A B2B Guide for Blogging Lead Generation

With all of the online buzz today about social media, blogging may seem like an old idea to some businesses. However, for many, it is still a new frontier. I previously took a deep look at leveraging Twitter for lead generation as the first in our series of social media lead generation articles. Today, let's take a deep dive into business blogging to ensure your business is doing everything it can to leverage its business blog for lead generation opportunities.

When it comes to proving the ROI of B2B social media, blogging can be the best place to start for many organizations. Blogging is such an important aspect of driving B2B marketing results because it delivers many direct and indirect business benefits.

Make a Blog Part of Your Website

While this post focuses mainly on lead generation aspects and less on content creation aspects, it is important to start with one critically important understanding: to get the maximum lead generation benefits from blogging, your business needs to make its blog a part of its corporate website. Blogs are dynamic; they drive fresh content that prospects and search engines love. Traditionally, corporate websites were static; they had traditionally served as digital brochures for businesses. By connecting your business blog to your website, you can transform your website into a dynamic resource and generate search engine traffic from your blog posts.

Think of it this way. The web is not linear. People don't just visit your homepage and select the page they want. Instead, if you are blogging, the majority of your site visitors will start their visit with your blog because they'll find it through search engines, social media and subscriptions. By making your blog a part of your business' website, you can make it easy for new visitors to move from your blog to other parts of your website that support lead generation.

Traditionally, blogs are added to existing business websites in two ways. The first format is a subdomain: blog.yourdomain.com. The second option is as a page on the site: yourdomain.com/blog. Both are good options.  The most important issue is that the blog be part of your main business website.

Diversify Lead Generation Offers

If a person is visiting your blog, they could be at a variety of points in the leads and sales process: a first time visitor, a warm, sales-ready lead or somewhere in between. As a B2B marketer, your job is to diversify the lead generation offers available on your blog so they apply to these different personas. These offers will fall into two main categories.

The first category is content. If someone is visiting your site for the first time, it's likely they aren't ready for a ton of product-focused information. Instead, they probably want to learn more about your business and, more importantly, your expertise. The best way to convey industry expertise is through some type of premium content. This content could be an eBook, a webinar, research or other type of content that provides more depth than a blog post. 

Warm leads need a different type of offer. They already know that you have expertise, possibly because they have read one of your premium content pieces or because they have already talked to a sales rep. These leads want more product-focused information.  They want detail, a discount or a free trail. This is the second type of lead generation offer that should be found on your blog. This type of offer is a direct product offer. 

It is important to make sure both of these offers are attached to landing pages that can capture new and reconverting lead information.

Define Blog Call-To-Action Placement

Now that we have a clear understanding of the types of offers needed to maximize lead generation, our next step is to determine how to best promote these offers on a business blog. All blogs are different, and depending on your audience, consumption habits may also be different.  Therefore, it is critically important that you test the placement, design and copy of your blog's calls-to-action to maximize your conversion rate.

While testing is important, business blogs have a few foundational opportunities for call-to-action placements that can serve as a great place to start the blogging lead generation process.

3 Important Blog Call-To Action Placements

1. The End of a Blog Post - Putting a call-to-action at the end of a blog post is the offline equivalent of calling a lead within minutes of a conversion. If someone has just read a piece of your content, it is likely they are at the peak of their interest. If you can place a call-to-action at the bottom of a blog post that connects with a content offer similar to the topic of the article, then you can dramatically increase your response rate for generating business blog leads.

2. Top Bar and/or Side Bar - Think of your blog like a publishing site. What type of content offers are most applicable to the majority of your blog readers? Use these offers in visual calls-to-action, either in your sidebar or below your blog's navigation. This type of call-to-action will have a lower click-through rate, but it will help capture leads that are not focused on a particular blog post but are instead scanning your blog.

3. Text Links - It is common practice to link to other websites and blogs in your own blog posts. Additionally, it is important to take the opportunity, where relevant, to include some anchor text links to offers related to the blog post. Use these anchor text links to direct readers to landing pages with a relevant offer as a way to help supplement lead generation and target readers who are focused on solving a particular business problem.

