Social media is fast becoming a leading outlet for savvy marketers to capitalize on their brand. By some estimates, social networking now accounts for 11 percent of all time spent online in the US. Between December 2008 and December 2009, total visits to the top 10 social networking sites increased 63 percent. Nearly one in 10 Internet visits ends up at a social network; nearly one in four page views is on a social networking site.

So, what exactly is engagement? No, we aren’t talking about when your significant other gets down on one knee and asks for your hand in marriage. We are talking about web engagement – the interaction of people with online channels.

Engagement comes in many forms today, through commenting to a blog post, to retweeting an interesting tweet, to connecting through a social network, to interacting to an online forum, and more.

There are a number of different ways people interact online. These people can be classified as:

When Search Engine Optimization (SEO) became a hot topic in the early 2000’s, it was very easy to write a press release with targeted keywords and end up at the top of the Google listings for those keywords.

Today, this doesn’t happen.

Internal Closed Loop Processes to Support Sales and Lead Nurturing

A Sales Support/Marketing group that is identifying potential leads, creating relationships and moving prospects through the buying cycle to lead status is paving the way for your Sales group to focus on closing well qualified leads.

Marketing and Sales are two sides of the same coin. So why don’t they work well together?

The simple answer is the communication between the two and processes set up to facilitate that communication are often lacking.

According to a recent MarketingSherpa study, 80% of B2B vendors either claim to have lead nurturing programs in place, or regard them as a key priority. But only 20% claim to be satisfied with the outcome of their programs. Why such a huge gap between theory and practice?

With all this socializing going on, the challenge of coordinating and integrating messages across multiple social networks platforms has become top-of-mind. Businesses, large and small, are using social media platforms – but for very different reasons.

Here is a quick list of Twitter

20 Twitter Marketing Tips for Social Media Success Everyone tweets these days, but some people just don't get it. Social Media can be a great marketing tool for spreading the word about your company, yourself, your industry, your customers, etc.

T

ActivityStreams home at http://ActivityStrea.ms

[NOTE] This post is on the uber-geeky side.  It relates to open standards for sharing what we do on a Website, such as Twitter, Facebook, Live.com, etc.

Sales Funnel Closing

Our experience includes conceiving, structuring, proposing, selling, and closing deals like yours.

Win Through Excellent Selling

Sales Funnel: Sales Excellence Takes You To The Lead

Success in sales is a learned experience that does not happen overnight.

Editor's note: a number of these tools are changed or no longer available.

Google: How To Submit to Google Webmaster Tools

Submit your site to Google's search engine via Google Webmaster To

Are Web apps and services heading to extinction? Mobile applications can embed common web functionality and interfaces--or--within commonly used apps, such as e-mail?

As part of our participation in the Drupal community, I've offered a presentation for annual DrupalCon conferences, DrupalCamps, or local Drupal Users Groups.  Jim can present this to your organization.

The session is entitled:

 "Lame to Fame: Whys & Hows for Taking Your Website to the Top"