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.

For the uninitiated, Posterous Groups is one part Facebook group and one part email listserv. In essence, a Posterous Group page is really a living, breathing, collaborative document. And again, like Posterous itself, it can all be done via email.

Posterous Groups represents an easy, simple opportunity for brands to collaborate with, learn from and communicate with customers, brand ambassadors, volunteers and external partners.

The key Posterous Group benefits and features include:

• Uber-easy to set up. Simply email the name of the group and group member emails and your group is ready to go (no blog/platform account necessary).
• Privacy is assumed. Posterous Groups defaults to a private group setting, which means content shared within the group is protected from prying eyes outside the organization (if you wish).
• Post a variety of media formats. PDFs. Microsoft documents. Photos. Video. You name it and you can post it to Posterous Groups.
• View content on the go—easily. Posterous Groups is also optimized for viewing from mobile devices, including iPads. A nice inclusion as more folks are accessing online content via smartphones and tablets.
• Receive daily email summaries instead of instant notifications. For more active groups, this is a nice feature. Keeps you more connected and plugged in to what’s happening within the group.

Daily email summaries make it easy to stay current on Posterous Groups.

• Fantastic photo-sharing capabilities. Just my opinion, mind you, but Posterous recently added a new slideshow feature that makes this functionality even better within Groups.

Slideshows are a great photo-sharing feature to add to your Posterous Groups.

The biggest advantage of Groups is the ease of use and the fact that everything is wired right to your inbox. After all, who doesn’t have an email address in 2011? Even that guy in accounting who thinks blogging is “never going to catch on” can still participate using Posterous Groups.

And remember, photos, video and other files you post to the Group are hard-coded into your emails—no big attachments. And finally, while conversations occur on email, they’re forever archived on your Group site so members can go back and track discussions that occurred weeks ago in just a few seconds.

So, what does all this mean for brands? There are a number of organizations already using Posterous as a blogging platform. One of my favorite local brands, Punch Pizza, uses Posterous to share photos and coupons, which are routinely redeemed en masse at Punch restaurants.

Punch Pizza routinely offers online-only coupons through its Posterous blog.

Chevrolet is one of the few brands using Posterous Groups.

Nationally, Chevrolet has been using Posterous for more than a year now to promote talk about the Chevy Volt.

And Twitter app TweetDeck is also using Posterous as its primary blogging platform.

But, by and large, not too many brands are using Posterous Groups—at least not groups that we can see.

That doesn’t mean opportunities don’t exist, because they certainly do. Given that Posterous is an email-based platform and it’s extremely easy to use, I’ve long felt more risk-averse companies have a big opportunity with Posterous as a means to start blogging—and I think with Groups, there are a number of clear opportunities, too, both internally and externally, for organizations.

Internal Applications for Posterous Groups

#1: Company intranet

Probably more appropriate for small businesses and non-profits—organizations that can’t afford an off-the-shelf solution. But think about it. Doesn’t Groups offer much of the same functionality as an intranet? Document, photo and video sharing, all accessible via email or the Internet. And remember, it can be private.

Sure, it’s not behind a firewall on your company’s servers, but you have to weigh the advantages and benefits versus the potential risk. This certainly presents a different way to think about an intranet, but I tend to think it’s a collaborative (and very easy) way to get your internal teams involved.

#2: Special interest groups

Look inside any company and you’ll find a number of special interest groups. Some are more formal than others; running clubs and bowling teams, for example. What if you had a way to give them a private space online where they could stay connected between meetings or events? They could use this area to post photos, videos and just share information about the next event or meeting.

#3: Team communication

Just as Posterous Groups is a great tool for special interest groups within your organization, it’s also a perfect tool for business communication between teams. Think about it from a marketing/PR standpoint.

Your team could use a Posterous Group as a project-planning tool, a way to brainstorm ideas across geographically disparate offices (complete with photos and video), a vehicle to aggregate and share media coverage with the team and a tool to share organizational updates and news. Again, all in one spot—as opposed to the different areas this information probably exists now.

#4: Short-term collaboration

For those who have managed a new agency relationship, consider all the information you need to share with that partner to get them up to speed. Wouldn’t it be great if you could house all those documents, images, usernames/passwords and graphics in one easy-to-find and common area? Hello, Posterous Groups.

External Uses of Posterous Groups

#5: Promotional/corporate event pages

Think about the promotional and community events your company participates in regularly. Wouldn’t it be great to have one spot where you could house RSVPs, key event information, promotional coupons, offers, photos, videos and interviews with customers and participants after the event? How are you doing that now? Would Posterous Groups present an interesting alternative?

#6: Private brand ambassador groups

What about creating a private group for your most cherished brand ambassadors? A space where you could share special offers, rewards programs and sneak peeks at upcoming marketing campaigns? You could also use the Group as a means to communicate with these ambassadors. Even use Groups as a way to run new product designs by them and get initial input and ideas. A plethora of options here.

#7: Volunteer groups

For non-profit organizations, Posterous Groups would be a great way to keep in regular contact with one of their most important audiences: volunteers. Many non-profits say one of their biggest challenges is not having enough touchpoints with volunteers. Groups would provide an easy solution. After all, who doesn’t have access to email? (Even that 77-year-old woman who volunteers on Wednesday evenings has access to email.) And the best part? The volunteers themselves could contribute meaningful content to the Group.

You could ask volunteers to post photos from events that they capture—photos that you could use in newsletters and brochures down the road. You could also share news about upcoming events, organizational priorities and more detailed instructional information that would only be relevant to volunteers. This is a great, low-cost, easy way to keep in touch with your volunteer force.

