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.

Two brand-new studies by HubSpot and Edison Research provide fresh insights on these important questions. Consider these five findings as you enhance your social media and blogging strategies.

#1: More frequent blog posts bring greater traffic and leads

C.C. Chapman and Ann Handley like to say that starting a blog is like having a baby. You can’t put it back and you have to keep feeding it. The question is how often do you need to feed your blog to get real results?

HubSpot found in their 2011 State of Inbound Marketing report that a vast majority of bloggers post once per week, with a significant 29% only posting monthly or less.

No matter how nutritious the food is, no doctor would recommend feeding a baby weekly or less. Mike Stelzner acknowledges that most content only has a shelf life of around 72 hours. Read about this in his new book Launch.

As it turns out, businesses seeing significant growth have also discovered they need to feed their blogs more frequently.

There’s a strong correlation between how frequently a blog posts and the amount of traffic generated. In fact, businesses that post daily will generate 5 times more traffic than those that post weekly or less.

The likelihood of acquiring a customer through your blog increases significantly the more frequently you post. Note that posting multiple times per day gets 15% greater results than just posting daily. Of course, you need to understand your audience’s appetite for content before you start posting multiple times per day.

While getting one customer through your blog is great, it will be far better when you start seeing consistent leads. HubSpot found blogs that post daily generate 4 times more leads than those that post weekly or less.

#2: A steady library of blog posts grew leads and traffic better

Over time, a well-fed blog will outperform other blogs. This is evidenced by the impact of blog size on traffic and lead generation. (Note: By blog size, I don’t mean the size of the company, but the number of blog posts accumulated over time.)

HubSpot found that blogs that have accumulated at least 51 posts see 53% more traffic than blogs with 20 to 50 posts. Additionally, blogs with more than 100 posts see 3 times the traffic, while those with over 200 posts see nearly 4.5 times the results. (Special thanks to Melissa Miller of HubSpot for this exclusive graphic.)

The size of your blog will also affect your monthly leads. Your business will profoundly benefit if you accumulate at least 52 blog posts.

#3: More Twitter followers = more leads

As Elijah Young reminded us last month, all Twitter followers aren’t created equal. So, if you have 1,000 spam accounts following you, there won’t be much measurable benefit to your business. But don’t let that excuse you from trying to grow your following. You may be missing out on some real results!

HubSpot found that businesses with over 1,000 followers saw 6 times more traffic than businesses with 25 or fewer followers.

Additionally, those businesses with over 1,000 followers saw 5 times more leads than those with 1 to 25 followers.

You may have questions about the value of a Twitter strategy, but know that 20 million Americans are on Twitter (half between the ages of 18 and 34, according to Edison Research) and these are the people more likely to influence public opinion about your brand than the other 90% of the population.

#4: Bigger Facebook fanbases mean better results

Edison Research recently found that Facebook is the one social media site that people allow to influence their buying decisions, with 24% listing it as their first choice. Of course, it’s not Facebook itself but the people on Facebook who influence those decisions. That’s why it’s so important to grow a strong and active fanbase.

HubSpot found that the size of your Facebook reach has significant impact on your traffic and leads. For instance, businesses able to grow a fanbase of 501 to 1,000 fans have 3.5 times more traffic than those with 1 to 25 fans. Moreover, businesses with over 1,000 fans had 22 times more traffic.

Additionally, the size of your Facebook fanbase will dramatically impact how many leads you receive. Businesses with 501 to 1,000 fans saw 4 times as many leads as those with 1 to 25 fans and businesses with over 1,000 fans saw 12 times more leads.

#5: Social demographics are growing

Tom Webster of Edison Research recently published a study that gives some fresh insight into how Americans are using social media.

In the Social Media Marketing Industry Report, we made the claim that social media has gone mainstream. Edison’s report proves it. They discovered that 52% of Americans over the age of 12 have at least one social media account and 51% of all Americans are on Facebook.

What’s more significant is that 46 million Americans are on social media sites multiple times per day. These are the influencers and potential clients we all want to reach.

These habitual social networkers tend to be young and female. In fact, 68% of these active networkers are between the ages of 12 and 34. Depending on your product or service, this information could help you better target your customers online.

The last thing to note about frequent social networkers is that they’re nearly twice as likely to be using mobile devices. Make sure to see what it’s like for your customers to engage you on their mobile devices.

Habitual social networkers are also 50% more likely to access social networks via their mobile phones.

Go generate some leads!

In many ways, this research confirms what many experts have been saying, but now you can see the reasons in black and white. If you want to generate leads through social media, try blogging more frequently and growing your reach—all with an understanding of your target audience.

For some great ideas on how to generate leads through social media, refer to Debbie Hemley’s article, 26 Ways to Use Social Media to Generate Leads.

What do you think? I’d love to hear what you think about this research. Leave your comments in the box below.

Quick Response codes (QR codes) and other two-dimensional codes are expected to achieve widespread use this year – and for good reason. Consumers want immediate access to what’s relevant and QR codes are being used to make that possible.

QR Codes 101

If you’re not yet familiar with QR codes, they’re similar to the barcodes used by retailers to track inventory and price products at the point of sale. The key difference between the two is the amount of data they can hold or share.

QR code to the Social Media Examiner home page.

Bar codes are linear one-dimensional codes and can only hold up to 20 numerical digits, whereas QR codes are two-dimensional (2D) matrix barcodes that can hold thousands of alphanumeric characters of information. Their ability to hold more information and their ease of use makes them practical for small businesses.

