What are the most popular Web 2.0 applications? Exactly how helpful is online video as as search marketing tool? Which social media sites are the most valuable? How can you use StumbleUpon for SEO link building? Where can you find free tools to help monitor buzz about your company across blogs, Twitter on online forums?

Read on to discover all of this and more in some of the best blog posts and articles on social media and Web 2.0 so far in 2008.

The 100 top Web apps for 2008 by Webware

The top 100 web applications as chosen by Webware readers, across 10 categories including browsing (e.g. Google Reader, Opera and Firefox), audio (e.g. last.fm, emusic and Pandora) and communication (e.g. Gmail, Skype and AIM).

Video Links: The Best Lures in the SEO Tackle Box? by E-Commerce Times

Writer Peter Hamilton makes the case that online video is useful not only for producing a short-term boost in traffic but also, through blended search, for SEO efforts. He includes some highly compelling figures for support: “MarketingExperiments Journal investigated whether viral video content could actually produce click results. It pulled in more than 80,000 views in only one month by producing and posting 28 amateur-style videos for the Web. After two months, that number grew to 300,000 with no further work or investment.”

Mythbusting: Why Video Should Be A Core Search Marketing Tool by Search Engine Land

Another post about the SEO value of video, this one from Glenn Pingul, VP of marketing for online advertising company Mixpo. Glenn pokes holes in nine myths about online video, small business and search marketing to bolster his contention that “video has the promise to not only alter the rules of search engine marketing but also online marketing in such a way that can tip things in the favor of SMBs.”

SAI 25: The World’s Most Valuable Digital Startups by Silicon Alley Insider

Billed as an iterative list of the most value private digital companies that “changes as facts and markets change,” this site shows the rankings of the top 25 online startups as well as 25 more top contenders. Some rankings are surprising (Webkinz is worth more than LinkedIn?), some are disturbing (the Huffington Compost is worth as much as Twitter?) and many are controversial, as indicated by the comments here.

StumbleUpon Traffic IS Worth Something: Links by Conversation Marketing

The brilliant Ian Lurie uses hard data from personal experience to show that “there’s a clear connection between Stumblefests and link growth.” StumbeUpon isn’t just great for producing low-quality traffic surges, it also produces more high-quality links over time, which is of course great for SEO. Unfortunately, Ian was recently banned by StumbleUpon, so use this service very carefully.

Building Your Blog With StumbleUpon by ProBlogger

This guest post provides detailed instructions on how to maximize your influence, exposure and blog traffic through the use of this popular social bookmarking site. Be warned that it takes some work, but the results may well be worth it. As far as I know, this author hasn’t been banned by StumbleUpon (yet).

Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile by SEO Chat

Inspired by sources such as Guy Kawasaki’s LinkedIn Profile Extreme Makeover, writer Terri Wells provides step-bu-step instructions for overhauling your LinkedIn profile to get the maximum social networking, SEO and reputation management benefit from it.

Is Your Site Social Media Friendly? by Search Engine Land

Internet marketing consultant Brent Csutoras provides eight tips (and creative use of clip art) to “make sure your site is designed and performs in a way that is suitable for social media,” including the use of a modern design template, avoiding pop-ups or other annoying roadblocks, a clear call to action and avoidance of “spam words.”

Who’s In Your Audience or Community? by Search Marketing Gurus

Contending that “An online marketing strategy includes SEO, PPC, Social Media and even Word of Mouth. With that in mind, there are more segments (beyond those identified in Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies by Charlene Li and Josh Beroff) of an audience to take into account when you begin to strategize,” Li Evans engagingly identifies eight other types of users your online programs need to consider, including Brand Evangelists, Promoters and Got To Have It Nows (but watch out for Trolls).

Seven Buzz Monitoring Sites To Watch by Search Insider

What’s hot in your industry? Who’s talking about you (and what are they saying)? To help you find out, David Berkowitz provides a guide to seven of the best buzz monitoring sites, including Twitter search tool Twist, keyword demographics from Quantcast, and blog search engines Trendpedia and BlogPulse.