#8: Customer forums

Your customers have questions. Why not address them all at once using Groups? You could even provide video responses to more complex customer issues/questions (I’m thinking about tech products here). Sure, there are definitely other ways to organize customer forums online—but Posterous Groups is free, easy and would tend to stay in front of customers because Groups would alert these folks via email each time a new post is made.

Those are my ideas about how brands could use Posterous Groups. What do you think? Any creative ideas on how your organization might take advantage of this new tool? Leave your comments in the box below.

Posterous allows you to post to 20 or so social media platforms via email. Posting to LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, even YouTube and Picasa is as simple as sending an email. And we’re not talking simple text-based posts either.

With Posterous, you can create full-screen photo galleries, groups for sharing and collaborating or just simply pass on an article you read on the Internet all by sending an email. Add a smartphone and you’ve got a powerful way to create and share content on the road.

An example of a Posterous blog page—blogging and Posterous

At its core, Posterous is a blogging platform similar to Tumblr. You can get a dedicated URL that provides a hub for your content, customize the look and feel of your Posterous site and add static content such as an “About Me” page. What separates Posterous is its ease of use and ability to distribute to a number of social media channels all at once.

Getting started on Posterous is about as easy as it can get. You don’t even need to open an account. Just send an email to post@posterous.com and you’ve got your first blog post. Posterous recognizes your email address and creates a dedicated blog for all content sent from that email address. The subject line of your email becomes the header or title of the post and the content of the email becomes the actual blog post. Any attached photos are automatically turned into a photo gallery and inserted into your post.

Posterous will send you an email when your blog post goes live (usually within a minute) with a link to view the post. When I sent a test post, it even pulled the name out of my signature (or email, not sure which) and named my newly created blog “Jim’s Posterous.”

After sending your first blog post, you'll receive an email from Posterous with links to your new account.

Be careful with email signatures though, as you may not want to post your phone number or other information and they can make a blog post look awkward. Adding “#end” to your email will prevent Posterous from posting anything that follows the “#end” tag.

If you can send an email, you can write a blog. Time spent tinkering and setting up your website is kept to a minimum. To unleash the true power of Posterous, however, you’ll need to open an account. When you visit your first post, you’ll be provided options to register an account.

Autoposting

Autoposting to multiple accounts is where Posterous really starts to shine. Say, for example, that you’re at a conference and want to post an idea to your Twitter and LinkedIn accounts along with a Facebook update and a post on your WordPress blog.

Normally, in order to do that, you’d need to individually open each account and create a post or update for each account. With Posterous, all you need to do is send an email to post@posterous.com. Posterous formats your email and distributes it throughout your social media accounts.

Posterous can post directly to any of a number of social media platforms.

But let’s say that you don’t want the post to go out to all of your social media channels. Say you just want to post a photo from your mobile phone to your Twitter and Facebook accounts. Change the email address to read twitter+facebook@posterous.com and Posterous sends the post only to the social media platforms specified.

Blogging and Posterous

Posterous can also turn any smartphone into a mobile blogging platform. The iPhone app includes settings for autoposting, adding photos and managing multiple Posterous accounts.

I’m a dedicated WordPress user and have no plans to switch everything over to Posterous. However, there are times when I’m on the road and want to post a quick blog update. In order to do this, I need to boot up the laptop, upload any pictures, find a WiFi connection, then write and publish the post. With Posterous and a smartphone, all I need to do is write the post in an email, attach photos or video and send it off.

Using the autoposting features, Posterous will automatically format and post my email directly to my WordPress blog, send a Tweet and update my Facebook and LinkedIn status. Although it’s possible to post to WordPress via email, I have found it somewhat clunky and it requires HTML coding to get it right.

Podcasting is just as easy. Attach an MP3 file to your email and Posterous generates an RSS feed for your podcast. Listeners can then subscribe to your podcast feed through iTunes or other subscription methods.

Distributing Content

Pushing your blog content throughout your social networks can be a time-consuming task. With the Posterous bookmarklet, it can be done in one step. After writing a post, click on the bookmarklet (which resides in your browser’s toolbar), choose from the selected excerpts or write your own and post it to your Posterous page. From there, autopost will push the content throughout your social media networks.

The Posterous Bookmarklet lets you easily share content throughout your social networks.

In order to avoid concerns with duplicate content, be sure to include just an excerpt or original summary. Even better, embed a link back to your post wrapped around the appropriate keyword for a backlink to your site.

Autopost can be your universal bookmarklet for Facebook, Twitter and your other blogs, without ever leaving the page you're already on.

Groups

Although my 80-year-old uncle was on Facebook before me, not everyone is as tech savvy. However, if you can send an email, you can join a Posterous group (see image below) sharing blog posts, photos, video and audio files (see example below). Rich media are embedded directly into the email as opposed to as separate attachments.

Again, starting and managing a group can be done entirely through email. Send an email to newgroup@posterous.com with the group name in the subject line and email addresses of group members as the email content. In a few moments, you’ll receive an email with a link to finish the registration. Give the group a description, set access privileges and your group is up and running.

Because you don’t need a Posterous account to participate, there’s no waiting on fellow members to open an account or learn a new platform. Group members can post or reply to the group entirely through email.

Share notes with your class or articles with your colleagues in almost any format.

Email as a Hub for Social Media Activities

Checking in on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn for messages can quickly become a distracting endeavor. One way to avoid the distractions is to set the social media profiles to notify you via email when you receive a direct message or post to your profile.

Add Posterous and you’ve got the ability to fully manage your social media network via email. Refine it even further by creating an email address just for your social media accounts. Limit yourself to only opening the email a couple of times a day and you’ve suddenly got a handle on all those social media profiles.