When you scan or read a QR code with your iPhone, Android or other camera-enabled Smartphone, you can link to digital content on the web; activate a number of phone functions including email, IM and SMS; and connect the mobile device to a web browser.

Any of these desired functions are easily achieved by properly creating your QR code.  It’s a simple process of entering the appropriate data into the QR code generator, described below, and it all takes just a few minutes.

The ability of QR codes to connect people with each other and to multimedia digital content is very useful for businesses and consumers alike.

The Origins of QR Codes

While QR codes are still considered a novelty here in the United States, they’ve been actively used for over a decade in Japan where they were invented.  QR is a registered trademark of Denso Wave, a subsidiary of Toyota.  Denso Wave has elected not to exercise their patent rights of QR codes and that has encouraged their widespread use.

There are other software companies that have created 2D codes that work much like QR codes, with Microsoft being the most notable.  Microsoft developed their own proprietary software to create codes known as MS tags.  Unlike QR codes, which can be read by a number of different readers, MS tags can only be read by the Microsoft Tag Reader.

MS tag to Microsoft Tag Reader app.

Choosing to use QR codes or MS tags is a personal choice.  It seems that MS tags presently allow for more possibilities for creative graphic designs, such as incorporating images and logos into the tag.  Nevertheless, those capabilities have to be weighed against the reach and ease of use of open-source QR codes.

How QR Codes Work

QR code Generators – There are a number of sites for generating QR codes and they’re all free.  An Internet search for QR code generator will offer many choices.

One that has worked well for me is Kaywa, a site created by Datamatrix, which is another pioneer of 2D codes.  You can use it to create QR codes that link to a web page, text, phone numbers, or SMS.  Another with even greater capabilities, including customizing the color and format of your codes is Kerem Erkan.

QR code Readers – The QR code reader app that works well on my iPhone is i-nigma, which claims to be the most widely used reader in the world.  It accommodates virtually any type of camera phone. For the android, you can also try Barcode Scanner. If you already own the popular price-checking app Red Laser, they’ve recently adapted their technology to accommodate QR code reading.

Applications for QR Codes

Sharing – There’s no limit to how, or even how much, you can share with QR codes.  While a video or landing page is easily shared, you could go further and share an entire eBook and even multiple pieces of content that share a common link.

QR code Like button to the author’s Facebook page.

Community – Sharing is how you build community, and one of the favorite arenas for doing this is Facebook.  You can use Likify to create a QR code that links your mobile device to a fully functioning LIKE button for your Facebook page.

This greatly simplifies the process of merging your other communities with your Facebook page – and it is all accomplished in one click.

Additionally, the accompanying signature “thumbs-up” clearly suggests the purpose of the code.

Calls to Action – After building a community, the next logical step is to mobilize them to take action.   What are you trying to accomplish?  You can alternate special offers by simply linking your QR codes to new landing pages, and you can combine then with email opt-ins to build your list.

The QR code above takes visitors to a Facebook page welcome tab where the calls to action are Liking the page and a list opt-in.

SEO and SMO – Earlier this month I wrote an article on social graphs where I discuss how web objects such as images, music clips, and videos add valuable content to your social graph.  QR codes enhance both your search engine and social media optimization.  Now you can increase traffic to those searchable objects to further optimize them by encouraging more sharing.

Social Proof – To help build a community offline, it can be helpful to use your vibrant online communities as social proof of your influence and expertise.  As one example, you can use QR codes to link to specific blog posts that have earned an abundance of activity.

Analytics - QR codes most commonly link to urls, which is why link shortening services bit.ly and goo.gl now automatically generate a QR code for sharing your shortened links.  Using goo.gl as an example, you simply click on the “more” link after you create your shortened link, where you are taken to a page that not only gives you the QR code, but useful analytics.

MyQR.co is another site that provides analytics and the ability to customize the color of your QR codes

This screenshot shows how bit.ly serves up analytics and a QR code for a shortened link. Scan it to go to a list of recommended QR code readers.

Practical Uses of QR Codes

Here are some ways for using QR codes that are mostly in practice now, as well as a few that I believe we will be seeing in the very near future.

Where

QR Codes could be used:

• The back (or front and back) of your business card.
• Your brochures and other marketing materials.
• The sides of trucks and trailers.
• Product tags and packaging
• Convention and event nametags
• Restaurant menus
• Event ticket stubs
• Point-of-sale receipts

QR Code at the Naperville, IL Public Library assists visitors with helpful advice.

What

QR Codes could link to:

• Installation instructions
• Sources for replacement parts and service
• Directions to your business
• The process for hiring your professional services
• Valuable coupons and special offers
• Recommendations for complementary products and services
• Free mp3 downloads
• Customer feedback forms

A QR code on a café in Seattle, WA links to Google Places and reviews on Yelp and around the web.

How you can you maximize your effectiveness with QR codes:

• Provide explanations about their use and benefits
• Encourage actions that support your marketing plan
• Assuage the fears of the technically challenged
• Give reasons to come back
• Experiment with the size, location, and color of your QR codes
• Study your analytics
• Make the process fun, such as a QR code scavenger hunt
• Experiment

Practical Examples

United Airlines – Many of the major airlines are now using 2D codes as digital boarding passes.  I recently learned that by the end of 2011 all carriers will be required to provide this service for international flights.

United Airlines 2D code boarding pass.