Analyze and Iterate

This post provides a structure and methodology for blogging lead generation, but it is up to you to optimize it for your business. Content is still king. Great content will drive qualified visitors, which is the foundation for blogging lead generation. When working with your own calls-to-action, it is important to analyze data on a regular basis to determine what offers, calls-to-action and placements work best for your audience. Look at click-through rates to landing pages and conversion rates on landing pages as two important metrics for determining what is working best for your blog. Once you indentify what works best, focus more time and effort on those key drivers, and reduce efforts on offers and calls-to-action that are not driving results.

via blog.hubspot.com

For more articles like this one checkout Rent Roll Growth

10 Common Website Mistakes and How to Fix Them

While hosting the past few Website Optimization Webinars, I've noticed that many businesses could benefit from similar easy fixes to their websites. All of these mistakes are easy to identify for free using Website Grader. In this post, I'll show you the common mistakes I've seen, and help you in fixing the ones that apply to you.

Where possible, I will demonstrate these opportunities through Phantom EFX, a guest from a recent webinar. 

10 Common But Easily Fixable Website Mistakes

1. Page Title Longer than 70 Characters

A page title is the text shown at the top of your browser window.

It is also the title of a page as shown in Google search results.

Page titles tell visitors what a page is about. Search engines and browsers may cut off your page title if it is too long. In most cases, it is good to keep your page title below 70 characters long.

From a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) perspective, it is good to keep your page titles concise. If your page title is too long, it will dilute the importance of each term in the title. This might prevent you from ranking well on any of the words in your page title.  

Website Fix #1:
Come up with a concise but keyword-rich description of your page that is under 70 characters long. Make that your page title.

2. Meta Description Longer than 150 Characters

Meta descriptions are important for drawing in visitors from search. The meta description is the text under a page title in search results. Like page titles, meta descriptions will get cut off and replaced by "..." if they are too long.

Website Fix #2:
Come up with a meta description of your page that adds detail to your page title, but remains under 150 characters long.

3. Page Title not Targeting Realistic Keywords

A key factor in search engine ranking is how closely the title of a page matches the user's search terms.

Phantom EFX's home page title (pictured below) illustrates the two common mistakes in targeting realistic keywords.

 First, their page title is written too much like an advertisement. Users are not likely to search for the "#1" casino game publisher. Avoid unnecessary descriptive words like this, because users don't actually search for them. 

Additionally, their company name should not be the start of their page title. The first few words in a page title are the most influential in search engine results. Your want people that don't know about your brand to be able to find you, so using more genreal industry keywords is important.

Website Fix #3:
Think about (or look at using analytics) the words that users might searching to find you. Adjust your page title to remain readable, but match these words more closely.

4. Page Keywords Are All the Same

Each page on your website is a new opportunity to get found online. You don't want to waste all these opportunities by reusing the same page titles or internal page keywords.

Website Fix #4:
Diversify your keywords. Think what each page has to offer uniquely, and target keywords based on that.

5. Domain Name Set to Expire Soon

Search engines favor websites that are not set to expire for a long time. Having your domain name registered for the next few years shows committment, and means your website is less likely to be spammy.

Website Fix #5:
Renew your ownership of your domain for $10-$20 per year for a good SEO boost.

6. Images Have No ALT Text

Search engines do not "read" images. They scan primarily for text. Fortunately with the ALT tag, you can associate text with an image. ALT text does not have as much influence on the page keywords as actual text on the page, but is still worth having.

Website Fix #6:
Assign ALT text to a pictures whenever possible by adding something like the following to your HTML.

7. No CSS

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) are not only a good way to ensure that your website has consistent design, they also help your SEO.

Many websites still have layout-related information in their HTML. Since HTML is the language that search engines understand best, make sure your HTML is as concise as possisble. This ensures that search engines extract the most relevant keywords and other information from your pages.

Website Fix #7:
Put your layout-related code into CSS, and take it out of your HTML.

8. Conversion Form Too Lengthy

Conversion forms are crucial for converting traffic into leads. However, more traffic will be willing to become a lead if your form is done right. Take a look at the Phantom EFX conversion form below.

