Yahoo on Wednesday announced it would be providing integrated Twitter results into its search engine, and that Yahoo users will start seeing this functionality immediately. The company also laid out a brief roadmap for further Twitter integration across the company’s network of Web sites.

The Twitter/Yahoo  integration supposedly will feature…

• Tweets in search
• Personal Twitter Feeds
• Real-time Public Updates

Read the full story at PC Magazine Titled: Twitter Comes To Yahoo

A great article by Kit Eaton of Fast Company titled “Facebook Turns to the Crowd to Monitor the Crowdies” reviews Facebook’s new system (in testing now) that uses its own members as a data-crunching system. According to the group’s motto it exists to “harness the power and intelligence of Facebook users to support us in keeping Facebook a trusted and vibrant community.” For sure this will spark a user privacy debate in the blogosphere. We will be keeping tabs on this one.

Read the full article here: “Facebook Turns to the Crowd to Monitor the Crowdies“

Check out our new profile at Entrepreneur Connect at:  http://econnect.entrepreneur.com/webdesign/

Leverage the Power of Facebook

A great post on optimizing your facebook page was written by Steve Coulson, a partner at The Advance Guard. Steve gives readers “5 Tips for Optimizing Your Brand’s Facebook Presence” posted on Mashable.

In summary the five tips include:

1. Creating the perfect profile picture
2. Optimizing your website’s Share Preview
3. Displaying different content for Fans and non-Fans
4. Vanity URL, or Custom Domain?
5. Defining a publishing schedule for your content

My favorite and probably most important when dealing with clients who are trying to implement a Facebook strategy is number five: Defining a publishing schedule for your content. Without a content plan most clients neither have the time and/or resources to consistently keep up with writing regular content for their Facebook Fan pages.

One of our clients – Women’s Peace Collection continues to reap the benefits of a well executed PR and Social Media campaign. Among many mentions in the press and media the most recent mentions are from a newspaper, the Star Telegram and a well know blog, Sensational Color.

Check out how the different products were picked up:

Colorful Spending: Gifts That Give Back
http://www.sensationalcolor.com/liveinfullcolor/colorful-spending-gifts-that-give-back/

When you buy holiday gifts that benefit a charity, the good feeling is priceless
http://www.star-telegram.com/living/story/1810654-p2.html

A recent study by the ANA reports that over two-thirds of marketers use social media in their practice. Social media (including blogs and sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn) remains the quickest growing marketing segment. The market is expected to grow beyond a $3.1 billion industry by 2014.

Among social networks being embraced by all marketers, the top sites used are:

• Facebook (74 percent)
• YouTube (65 percent)
• Twitter (63 percent)
• LinkedIn (60 percent)

In 2009, the most effective newer media platforms were as follows:

• Search engine marketing (SEM) (65 percent)
• Own Web site (59 percent)
• Search engine optimization (SEO) (55 percent)
• E-mail marketing (45 percent)

In all, it looks like social media marketing still has a healthy amount of growth in front of it.

read the full article: New ANA/B2B Magazine Study: Marketers Embrace Newer Media Platform