I tried this myself and it works like a charm.  My only suggestion is to not rely on the link, but rather to save a copy of the image on your phone.   You don’t want to risk not being able to find a good signal when you need it most!

Google Places – When you register your local business with Google Places, you’ll receive a decal for your place of business that includes a QR code to your company website. Be sure that QR code links to the most relevant information that potential customers are interested in – such as hours of operation and current specials and offers.

The Cure Starts Now Foundation – This non-profit foundation is creatively using QR codes in partnership with a local small business, and the results have been favorable for both organizations.

The Cure Starts Now Foundation was started in 2007 by Keith Desserich and his wife Brooke, in honor of their six-year old daughter Elena, who died of brain cancer.  They partnered with Graeter’s Ice Cream, based in Cincinnati, OH, who created a special flavor of ice cream for the cause – Elena Blueberry Pie.

The marketing campaign used a QR code linking to the Cones for a Cure landing page, where your contact information is exchanged for a coupon for a free scoop of Elena Blueberry Pie ice cream.

Cones for a Cure billboard with QR code.

The campaign not only surpassed the fund-raising goals, but it also helped to increase revenue and distribution for Graeter’s – who actively participated in the fund-raising on a per scoop basis.  The campaign will be rolled out again next year in twice as many cities.

The Future of QR Codes and Tags

The potential for QR Codes is limitless.  What’s most exciting is how they take what social media is doing well now, bringing people together with technology, and extending it to enhance the experience.

The next generation of barcodes will hold even more information – so much that an Internet connection will not even be necessary.  The content will be effectively embedded in the code.  Imagine scanning a digital code to manifest physical reality?

It’s amazing to consider where this can go.

How about you?  How can you use QR codes to take advantage of this phenomenon? Leave your comments in the box below.

Social media allows you to match data generated by social interactions with individual’s preferences and general interests. This creates useful profiles that give marketers insight into how to tailor future offers and products to their customer base.

In this article I’ll show you five ways to use the data generated by your social network profiles—and those of your competitors—to expand your reach and sales.

#1: Listening Data

Nearly every social media plan tells you to begin by “listening,” but what are you listening for? Monitoring news related to your local business environment and industry can give you a sense of the conversation around your products or services, but social listening allows you to expand this information and make it more relevant.

Specifically, you can gather data about the reactions to your products and campaigns as measured by interactions with messages on Facebook, retweets, mentions on Twitter and comments on your blog.

Measuring the volume, sentiment and relevance of these interactions—and tracking this data over time—will allow you to determine how new products, services and/or offers are received by your customers.

Here’s a view inside Gatorade’s mission control, where the brand reviews insights from social data to drive marketing improvements.

Tools like Google Alerts and HootSuite allow you to monitor basic volume of interactions. If the volume grows to the point where manual tracking is not feasible, there are a few paid products like Radian 6, Meltwater Buzz and Scout Labs that allow you to track data in a more automated fashion.

Some large-scale examples of using listening data for product development and service improvement include Dell’s new Social Media Listening Command Center and Gatorade’s Mission Control. How can you model your listening campaign on these examples?

#2: Benchmarking Data

In the past, it was difficult or even impossible for business owners to know how their efforts and branding stacked up against their competition, aside from observing the general performance of the competitors’ businesses and anecdotal information. Social media data allows you to understand your performance relative to your competitors, because so much of it is publicly accessible.

Once you gather the listening data based on your own company profiles, compare it to that of your competitors to gain perspective on your performance.

Observe the size of your communities relative to your competitors. Also, analyze the relative activity of those communities. Do your fans and followers post more or less frequently than your competitors?

Additionally, you can dig in to see who is following your competition and your own profiles, and compare to see who has more relevant community members for your industry.

Note the relative level of effort required to gain the number of interactions your competitors are driving. If you’re receiving either more or fewer interactions than your competitor, but posting with the same frequency, note the differences in your content and what is driving the disparity in results.

Be sure to account for competitors in each social channel on which you are active, and if possible, benchmark yourself against competitors that are active across multiple channels.

#3: Strategic Forecasting Data

RapLeaf, a social data company, provides insights on customer trends.

While market research groups provided one channel for companies to learn about the interests and perceptions of a few customers, companies like RapLeaf allow you to identify your customer base by revealing key insights and trends about what social networks your customers use, other popular websites for customers, relative location trends and relative demographic trends.

The use of social data allows you to hone your financial performance projections and product development, especially if you produce specific promotions for each social network, and can track revenue and profit from the activities on individual channels. Knowing this kind of information about your consumer base allows for more accurate targeting and the power to personalize campaigns.

#4: Real-time Tracking Data

Traditional advertising channels like radio, television and print were able to provide estimates of effectiveness through quantifying radio ratings, television viewership or magazine sales; however, these ads were effectively impossible to track with any real certainty. Social data allows marketers to view relevant and real-time trends including how campaigns are performing at given time and how alterations to campaigns affect results.

Tools like HootSuite provide real-time tracking of social data to drive business decisions.

Not only do these tracking mechanisms allow businesses to see how a campaign is performing, they allow them to view consumer data at a granular level, identify positive or negative trends and make instant modifications.

This ability, combined with the real-time tracing of consumer sentiment, can mitigate wasteful spending or funding for a campaign that isn’t working as planned.

#5: Reflection and Insight

No matter the level of preparedness a company has in listening, gauging relevance, forecasting and implementing, there’s still a degree of uncertainty in social media. The advantage of robust data tracking services is that you never find yourself guessing why something worked or what caused it not to work. Here is a great post on how to analyze Twitter performance, for instance.