Previous posts in this series:

Best of 2008 (So Far) - SEO Guidance, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) - SEO Guidance, Part 2
Best of 2008 (So Far) - Search Engine Marketing, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) - Cool Web Tools, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) - Social Media Optimization, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) - Blogging for Business, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) - Web Marketing Research, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) - Website Design, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) - SEO Link Building
Best of 2008 (So Far) - Search Engine Marketing, Part 2

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Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom

In The Disconnect in PPC vs. SEO Spending, Rand Fishkin demonstrates that “SEO drives 75%+ of all search traffic, yet garners less than 15% of marketing budgets for SEM campaigns. PPC receives less than 25% of all search traffic, yet earns 80%+ of SEM campaign budgets,” then asks: “Why does paid search earn so many more marketing dollars?”

No doubt the comments to Rand’s post will reveal many reasons for this differential, but here are three that spring immediately to mind:

1. The perception that people click on natural search results when they are seeking information, but on sponsored search ads when they are ready to buy. This presumption certainly justifies proportionately greater spending if it’s valid. I suspect that just the opposite may in fact be the case, but don’t have sufficient data to back that up.

2. The “media cost” is inherent in PPC. Companies can spend very similar amounts for SEO activities and SEM program management–in fact, they can even spend more on the former than the latter–yet still have much larger budgets for PPC than for SEO. That’s simply because PPC includes a “media cost” of paying for the sponsored search clicks from Google, Yahoo, MSN, or another search engine.

3. PPC is applicable to a broader set of search terms. Some terms (most commonly one- to three-word search phrases) are simply very, very difficult to SEO for, either because they are highly competitive, very common, or ambiguous. With SEO, you can spend a lot of money to try to rank well for these terms yet still end up with disappointing results. With SEM, you can guarantee your site will appear, then control total costs through day-parting and geo-targeting.

It’s also very difficult to show up well in the natural search results for a competitor’s brand name. PPC not only gives you a spot on page one for these phrases, it lets you customize the message (e.g., “consider the more cost-effective alternative”).

The bottom line is that SEO is both more effective and less expensive than PPC, which makes it a no-brainer for any website.

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Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom

Between the two of them, John McCain and Barack Obama will spend close to $400 million trying to convince you to vote for them next week. Four hundred million dollars. One would think, with that kind of money to spend, their marketing would be a whole lot better.

I decided to save all of the direct mail I received from one of the candidates for a while, just for the heck of it. This is three weeks’ worth of mailings. From one candidate. I sometimes got two or three letters in a single day. This isn’t environmentally friendly, it can’t be cheap, and worst of all, it’s not even effective.

Rather than wiping out our forests to produce more junk mail, here are a few ideas the political parties and candidates might want to consider (they work for businesses as well):

Be creative

Both sides have been spending a ton of money on video, both TV ads and online. Has any of it been memorable? Has anything from either campaign gone viral? Everything seems very standard, safe, formulaic and boring.

On the other hand, there’s the McCain-Obama dance off video. It wasn’t produced by any campaign and won’t sway any votes but is extremely funny, creative, original, and viral, having been emailed prodigiously. (Thanks to Mike Keliher at Provident Partners for Twittering this link.)

For $400 million, how about stepping outside the box? Give a few thousand bucks to some college kids who are passionate about your ideas and see what they produce.

If you’re going to use direct mail, do something interesting

Postal mail doesn’t have to be flat (literally or figuratively). Instead of sending a dozen letters, all slight variations on a theme, to the same person over a two-week period, send one big, lumpy, memorable piece.

Create and send out a construction game that lets people “build a better world.” Or borrow an idea from business like the supply chain superhero mailing. Yes it was expensive, but it was very effective. Such ideas aren’t much of a stretch for a $400 million budget.

Follow The New Rules of Marketing and PR, and Reduce Interruption Marketing

Most of the candidates’ marketing expenditures are still being spent either interrupting your favorite TV show with commercials, or worse, interrupting your dinner with phone calls. Has any candidate, ever, annoyed voters into pledging their support?

Instead of producing expensive commercials which are going to be TiVo’d or making phone calls that will be caller ID’d into uselessness, how about focusing more on building relationships with your most passionate supporters and giving them the tools to influence their social network?

Make Data-Driven Decisions

Considering how much of that $400 million supposedly goes to polling, focus groups and the like, you’d think the candidates would know that sending blizzards of junk mail is an expensive waste of time. They’ve got 50 states to experiment in, and the budget to figure out what works and replicate it.

In the famous words of MarketingSherpa’s Anne Holland, “test, test, TEST.”

Buy, and Use, a CRM System

Much of the wasteful spending on direct mail and phone calls could be avoided by proper use of CRM (and it’s not only political candidates who need one; businesses such as Internet service providers are notorious for screwing up their own promotions).