You can email to specific service types on your account. Do you want to update your Twitter, but not your Facebook? You can do that.

A few years ago, I wrote a blog post arguing that social media would make email obsolete. As the number of social media channels grows and the streams get more and more crowded, I’ve since changed my thinking. There’s a simplicity to a good, old-fashioned, overloaded email inbox that at times can look somewhat appealing.

To learn more about Posterous, visit “The Official Posterous Posterous.”

What do you think? Are you using Posterous? What has been your experience? Leave your comments in the box below.

What follows is an amazing list of social media tools you’ve likely never heard of—covering a wide range of categories:

• Tools for pictures, video, audio and screen capture
• Tools to measure and track results
• Tools to manage content
• Blogging tools
• Twitter tools
• Other social media tools

Try them out. And be sure to report back here with your thoughts.

Tools for Pictures, Video, Audio and Screen Capture

#1: Cinches

Recommended by Denise Wakeman, online marketing advisor and founder of The Blog Squad.

“My favorite new tool is CinchCast.com. This simple tool can record audio, either via the web or phone (there are apps for iPhone and Android), so you can share audio messages with your followers. While audio tools like this are not new, this one seems to work the best and most consistently for me both on the web and my mobile app.

Cinches can be syndicated automatically to your Facebook status (not to pages, though) and to your Twitter stream. It’s simple to find and follow people from your social networks as well. Adding an image and description to the audio message is easy too and boosts visibility and encourages comments and sharing. Cinches can be shared by embedding the player in blog posts and posting links in status updates.

I’m using CinchCasts to repurpose a lot of content into audio: presentations (I record one tip from a PowerPoint and expand on it a bit), blog posts and articles. I also reverse the process and embed Cinch tips in blog posts to expand on the written text and create an experience that encourages my audience to stay longer on my blog.”

Learn more about Denise at Build a Better Blog and follow her on Twitter @DeniseWakeman.

CinchCasts was created by the folks at BlogTalkRadio.

#2: Screenr

Recommended by Tim Ware, owner of HyperArts Web Design, helping businesses build and promote their web presence.

“My favorite social media tool in the past half year has to be Screenr, an enormously useful online service to create screen-capture videos, with audio, easily and for free. Because much of what I do these days involves teaching people how to do things online, usually on Facebook, Screenr is the perfect tool for me. I can just say, “Wait a sec. I’ll send you a video.”

Creating an instructional video on Screenr is just about as easy as it gets, allowing you to record, pause (while you rearrange what’s on your screen) and then click “Done” and that’s it! With a few clicks, you can post the video plus comments to your Twitter account, or download the file as an MP4.”

Follow Tim on Twitter @hyperarts.

Create screen-capture videos quickly and easily with Screenr.

#3: DailyBooth

Recommended by Lewis Howes, the author of two books on LinkedIn and founder of Sports Executives Association and SportsNetworker.com.

“As an online/social media marketer, it’s easier to get more sales (or transactions) from potential customers if those individuals feel like they know, like and trust you.  A great way to let them get to know you better is simply by letting them see you daily. A great way to do this is to record a video each day and post it to your networks.  But who has the time to set up a camera, shoot a video, edit it, wait for it to upload and publish to your network each day?  I know I don’t, as it’s hard enough getting a blog post out once a week!

Pictures solve this problem, and DailyBooth provides a fast-growing social networking site that allows you to easily upload and share pictures in seconds. DailyBooth.com is still under the radar for most, but the interaction for those on it is similar to the mad interaction Twitter users have, and it’s getting more and more additive as the days go by.”

Learn more about Lewis at LewisHowes.com and follow him @LewisHowes.

Be sure to check out DailyBooth. It could be the next big social media tool in the future.

#4: Skitch

Recommended by Clément Yeung, co-director of Easisell, a digital marketing and design company that helps small businesses achieve success online.

“I love Skitch because if you constantly need to communicate complex on-page issues to people, then Skitch helps you do it seamlessly from your desktop! Just a few clicks and you have a shareable link that you can send to anyone you like. It’s also free.”

Follow Clément on Twitter @ClementYeung.

Skitch is your online camera and pen. You can screengrab anything, add a note and share it quickly.

#5: Instagram

Recommended by Christine Gallagher, relationship marketing speaker, trainer and coach.

“Instagram, which is an addictive, free photo-sharing app for the iPhone.

It’s social and fun to share your pics with others and see theirs as well. You can also comment or like others’ photos, follow other users and see what they’ve posted lately. It’s super-simple to use and my favorite thing about it is that you can transform seemingly ho-hum pictures into unique little works of art with the assortment of filters available. Two thumbs way up.”

Learn more about Christine at Communicate Value and follow her on Twitter @christineg.

"Use Instagram to take pictures, add filters to make them look artsy or retro and then share them on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter and Flickr."

Tools to Measure and Track Results

#6: Argyle Social

Recommended by Jason Falls, principal of Social Media Explorer, a social media marketing consulting firm based in Louisville, KY.

“Because my primary use of social media is to share great content, I think the tool I’ve become most dependent upon in the last six months is Argyle Social. It’s a URL shortener that has an elegant suite of measures around it, a bookmarklet for easy use and the customization you would need to separate your shares on Twitter from those on Facebook to deliver different messages around the same content. Once they add LinkedIn and perhaps even Posterous or Tumblr to their publishing options, Argyle could become THE tool for folks who not only want to share, but also measure the impact of that sharing.