Consumer feedback is usually statistically significant, mostly unsolicited and readily available for companies looking to reformulate their efforts. By understanding a campaign through the targets’ points of view and gaining the ability to quantify their evaluation process, social data can be an invaluable tool for marketers.

How will you use social data in 2011 to grow your business? Is there a particular suggestion that you’ve already implemented and can discuss? We’d love to hear what’s working for your business, so leave your comments in the box below.

This can be a real problem if you’ve made Facebook updates an integral part of your communications strategy.

These are the times when having a ready-and-waiting list of Facebook ideas will come in handy. In this post I’ll show you 26 practical ways to use good content for your Facebook pages, everything from A to Z.

Some days knowing what updates you want to post to your Facebook business page comes easily.

#1: Alltop

If you’re looking for a comprehensive list of content ideas, the online magazine-rack format of Alltop may be just what you’re looking for. According to Alltop, the purpose of the site is to help you answer the question, “What’s happening?” in all the topics that interest you. Alltop aggregates the headlines of the latest stories from websites and blog feeds, and displays the five most recent headlines. When you mouse over a headline, you’ll see the first line of the post. Perusing the vast number of headlines will give you access to loads of great material.

#2: Business Updates

These updates include news about your business and are akin to mini press releases, including: announcements of new products and services, new hires and new customers you want to welcome on board. Word of caution regarding these types of posts—limit how frequently you use them so you’re not seen as a self-serving broadcaster!

#3: Contest

A contest is a good way to engage with your Facebook community. There are a number of apps that can be added to your page and become a tab on the navigation bar. Some companies use their Notes tab as a place to post information about how to enter a contest and official rules. A contest requires planning and forethought, so it’s best to go this route only when you’ve already invested the time and necessary resources.

#4: Data

Facebook is an excellent way to share facts and statistics. You probably come across great data all the time that your fans will enjoy, too. For example, in 10 Fascinating Facebook Facts by Amy-Rae Elliott, the author shares interesting Facebook posts. Here’s a sample: 1) the meaning of the term poke has never been defined, 2) the average Facebook user has 130 friends, and 3) Mark Zuckerberg calls himself a “Harvard Graduate” on his Facebook profile (not what you learned in the movie The Social Network, was it?) What unique facts can you share?

#5: Events

With Facebook Apps you can easily share information on Facebook about upcoming events you’ve been invited to or are hosting. Events can be classified as open, closed or secret (only visible to invitees). Among other things, you can add an event description, photos, videos and links, and specify whether guests can bring a friend. You can invite friends and manage and promote the event.

Facebook fan pages can have a lighter side.

#6: Fun

Facebook fan pages don’t always have to be serious. You might want to mix up your posts every now and then by adding some fun ones. Callan Green’s post, Killer Facebook Fan Pages: 5 Inspiring Case Studies, shows how Pringles, Coca-Cola, Starbucks, Adidas, and Red Bull have broken out of the mold by creating fun content. Red Bull, for example, has “aggregated tweets from sponsored athletes like skateboarder Ryan Sheckler and snowboarder Shaun White and included them directly in their Facebook presence.”

#7: Gimmick

As described on The Daily Gimmick, gimmicks are often a big way to draw in new customers and entice existing customers to buy more. Here’s one used by Miller Lite’s Fantasy Football Draft Sweepstakes: “On September 1, one lucky winner and nine of his friends will be flown to Dallas for two nights where they will get to conduct their fantasy draft in the fully stocked Miller Lite’s suite at the state-of-the-art Cowboys Stadium. They will enjoy all the amenities of the suite…”

#8: Helpful

You don’t have to be Heloise to list helpful hints. Communicate with readers about things that will help them. For example, what time- or money-saving tip can you share with your readers? Maybe there’s a new phone app relevant to your audience or an upcoming conference where if you register today you’ll save $100. Your readers will thank you for the recommendations and heads-up.

#9: Info

Depending on the business category you selected when you set up your Facebook page, there will be fields for you to fill in to describe your business; e.g., hours, web URL, detailed info, mission. It’s good practice to use the open-field space to put your other social networking profile URLs such as your Twitter, blog and YouTube channel. You only get a limited amount of real estate, so use it to your full advantage.

#10: Jokes

It’s okay to be funny on Facebook. You can be your own comedian or rely on others for Facebook jokes. For inspiration check out Jokes, Jokes and Funny Pictures, and Top 100 One Liners.

#11: Keywords

Keywords are one of the most powerful features of all online content. As Justin Smith tells us in his post 10 Key SEO Strategies Every Facebook Page Owner Should Know, “One important SEO strategy that should be employed on your Facebook page whenever feasible is placing keyword-dense prose as close to the top of the page as possible. Because Facebook limits where page owners can place large chunks of text on the default Wall tab of Facebook pages, the ‘About’ box actually represents the highest place in the CSS structure of the page to add custom text.” Are you using your About box most effectively? Take advantage of those 250 characters and make them work for you.

#12: Like

In the post, 10 Ways to Grow Your Facebook Page Following by Ching Ya, she suggests that in order for a page to be Liked, it must be likeable first; which translates to quality wall posts and consistent engagement. Facebook has some ready-made sharing buttons. Place a shout-out or a reminder to Like your status updates and instruct fans to click the Share button right next to your message so that their friends will be alerted about the update, too.