Knowing, for example, that Chris responds best to direct mailings sent every couple of weeks, while Fran always takes phone calls and Pat doesn’t mind being emailed, could save a lot of money, and trees, while solidfying their support.

As a final benefit: if politicians spent their campaign funds a bit more wisely, voters just might trust them a bit more not to squander our tax dollars once they’re elected.

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Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom

When is including a meta description tag important (and when isn’t it)? How can you optimize SEO benefits from internal link building? How does Google view search quality, from the inside? What key weapon in the SEO arsenal do many companies overlook?

Read on for all of this and much else in some (more) of the best articles and blog posts written about SEO to date this year.

How to Optimize for Google – Part 1 of 3 by Internet Search Engine Database

In part one of this series, SEO pro Scott Van Achte provides a comprehensive guide to the factors that need to be considered on-page website optimization, including title and meta tags, synonyms, headings and navigation. Even for experienced SEO practitioners, this post serves as a good reminder of what not to forget.

When, Why and How to Construct a Meta Description Tag by Search Engine Guide

The ubiquitous Stoney deGeyter delves into the details behind the meta description tag, demonstrating how its value lies more in generating higher click-through rates than purely SEO.

The Importance of Internal Linking, and How to Do it Right by Search Engine Guide

In another post from Search Engine Guide, Scott Allen provides an in-depth guide to maximizing the value of internal links, which, as he points out, provide two key benefits when done right: improving search engine rank and usability.

Introduction to Google Search Quality by The Official Google Blog

Since Google is the most important search engine for SEOs, it’s helpful to understand how its engineers view search. Udi Manber, VP of Search Quality, provides a glimpse behind the curtain. He doesn’t share any deep, dark secrets in this post, but does reveal some interesting information, such as the reduced importance of Pagerank and the sheer volume of changes Google makes to its algorithm each year (more than 450 in 2007; no wonder search positions for individual sites are so volatile).

Cheap SEO: it’s about quality, not price by Internet Business

U.K.-based SEO consultant Brian Turner makes a compelling case for buying SEO services based on your specific needs—but most definitely not on price. As Brian bluntly points out, “”Buying SEO services by price point alone is definitely in invitation for poor quality services, and even worse, can invite a penalty in Google. India has probably done more than any other country to position itself as the ‘SEO spam’ capital, with a huge number of companies fighting to offer the cheapest service that delivers the smallest results.”

Gain the competitive edge with SEO by iMedia Connection

Craig Macdonald, VP of Marketing and Product Management at marketing analytics provider Covario, outlines a “a strategic, scalable system for success” at SEO. His advice, which includes setting up a search “center of excellence” and performing sophisticated analysis, is targeted primarily at very large enterprises, though other pieces of information—such as noting that page file names are much more important to Google than Yahoo results—are more universally helpful.

The new SEO: organic search by iMedia Connection

In another noteworthy article fro iMedia, Andrew Rodrigues of Geary Interactive explores how the emergence of social bookmarking, blended search, link competition and other developments have forced a more strategic approach to SEO.

How to Take on a Major SEO Client by Search Engine Watch

When it comes to SEO, size does matter. William Flaiz, VP of SEO at Razorfish, offers a guide to SEO for very large websites, from site architecture and internal linking strategies to social media and reputation management.

The e-mail newsletter: a key weapon in your SEO arsenal by DMNews

Loren McDonald, formerly of J. L. Halsey and now with Silverpop, provides a step-by-step guide to search optimizing the email newsletter articles housed on your website.

Google Previous Query Reason For Crazy Google Rankings? by SiteProNews

This posts suggests that Google’s “previous query” feature may be one explanation for volatile search rankings, though as one commenter points out, later changes to the algorithm may have blunted this effect somewhat.

Previous posts in this series:

Best of 2008 (So Far) - SEO Guidance, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) - SEO Guidance, Part 2
Best of 2008 (So Far) - Search Engine Marketing, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) - Cool Web Tools, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) - Social Media Optimization, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) - Blogging for Business, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) - Web Marketing Research, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) - Website Design, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) - SEO Link Building
Best of 2008 (So Far) - Search Engine Marketing, Part 2
Best of 2008 (So Far) - Social Media Optimization, Part 2

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Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom

The presidential election now upon us offers an interesting contrast in marketing approaches. One candidate is all about brand, image, and soaring rhetoric that appeals to the heart. The other is (significantly) less flashy but appeals to our more practical side. He’s the candidate of rational, “value” buyers who carefully consider the offerings then choose the one that offers the greatest benefit for the lowest price—an appeal to the brain.

