If you have been following this blog, you have probably realized that I am not a big fan of automating Twitter tasks. There are plenty of tools on the market that you can use to completely outsource your Twitter work. But what’s the fun in that? It’s similar to traveling miles to get yourself to a party and then decide to sit outside or in the corner without interacting with other people. Of course, Twitter tools do have a place for active Twitter users. Unfortunately, there are only 24 hours in each day, which means somethings should and need to be outsourced if you are to get the most out of Twitter.

I got familiar with Market Me Tweet on Twitter. There was a discussion about branding one’s tweets on Twitter, and that’s when Market Me Tweet comes in. It’s a Twitter management tool that allows you to brand each and every tweet of yours. But this tool is more than just about branding your tweets. You can use it to manage multiple accounts and monitor your replies, direct messages, and  other people’s time-lines using this software.

Of course, just like any other Twitter tool, Market Me Tweet has a controversial feature as well. The Reply campaign with all its templates and automation capability is something you want to look at with caution. You certainly don’t want to spam Twitter. Besides, I am not sure how template messages can help you build real relationships. It may work in the short-term, but that is not the right approach for the long-term.

There are a lot of things to like about this package. It’s nice to have an option to find new followers and manage existing followers with the smart algorithm feature included in this software. The fact that you can use this account to manage unlimited accounts is a plus as well. The software is pretty affordable as well. So it may be worth checking out if you are planning to move to a premium brand management tool for Twitter. Just don’t spam Twitter, but you already knew that.

A whole lot of people spend hours each day on Facebook updating their status and viewing other people’s status. Facebook is still growing and holds a lot of promise for marketers and businesses. It’s not a finished product by any means. Facebook’s Advertising platform has gone through many changes in the past few months, and it’s become another venue for marketers to take advantage of. Now it seems Facebook is testing status advertising. Essentially, it’s trying to make it easier for Facebook page owners to promote their top status updates and get more action going on their pages.

Credit: Web Pro News

Web Pro News has discovered that some Facebook page owners are seeing the “promote” feature show up next to their status updates. The process seems to be pretty straight forward. Once you click on the promote link, you are going to have to go through a wizard, which will include you approving how much money you want to spend promoting your page and who you want to show it to. From there, you can expect traffic to flow to your pages.

Online marketers are already taking advantage of Facebook to promote their pages. Some argue that advertising will take away from Facebook experience. But advertising is going to be the future of Facebook. That’s how the company has managed to stay afloat while Twitter and other services still struggle to come up with a proper business plan.

Promoting your page status updates is another easy way of increasing traffic and interactions on your Facebook pages. Of course, you want to make sure you spend enough time to optimize your Facebook pages. This latest move by Facebook could be just a test, but we have heard similar stories about Twitter. There is no question we’ll be seeing similar attempts in the future.

Your thoughts: are you against more ads on Facebook?

Being involved in the social media is more than just writing about what you have had for lunch or posting your blog articles to Twitter and Facebook. You want to be part of the community and participate in a meaningful way. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t give your readers on your blog a chance to help make your blog posts go viral. That’s why having proper social media buttons before or after each and every post is essential. If you happen to run your blog using a CMS such as Wordpress, you are in luck. Plugins such as Digg Digg make it so easy to pick and choose what social networks you want to target and add their buttons to your posts fast.

There are three things that you need to consider to get the most out of your social media buttons. You want to make sure you are choosing the buttons that apply to your niche, are displaying them in the right place, and are using a design that doesn’t take away from your stories. That’s what you can accomplish with Digg Digg easily. This plugin enables you to choose the social networks you want to take advantage of on your blog and the site sections you want to display them on. You can even choose the compact model to save some space on your blog.

The plugin is very flexible as it allows you to choose whether you want to display your buttons in a table or as a list. You can stack them together horizontally and vertically. If you are into coding, you can go beyond the options provided in this plugin and pick and choose what you want to display in each and every section of your website.

Digg Digg won’t make your content any better. It just helps you promote your content more effectively with the help of your visitors. The hard work still needs to be done by you.