#13: Movie Reviews

On Facebook’s Blog, Austin Haugen writes that he asks his friends, “Have you seen any good movies recently?” as he’s making weekend plans. Austin suggests using Rotten Tomatoes as a movie review site. You’ll immediately see the reviews most relevant to you without having to register, search for friends or fill out a profile.

#14: Offers

Your Facebook page can be your own daily deal site. For instance, a national movie chain posted, “Last chance to win 1 of 4 prize packs, click the link below. Good luck!” What are your offers?

#15: Promote

In order to be successful, Facebook fan pages need to be promoted inside and outside of Facebook. Social Media Examiner uses Facebook Friday Expert Sessions for Q& A sessions among experts and page fans. Cindy King’s post How Facebook Friday Expert Sessions Increase Fan Engagement discusses how the sessions help to increase fan engagement. She writes, “These sessions are a great way for fans to quickly get the information they need. And you can model this for your business. These open Q&A sessions with industry experts are a great way to encourage engagement with your fans and get your updates to show up more in your fans’ news feeds.”

#16: Questions

While you can use questions and answers in one longer session as discussed above in #15, updates can be made on an as-needed basis to answer questions that come up on your social networking sites or in your in-person meetings with customers. Update your group or fan page on a regular basis with helpful information and answers to questions.

#17: Reads

What book or magazine article are you reading today? What’s on your future reading list? If the book is available on Amazon (what isn’t, these days?) you can add a link to the book so your readers will be able to learn more and maybe they’ll order the book based on your advice. Your audience will appreciate hearing about books that wouldn’t ordinarily hit their radar if it weren’t for your update.

#18: Separate

Fletcher Prince suggests in his post Twitter Updates and Facebook Page Updates for Your Business to keep Twitter and Facebook updates separate because he sees them as “two very different platforms with different capabilities, audiences, and tone.” I agree and would take it one step further—to establish distinct messaging strategies for your profiles.

For example, planning that you’ll communicate on Facebook about what books you recommend, but as a rule, knowing that you will not use your tweets for that purpose. This becomes helpful too when you have multiple people managing your profiles and separate them into different content turf. For a list of tweet ideas, see the companion post to this piece, 26 Twitter Tips for Enhancing Your Tweets.

#19: Static FBML

(Important Update: Facebook no longer supports FBML. Please refer to the articles on Facebook iFrame.) Nick Shin’s post How to Customize Your Facebook Page Using Static FBML shows how to add a clickable image, embed a YouTube video and how to set the FBML box as the default landing tab. As Nick suggests, static FBML gives you the ability to make your Facebook page serve as a marketing vehicle which can help drive traffic to your website and engage further with your audience. Social Media Examiner’s Facebook page does this quite nicely with the Welcome tab and the embedded video.

#20: Tagging

You can tag your status updates by including the “@” symbol before a friend’s name. This way the person will receive a notification and a wall post linking them to your post. Tagging within your status updates is a powerful way to increase the social and shareable features of Facebook. Check out this video by David Erickson to learn more.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uxw16T2tWPM

#21: URL

When you create your Facebook page, the URL will first appear with over 100 characters including the name of your business, city and state, followed by a long string of numbers. Hardly easy to communicate! But as soon as 25 people have Liked your page, you can visit here to choose a user-friendly URL for your page; e.g., www.facebook.com/yourbusiness.

#22: Visual Aids

Want to make a point with an image? Use an app such as SlideShare to upload your presentations, documents and PDFs. Remember, content doesn’t need to be limited to the printed word.

Facebook updates are checked on screens of all sizes.

#23: Web Writing

Christina Halvorson, author of Content Strategy for the Web, defines web writing as “The practice of writing useful, usable content specifically intended for delivery online.” Facebook updates will not only be read on computer monitors and laptop screens but on other devices too, such as iPads and smartphones.

Remember that you’re writing for online delivery, so be sure to use a good balance of chunked content, hyperlinks, images and videos.

Good rule of thumb: Commit to a social media content strategy.

#24: Excellence

Soumitra Dutta, in the November 2010 issue of Harvard Business Review, writes in her article, “What’s your personal social media strategy?”, how today’s leaders must embrace social media for three reasons: 1) communicating as a personal brand, inside and outside of your company; 2) engaging rapidly and simultaneously with peers, employees, customers and the broader public; and 3) providing an opportunity to learn from instant information and unvarnished feedback.

Used properly, Facebook business pages provide a vehicle for demonstrating your business excellence, which is even more reason to give thoughtful consideration to the quality and quantity of your company status updates.

#25: YouTube

As already discussed in this post, videos will enhance your Facebook updates. Here’s an important perspective from Ekaterina Walter, a social media strategist at Intel, who shared thoughts about social media initiatives in an SME interview, “The Inside Scoop on How Intel Manages Its Facebook Page.”

Ekaterina encourages businesses to upload raw video files versus just linking to YouTube to enhance their engagement strategy. As she says, “If you upload a raw video file, not just linked from YouTube but uploaded on Facebook, and your fans share it with their friends, when somebody who’s not a fan or liker of your Facebook page actually watches the video, there is a sweet little thing—a button that pops up on the upper-left corner of the video that invites you to basically like the page, or in the old terms, to become a fan of the page. That is the fastest way for folks to just click on it and become a fan.”