From a product standpoint, Obama is like the iPod. Never mind that there are lots of MP3 players that offer matching or even superior functionality, at a lower price, without the limitation of compatibility only with a closed network—the iPod is cool! So much so that “iPod” has become to “MP3 player” what “Kleenex” is to “tissue.”

McCain on the other hand is the “off-brand” that peels buyers away from the big name through an appeal to value. A classic example is Dell Computer. When the company first got started, IBM was the premier, established brand in PCs. But Dell eventually wiped them out of the market with a better product, lower price, and direct appeal that bypassed traditional channels.

There’s no question that McCain represents the better “value” in this election: lower taxes, smaller government, free trade, free market healthcare reform, and on foreign policy experience…no comparison. But on brand, Obama kicks. He’s the candidate of hope and change, of mega-crowds, a uniter-not-a-divider (wait, wasn’t that…ah, never mind). McCain, in contrast, appears to many people that he really is your father’s Oldsmobile. Or worse, your grandfather’s. And his choice of a running mate who, fairly or not, comes off as not exactly Mensa material has arguably hurt McCain more than Obama’s past connections have impacted his image.

Sometime late Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning (barring any hanging chads), we’ll know: are the majority of us brand buyers or value shoppers?

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Most Web 2.0 sites fall into one of a few increasingly well-defined categories, such as social bookmarking (Digg, del.icio.us, Searchles), social networking (LinkedIn, Facebook) or file sharing (YouTube, Flickr, podOmatic). Twitter, however, stands alone. (Okay, there’s also Pownce, but Twitter is better.)

Self-described as simply a real-time short messaging service and often referred to a microblogging platform, to those new to it, Twitter resembles nothing so much as a giant cocktail party where everyone talks at once and hopes others listen. You can tell who’s important by how many “followers” that person has, though that’s no guarantee anyone is really paying attention. People (or rather, Tweeple in the Twitter lexicon) can come and go without really being noticed, just like at a real (very, very large) gathering.

Twitter can be difficult to explain to those unfamiliar with it. Jennifer Laycock writes that Twitter is like Post-It notes; lots of them and in multiple colors. Johnny Makkar provides some helpful guidance on how to get your co-workers to start Twittering, in which he links to this long but informative video from HubSpot on how to use Twitter for marketing and PR.

Types of “Tweets”

I’m sure there’s a better list somewhere, but from my observation thus far there are five primary types of messages posted to Twitter:

Evangelizing: One of the most common and valuable uses of Twitter—linking to and promoting great stuff, like articles, blog posts, videos, etc. Example from Bill Hartzer: “Ask.com Adds One-Click Election Poll Information to Search http://ff.im/5×8.” It’s okay to evangelize your own stuff occasionally, as long as 1) it’s great stuff, and 2) you don’t evangelize only your own content. That would be…Twitterbation?

Social: Arranging live meetings is another practical, common and perfectly acceptable use of Twitter. Got a long layover at the Detroit airport? Use Twitter to see who among your “followers” might also happen to be there and grab a cup of coffee together. Example from Chris Brogan: “Chicago area meetup 11/10: http://tinyurl.com/54rs7m Pass it on!”

Thoughtful: Inspiration, observation and philosophy in 140 characters or less. For example, from Jeremiah Owyang: “Be inspired this week my friends: Try something new, learn something you always wanted to –be uncomfortable.”

Conversational: Using the @ symbol before someone’s Twitter name lets you target a public message to them. A fine practice, though it should be used in moderation. If you never use the @ symbol, you may be perceived as anti-social, arrogant or purely self-promotional. If you use it too much, you should probably take some of these conversations offline.

Annoying: Tweets which add absolutely no value to anyone, but are written just for the sake of writing something. Among the worst are the “Off to the gym,” “Going for a run,” “Just got back from a workout and gosh I’m stiff!” variety. Argh. The rest of the world would care about this…why?

What’s Cool About Twitter

Fans of Twitter believe it is a key social media tool for business. According to the MindValley Labs blog, Twitter is an incredibly powerful marketing tool, and they offer up three forbidden Twitter mind control tricks for marketing, stating “Twitter is currently the closest app on Earth that replicates the actual thought patterns of the human mind. You see, the human mind does not really think in blog and article form. Instead, it thinks in a stream of consciousness way, random disjointed thought layered upon random disjointed thought…After all, what’s more intimate than the whispering voices in your head?”