Google Buzz generated quite a buzz in the past week as it was Google’s latest effort to take on Facebook and Twitter. The service sits on the top of your Gmail account and lets you connect with friends and others. It’s not as polished as Twitter and Facebook by any means, but it does give you a chance to connect to more people and let your content go viral. In fact, if you have a Wordpress blog, you can easily add your blog posts to Google Buzz. Thanks to WP Google-Buzz, you won’t even have to write a line of code.

Thanks to WP Google Buzz, you can add a “buzz it” function to your blog posts. So when your visitors come to your blog and love a post of yours, they can share it with their friends and others through buzz. The plugin is designed to give you flexibility without you having to deal with any code. You can choose to automatically add buzz button to your blog before or after your content or add it manually. You can also no-follow buzz URLs as well.

All in all, if you are looking to get more out of Google Buzz and let your content go viral on that community, WP Google Buzz is a pretty handy tool.

In case you missed it (which you shouldn’t have if you have a Gmail account), Google has decided to start a new social media venture in form of Google Buzz. Google Buzz is designed to bring a whole new social meaning to your Gmail account. The service allows you to update your status and post multi-media content to your Gmail account just like you would on Twitter or Facebook.

What’s interesting about Buzz is the fact that your communications with your friends and followers shows up in your Gmail inbox. That certainly makes it easier to keep track of your messages per se. I also like the fact that the service integrates your content from Picasa and Google Reader. So your followers can see your activities on those sites as well.

You can also add your Twitter account to your Google Buzz account as well. That will allow you to post articles to Twitter and have them show up on your Buzz page.

The service is a work in progress. I do hope that Google adds more social media sites that can be connected go Google Buzz. I am also not sold on the idea of getting direct messages via e-mail. It could make keeping up with e-mail tough, especially if you get a lot of e-mails. The good news is that you can post photos and links to your account much easier, and you are not limited to 140 characters. Certainly a nice move by Google.

What did you think of Google Buzz? Is it the Twitter killer many have made it out to be?

So you want to build your very own super community? One of the best ways to do that is by creating your own blog and adding only top notch content to it. That’s simplifying the matter. If you are passionate about blogging and take the time to engage your community and provide them more value, there is no reason you can’t grow your community and move your blog to the next level.

One of the best ways to get people more involved on your blog is by giving them a way to communicate and connect with your other online presences. Let’s say you have a fan page or a Twitter account for your blog. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could get your blog visitors to connect with you on Twitter and Facebook as well? That’s where Wibiya comes in. It’s a cool toolbar system that you can install on your blog to communicate with your visitors more effectively. It comes with all kinds of apps that you can add to your toolbar to bring your online presences to your toolbar without too much trouble.

Wibiya is one flexible service. It not only allows you to add all kinds of widgets to your toolbar, it also makes it possible to run these apps from your website, hence keeping the visitors’ attention on your blog and your content.

There are plenty of apps that you can add to your Wibiya toolbar, but here are some of the more important ones:

• iTranslation
• Random Posts
• Realtime Users
• Live Notifications
• Facebook Community
• Facebook Fanpage
• Twitter Dashboard
• Digg
• Website Chat

You can also add games and all kinds of other applications to your footer. You’d be surprised what you can do with this toolbar. While it may not increase your traffic 100 folds, it does give you a better chance to engage your visitors and get their attention. Another good social toolbar to add and a very good alternative to Skysa.

In case you have been surfing the Web a lot lately, you may have seen those sites that take advantage of footer bar to promote social media profiles and related RSS feeds. Thanks to services such as Skysa, you can build your own social media bar and give your visitors more ways to interact with your website and connect with you on social networking websites.

Skysa footer bars essentially add a task-bar to your website. So your users can open up different windows on your website and even join your chat-room. Designing your own Skysa is not that difficult. All you have to do is provide your information and pick the design you feel fit your website’s layout the best.

What I like about Skysa bars is all the apps that you can add to your bar. So whether you want to promote your Twitter account or let others to connect with you on YouTube, there is an app for that. Here are just a few apps you can add to your footer bar:

• Chat Room
• Facebook Fan page
• Flickr
• Google Maps
• Navigation Widget
• RSS Feed
• Translate
• Twitter
• Voting Poll
• YouTube

If you are an advanced user, you can add you own widgets to your bar. So you’ll have plenty of ways to add more interactivity to your website.