#26: Zen

We’ve gone over 25 tips before coming to this last one. This is a good place to wrap up by saying that Facebook updates shouldn’t feel overwhelming. In fact, quite the contrary happens when you view Facebook as a zen-like experience, commit to enlightenment and make a point to provide content that doesn’t add to the noise. Commit to memorable, thoughtful content.

Final Thoughts About Facebook Content Ideas

Whether your business communication is targeted for B2B or B2C end-users, Facebook offers a unique and powerful vehicle for creating a memorable experience.

What Facebook content ideas can you add to this list? Which ones are you already using? Which ones do you enjoy most? Leave your comments in the box below.

Photos from Flickr: smemon87, boetter & Jorge Quintero

However, there are still many who are struggling to ‘sell’ social media to their executives.  And as Doug Frisbie, Toyota National Marketing Manager says, “The price of inactivity is greater than the risks of anything we’d be doing in social media.”

Let’s explore 9 ways you can make a good case for social media programs.

But first…

Why Do Some Execs Avoid Social Media?

It’s important to understand the reason that executives resist jumping into social media. Most of the time it’s fear of the unknown. Brands are not used to being open; they’re used to being in control. Old-style marketing was easy – you push out a message to millions of people (through TV or radio) and you’re done.

Marketing the new way actually means letting go of the reins and putting customer voices up front and center, which can be a scary thing. Because a lot of executives often are not personally active on social networking sites and microblogs, they lack full knowledge of the inner workings.

Couple that with all of the negative press some companies are getting for having the wrong approach to social media and you start seeing the lack of trust in the effectiveness of social media.

But what can you do to convince your executives that Doug Frisbie and all those social media practitioners out there are right? How do you show them that social media should be a critical part of your business strategy?

Here are a few suggestions:

#1: Display Current Conversations

One of the fastest ways to convince your management that it really isn’t a matter of ‘why’ rather than ‘when’ is to do some quick detective work yourself.

Using free tools like Google Alerts, TweetDeck and others, research the ongoing conversations about your company and provide a quick summary in a very visual way. Include screenshots of people’s tweets; calculate the percentage of positive, negative and neutral posts and comments over a specific period of time (1-2 months). If you don’t have expensive listening tools in place, the calculation will be manual, and it will take you a little bit of time.

If the customers are already reaching out to you and getting no answer, this will definitely get management’s attention. Further into your presentation, don’t forget to tell management what you’re planning on doing to turn the ‘neutrals’ and ‘haters’ into loyalists.

#2: Don’t Leave Out Competitor’s Information

Make sure to include the information on not only what your competitors are doing in this space, but also what is being said about them. If your competitors are not yet looking into social media immersion, this is your chance to show leadership in the industry. If they’re already getting into this space, this might convince your boss to at least look at doing the same to avoid being left behind.

#3: Show Your Industry Peers’ Successes and Failures

Take a look at what other companies in the industry are doing and make sure to mention two or three social media campaigns that got a lot of press coverage. Providing examples of companies that failed to listen to social chatter and to address customers’ concerns can at times be very convincing as well.

#4: Use Data

Do your homework. Organizations like eMarketer, MarketingProfs , Nielsen, comScore and lots of others publish a ton of data on social media usage, social network demographics and other statistics. Morgan Stanley and Forrester publish research on digital trends and consumer expectations. Use this data to make your case when it makes sense.

#5: Start Small

Start with pilots. Try it out with a small budget (or sometimes with no budget to begin with) and a small dedicated team. Enlist the help of grassroots folk from all over the company if needed (you don’t have to have full-time dedicated personnel at this point; you can succeed with just the help of a few passionate people). Make sure that your goals are measurable. This is absolutely critical to your mission.

#6: Do Risk Analysis and Contingency Planning

You need to ensure management is comfortable with the idea of pilots. Having a crisis plan helps. Map out every scenario you can think of. Identify any potential risks. Ask yourself, “What if conversation turns to this topic?” or “What if we get this type of reaction?” and have a solid plan to address every one of them.

#7: Seek Outside Help

As much as it pains me to say this, the sad reality is that often external consultants seem to have more convincing power and more credibility than a company’s internal experts. If that’s the case, then enlist the services of an external source to help management understand that the conversations are happening with or without them and that they don’t have a choice but to join in.

#8: Create Guidelines and Enable Your Employees

Let your management know that you’re not going into this blindly. Start by creating guidelines for engagement on a platform of your choice for your pilot. Include topics that will and will not be discussed, your moderation house rules (what posts will be deleted and why) and any additional information you want to convey.

Be transparent up front and be sure about setting expectations for the dialog to come. You can then go even further and create a simple set of social media guidelines to ensure that your employees are operating with a clear understanding of what’s appropriate and what is not. Partner with legal, PR, HR, security and privacy teams on this; it will ensure your key stakeholders are all on the same page and feel comfortable with the direction. Their support will be critical in your pitch to executives.

As an example, take a look at “Intel’s Social Media Guidelines (and feel free to steal with pride).

#9: Stay on Course

Most importantly, remember that change isn’t easy. But one person can make a difference and help a brand think and behave differently. We’ve seen it time and again. Don’t get frustrated; stay on course. Having a meaningful dialog with your customers is critical to the success of your business and absolutely is the right way to go.

We would like to hear your experiences. What has worked for you? Let us know your thoughts in the box below.

One of the reasons measuring the return on investment (ROI) of social media has sparked so many discussions is because it’s not easy. The main barrier to end-to-end measurement is the lack of a true social customer relationship management (CRM) solution.