Ellie Mirman of HubSpot contends that tapping into the conversations happening on Twitter related to your brand, product or industry is crucial even for niche businesses. And Miguel Cancino explains why Twitter is a key tool for reputation management.

This was the first post in a two-part series. Part 2 will cover best practices for using Twitter, Twitter tools, and the future outlook for this platform.

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Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom

Here are more of the most useful business, social media and web marketing tools of 2008. Included here are some interesting new tools for getting more out of search, reflecting your personality on Twitter, collaborating with teammates online, writing blog posts more efficiently, accessing your home or office desktop PC from the road, and more.

Surf Canyon

Surf Canyon is a broswer plugin for Firefox and IE that refines results as you search, helping to make them more relevant so you can find exactly what you’re looking for more quickly. Pandia’s review of how Surf Canyon personalizes search results states that “SurfCanyon accelerates the search process by re-ranking the search results based on your behaviour…Even though there’s no actual magic involved, this nifty little app does a great job of digging though the search results for the hits you need, even though Google buried them on page 12.”

Projjex

In the same realm as Basecamp from 37signals, Projjex is an online project collaboration tool that lets you define groups, upload and share files, schedule meetings, assign tasks and send automated reminders. Projjex extends this functionality with cool, practical features like file tagging to simplify search, time tracking and iPhone integration. Serious users will eventually want to upgrade to the fee-based service, but the free offering is robust enough to be helpful tool for small businesses while providing larger organizations with a realistic trial before buying.

Follow me on Twitter badges / logos / buttons by limeshot marketing

Lots of bloggers are adding Twitter follow-me buttons and badges to their blogs, but thanks to limeshot, you no longer have to limit yourself to standard light-blue-and-white graphic. Here are 36 variations for a follow-me badge that reflects your color scheme and personality.

feedkiller

feedkiller is an rss mixing tool that lets you combine a variety of content into your website or favorite rss aggregator with a single rss feed. It’s free and very simple to set up. MakeUseOf.com notes in its review of feedkiller that “other tools can be used for that purpose (such as) RSS Mixer, Feedoor and FeedBlendr. However what makes FeedKiller standout is the ability to select the number of stories to include from each feed.” What would make it stand out even more is a simple PHP script for including the resulting feed on a website.

SearchCloud

SearchCloud is a powerful search tool to use for multi-term, detailed searches. Any search engine will let you use multiple search words of course, but SearchCloud takes that a step further by letting you select a size for each search word or phrase, indicating its relative importance. And on the off-chance that SearchCloud isn’t intuitive enough for you, they even provide this one-minute video on how to use it:

ScribeFire

ScribeFire offers a Firfox browser plugin that lets bloggers drag and drop formatted text from the web into their blogs, post entries, take notes, categorize and tag their blog posts, upload images and share posts on social bookmarking and networking websites. The company also offers tools for both displaying and buying online ads. TechJaws has called ScribeFire a blogger’s best friend, and LifeHacker has made it a download of the day, pointing out that “In addition to Blogger and WordPress, ScribeFire works with Jeeran, LiveJournal, TypePad and Windows Live Spaces.”

Monitter

Inspired by TweetDeck, Monitter is a real-time Twitter monitor that lets you keep track of live posts for any three keywords you enter, plus filter the display by geographic location or language (English, Spanish, and German). Frederic Lardinois wrote in his ReadWriteWeb review of Monitter that “Monitter is a cool and well designed way to monitor keywords on Twitter.”

dnScoop

Overall, this is more for amusement than practical business use (though the inbound link checker is very thorough and accurate). dnScoop is a domain check and website valuation tool that estimates the value of an established website or a domain name using several different criteria including the number of inbound links; the popularity, age and Pagerank of the domain; website traffic; and other factors.

Propeller

At first glance, Propeller look like just another Digg clone or YASN: a social bookmarking site where you can post links, vote on them, comment, and share them with friends or a group. However, the site is owned by AOL, so there’s a chance it will be able to keep spammers and objectionable material out while avoiding the problems like the Digg Mafia or the StumbleUpon witch hunt.

Top 5 Free Web Applications by Search For Blogging

Mert Erkal, Chief Editor of Bloghology Magazine, shares his favoriate free web applications, including ADrive, an online service for storing, transferring and sharing very large files; Audacity, a powerful open-source audio-editing program; and LogMeIn, a free remote-access service similar to GoToMyPC.