Footer bars are truly underrated. It’s true that a lot of people may not pay attention to your bar, but some visitors do. By giving them more ways to interact with your website, you only help build a more solid community around your website. Considering that Skysa’s bars are for free, there is no reason not to try them.

Being involved on Twitter is more than posting philosophical quotes or retweeting what others have to say. Twitter is an extremely powerful tool for businesses who know how to use it. There are plenty of ways that businesses can get value out of Twitter. They can listen to what people have to say about their niche and pick up ideas for future ideas. They can also track their reputation on Twitter. Best of all, they can provide real-time support to customers via Twitter. That’s where Followbase comes in. It’s an interesting service that lets you get in touch with other companies’ support teams and get help via Twitter.

FollowBase is pretty simple to work with. It’s essentially designed to help people get the support they need via Twitter. If you happen to be a business owner, you can just add your company by entering the Twitter account for your business. The fun part starts when you claim your forum on FollowBase. That will allow you to communicate with your customers more effectively and keep the spammers out as well.

The service is also helpful if you want to find out more about your competitors and how they handle their customer service on Twitter. It can certainly be used as a learning tool. The forum is pretty flexible as you can customize the look and feel, add employees, and even upload your company logo to the site.

So why is FollowBase important? It’s more the concept here that matters rather than the execution. Twitter has applications for business and can help small & big businesses support their customers more effectively. Sooner rather than later not having a Twitter account for your business will be similar to not having a business phone #. So if you haven’t taken advantage of Twitter already, now’s a good time to start.

The number of social media experts is on the rise. In fact, that number may be growing as fast as the number of new blogs. There are a lot of people who are looking for new ways to market themselves to employers and their clients. Being a social media expert (or claiming it) is certainly one way to gain some extra attention. But social media is not about what you claim you know. It’s not even about what you do know. It’s more about what you can do with the knowledge you have.

You can be an expert in Google Wave or Twitter. You may know all the commands and even spend hours everyday playing with these services. But if you don’t know how you can provide value to your company through these services, you are not really an expert. There are too many people who spend their time going to conferences, picking up industry jargon, and claiming things that are not necessarily true. These won’t really make you an expert in the field of social media nor does the fact that you can set up a blog by yourself.

Most of us have seen the movie Matrix. There is a big difference between knowing you can do something and actually walking the walk. If you are planning to get a job as a social media expert, you want to be able to demonstrate what you can do with the social media. That’s more than having a certain number of followers on Twitter or blogging everyday. Think about it. An employer that is going to give you a chance with its social media program is going to expect you to give it a good return on investment. As a social media expert, you are going to have to use services such as Twitter to listen to what customers have to say, analyze their ideas, address their negative feedback, and bring prospects on board and help them make their decisions in an easier fashion. You may also have to run contests, out-reach programs, and social media ROI analysis for your company.

The best way to master the above tasks is by doing it and practicing your craft. If you own a blog, you can use it to run contests (on your blog or Facebook page). You can also practice determining your own social media ROI to make sure you are ready to do it for your employer. The same approach applies to other tasks as well. The moral of story is, you can’t just claim you are a social media expert. That means nothing these days. There are over 15,000 of them on Twitter already. What makes you stand out?

We have seen a lot of social networking websites emerge out of nowhere in the past few months. They all you to share all kinds of information with the world. You can get to share your favorite books, lists, videos, and more with the world. With Blippy, you get to share what you are buying and where you are buying it from with the world. I know. Why would you want to share what you are buying online with others. Maybe it is to get feedback or show others what stores you are supporting. Whatever the case, the idea can be certainly interesting.

Now here is the crazy idea. You can share your financial information with the service to help it draw out more accurate information from your account. Not that we suggest anyone doing that. Of course, you don’t share the information on what you are buying just for the sake of having fun. The cool thing about this service is that you can get instant feedback from your friends on things you are buying. So you can do social shopping with this service as well.

If you happen to be a marketer, you may find the information on Blippy useful. Being able to figure out who’s spending how much money at what store can be useful for online marketers as they can optimize their campaigns based on that information. All in all, an interesting service to try.