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Over the course of 2009, a consistent theme that Google has been involved with is that of speed. In announcement after announcement, Google has talked about the importance of speed on the web, and how the company wants to do everything it can to make the web a faster place. Has it occurred to you that how fast your page loads may have a direct effect on how your site ranks in Google? Don't worry, it hasn't had an impact...yet. In an interview with WebProNews, Google's Matt Cutts told us that speed may soon be a ranking factor. - Marc Baumann

So you want to get up to speed fast on the latest social media thinking. Maybe give your colleague, boss or friend a dose of new social strategies. But where to start? Amazon nicely suggests 44,444 titles that they would be delighted to overnight direct to your bookshelf. Ummm, no thanks. Fortunately, you’ve got your own social media fairy right here. (Hi!) We’ve already done the hard part for you, and have narrowed down those 44,444 titles to 5 killer must-reads that can get you on the road to social media stardom. - Marc Baumann

PR-firm Edelman has developed a new tool that measures an individual's importance or "gravitas" on Twitter using metrics that go beyond a mere tally of followers. The tool, Tweetlevel, joins a growing number of third party data mining and analysis tools developed to tease out user trends and influence on the popular microblogging site. Importance and Trust Tweetlevel does take into account how many people are following a Twitter user. That number, though, is not themost important attribute the tool weighs, Instead, it places greater weight on what the tweeter says (importance), whether he or she actively participates within the community, and whether people believe what he or she is saying (trust). Each score is rated on a 100-point scale. - Marc Baumann

Great presentation of Katie Paine of KDPaine & Partners about on social media measurement at the 2009 PRSA International Conference in San Diego. The audience had to grapple with the idea (read truth) that it’s the end of measurement as we know it.So, if you are measuring success with any of the following, you might be labeled Old School (and need to keep reading).1. AVE (ad value equivalency) 2. Eyeballs 3. Hits 4. Couch Potatoes, 5. # of Twitter Followers, 6. # of Facebook Friends/Fans - Marc Baumann

To help marketers boost their reach on Facebook, the company has added an option that lets companies advertise to friends of their brand fans on the social network. The new "Friends of Connections" targeting feature allows you to "expand your audience reach by delivering your ads to the friends of people already connected with your Page, Application, Group or Event," according to a a post on the Facebook Ads Page. So when someone sees the ad, they will see which of their friends is a fan. Previously, advertisers could only target people who "fanned" their pages, used their applications, or signed up to any company groups or events via the site.The new targeting capability "should lead to increased conversion on Facebook Ads (Facebook's performance advertising system), because users will find the social context and implied endorsement more interesting," according to the Inside Facebook blog. - Marc Baumann

Social media sites and mobile advertising appear to be affecting consumer purchase decisions at an increasing rate as the holidays near. A study conducted by Deloitte from Sept. 24 through Oct. 2 on 10,878 consumers found that 17 percent planned to use social media sites to shop for gifts during the next several weeks, according to the research firm. Of those who answered in that fashion, 60 percent are planning to use the sites to hunt down discounts, coupons, and bargains. Fifty-two percent of that same pool said they would use social media to check gift wish lists of friends and families. - Marc Baumann

I'm pleased to announce that Forrester's five year forecast is now complete and live on Forrester's site. This research will certainly help marketers plan their channel strategies. Search continues to lead interactive spend followed by display. And owned social media assets (like internal blogs, community sites) are really the only emerging media getting traction in today's economic climate. - Marc Baumann

If you were a first-time visitor from Mars and you happened to drop into a marketing meeting somewhere in the United States, you might assume that marketing people do nothing but talk about "TGIF." That's Twitter, Google, the internet and Facebook. - Marc Baumann

A growing number of businesses are making Facebook an indispensible part of hanging out their shingles. Small businesses are using it to find new customers, build online communities of fans and dig into gold mines of demographic information. - Marc Baumann

A growing number of businesses are making Facebook an indispensible part of hanging out their shingles. Small businesses are using it to find new customers, build online communities of fans and dig into gold mines of demographic information. - Marc Baumann