I know I’ve driven over 150,000 clicks to various content in the last six months. I can break those down and tell you exactly how many I drove to certain pieces of content, too. My own and other sites I found and shared with my networks. That’s pretty powerful information if one of your goals is to share or build trust. I can put numbers around that now.”

Learn more about Jason at SocialMediaExplorer.com and follow him on Twitter @JasonFalls.

Argyle Social helps you use social media strategically.

#7: TwentyFeet

Recommended by Mari Smith, social media speaker, trainer, thought leader and co-author of Facebook Marketing: An Hour a Day.

“Here’s my fave new tool: TwentyFeet.com—aggregate all your stats in one place!

I love this simple social profile analytics platform with its easy setup, intuitive interface, daily stats emails and very low micro payments model. Credits are just $2.49 per account for an entire year, but users get one Facebook and one Twitter account free forever. You can monitor one or more accounts from Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, bit.ly, Google Analytics, MySpace and more and see how your key performance indicators develop over time. Oh, and another reason I love TwentyFeet? Their logo is a giraffe (the tall blonde!), my favorite animal!”

Learn more about Mari at marismith.com and follow her on Twitter @MariSmith.

Check out TwentyFeet for a low-cost social media analytics tool.

#8: PostRank and PostRank Analytics

Recommended by Kristi Hines, an Internet marketing specialist with Vertical Measures.

“One of my favorite social media tools/resources is PostRank. You can gain an amazing amount of insight into what topics get the most engagement on a particular blog (such as Social Media Examiner) by finding it in their directory and using the Good, Great and Best filters to see what posts have the most comments and social shares. The best part is that researching another blog‘s social sharing statistics is free, and it’s something you can look at for your own blog as well by making sure it’s listed on their site. If it’s not, just enter the URL in the search box, and they’ll email you as soon as it’s on their site. Then wait a week or two and start discovering what’s most loved by your readers.

If you’re interested in learning more about your own social engagement scoring, you can also sign up for their in-depth social analytics. It’s only $15 per month to analyze up to 5 sites with custom tracking on 10 additional pages within those sites. You can even connect your Google Analytics with PostRank and see how social engagement matches up with your conversion rates and goals.”

Learn more about Kristi at Kikolani and follow her on Twitter @Kikolani.

PostRank Analytics is also recommended by Jay Baer, a hype-free, tequila-loving social media strategist, speaker and coach.

“PostRank Analytics is my favorite tool because it solves a very real problem for bloggers, which is how to understand the full impact of a blog post. What’s more important, page views, comments, tweets, Facebook shares? PostRank Analytics tracks all of the actions related to each of your posts, and compiles a consolidated score that helps you understand what your audience wants from you and your blog. It’s like a psychic, if psychics also had fancy charts and graphs!”

Learn more about Jay at Convince & Convert and follow him on Twitter @JayBaer.

PostRank Analytics is an inexpensive tool with tons of value if you're looking to learn more about how to increase your blog's or website's social media engagement.

#9: Postling

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

“Postling is a tool that brings together multiple social media channels into one interface. What makes it invaluable for me are the email notifications I receive when comments are made on my professional Facebook page. To my knowledge, it’s the only social media tool with this capability. All of the comments are nicely presented in clean threads that maintain the continuity of the conversation, thereby allowing me to easily make timely comments, or schedule them for later.”

Learn more about Jeff at jeffkorhan.com and follow him on Twitter @JeffKorhan.

Postling is also recommended by Stephanie Sammons, the voice behind Smart Social Pro, a resource for professional practitioners to help them understand how to leverage the power of social media and blogging in their practices.

“A tool that can help you stay focused on relevant tracking and engagement is Postling. Postling is designed with the small business owner and professional in mind and can simplify your social media activities. It’s a clean and intuitive dashboard that offers management features to track, engage and publish to your relevant social media profiles, and even to your blog. (It plays nice with WordPress.)

Most importantly, Postling will send you a daily email update of all of your comments so that you know who’s engaging with you and what’s being shared or said about you. (It’s great to know you won’t miss anything.) The basic features are available with a free account. The paid account at $9.00/month allows for multiple accounts per social network, brands and users, providing instant email alerts and an analytics dashboard. And there’s also a premium version for power users at $49.00/month. Overall, Postling is well on its way to becoming a great tool for business owners and professionals!”

Follow Stephanie on Twitter @StephSammons.

Give Postling a try to manage your social media activities.

#10: Sysomos

Recommended by Nick Shin, online marketing strategist specializing in SEM, social media, and PPC.

“Sysomos, by far, has been my favorite social media tool. (Disclosure: I am the SEM and social media specialist at Marketwire and we acquired Sysomos in July.)  Since then, I’ve been able to take advantage of what Sysomos has to offer. I use Sysomos to monitor our social media conversations on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, forums and blogs. The ease of use, robust features and convenience have cut my monitoring time in half. In addition, as the founder of #smmeasure social media measurement chat, I can tell you there’s a lot of concern about how to measure social media. The more I use Sysomos, the more it eliminates the need to keep ‘proving’ the value of social media because of the actionable insight you can get from its analytics. With all of my other responsibilities, any tool that will help me do the same job in less time is a win. I highly recommend getting a free demo.”

Learn more about Nick at Marketing Shindig and follow him on Twitter @shinng.

Check out Sysomos to monitor your social media activities.

#11: Inside View

Recommended by Jacob Morgan, principal of Chess Media Group, a social business consultancy focused on customer and employee engagement strategies.

“My favorite new tool that I started using within the past 6 months is Inside View (through a customized enterprise version of Salesforce).