Do they really need the address information for a person in addition to their email addresses? As a site visitor, I don't understand this. Would they actually send me snail mail?

I'll bet they're better off communicating with leads via email for now, and requesting a home address only when they need to deliver something to them.

Website Fix #8:
Limit the content of your forms to only the information you need.

9. Too little (or Too Much) Text

Search engines read text better than anything else. So, it's important to have text on your web page. Knowing this, some people cram as much text as possible into a page. As a result, search engines then struggle to extract the relevant text.

Website Fix #9:
Make sure your page is readable and contains the keywords you are targeting. However, don't add unimportant text just to have more of it.

10. Not Using Analytics

Even after you've created interesting content on your website, optimized, and converted traffic into leads, your work is not done! If you want your website to be all it can be, you should analyze your results, and refine your SEO strategy accordingly.

Website Fix #10:
Install and start using an analytics program. To learn how to use analytics more effectively, take a look at HubSpot's Web Analytics Marketing Hub.

What are some other common Website Optimization mistakes you've seen?

via blog.hubspot.com

The Ultimate Glossary: 101 Social Media Marketing Terms Explained

On the web today, things change fast. New applications launch every day and existing applications continue to evolve and add new features. As we all learn about social media and inbound marketing and we teach others about it, having a resource that quickly and clearly explains all of the basic terms and applications is critically important.

I hope that you will pass this blog post along to others in your organization and maybe even print it out to have on hand when others have questions related to social media marketing.

Social Media Marketing Dictionary: 101 Terms to Know

A

Application Programing Interface (API) - An API is a documented interface that allows one software application to to interact with another application. An example of this is the Twitter API.

Avatar - An Avatar is an image or username that represents a person online within forums and social networks.

B

BackType - BackType is a social media analytics company that helps companies measure their social engagement. Previously the service started as a blog comment search engine.

Bit.ly - Bit.ly is a free URL shortening service that provides statistics for the links users share online. Bit.ly is popularly used to condense long URLs to make them easier to share on social networks such as Twitter.

Blip.TV - Blip.TV is a online video sharing site that provides a free and paid platform for individuals and companies who host an online video show.

Blog - Blog is a word that was created from two words: “web log”. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. "Blog" can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.

Blogger - Blogger is a free blogging platform owned by Google that allows individuals and companies to host and publish a blog typically on a subdomain. Example: yourblogname.blogspot.com

Blog Talk Radio - Blog Talk Radio is a free web application that allows users to host live online radio shows.

BoardReader - BoardReader is a free search engine that allows users to search for keywords only in posts and titles of online forums, a popular forum of social networking.

Boxee - Boxee is a social video application that allows users to watch online videos on their TVs and computers. Users can share and watch videos from a variety of online videos sources for free.

C

Chat - Chat can refer to any kind of communication over the Internet, but traditionally refers to one-to-one communication through a text-based chat application commonly referred to as instant messaging applications.

Collecta - Collecta is a real-time search engine that includes results from from blogs, microblogs, news feeds and photo sharing services as they are published.

Collective Intelligence - Collective Intelligence is a shared or group intelligence that emerges from the collaboration and competition of many individuals and appears in consensus decision-making in social networks.

Comment - A comment is a response that is often provided as an answer of reaction to a blog post or message on a social network. Comments are a primary form of two-way communication on the social web.

Compete - Compete is a web-based application that offers users and businesses web analytics and enables people to compare and contrast the statistics for different websites over time.

Craigslist - Craigslist is a popular online commerce site in which users sell a variety of goods and services to other users. The service has been credited for causing the reduction of classified advertising in newspapers across the United States.

Creative Commons - Creative Commons is a nonprofit corporation dedicated to making it easier for people to share and build upon the work of others, consistent with the rules of copyright. It provides free licenses and other legal tools to mark creative work with the freedom the creator wants it to carry, so others can share, remix, use commercially, or any combination thereof.

D

Delicious - Delicious is a free online bookmarking service that lets users save website addresses publicly and privately online so that they can be accessed from any device connected to the Internet and shared with friends.