While Salesforce and others are working hard to bring a full solution to market, many marketers are simply cobbling together data they receive from web tracking solutions and social monitoring solutions.

Unfortunately, this will only give you pieces of the story. Those with proprietary CRM systems will have the toughest hurdle, which is a challenge I have personally faced.  In the short-term, the only hope is to integrate tracking cookies on your site and work with a development team to integrate with your CRM.

However, you can build an effective measurement strategy if you take a holistic view to social media lead generation. Here are four tips to make sure you are measuring the full impact of social media on your bottom line.

#1: Define Your Inputs for Lead Generation

In order for any type of measurement strategy to be effective, it’s critical to determine which key factors should be included. From a lead generation standpoint, there are two key lead generation inputs.

• Indirect and Direct Response Conversion Points—These may be different based on your business model, but generally speaking, you would want to measure those who filled out your lead forms. These would then be given a lead score that defines the prospects’ interest level. Then you would break these scores into meaningful ranges and measure your social prospects within each range. Specifically look for the number of leads and the growth rate in each range.

• New Business Campaign History—This is likely one of the most undercounted areas where social media plays a large role. Look at all of your new business for the month against the campaign history that has been reported in your cookies. How many times was social media an “assist” at any point in the campaign history leading up to the sale? How many times was social media the direct “conversion point” for the sale? How many times was social media the “originating lead source” for the prospect? Are these numbers growing at a healthy rate? If not, where do you need to adjust your strategy? Define a dollar value for different points in your lead cycle, define the costs for those efforts including the staff time required to execute and see where social media is showing the most impact for ROI.

Add the social media "assist" to your ROI reporting.

#2: Use Lead Scoring to Place Leads Into the Proper Place in the Sales Funnel

When marketers talk about measuring the ROI of social media, many consider it a very cut-and-dried discussion. Either social media is delivering profit to the company or it isn’t.

While I agree with the premise, I also recommend that you take a step back before you make decisions based solely on numbers.

We discussed using lead scoring to define where customers are in the buying cycle. While there are likely very lengthy formulas for lead scoring that companies are using, I’ve found the best approach is the K.I.S.S. (keep it simple, stupid) philosophy. Break your leads into three distinct pools of prospects. Define timeframes for conversion based on your business and the standard buying cycle.

• Slow—These prospects are likely in the pre-research/awareness phase. They find what you say interesting and they want to follow it, but they aren’t looking for a solution right now. You want to stay top of mind with these prospects for when they are ready to buy, but you don’t want to invest a lot of time from your sales force. This is a great opportunity to send these leads your relevant FREE content at some regular interval that isn’t annoying, but enough that you don’t fall off the radar.

• Medium—These prospects are in the research/consideration phase. They are looking at products to be considered as a solution. You want to find the tipping point for these prospects to move them into the next stage in the funnel. It is likely that most of your marketing dollars get spent converting these prospects.

• Fast—These prospects are in the decision-making/buy phase. They want a solution and they have a clear time frame for when they need it. It is likely that most of your sales team spends their time actively working these prospects. Generally, marketing takes a back seat on special marketing offers in order to not “delay” the sale.

Integrating lead scoring into your sales funnel.

This gives you a framework for what you want to measure along the way. For it to be a true measure of ROI, you have to compare the cost of social media efforts against the revenue brought in for each point in the campaign history and the cost associated with converting each range of lead scores.

#3: Understand Where Social Media Efforts End and Sales Efforts Begin

Why are these different points in the buying cycle important to social media measurement? Because social media is just another lead generator. Once the lead comes in, your normal sales process takes over. That process may include marketing efforts and sales team efforts.

However, if you are reaching prospects at the pre-research/awareness phase with social media and you do not have marketing programs or sales processes to support it, you may cut bait on the only marketing effort that is touching this group. A hard-sell approach with slow prospects risks losing their business forever. Before you write off social media as not delivering the ROI you anticipated, make sure to review your sales and marketing efforts.

If you don’t have an awareness program as part of your strategy, it could be the reason you aren’t converting these leads. Evaluate social media for the value it really brings to the table and make sure you don’t overlook some of the areas where social media is already delivering ROI to your company.

#4: Ask Yourself Where You Need to Optimize Your Social Media Lead Generation Efforts

Here are some key questions to ask when evaluating your social media efforts:

• Is there a bottleneck in your lead funnel? Review where leads are getting caught and reevaluate your approach.
• Are you able to convert leads at the same or lower costs than other channels with social media?
• Do you need to stop any activities that are causing leads to fall out of the sales funnel?
• Are you reaching people at points in the buying cycle when other channels can’t?
• Are you placing more people into the sales funnel at a lower cost? At what rate is it growing?
• Have you aligned your sales process with leads that aren’t ready to buy today?

This post is just a starting point for discussions around ROI measurement. There are many variables specific to each company that make it difficult for generalizations to provide a solution.

Related Posts:

• 4 Ways to Measure Social Media and its Impact on Your Brand
• Is Social Media Marketing Measurable? The Big Debate
• How to Measure Social Media Marketing Performance

What are your thoughts? How are you measuring? Are you measuring the social “assist” in your organization? Do you have marketing messaging, marketing campaigns and sales processes that cater to the research/awareness phase?

Twitter’s role as a Magic 8 Ball for our shared culture is unrivaled, and it has almost single-handedly ushered in the era of real-time search and social customer relationship management.

But Twitter is the online equivalent of HBO – important more because of who uses it and the media’s infatuation with it, rather than the actual size and impact of its audience.