According to a new report from Forrester Research, interactive marketing will grow to near $55 billion by 2014, but some industries -- like consumer goods, automotive, and media and entertainment -- will grow interactive investment faster than others. Big brand advertisers -- like media and entertainment, consumer goods, automotive, and health care firms -- spend less online today than direct marketers, according to Forrester. However, they also have the highest growth potential. The B2B category -- like accounting firms, consultancies, and agencies - will stay at about 9% of the overall interactive pie over the next five years, growing from $2.3 billion today to $4.8 billion in 2014 as B2B marketers adopt emerging media and improve the sophistication of existing efforts. - Marc Baumann

Yes, you can measure the ROI of marketing via social media campaigns. The attitude toward social media today is much like the "build it and they will come" approach that companies took to Web site development in the early days of the Internet. Over time, businesses learned how to measure the value of click-throughs, e-mail campaigns and other Web site functions, and today they can calculate the ROI of their online initiatives. Now, as more companies adopt social media for business dealings, leading organizations are trying to assess the actual value of using these tools. They're finding that while social media technologies do have business benefits, calculating the hard numbers of ROI is a difficult yet necessary step as they try to decide what actions to take next. - Marc Baumann

While social media often commands favorable media attention, the less often told story is that successful initiatives are rare to come by and that there are still a number of organizational roadblocks that managers need to overcome in order to make progress. Still, we are seeing signs of progress in the form of new efficiencies, more direct ways to connect with customers, and ways to make products and services better. From my experience working and talking with people in large, complex organizations, here are a small sample of obstacles to look for with suggestions on how you might overcome them: - Marc Baumann

The social blog scene is getting pretty crowded these days and we cannot just stand here without releasing a new list. So give it up for the coolest social media & social marketing blogs out there! - Marc Baumann

OneRiot and search engine Taptu plan to announce Tuesday that people have an option to browse the Web on mobile phones for trending topics and the most relevant results. Taptu is the first mobile search engine to link into OneRiot's application programming interface (API) to develop a mobile app. - Marc Baumann

The SEO is a process of choosing the most appropriate targeted keyword phrases related to your site and ensuring that this ranks your site highly in search engines so that when someone searches for specific phrases it returns your site in search result. It basically involves fine tuning the content of your site along with the HTML and Meta tags and also involves appropriate link building process. We are listing 11 Smart Keyword Related Apps to Help You Simplify Your SEO Task. These online applications are useful for researching how people search the web and then optimizing your own web pages so that more people find your web site. - Marc Baumann

Digital marketing company Razorfish has just launched its third annual FEED survey of 1,000 "connected consumers." The survey is focused on online consumer behavior. This year Facebook and Twitter feature prominently. 40% of respondents "friended" brands on Facebook, while 25% reported following brands on Twitter. What's more, Razorfish found that consumers access brands on Twitter and Facebook mainly for deals and promotions. Of those who follow a brand on Twitter, nearly 44% reported that access to exclusive deals is the main reason. On Facebook or MySpace, 37% said that access to exclusive deals or offers was their main reason for friending brands. Over 1/4 of respondents reported having followed a brand on Twitter, which is encouraging news for companies wanting to use Twitter to promote themselves. - Marc Baumann

Facebook Users can Now Share & Discover via Sheraton's website - Is this the future of websites & social media? - Marc Baumann

Local media companies are working with social media tools and user-generated content contributors to expand their local reach. Including: Chicago Now and Queen Anne View. - Marc Baumann

Over the past year we have worked with a number of organizations that have chosen to relocate their sites from an existing domain to a new domain. One of the questions that always comes up early in the process is “how much traffic are we going to lose?” It is an excellent question and not an easy one to answer, but in today’s column I am going to explore that exact question. 1. Domain change. 2. Structural changes or URL changes. 3. Content changes. Here are some of the types of changes that can have an impact on traffic or rankings. - Marc Baumann

Today we’re going to jump into the second pillar of Internet Marketing for Smart People, which is copywriting. More specifically, direct response copywriting, which is used by direct marketers to trigger very specific responses from readers. Plus: Links to Copyblogger's 11-part series on “How to Write Magnetic Headlines”. The first thing you should know is that copywriting and content are two different critters. Related, but different. We’ll talk lots more about that as we go forward. - Marc Baumann