Inside View (their Salesview product) allows you to make the “social sale” by extracting valuable company information about a person or prospect prior to making a sale. You can get market cap, the org structure, list of key employees and the social sites they belong to, relevant company news, addresses and phone numbers and more; all from your Salesforce “lead” view. You can then sync all of this information with your Salesforce account so that it actually fills in the information for you.”

Follow Jacob on Twitter @jacobm.

Inside View is truly a valuable tool that integrates social data with CRM data and is a must-have for anyone even remotely involved driving business for an organization.

Tools to Manage Content

#12: Trunk.ly

Recommended by Nathan Hangen, Internet marketing strategist and founder of Webrepreneur Media.

“Recently I was looking for a better bookmark solution, and I was getting so desperate that I was thinking of developing it myself. Tumblr was too big, and sites like Delicious and other social bookmarking services felt walled off. Then someone pointed me to Trunk.ly, which you feed with your Twitter and/or Facebook account, and I was hooked. Trunk.ly keeps a history of the links that you like or Tweet and makes them searchable and easy to share. If I was going to build a solution, this would be exactly what I built. It’s beautiful.”

Learn more about Nathan at nathanhangen.com and follow him on Twitter @nhangen.

Trunk.ly keeps track of all of the links you share on Twitter and Facebook.

#13: Storify

Recommended by Michael Brito, VP for Edelman Digital and has worked for HP, Yahoo! and Intel.

“My favorite tool is Storify which is fantastic to aggregate and curate content from around the web. It’s great for events, product launches, etc.”

Learn more about Michael at social media blog and follow him on Twitter @britopian.

Storify is a great social tool to tap into the power of stories.

#14: Posterous

Recommended by Jim Lodico, copywriter and marketing consultant specializing in creating powerful content and teaching businesses how to use blogs.

“I just started using Posterous and I really like the potential. It allows you to post to 20 or so social media channels all through email. Photos, video, blog posts, even podcasts can all be distributed throughout your network just by sending an email. I really like the simplicity and the ability to manage all your social media accounts at once.”

Learn more about Jim at jalcommunication.com and follow him on Twitter @jlcommunication.

Posterous offers an alternative to a traditional blog for publishing content online.

Blogging Tools

#15: Apture

Recommended by Ching Ya, author of Social @ Blogging Tracker.

“One of the new social media tools I found in the last 6 months is Apture. I was between installing it or Wibiya, but because I’ve decided to emphasize visitors’ sharing on Facebook and Twitter, I went for Apture instead. It turned out to be one of the best decisions I’ve made. The catchy, customizable drop-down bar on top of the site makes sharing easy and friendly. You can search for related content—not just posts, but videos and images to be linked to as well. Your visitors can even use it to search similar posts within your site. Highly recommended!”

Follow Ching Ya on Twitter @wchingya.

Apture adds a social dimension to your blog.

#16: OnlyWire

Recommended by Dino Dogan, blogger, writer, motorcyclist, dog trainer, singer/songwriter, martial artist and founder of DIY Blogger.

“OnlyWire can auto-submit your blog post to 42 top social network sites like Digg, Reddit and StumbleUpon. By doing this, you build backlinks to your blog the quick and easy way. This doesn’t improve your page rank but it does improve your social rank so much that in one of my tests, this one technique alone took me from the page 14 on Google to page 4.”

Learn more about Dino at DIY Blogger and follow him @dino_dogan.

Use OnlyWire to build backlinks to your website or blog.

Twitter Tools

#17: FormuLists

Recommended by Elijah R. Young, lead strategist and owner of Social Talk Live.

“My favorite social media tool over the past 6 months has been FormuLists. FormuLists allows me to effortlessly keep up with my newest followers, my recent conversationalists and tons of other specifications that I can adjust in my settings to keep me on top of all of the new folks I meet in my Twitter timeline. Before FormuLists, I had to hope I remembered who I added to my lists, and work around crossover… It was just a mess. Now I can just focus on keeping up with conversations that matter to my followers, and pitching in when appropriate.”

Follow Elijah on Twitter @elijahryoung.

FormuLists is also recommended by Ann Smarty, an experienced blogger and SEO consultant at BlueGlass.com.

“The tool that I’ve just recently discovered and fallen in love with is FormuLists. I have a lot of followers and it’s been almost impossible for me to organize the following manually. The tool has quite a few very handy options.”

Learn more about Ann at MyBlogGuest.com and follow her on Twitter @myblogguest.

FormuLists manages your followers for you so you can focus on building your relationships.

#18: HashTracking

Recommended by Lori Taylor, a self-proclaimed “URL-junkie,” and an award-winning marketing veteran with 20 years experience turned social technologist by day and angel investor (Klout, Live Matrix, Pixsy) by night.

“My favorite new Twitter tool is HashTracking, which we use to track campaigns on Twitter. It takes group conversations and measures the influence and type of engagement level for each participant. The reason I’m in love with it is because the depth of data is incredible. Starting with the total number of people who participated in the group conversation, HashTracking chunks the participants into 4 buckets they call leaders, people who were engaged, just curious, and even identifies the wallflowers. We can get content to the most powerful hands who can truly give us the most reach on a specific topic, not just a broad category.”

Learn more about Lori at lorirtaylor.com and follow her on Twitter @lorirtaylor.

HashTracking is a great testing tool for all kinds of direct response metrics such as a top-ten list for impressions, number of tweets and follower count for each person using your hashtag (for free).

#19: Oneforty

Recommended by Ekaterina Walter, social media strategist at Intel.