Previous posts in this series:

Best of 2008 (So Far) - SEO Guidance, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) - SEO Guidance, Part 2
Best of 2008 (So Far) - Search Engine Marketing, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) - Cool Web Tools, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) - Social Media Optimization, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) - Blogging for Business, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) - Web Marketing Research, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) - Website Design, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) - SEO Link Building
Best of 2008 (So Far) - Search Engine Marketing, Part 2
Best of 2008 (So Far) - Social Media Optimization, Part 2
Best of 2008 (So Far) - SEO Guidance, Part 3

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Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom

This is the second of a two-part series. Part one covered what Twitter is and why it’s cool; this post discusses Twitter etiquette, tools, and speculation about its future.

How to Twitter Properly

Like any other social setting, Twitter has its own etiquette. This can be confusing to new users. (And, as you can see by spending more than a few minutes on Twitter, it’s apparently elusive to many long-time users as well.) Margaret Mason has written an outstanding primer on Twitter etiquette, offering advice such as watch your ratio (”If only a few people follow you, but you follow a thousand or more, many people will assume you’re a spammer. That’s because you probably are. Go away, spammer.”); never Twitter if you’re drunk or high; and most importantly, “remember that everyone can hear you.”

The brilliant Mike Volpe of HubSpot takes a different approach to offering his advice in 5 Things On Twitter That Annoy the Crap Out of Me. His practices-to-avoid include always broadcasting and never conversing (again, some @ posts are good, too many are bad); insisting that everyone you follow return the gesture (”Just because you follow me does not mean I want to follow you. In fact, I only follow back about half the people that follow me. I look at your profile, check your recent tweets and bio, and decide if what you are saying is useful to me. Not useful, no follow. Sorry. Stop harassing me! You can unfollow me if you like.”); and providing too much information (”I like how Twitter is a combination of some business and some personal info so I can get to know people on both levels. But there are limits.” Like your morning run.).

MarketingSherpa has also produced and excellent case study on How to Target Twitter: 8 Ways to Build a New Audience in this Niche Community (fee-based, but non-members can access it through a free trial).

Noting that “Major media outlets (and) smaller regional publications…have generated thousands of followers for their Twitter feeds. By reaching out to that community, these publishers are developing new content strategies that are driving traffic, brand awareness and healthy online discussion about the topics they cover,” the MarketingSherpa case study advises content publishers (including bloggers) on how to find the right community to target, make tweets relevant to the community, use proper timing and volume, and grow your audience: “Don’t follow every Twitter user in your coverage area or everyone who shares interest in your publication’s topics. Users receive an email notification whenever a new member follows their updates; simultaneously adding dozens or more followers looks like spamming to the Twitter community.”

Twitter Tools

Similar in concept to Facebook applications—but different—Twitter has spawned an industry in clever little tools. Want to know how you rank as a Twitter user (or check out anyone else’s rank)? Get your “score” from Hubspot’s TwitterGrader. Forrester guru Jeremiah Owyang recommends desktop client Twhirl and search tool Tweetscan among his list of essential Twitter tools.

There are lots, lots more. Use Twitscoop to find out what topics of conversation are hot on Twittter; Tweet Later to set up automated Tweets or schedule messages to display in the future; TwitDir to search for users by name, location, description or other attribute; and Twubble, which helps you find new friends based on the attributes of your current followers and followees. Find even more tools on Jon Clark’s list of the top 75 Twitter tools, applications and plugins.

And there’s no shortage of new ideas, as evidence, for example, by Lee Odden’s wish list for Twitter.

The Future of Twitter?

Obviously, Twitter has inspired a large and enthusiastic following. Its business potential, not just for marketing and PR, but for applications like customer relations and crowd-sourced product development is only beginning to be tapped.

Yet there are significant concerns about the future viability of the platform. Marios Alexandrou of All Things SEM believes Twitter will die because there are too many worthless posts, one-way conversations, and a focus on quantity over quality of followers among other reasons. Dave Winer takes a different tack, arguring that Twitter is like to become the next Netscape, as “they’ve definitely staked out too much territory, they’re spread too thin” and are vulnerable to being overtaken by a better, more open alternative. MG Siegler disagrees, however, noting that “Certainly a big player, maybe even Microsoft again, could move in to try and make a new version of Twitter that is fully open. But if Twitter hasn’t died by now, I’m not convinced that it’s ever going to die.”

