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We are all excited that the 2010 Search & Social Spring Summit is less than a month away! With 52 tickets left, we are quickly approaching our capacity limit. With topics such as Doing Business on Twitter & Facebook and Outsourcing Secrets: Cut Costs & Spend More Time on the Beach, you really don’t want to miss it. We have 5 free tickets (valued at $525) to give away. One has been given to our Twitter contest winner, Ben Cook. Now, I am proud to announce our YouTube, Your Story and SEOtini contest winners. Drum roll please…   1)      The YouTube contest winner goes to Ethan Stanislawski! Ethan posted a video response on YouTube about his first day on the job doing SEO. He tells of how the Paris Hilton DUI incident, CNN and the Daily Show made him realize that SEO is about marketing.     2)      The Your Story contest winner is Joshua Titsworth! Joshua told his story about how he got into internet marketing. He went from working at a non-profit organization to being called “The Repair Man” to being hired by another company for his experience (where he gained from self-taught SEO). In 2007 I started working for a non-profit in downtown Kansas City, KS. I was hired with the directive to help raise funds, write press releases, and update the website. The more I got involved with the website the more I liked it and the more time I started to give it. After the website was looking better than it did before (I was stuck using Frontpage ‘98), a board member complained to me I was spending too much time with it. If they can’t find us what good are you? So I started looking for cheap ways to market NPOs online.   I came across seomoz and few other sites. I was a little shocked at first, not at the material, but at how quickly I was able to read and understand it. In the past it has taken me hours of reading and homework to comprehend what was in front of me. With the information about SEO I could read it, process it, and use it right away. Pretty soon the website was doing well, patients were finding us easily, their mission teams were getting filled and all from the web. After that a board member (a different one from before) asked me to look at his site. I applied the same measures as I took to ours, and the same results took place a few months later. But with all non profits, what is written in the contract is not always what you will do. I was ordered to take a break from the web to focus on facility repair. Pretty soon I was known as the repair man, which I didn’t mind, but I really wanted to do more internet marketing. I ended up leaving that non-profit to get more involved in SEO so I could get a job one day. I applied for everything I could. I had two years of limited experience, but I never got a call back until I applied at Chemidex. They called me, and I made it down to the final interview. My boss told me on my first day the deciding factor was so much experience, as it was they wanted someone with a heart for SEO and someone young enough in his/her career that they could get their start with Chemidex. I’ll admit, I’m still pretty new in this field. But I love it, and I can’t imagine not working in this industry.   3)      The winner of the SEOtini contest is Vivian Hoang! Vivian has given us an award-winning recipe for our signature drink, The SEOtini. Everyone who attend the Search & Social Spring Summit will get a complimentary round of this drink. 2 parts Grey Goose vodka 1 oz Blue Caracao 1 oz Cointreau 1 oz Champagne Mix the vodka and liqueurs in a mixing glass. Add ice, stir to chill, and then strain into a martini glass. Top with champagne, stir gently, and garnish with a lemon peel.   Congratulations to Ethan, Joshua and Vivian for each winning a ticket to the 2010 Search & Social Spring Summit. We have one last contest (THE GRAND PRIZE) to be announced on April 15 th , 2010. That’s exactly ONE WEEK from today! You can still enter here .   For questions or more info about the conference, you can reach Thao Tran at thao@searchandsocial.com or (813) 932-4SEO.   Please check out this video on the 2010 Search & Social Spring Summit: Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . And the winners for the 2010 Search & Social Spring Summit

As social media continues to grow at an exhilarating pace, it can become challenging for marketers to balance the time-consuming demands of today’s social media marketing landscape with their career’s core focus. Whether you’re a full-time social media marketer whose main responsibility is to manage social media campaigns, a brand-side marketer who dabbles in social media throughout the day, or a consultant who networks with others in the industry, it’s important to streamline your social media initiatives as much as possible, in order to save time & stay focused. Here are 5 musts for boosting the efficiency of social media marketing in the workplace. 1. Check in at increments “Check in” at periodic increments throughout the day, but don’t let it consume your day. It’s easy for a one minute check-in to become 10 minutes of reading Tweets & links. If you’re not a full-time social marketer, schedule time in the morning, at lunch, and at the end of the day to “check in” on your favorite social networks. And if you are a full-time social marketer, check in at hourly increments. When you need to knock out a larger scale project, tune out the social chatter – except for any key, “emergency-scale” tweets. Those other tweets & updates can wait. Really. 2. Sch edule tweets in advance If you’re sharing content that’s not time-sensitive – i.e. articles, ideas, or commentary, schedule your Tweets in advance with a tool like SocialOomph . You can schedule Tweets once a day (or once a week), and then check in at a few increments throughout the day to engage with your following. 3. Focus on the most important tweets If you’re a brand-side or full-time social media marketer, stay on top the most important & relevant Tweets by monitoring key phrases with RSS feeds. Tools like NewsFire can notify you in real time when someone Tweets about your brand. Obviously, if you’re @ Starbucks , you’ll want to refine brand Tweets even further, or use an online reputation tool like Trackur . 4. Segment your social media universe Thought leaders, real-life friends, and colleagues: there are many ways to segment your Twitter universe. By segmenting your list into different relationships, you can follow work or industry-related Twitter friends during working hours, and more “fun” Tweeps, like @ aplusk & @ theonion after hours. Twitter’s own list functionality & apps like Tweetdeck make it really easy to sort your relationships, and focus on the right ones at the right time. 5. Multi-task when you can, but don’t repeat updates There are a lot of tools out there that can pull your Tweets and launch them to other networks. While those seem helpful on the surface, you have to remember your audience & the type of content & frequency that works on each network. While short, quick 140-character updates are welcome on Twitter, your Facebook fans can grow tired of those updates quickly, and would prefer less frequent updates of rich content, such as videos, contests, and photos. So instead of repeating the same exact updates on your different social networks, use a tool like HootSuite to launch network-specific updates from one master account. While all the growth & potential surrounding social media marketing is certainly exciting, it can become a bottomless pit of wasted time. But by staying focused on the right audience and streamlining as much as possible, you can be sure ALL of your marketing initiatives get the love they deserve. Megan Leap is Marketing Manager at ion interactive, a leading provider of advanced landing page software . As Marketing Manager, Megan manages search, email, webinar, and social media campaigns. She has extensive experience in conversion rate optimization and social media marketing, and when not championing high-ROI online marketing strategies, can be found running marathons across the U.S. She is also a frequent contributor to the Post-Click Marketing Blog . Follow Megan on Twitter: @ MeganLeap . Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . 5 Ways to Maximize Social Media Marketing Productivity in the