Don’t get me wrong. I advocate participating in Twitter, and I’ve certainly grown my own audience via that channel.  Twitter indeed should be part of almost every company’s social media tool kit. (See the great post here on how to methodically grow a Twitter following.)

However, Twitter alone does not constitute social media, and you’d think it does given all the disproportionate attention being paid to it at conferences and in trade publications.  Let me provide seven reasons why you shouldn’t focus solely on Twitter…

As an aside, I presented a half-day workshop at the Email Evolution Conference on social media strategy (slides here) recently with DJ Waldow and Mike Corak, and the majority of the questions were about Twitter. That got me thinking that perhaps social media types aren’t fully recognizing Twitter’s limitations?

So, fully expecting each of you to tell me I’m wrong in the comments, here are 7 reasons why Twitter is not the Valhalla of social media:

#1: Growth Is Slowing

The true size of the Twitter audience is a bit tricky to pin down because 55% of its users access Twitter via third-party and mobile applications. But new data from Compete.com shows a clear stagnation in Twitter’s runaway growth.

Has Twitter Peaked?

According to these numbers, the audience using Twitter actually declined from August to December 2009 (during the same period, Facebook went from 250 million to 350 million members).

#2: Young People Don’t Use It

Today’s marketing coordinator is tomorrow’s CMO, and younger Americans don’t embrace Twitter. A new Pew Research study shows only 8% of U.S. teens using Twitter, compared to 66% engaged in texting. Do young people not appreciate the m:any-to-many nature of Twitter, preferring the one-to-one paradigm of text messaging?

Regardless of the reason, as the current teen population ages, it threatens Twitter’s preeminence unless adoption rates soar.

#3: New Features Aren’t Being Used

Last Fall, Twitter rolled out the option for users to “tag” their location onto Tweets, to add geographical context. In true Twitter fashion, it wasn’t “rolled out” per se, it just appeared as part of the API that third parties access. Since then, .023% of all Tweets include location data, according to Sysomos. Not an overwhelming participation rate.

Twitter lists, while useful for categorizing people to follow, haven’t really taken off either. Nor has the new, integrated retweet capability.  With each new release of features being met with tepid response, Twitter users are making the statement that they like Twitter just the way it is. That’s great for keeping the existing user base satisfied, but further impedes growth potential.

#4: Facebook Sharpening the Knife

You may remember that Twitter refused Facebook’s $500 million buyout offer last September. So as expected, Facebook just added Twitter-style features and functions to its service, to evaporate Twitter’s competitive angle.

Updating Facebook from third parties like Tweetdeck? Check. Tagging people with @ within status updates? Check. Posting to Twitter directly from Facebook? Check. Stripped-down interface option, with status updates at the core? Check (Facebook Lite). Retweet-style sharing tools? Check.

Functionally, everything Twitter does, Facebook does just as well, with the exception of mobile usage. Because Facebook has so much more overall functionality than Twitter, the mobile experience is a bit more clunky than Twitter. However, it’s important to recognize that 3 times more people use Facebook from a smartphone every month than use Twitter at all.

#5: The Better You Are at Twitter, the Worse You Are at Twitter

Being a new user on Twitter is as lonely as Michael Boublé at a Green Day concert. “What’s happening?” it asks, followed by a box and a blinking cursor. Twitter success requires an understanding of the unique rhythms and cadences of the community, and a give first, get later mentality that is a bit counterintuitive at first. The site is exceptionally poor at welcoming and training new users, which may result in its high churn rate.

But a bigger problem with Twitter is that like CB radio, it doesn’t scale well. If you have a few hundred followers, you can semi-coherently keep them straight, and watch what they are doing via your public stream. But once you get into the many thousands of followers, that public stream is a cacophony at best. Twitter lists can help in this regard, but many Twitter power users lament that the way they use the service is forced to change significantly as their own Twitter connectivity increases.

Much less time is spent in the public stream, where discoveries occur, and much more time is spent answering replies, and monitoring relevant topics via Twitter search.

When your most popular users are the ones who have the hardest time using your service to its full advantage, you have some issues to consider.

#6:  FourSquare and Gowalla Go Back to the Future

The new location-based darlings FourSquare and Gowalla are stealing a lot of the place-based intimacy that originally propelled Twitter. The “original” Twitter contained a substantially larger percentage of tweets about the author and what he or she was doing in his or her own life at that moment. That type of status update has been migrating, first to Facebook, and now to the location services.

Because you actually know the people you are connected with in most cases, FourSquare and Gowalla feel a lot more like the original Twitter, with a sense of engagement that today’s Twitter can’t deliver.

#7: Measurement Lacking

Other than retweets and clicks – data that inexplicably is only available from third parties – Twitter provides no statistics to its users other than followers/following. Meanwhile, Facebook has been busy adding layers to its Insights platform, which provides a nuanced dataset enabling business users to test, optimize, and evaluate the efficacy of their time spent on Facebook.

The lack of integrated metrics on Twitter may not be a big deal for personal users, but for corporations looking to embed Twitter into an integrated social CRM approach, it’s a gaping hole that is currently being patched by inefficient, home-grown workarounds.

I love Twitter. It enriches my life every day. I hope it sticks around for a long, long time. But, figuring out what you want to do on Twitter is not your “social media strategy” – it’s just a short-term, tactical plan for a platform that survives despite its shortcomings.

What do you think? Are you still sold on Twitter? Please leave your comments below.