One problem is increasing competition. In Building a Better Twitter, Douglas MacMillan list several microblogging platform competitors that offer Twitter-like capabilities but with unique twists, such as video (Seesmic) or music integration (Blip.fm). These sites pose a potential threat to Twitter not like a shark able to kill with one big bite, but more like a school of pirahna, nibbling around the edges of Twitter’s dominion and taking away share bit by bit. Still, MacMillan is bullish on Twitter, noting that “Soon after Twitter raised $15 million in funding, Silicon Alley Insider blogger Henry Blodget speculated that the site may be worth as much as $1 billion.” After all, alternative search engines have been trying to take the death-by-a-thousand-small-bites approach to knocking off Google for years without diminishing the search giant’s dominance.

The biggest concern, however, is Twitter’s revenue model—or lack thereof. As CNet’s Caroline McCarthy points out, “Twitter remains Silicon Valley’s poster child for hyped companies without revenue models. With the financial crisis continuing to unfold daily, that simply isn’t acceptable.” Popularity alone won’t sustain Twitter (a lot of popular sites disappeared in 2001). But Twitter is a product of insight and creativity, and one has to conclude there is at least a good probability that those attributes will enable Twitter to continue offering a platform for news, links, wisdom and commerce mixed among a sea of trivial but very human chatter.

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Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom

Creating a successful viral marketing campaign has been likened to hitting home runs—you never know which at-bat is going to produce one, so the key is to make a lot of trips to the plate. Put another way, there is no magic formula for producing a viral campaign, you just have to try different concepts. There are, however, certain characteristics that will either increase the odds of viral success, or doom it to failure.

Simplicity: engaging with your campaign should be easy and intuitive. Most of us have too much to think about already: deadlines at work, paying the bills, juggling schedules—interacting with a viral campaign isn’t something we should have to put a whole lot of thought into. If your concept requires too much thought, the only people it will catch on with are those who have nothing better to do.

Originality: if an idea feels too familiar, it won’t go anywhere. There are about a zillion variations of whack-a-mole games, for example. This concept was very clever the first time, and perhaps moderately clever in a few of the first variations. Now it’s a yawn.

Entertainment: while widgets which are practical rather than entertaining can go viral, the most successful viral campaigns are either fun or very amusing. That’s why “how to create a viral YouTube video” has had about 17,000 views, while Harry Potter and the mysterious ticking noise has had 54 million.

Speed: people worth reaching tend to be busy. They’ll take a short diversion break, but unless your campaign is extremely engaging, they’ll shut it down if it’s too time-consuming. That means you either need to make it fast, make it brilliant enough to keep their attention away from other priorities, or make it flexible enough that anyone can engage quickly, while those with more time can interact at a deeper level.

Respect: most people understand that if you’ve created a viral campaign for marketing purposes, especially in the b2b world, you’re going to ask for contact information at some point. That’s fine, but ask only for the information you really need. If your initial interaction is going to be by email or phone, for example, you don’t need to ask for physical address.

Relevance: ideally, your viral campaign will actually have some relation to your product or service, so that it attracts people who are actually in your target market and reinforces your value proposition. How many times have you remembered a very funny or creative TV ad, but forgotten what was actually being advertised? `Nuff said.

Sharability: very simply, the easier it is to pass something along, the more likely it will be. Embed code, “email this” and social bookmark site tagging buttons are examples of simple ways to increase pass along.

I recently received a press release about a viral campaign for a new movie. While the concept sounded clever, it turned out to be confusing, unnecessarily complex, time-consuming, and worst of all, it required participants to give up not only their own privacy, but that of their social network connections as well. Bad idea.

On the other hand, there’s the Interstellar Pizza Express game from Minneapolis-based web hosting provider Visi.com. Players choose web hosting options to maximize their pizza sales. The high scorer each month wins an iPod. While there’s no guarantee this campaign will go viral, it does have most of the right attributes for potential viral success: it’s relatively simple (though some of the options could be made more clear); definitely original; moderately entertaining in a geeky sort of way; quick to play; extremely relavant to Visi’s business web hosting services; and asks only for pretty basic contact information. One area where the campaign could have been improved is on sharability—an email-this button and badges for social bookmark sites like Digg and StumbleUpon would have simplified pass along.

Still, the Visi campaign exemplifies many of the key requirements for going viral. Whether your next viral campaign is a home run or more of a strikeout, however, the most important tactic of all is to keep swinging.

