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What I am going to share with you is not new, but I am surprised at how many people do not use this time saving source. Ping.fm is a resource that I want everyone to know about. If you aren’t using it then you need to rethink the reason why. If you are using this wonderful tool then maybe I can share with you some more helpful tips to help in your successes. In there own words: “Ping.fm is a simple and FREE service that makes updating your social networks a snap!” To me the best part is that the service is free and you can post from anywhere with their mobile, instant messenger and email apps. They also work along with hundreds of other 3rd party apps to make updating your status simple and fast. Ping.fm was recently acquired by Seesmic making the service much more powerful. You can send an update and it can be submitted instantly to 50+ social networks including Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Ning, WordPress, TypePad, Yammer, Status.net and many more. My favorite part about using this valuable resource is that I can post from my iPhone from anywhere sharing with my friends and family something cool. For example, I recently sent an update to all my friends to over 20 of my social networks right from my phone. The update was sent from the beautiful mountains of Utah stating that I had just finished a Half Marathon. Here is a very short video I created showing how easy it is to sign up and start using Ping.fm today: There is also a trick to update your Google Buzz account via Ping.fm and here are the steps: 1. Of course you must have a Ping.fm account, sign up here – http://ping.fm/ 2. Add Gtalk by clicking “Add Network” at the http://ping.fm/networks/ page 3. Next enter your email address and password associated with your Google buzz account then click submit: 4. And for the last step, you need to add Gtalk as a connected service by logging into your Google Buzz account. See images below for steps: That is it, your Ping.fm posts will now automatically post to your Google Buzz account. Most other social networks are much easier to add as you can see in the video I shared above. There are some things you need to know with using Ping.fm as a social media tool. You need to remember that it is simply a tool that will help save you time. It is not an automated tool that will make you millions or get you more followers necessarily. I see many people abuse the tool to the point that they are not being social anymore with their friends and followers. As we know, Social Media is all about the conversation and being social. If all you are doing is submitting updates and not a part of the discussion then you will loose out on what social media really is. Here are some helpful tips and reminders to save time but still be social: Only use Ping.fm as a status update service and not your only means of connecting to your social networks Post your status updates and make sure you still login to your social network profiles to be a part of the dialogue Don’t overdue it with your submissions, you will loose a lot of friends and followers this way Use other tools to help you in the conversation (e.g. Seesmic , Hootsuite , or Tweetdeck ) In conclusion, Ping.fm is simply a tool for us as marketers and individuals to use to help us save time when conversing and sharing stuff with our friends and followers. This free resource has the ability to help us be more productive if we use it correctly and wisely. Bear in mind that any tool can be abused, so just be careful. Also always remember to have fun. Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . Social Media Time Saving

Last week I spoke at PubCon South on the Analytics Strategy panel on the topic of social media. This is something I’m very passionate about and during my preparation for the presentation I uncovered some scary statistics. According to a survey conducted by BazaarVoice in 2009, on average businesses have no idea what their ROI is on any type of social media activity: Here are a few of the lowlights highlights 53% of respondents are unsure about their return on Twitter 50% are unsure about the direct value of LinkedIn 50% are not sure how to measure the impact on business metrics from blogs And yet, companies now-a-days have no problem investing thousands of dollars into social media marketing even if they have no idea if they’ll profit from it. Why have companies gotten so lazy when it comes to marketing spend? Part of the problem is they aren’t properly analyzing their data. Social networks are giving us more and more insight into visitor and performance metrics, but most of us aren’t properly setup to find actionable insights on the campaign’s performance. This series of posts will explain how to properly setup your social media strategy so that you can make better-informed decisions, understand your ROI and adjust your strategy according to the numbers. Let’s get started. Before you do anything else, you need to have a clear understanding of what your goal will be and how you will measure the success of your social media strategy. In other words, we need to define KPIs. There are a couple of guidelines you should follow when definining KPIs: Choose metrics that actually translate into business context (e.g. sales, new leads, customer satisfaction, customer interaction, etc.) Define more than just attention metrics (You want to look at more important metrics than just your fan/follower count) Define KPIs that are actionable (How does knowing what your retweet reach is help you adjust your Twitter strategy?) Create specific KPIs for each social network and specific elements of your website The most important guideline above is to define actionable KPIs. Obviously these types of KPIs are going to be unique to your business, but here are a few examples of what I would consider good actionable KPIs: Number of people in a specific location who follow your company on Twitter Reduction in sales cycles Reduction in support costs Increase in product reviews Product improvement suggestions from [specific social network] If you’d like more KPI ideas, I highly recommend you buy Jim Sterne’s new book, “ Social Media Metrics ” where he has over 100 KPIs listed in the first few pages of the book. Now that we have your KPIs established, we need to configure your analytics. I’ll walk you through that process in part 2 of Creating a Social Media Analytics Action Plan . Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . Creating a Social Media Analytics Action Plan – Part 1: Defining

http://twitter.com/jordankasteler To add a bit of explanation here… Live at Pubcon Dallas there is a blackhat panel going on. Steven Plunkett is attempting to rank Giovanni.net for “social media freak” live during his session. It FAILed. This was to rank #1 instantly through use of a post and Twitter conversation. Follow the coverage on Twitter here: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=social+media+freak Me = #1 Steve Plunkett = 2nd page Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . Social Media

It is important for every company to have a social media policy in place. Depending on the size of your company or organization, your policy may be more or less detailed. It is amazing to think that only 1 in every 3 companies has a social media policy in place. Of course as social media becomes a main-stream marketing tactic, more and more businesses with start to see the importance of having a writing social media policy. Overall Philosophy and

It’s not a hidden secret that link building is an essential part of SEO, but how you go about building links can make a huge difference in your organic visibility. Having your company buy into the fact that actively building links to your site can help your bottom line can help make your efforts a lot easier. Instead of having an in-house SEO or marketing department focused on link building, why not leverage the power of the entire company and have everyone contribute. Roles and