“My favorite tool of the past 6 months is oneforty. Oneforty helps you discover thousands of tools that help you do more with your business, career or life using Twitter! This is essentially a directory of various Twitter apps that can help you do whatever you can possibly imagine on Twitter from helping manage your brand Twitter account to managing your followers to finding fun apps for your everyday life. I love their Toolkit feature which allows you to see what other industry leaders or even brands are using to manage their presence.”

Learn more about Ekaterina at ekaterinawalter.com and follow her on Twitter @ekaterina.

Oneforty also just introduced the Q&A section where the community of tweeps can share tips and tricks and help each other discover new cool ways to engage.

#20: TweetDeck for Chrome

Recommended by Corbett Barr who wants to help you attract as many visitors to your site as you need to make your business thrive.

“My favorite new social media tool is definitely TweetDeck for Google’s Chrome browser. I love it because I get all the awesome functionality of TweetDeck without having to run a separate application. I also love how it integrates multiple Twitter accounts into one combined column of @ replies and another for direct messages. It’s a huge time-saver for people who tweet a lot from different accounts.”

Learn more about Corbett at Think Traffic and follow him on Twitter @CorbettBarr.

Chrome users can also use TweetDeck to manage their Twitter accounts.

Other Social Media Tools

#21: LinkedIn Company Page

Recommended by Linda Coles, a sought-after speaker who also runs various workshops and seminars on how to use social media tools effectively and productively.

“I love the LinkedIn Company Page upgrade as you can upload three banner ads, add video to each product or service page and you’ve even got analytics to monitor what’s going on. It may well get as good as a FB business page but in a different environment.”

Learn more about Linda at Blue Banana and follow her on Twitter @bluebanana20.

LinkedIn Company Pages are a welcome addition for businesses on social media.

#22: Quora

Recommended by Lori Randall, online marketing strategist specializing in social media and WordPress sites. Follow Lori on Twitter @lori_randall.

“Quora, an online knowledge hub for mostly social media and technology, is a tall glass of water. People ask insightful questions and exchange substantive answers. I was starting to feel like I was in a social media desert of genuine thought because of all the noise and this has risen to quench my thirst for knowledge admirably.”

Quora has become a popular Q&A platform in a short time.

What Are Your Favorite Social Media Tools?

Have you used any of the social media tools mentioned above? Which ones are your favorites? Which other social media tools would you add to this list? Please share your comments below.

What’s New This Week?

Yahoo To Dump Delicious: Yahoo is downsizing and looking to either shut down or get rid of Delicious, MyBlogLog, Yahoo! Bookmarks and Yahoo! Picks. If you are part of the active Delicious user community here’s a list of alternative bookmarking sites and how to download your Delicious bookmarks.  Click here to read an update from Delicious.

The news of Yahoo dumping Delicious raises an outcry from its users.

Twitter Embraces Businesses: As Twitter continues to grow, its business guide provides useful tips and helps businesses to advertise on Twitter. It’s also interesting to note a recent eMarketer study shows more marketers are buying promoted ads on Twitter.  How is your business using Twitter?

Twitter recently updated its business center information.

Facebook Announces New Photo Tagging Feature: Facebook is rolling out “tag suggestions,” which will make tagging multiple photos even more convenient. Do you tag your photos on Facebook?

Tagging multiple photos is easier with Facebook's suggestions.

HootSuite Adds Ning to Their Dashboard:  With this integration, the 1 million HootSuite users can now broadcast to Ning’s participants – which number upwards of 70 million users across 80,000 social websites – and connect with them on the topics they are passionate about. Will you find this new feature helpful?

Monitoring and engaging in conversations on the popular Ning platform is now easier thanks to this new HootSuite integration.

Posterous Introduces a New Group Feature: This new service now allows you to create private groups and take advantage of Posterous’ easy way to share photos, videos, audio and text by email.  Do you prefer the new Posterous groups to the new Facebook groups?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FhixsgF6jY

Eloqua Publishes Infographic of “Must-read” Bloggers: If your favorite blog is not there, you can tag the Facebook photo to add it to their next list of bloggers.

And while we’re on the topic of blogs, have you voted for your favorite social media blog yet?

Eloqua's list of essential bloggers.

Mark Zuckerberg is Time's Person of the Year

Mark Zuckerberg Is Time Magazine’s Person of the Year: “For connecting more than half a billion people and mapping the social relations among them; for creating a new system of exchanging information; and for changing how we all live our lives, Mark Elliot Zuckerberg is TIME’s 2010 Person of the Year.”

How has Facebook changed your life this past year?

Here’s one more social media tool worth a look:

Wishpond Local Shopping Widget: Customizable widgets for publishers, brands and merchants to embed a local commerce offerings.

Don’t forget to change your social media passwords from time to time:

Yahoo, Twitter and LinkedIn asked users to change their passwords following a recent hack where large numbers of passwords were made public.

What social media news caught your interest? Please share your comments below.

The simple answer is: You have to promote your blog and let people know it exists.

Optimizing your blog for search engines is critical, but just like any website, product, book or service you create, you have to promote the launch of a new blog.

There are a lot of ways to promote a new blog and I’m sharing 14 tactics to help you get the word out about your new baby. Heck, you could use these tactics for an established blog as well if you want a boost in traffic and subscribers.

But before you tell the world your blog exists, make sure you have completed these essential tasks first:

1. Does your masthead (banner) make it easy for new readers to know what your blog is about and if it’s right for them (target audience)?
2. Is your name as author/publisher easy to find?
3. Do you have an About/Contact page?
4. Do you have subscription options (RSS and email)?
5. Do you have a call to action to get more info (join your mailing list, get a free report, etc.)?
6. Do you have social sharing buttons on your posts?
7. Do you have links to your social networking profiles?
8. Do you have comments enabled?
9. Do you have 7 to 10 posts published?

