foursquare was only for businesses with a physical location. With Foursquare for Business, “brands that are not tied to a specific physical location” can now use Foursquare’s Pages and Custom Badges in their social media marketing mix. Find out more about what this means to you here.
What Your Business Needs to Know About Social Graphs
Are you familiar with the term social graph? Can you easily describe what one is, and better yet, why they’re significant to the marketing of your business on the social web?
Understanding the concept of social graphs will not only enhance your proficiency with social media marketing today, it will also help you foresee emerging trends. This will significantly help you be fully prepared when new web technologies are launched.
The term social graph was first used a few years ago by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, specifically in reference to the Facebook platform. Your social graph is a digital map of your personal identity, your primary Facebook friends and everything you share with them.
The Top Social Media Tool for 2011 is…
If you heard about a marketing strategy that could substantially lower your marketing expenses and return 600% or more of your investment, would you be interested in learning more about it?
When Social Media Examiner surveyed 1,900 marketers in 2010, half said they wanted to learn more about this strategy.
Of those just starting out in social media marketing, 65% wanted to learn more about it. And 81% of all the marketers surveyed said they would definitely increase their use of this strategy.
No, it’s not Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or YouTube.
Sure, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn were among the top four social media tools among this group of marketers.
But what was first?
Top 75 Apps for Enhancing Your Facebook Page
Have you customized your Facebook page? There are thousands of apps that can help you engage with your fans. In this article I’ll focus on the top 75 Facebook apps.
These apps allow you to customize your landing tabs, add your blog, add videos and photos, add chat, add polls, contests, geolocation, scheduling, email, ecommerce and much more.
Why Facebook Apps?
Why add apps to your Facebook Business (Fan) page? By customizing your Fan page with apps, you can significantly enhance the user’s experience. And, the more you keep your fans engaged and coming back for more, the more likely you’ll increase your “viral visibility.”
The 5 Pillars of Business Blogging Success
Are you looking for practical tips for blogging success? Are you wondering what to avoid? While my position is generally that there are no “rules” in blogging, there are best practices that will help your business blog succeed.
There are a lot of obvious elements you need to include to make a blog reader-friendly: quality, compelling content, good navigation, a contact page, an about page, focus and clarity about the subject of the blog… and there’s a lot of not-so-obvious or overlooked things that can really help make a blog stand out if they’re implemented.
While I do have my own list of do’s and don’ts included, I decided to get input from other smart, savvy bloggers. I posted a request on LinkedIn Answers and received many great do’s and don’ts. I’ve grouped the tips into five categories: Planning, Content, Design, Marketing and Engagement.
8 Social Media Trends Impacting Businesses
As businesses continue to integrate social media and become more confident and comfortable with social media tools and platforms, we’re starting to see a change in social media usage. A new study reveals what’s changing with social media.
SmartBrief recently partnered with Summus Limited to survey more than 6,000 of its readers across a variety of industries.
They benchmarked and measured the state of social media usage among businesspeople. The data identified eight prevalent trends that give great insight into the social media behaviors, beliefs and challenges of the majority of businesses today.
Facebook Marketing in Only An Hour a Day?
When fifth-grader Kane Swift had to do a science project, he decided to help raise funds for the Susan G. Komen for the Cure campaign.
So he set up a Facebook fan page with the help of his parents. In just one week, he got more than 1,200 fans and raised $400!
“I can understand using Facebook for a fifth-grade science project,” I hear you saying. “But how do I use Facebook to market my business? I keep hearing that I should include social media in my marketing campaigns, but I don’t have a clue how to do that.”