What impact will social networks have on search marketing strategies? Erik Qualman, global vice president of online marketing for EF Education, offers insights on this and other business trends in his new book, "Socialnomics: How Social Media Transforms the Way We Live and Do Business." I interviewed Erik in advance of the SES Chicago conference in December where he will participate on the panel, "PR, Social Media and Search." - Marc Baumann

Here, then, is my 10-step social media strategy checklist. It's hardly magical stuff; you could probably apply a lot of these questions to just about any advertising or marketing you do. But going through this checklist as you build a social media strategy will help you develop a strategy based on results, not hype. - Marc Baumann

The major search engines have a history of evolving their indexing capabilities to keep up with new types of digital content. First it was HTML text, then blog content, then multimedia files like videos, and more recently it was flash content. Now the search engines are indexing another type of content -- tweets! That's right, for those of you who haven't heard, it's official -- Google has reached an agreement with Twitter to show tweets in their search results. While previously, Twitter profile pages may have been surfacing in the listings, now individual tweets can show up as a unique listing. So, what does that mean for marketers? Well, just like when new types of content have been added to the search indexes in the past and we've had to adapt our strategies to optimize for this new content, we're going to have to do the same for tweets. - Marc Baumann

Inspired by the results of experimental social media campaigns, some major retailers are gearing up to roll out more elaborate social networking campaigns than they did last year. Though overall online ad spending among retailers is expected to increase this holiday season, details have emerged over the last several weeks that indicate merchants plan to use more of this money on sites such as Twitter and Facebook. Shop.org, the digital division of the National Retail Federation, found that 47.1% of retailers surveyed will be increasing their use of social media this holiday season. Forrester Research predicts that spending on social media marketing in the US will reach $ 716 million this year and grow to $3.11 billion in 2014. - Marc Baumann

Smart brands use Twitter in meaningful ways, and most of them use their brand name as a way to make sure customers can find and recognize them. This piece, and the knowledge I learned from the incessant hours invested, demonstrate why brands do belong on Twitter. No other medium gets you inside a business or brand quiet like Twitter. - Marc Baumann

Did you know Facebook is a great tool for your business? Is your company utilizing the new features of Facebook pages to do social media marketing? If you are not yet leveraging the power of social media to boost your sales or engaging your customers, it is time you seriously take action on this front. - Marc Baumann

What's a megatrend, you ask? It's something big. I'm talking really big. Think of a giant unstoppable tsunami of change transforming society as we know it. Think global warming scale -- then apply it to mass human behavior. Think glaciers carving the grand canyon of consumer sentiment. Here's a megatrend: "Social media has permanently transformed the way people connect and share information." - Marc Baumann

Google Alerts, once the secret of savvy online marketers and social media experts, have become the de facto way for the masses to keep one eye always on the web. While there have been attempts to apply the instant alerts concept to Twitter (Twitter), we haven’t seen an application get the formula completely right yet. Perhaps we spoke to soon, as we just discovered Listiti, a new web-based application that promises to do one thing: send you email alerts whenever tweets from specific Twitter Lists match your specified query. - Marc Baumann

In 2009 we saw exponential growth of social media. According to Nielsen Online, Twitter alone grew 1,382% year-over-year in February, registering a total of just more than 7 million unique visitors in the US for the month. Meanwhile, Facebook continued to outpace MySpace. So what could social media look like in 2010? In 2010, social media will get even more popular, more mobile, and more exclusive — at least, that's my guess. What are the near-term trends we could see as soon as next year? In no particular order: - Marc Baumann

As the Web matures, a greater volume of our attention and focus continues to shift from other mediums to the Web for not only purchase considerations but also for content discovery. Nielsen released a new study that documents the extent of this shift and also captures an evolution in our online behavior as we augment traditional search engines with the search boxes within social networks. As such, Google is no longer the only hub for content discovery. The statusphere is introducing new channels that now serve as our attention dashboards and it’s the collection of streams of consciousness from those we choose to follow. Collecta, Twitter Search, Facebook News Feeds, FriendFeed, etc., serve as the gateways to insight and enlightenment. The Nielsen study fielded in August 2009 consisted of 1,800 participants in which they looked at three main consumer segments using search (Searchers), portals (Portalists) or social media (Socializers) as their primary vehicle for content discovery. - Marc Baumann