Point #9 is important because you don’t want to send people to a blog with only one or two posts. New readers will want to get a sense of your style, content and expertise before they commit to subscribing. I strongly recommend having a minimum of seven posts published before you start promoting your new blog.

Implement the Obvious First

Before I get to the 14 creative ways to promote your blog, implement the obvious and see #12, 13 and 14 in this article.

• Syndicate your blog content to your Twitter stream.
• Link your blog to your Facebook business page.
• Link your blog to your LinkedIn profile.
• Submit your blog to the appropriate blog directories.
• Write and post a media release.
• Send an email announcement to your list.

The Not-So-Obvious

When I was thinking about this topic, I decided to “tap the wisdom of the crowd” to get the best of the best ideas. I posted the following question on LinkedIn Answers:

Question posted on LinkedIn Answers.

There were 27 responses in 7 days. There were many similar recommendations and a few that stated the obvious (like using social media and writing engaging content). I’ve culled through them and offer you a selection of tips I feel are the most effective for launching your new business blog.

#1: Host a Live Streaming Video Event

When Mike Stelzner launched Social Media Examiner, he created buzz and a lot of traffic by hosting four back-to-back video chats with the initial contributors (me, Mari Smith, Jason Falls and Chris Garrett).

#2: Use Offline Marketing

Boris Mahovac recommends going offline and sending postcards to your existing clients, asking them to promote your new blog to their contacts. Using a unique URL will allow you to track new visitors/signups, and this can be a way for you to reward the one client who sends the most traffic to your new blog. You need to give your clients an incentive to promote your new blog—say a chance to win an iPad, or something more expensive, depending on the business (model).

#3: Create a Video to Promote Your Blog

Apryl Parcher suggested using Animoto.com to create a video about your blog. Post it on your YouTube channel and Facebook page. Send the video link to your email list as well. Several others also mentioned creating videos and with the popularity of video, I encourage you to include it in your launch plan.

#4: Use Remote Blogging Sites to Extend the Reach of Your Content

Brandon Uttley uses Posterous.com to post excerpts from blog posts with links back to his main blog and other social media sites. Remote blogging sites often have high traffic and this puts your content in front of potential new readers.

An excerpt of the original blog post is published on a Posterous blog with a link back to the original post.

#5: Host a Live (In-person) Event for Your Announcement

As Barry Hurd says, “I think a lot of people forget the social part of the media. Launching a new blog is really about reaching through your relationships.” Host a private reception, dinner or cocktail party with industry leaders in your niche. Or, go big and host a meetup or tweetup and cross-promote with a charity. Live events are an opportunity to connect face-to-face, get to know the needs of your target audience and build a lot of goodwill.

#6: Repurpose Your Content

I could relate to Kathi Browne‘s suggestion to submit blog posts on article sites like EzineArticles.com.  There’s more on repurposing your blog posts here.

#7: Feature Experts

It comes as no surprise that Liz Strauss , a master at building community, shares a tip about featuring other people on your blog. Start an interview series that features experts who folks want to know better. Invite a wide range of people to participate in short interviews that ask unusual and insightful questions. Include the expert’s name in the blog title.  Additionally, make heroes of other people who are just starting out. Point out their work as well.

#8: Comment on Other Blogs in Your Niche

This suggestion was offered by quite a few people, and with good reason. As Janet Fouts says, “Commenting on other blogs with useful (not promotional) information and insight can pique the interest of other readers and also build those treasured backlinks.”

#9: Do Some Guest Posting

This idea came up many times as well. There are two sides to this: inviting other bloggers to guest post on your blog and offering to guest post on complementary blogs. Both ways can generate visibility for your blog. The value is in creating connections with colleagues and creating win-win-win for you, other bloggers and your readers. The links and buzz will support your blog launch.

#10: Host a Webinar

Along the lines of a live video chat or an offline event, create a webinar or teleseminar to introduce your blog. Rather than simply announcing your blog, make it a learning experience by teaching or demonstrating an aspect of your expertise. Remind your audience they can continue getting the same great content by subscribing to and reading your blog.

#11: Run a Contest

Dawn Pigoni offered this excellent idea: Run a contest based on the content of the blog. Have an “answer hunt” where the answers to win the prize(s) are found within the blog posts. That will get people reading the quality, content-rich posts while attempting to win a prize. Then use Twitter to post questions and the winner(s).

#12: Host an Online Radio Show

BlogTalkRadio is a popular and free site that provides the tools and foundation for creating your own show. Because of high traffic and the syndication options on Blog Talk Radio, a show focused on your niche could generate an ongoing stream of visitors to your blog. If hosting isn’t for you, most radio hosts are always looking for guests to fill their time slots. No doubt you can find many shows that are in alignment with your blog’s niche.

#13: Create a Related Special Report

Brian Clark of Copyblogger.com shared his secret: Release a valuable piece of “extended content” such as a PDF report or video tutorial (without an opt-in) fairly early after the blog launches. While the content itself is valuable, it also acts as a “sales letter” for subscribing to the blog, due to the promise to keep expanding on the themes presented in the extended content in more detail. This allows you to create a “content event” early. And it’s a natural way to attract long-term subscribers if well done. Just be sure to have the opt-in call to action at the close of the extended content, because that’s the action you want people to take.

#14: Advertise Your Site

Clay Franklin recommends using Craigslist, eBay classifieds and Facebook ads to boost awareness of your new blog. This will depend on your budget. If you do want to spend some advertising dollars, you can test a Google Adwords campaign and see what kind of results you get.

