A few features of Google +:

• Circles: Circles are your group of friends. You can create individual circles for your family, friends and business colleagues
• Hangouts: Just hanging around? You can “hang out” with up to 10 friends in real time video
• Sparks: Interested in a particular topic? Sparks streams content related to your interests including video so you always have something to watch, read or share
• Instant Upload: All photo’s and video’s you take can be uploaded automatically to your private album allowing you to share with those in your Circle
• Huddle: Huddle is a group messaging feature allowing everyone in a particular Circle to share what is going on in real time

Will Google + give Facebook a run for its money? Only time will tell but over 20 million have already signed up in their first 3 weeks of launch.

A side note, Google + is only open to individuals and the business version is to be released later this year.

You’ve certainly heard of, and are most likely participating in, the social media wave that has been going on for the past few years. Like it or not, social media has become a key component of most business marketing strategies… and why not? It’s free!

Although it’s free, you may have found that attracting people and engaging them can be very time consuming. Worse yet, after spending all that time and effort, you can’t figure out how to tell what it’s gotten you. Where do you see the return on investment? How do you track your performance? To do that means even more time!

One social media company that has provided a great way of tracking your company’s performance is Facebook. Facebook Insights provides statistics on such items as active users, post views, post feedback (likes, comments) and unsubscribes. The trick is being able to take the data and put it into a format that easily shows business owners how their social media presence is affecting their ROI.

A key to making this work is to first understand how return on influence (ROI) affects return on investment (ROI). Return on influence in Facebook is measured by such things as likes, news feed impressions and fan interaction. Return on investment is indicated by product sales, email opt-ins, website traffic, etc.

Once a business owner has established her conversion goals (e.g. increasing email opt-ins or increasing the number of event participants), she can use the Facebook Insights data to help determine if she’s meeting those goals.

For example, let’s say a particular business owner is interested in building her email list. She can do this by creating a Welcome tab on her Facebook fan page that includes an email opt-in box. To increase the chance of getting a Facebook visitor to subscribe, something free can be offered such as a free report or a free e-course. Then, using a combination of the Insights data and data from an email program such as Aweber, a calculation can be made to show what percentage of people visiting the Welcome tab actually opted-in to the email list.

If the conversion rate was below her established goal, she might think of offering some other report or enticement. If conversion was at her goal or better, then she knows that her free report is interesting people enough and doing a good job at prompting them to opt-in.

This is just one example of what a business owner’s goal might be and how it can be achieved and measured in Facebook.

So, in today’s business world, using social media as a key component of any marketing strategy is a must, and tracking its performance is easier and more powerful than ever before.

Using Facebook Insight metrics can not only help a business owner measure return on investment, but also help her make decisions about her engagement and content strategy that will allow more effective interactions with her customers.

Better return on influence equals better return on investment.

If you need assistance with setting up or running your Facebook Insights report, please let us know and we’ll gladly prepare and send you the report each month.

Using the Tweetmeme button you can discover new content and tweet about it. The button provides a fully integrated URL shortener and the title of the story or page. Each link which is posted on Twitter adds one to the tweet count for that story. Once the story has reached a critical mass of tweets, it makes it into the top 10 on the front page and gets tweeted by Tweetmeme’s Twitter account.

You can install the Tweetmeme button easily on your website or blog, and let your users quickly retweet your stories straight from your site. They have a plug-in for WordPress.

Keeping up with interesting news and people you care about is one part of Twitter. Twitter Search helps you filter all that real-time information.

All you do is click on Twitter Backup once you are on their site. Select the fields you would like to have archived which include:

• Your Tweets
• @Replies
• Friends
• Followers
• Direct Messages
• Favorite Tweets
• or Full Archive

Then select Go To Twitter; click Allow; enter your email address (download link will be emailed to you); agree to their terms and hit continue. The next screen will provide a link for downloading a zip file containing both a csv and html file.

Tweetscan’s index goes back to December 2007 which provides the most complete and convenient backup available.

The following social media marketing tips will help you outshine your competition as well as increase traffic to your website and perhaps increase your sales.

• Sign up for social networking sites – check out Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and other niche social networking sites and sign up for them. Sign up is free and these sites are easy to navigate and user-friendly.
• Fill out the profiles. If you leave your profile blank, you aren’t helping yourself when it comes to social media marketing. Include links to your website and blog (this is how to get backlinks to your site). Fill out your business contact information, email, etc. You WANT potential customers to contact you.
• Keep them coming back for MORE. Offer a freebie, valuable information, the latest and greatest news in your industry, etc. Analyze your target markets and create your message accordingly. People want value so give them what they want so they keep coming back for more.
• Include your photo. People want to do business with a face and name they trust. Include a professional photo – a photo connects you with your business name/company – a great branding trick.
• Don’t “over” sell/market. Remember less is more. You want to reel potential customers in with social media/networking messages. You don’t want to scare them away. Stop tweeting about what you ate for breakfast. Get back to the basics of your marketing message and don’t over sell your message. Stay away from “spam” messages or you’ll get blocked (not only by the sites, but by other users). You want a fan base, not an “I hate your business because you spam me too much” club.
• Keep it simple. Showcase your knowledge but don’t “talk down” to your audience. Learn what works and what doesn’t work for potential customers. Remember to keep your message informative and friendly.

Some of the features you will love:

• Ability to manage multiple twitter accounts
• Customization of their interface through columns. Columns can be display your profile feed, keyword tracking, groups of individuals such as your clients or prospects allowing you to easily follow their tweets
• You can drag and drop between columns so if you want to create a column for clients, you can easily drag them from your profile feed to your customized client column
• Integrated URL shortener
• Send now or schedule for later. You can create Twitter messages and schedule for later launch times. There is also a column showing you all your pending tweets
• You can attach a file or photo to your Tweet
• Support of your other social media sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn. Just select which social media source you want your Tweets to update
• Track statistics. Graphs show not only a summary but also individual Twitter statistics.

Thank you John Ennis of TAB Monmouth County NJ (TABMonmouth) for sharing this resource.

Some features of TwInbox:

• Update your Twitter status directly from Outlook.
• Receive your friend updates in Outlook.
• Archive, manage, group and search your tweets the same way you manage your email (details).
• Search, track keywords. TwInbox will automatically download ALL tweets matching the keywords you specify, even if you are not following the tweet sender. This feature is perfect for keeping up to date with the Twitter buzz on your name, brand, interests, etc.
• Group tweets by sender, topic, etc using the Search feature.
• Upload and post picture files and Outlook email attachments.
• See new tweets at a glance (details).
• Assign custom folder and categories to new messages.
• Use Outlook’s “Reply” and “ReplyAll” commands to send twitter direct messages and @replies.
• Automatically sort new tweets into per-sender folders.
• Shorten URLs with tinyurl.
• See graphs of your Twitter usage statistics.
• Tweets sent to you (@replies and direct) are marked with high importance, so you can see them at a glance.

When you install TwInbox, you will see a new folder in your Outlook inbox. From here you enter your Twitter user name and password and the magic begins. TwInbox retrieves all the tweets from your account and allows you to read them just as your read your email.

Another great benefit – TwInbox is FREE!

Some of the graphs created:

• Your Tweet Timeline
• Your Tweet Density (by day and time of day)
• Aggregate Daily Tweets
• Replies To
• Who You ReTweet
• What Interface Used