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Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom

Why do some websites fail to achieve objectives? How can you whip an underperforming website into shape? Which elements are the most critical when initiating a website redesign project? How can small businesses cost-effectively add sophisticated capabilities like custom search and social networking features to their sites? What separates effective navigation from poor design?

Learn the answers to these questions and more in some of the best blog posts and articles on website design published so far in 2008.

A Small Business Year-End Web Site Checklist by Search Engine Land

Search marketer Matt McGee provides an outstanding 10-point checklist of items that site owners should check (at least) annually, including domain registration, contact form operation, autoresponders and outbound links.

15 Ways to Get Your Website in Gear by iMedia Connection

Lisa Wehr, CEO and founder of Oneupweb, writes that if your online marketing efforts are coming up short, it may be a good time to take “a systematic look at how your website is performing and (develop) a strategy to address its shortcomings.” To this end, she recommends reviewing 15 areas, including navigation, interface design, architecture, PR and SEO.

Site Redesign: 4 Vital SEO Tips for Web Designers by Search Engine Watch

Noting that, “Many times when companies consider a site redesign…their rationale may be that they need better ‘marketing fluff’…Rarely do you hear companies say, ‘We need to redesign our Web site because it wasn’t built for SEO,’” Mark Jackson, President and CEO of Vizion Interactive, outlines the four essential considerations in a redesign. Included in his analysis is an intriguing suggestion for a CMS, and the introduction of the term “Flashterbation” (using Flash for no real reason) to the web lexicon.

Write in the Quiet to Get Your Point Across by E-Marketing Performance

Michelle Montoya provides three writing tips for getting your message across to “scanners,” the significant portion of online readers who “want the message as quickly as possible and don’t want to have to read through a bunch of muck to get to it.” Key to this is using “quiet times”—those short sentences mixed in among your paragraphs that really get your point across.

Top 10 Reasons A Website Fails To Perform by Internet Search Engine Database

You spend significant time, effort and money on a website redesign, and then get lackluster results. Why? Gary Klingsheim, Vice President of Moonrise Design, nails it in this list of 10 factors to examine, including poor definition of your target audience, underestimation of competitors, and inconsistency in design and content. Obviously, this is a great post to read before undertaking that redesign effort.

How To: Create a Great 404 Page Not Found Error Page by Conversation Marketing

Ian Lurie supplies step-by-step instructions for creating a more engaging and friendly 404 error page for your site than the standard “This page cannot be found.” As he points out, if someone mistypes a URL or follows an incorrect link from another site, why drive them away with a boring standard message? For some really creative ideas, check out 404 Pages - Funny, Geeky, Disturbing from Squareoak.

Using Google’s Custom Search Engine for Internal Site Search by Ask Enquiro

Manoj Jasra, who writes a lot of great stuff on web marketing, explains why Google’s Custom Search tool is excellent way to add this functionality to your site in this brief but informative post.

Google Wants to Help Web Sites Make New Friends by The New York Times

Saul Hansell, editor of the New York Times Bits blog, explains the features of Google Friend Connect, which lets small website publishers add social networking features to their sites. As Hansell writes, Friend Connect gives website publishers an easy way to let users log in then link their profiles from other social networks (including Facebook, LinkedIn, Plaxo, Hi5 and Google’s Orkut), and “add OpenSocial applications, written by Google and other companies.”

The 19-Hour Website Analysis, in 20 Minutes or Less by Internet Search Engine Database

Stoney deGeyter, website design expert and owner of Pole Position Marketing, explains that “Investing in SEO and PPC marketing, without having performed a thorough (usability) analysis of your website is largely an exercise in vain.” He then provides a 19-step guide, with links to prior articles, to analyzing and improving your site’s usability looking at factors like on-site search, about us, contact and FAQ pages.

The Best Damn Web Marketing Checklist for Website Navigation by Search Engine Guide

Yet another highly useful checklist from Stoney deGeyter, this one detailing 21 considerations for effective site navigation, including consistency, proper categorical divisions, and the use of absolute links throughout the site.

Previous posts in this series:

Best of 2008 (So Far) - SEO Guidance, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) - SEO Guidance, Part 2
Best of 2008 (So Far) - Search Engine Marketing, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) - Cool Web Tools, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) - Social Media Optimization, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) - Blogging for Business, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) - Web Marketing Research, Part 1

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