If you were to implement just three or four of these ideas, you would see a boost in visibility, traffic and blog subscribers.  Pick the tactics that fit with your business model, style and intended audience and you’re sure to experience success.

Now it’s your turn. What creative tactics have you used or observed to launch a new blog? Share your ideas in the comments box below.

Watch this video to pick up some of the nuggets of social media advice he gives his clients. One valuable tip Steve gives is about “shared mutual gain” and what it means.  Steve also explains why he quit blogging.

You will also learn why Steve believes digital is mandatory and not optional.  And here are a few other takeaways:

• Why you need to have a presence on all social networks where your customers are spending time.
• How to use mixed messages to tailor your stories to different venues.
• How to measure social media metrics.
• Why the different vectors of reach, engagement and reputation lead to trust.
• Why it’s important to understand people & understand business.

And Steve also shares some insights about why he stopped blogging on Micro Persuasion and started lifestreaming on Posterous.

What are your takeaways? Do you agree that blogging is old? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

Posterous is known as the most “social” networking place of social media. It’s also the ideal solution for sharing content that’s too long for a tweet and too short for a blog post.

There are many different reasons and motivations to create a free Posterous account. Let’s have a look at the 7 most common reasons for businesses to use Posterous.

#1: Can Replace Your Blog

When a regular blog is not for you, Posterous can give you similar advantages to a regular blog without the work of setting up a blog and maintaining it.  All you have to do is send in your content by email.  It’s that simple.  This is why Posterous is great for lifestreaming.

This can be a good starting point for businesses hesitating to create their own blog. Posterous can provide a place to learn more about social media and develop the right content strategies.

#2: Fills a Gap Between Blogging and Microblogging

Posterous is an easy way to publish more content to reach different audiences. Steve Rubel says, “I still see a big space in between blogs and Twitter that allows you to have a hub and spoke strategy and post in multiple formats.”

And as Ted Villa says, “Posterous is clean and nimble, simple to use and a great tool in any organization’s social media toolkit. It’s a great way to extend a client’s footprint online and increase links to their site as well as their social media sites.”

This can fill a gap in your presence on social media.

#3: Can Improve Your Visibility

Posterous can help you improve your visibility in search results in two ways.

First, you have more updates for search engines to find. If you like to share photos and videos online, Posterous makes it very easy to do this (see reason #7 below for more details). And with photo and video publishing made this easy, you end up sharing more content to increase your online search results.

Second, you can publish your Posterous content on your own website. Unlike other social media platforms, you can set up your Posterous account on your own URL.  This means you can set up your Posterous account on:

• Your own domain name separate from your company website
• Or even use a sub-domain of your current website or blog

This is something important to keep in mind as the social media landscape changes over time.

#4: Gives You Another Voice on Social Media

Many business professionals also use Posterous to post content that would be off topic on their main website or blog and engage with a different audience online.

Posterous provides an easy venue to share different “social” content. A separate platform makes it easy to create an additional point of connection with your audience, with a different style, to engage different mindsets.  As Debbie Weil says, “There are distinct differences in how you talk or write for the different platforms.  Simply put, you write in a different ‘voice’ and, generally, talk about different topics.”

This makes it easy to reach out to different audiences.

#5: Makes it Easy for Groups to Publish Content

Posterous allows you to set up group accounts too.  This means you can set up:

• Posterous pages for individual team members
• Collaborative Posterous pages for different company employees to post on the same page
• Collaborative Posterous pages to bring people outside your company to collaborate on one Posterous page

Here’s one example of how Posterous brings social networking to a higher level: ClickIdeas

#6: Helps You to Segment Content for Different Audiences

You can use your Posterous account to create different points of contact with your audience.  Pat Kitano says, “I originally intended this slideshow (How to create a blog without “writing” one) for local businesspeople who wanted a blog for marketing purposes, but didn’t have the inclination to start a blog due to writing and time commitments. After posting the slideshow, I received feedback that Posterous was a great method to create new ‘blogs’ on a variety of topics and interests that were parallel to the principal blog. One mentioned how fast Posterous blogs were indexed by Google.”

This makes it easy to test different market segments outside of your main blog or website.

#7: Is the Easiest Option to Share Photos

Posterous is simply the easiest social media platform to share photos and videos.  All you have to do is email your photo or video to Posterous and it does everything else. This means you can publish your favorite photos and videos from any location where you have access to your email, even from your mobile phone.

This is why many users choose to post all of their photos and videos to Posterous and set it up to feed their Facebook, Twitter and other social media profiles.

Bonus: Makes You Easy To Connect With

Sometimes a personal touch helps you to create a stronger connection with your audience on social media.  This is why some business professionals use Posterous as a place to provide a unique glimpse into their personal lives.

Jason Falls does a good job at providing both personal and business insights on his Posterous page: Falls, Off the Rocker. He links to these Posterous posts from his Twitter account and invites his Twitter followers to get to know him better.

A Step Toward Creating Social Connections

Creating a social presence and adapting to different social media platforms are not easy for many businesses.  Posterous provides a way for businesses to make a social connection between their own website and other social media platforms as they learn more about incorporating social media into their current marketing tactics.

Ready to Give Posterous a Try?  Here’s some good resources to check out:

• Read Mashable’s Posterous Guide.
• Have a look at Guy Kawasaki’s Twelve Tips and Tricks.
• And remember to subscribe to Social Media Examiner.  There’s more to come on Posterous and other social media platforms.

Now It’s Your Turn

• What are you interested in getting out of Posterous?
• Do you already have a Posterous page?
• How is Posterous helping your social media marketing?

Share the link to your Posterous page below and tell us what your experience has been so far in the Comments section below.