Digg - Digg is a social news website that allows members to submit and vote for articles. Articles with the most votes appear on the homepage of the site and subsequently are seen by the largest portion of the site’s membership as well as other visitors.

Disqus - Disqus is a comment system and moderation tool for your site. This service lets you add next-gen community management and social web integration to any site on any platform.

DocStoc - DocStoc is an online sharing service for documents. Users can view, upload, share and sell documents.

E

EventBrite - Eventbrite is a provider of online event management and ticketing services. Eventbrite is free if your event is free. If you sell tickets to your event, Eventbrite collects a fee per ticket.

F

Facebook - Facebook is a social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them. Facebook is the largest social network in the world with more than 500 million users.

Firefox - Firefox is an open-source web browser. It has emerged as one of the most popular web browsers on the Internet and allows users to customize their browser through the use of third-party extensions.

Flash Mob - A flash mob is a large group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place, perform an unusual and pointless act for a brief time, then quickly disperse. The term flash mob is generally applied only to gatherings organized via telecommunications, social media, or viral emails.

Flickr - Flickr is a social network based around online picture sharing. The service allows users to store photos online and then share them with others through profiles, groups, sets and other methods.

Forums - Also known as a message board, a forum is an online discussion site. It originated as the modern equivalent of a traditional bulletin board, and a technological evolution of the dialup  bulletin board system.

Foursquare - Foursquare is a social network in which friends share their locations and connect with others in close physical proximity to each other. The service uses a system of digital badges to reward players who “checkin” to different types of locations.

G

Google Buzz - Google Buzz is a social networking and messaging tool from Google, designed to integrate into the company's web-based email program, Gmail. Users can share links, photos, videos, status messages and comments organized in "conversations" and visible in the user's inbox.

Google Chrome - Google Chrome is a free web browser produced by Google that fully integrates into its online search system as well as other applications.

Google Documents - Google Documents is a group of web-based office applications that includes tools for word processing, presentations and spreadsheet analysis. All documents are stored and edited online and allow multiple people to collaborate on a document in real-time.

Google Wave - Google Wave is a collaboration tool developed by Google as a next-generation solution to e-mail communication. A wave is a live, shared space on the web where people can discuss and work together using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

Gowalla - Gowalla is a social network in which friends share their locations and connect with others in close psychical proximity to each other.

Groundswell - A social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other, rather than from traditional institutions like corporations. (Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff, Groundswell, pg. 9)

H

Hashtag - A hashtag is a tag used on the social network Twitter as a way to annotate a message. A hashtag is a word or phrase preceded by a “#”. Example: #yourhashtag. Hashtags are commonly used to show that a tweet, a Twitter message, is related to an event or conference.

hi5 - hi5 is a social network focused on the youth market. It is a social entertainment destination, with a focus on delivering a fun and entertainment-driven social experience online to users around the world.

HootSuite - HootSuite is a web-based Twitter client. With HootSuite, you can manage multiple Twitter profiles, pre-schedule tweets, and view metrics.

HTML - HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is a programing language for web pages. Think of HTML as the brick-and-mortar of pages on the web -- it provides content and structure while CSS supplies style. HTML has changed over the years and it is on the cusp of its next version: HTML5.

I

Inbound Marketing - Inbound marketing is a style of marketing that essentially focuses on getting found by customers. This sense is related to relationship marketing and Seth Godin's idea of permission marketing. David Meerman Scott recommends that marketers "earn their way in" (via publishing helpful information on a blog etc.) in contrast to outbound marketing where they used to have to "buy, beg, or bug their way in" (via paid advertisements, issuing press releases in the hope they get picked up by the trade press, or paying commissioned sales people, respectively).

Instant Messaging - Instant messaging (IM) is a form of real-time direct text-based communication between two or more people. More advanced instant messaging software clients also allow enhanced modes of communication, such as live voice or video calling.

J

Joomla - Joomla is an content management system (CMS) which enables users to build websites and online applications.

K

Kyte - Kyte is an online and mobile video application that provides video hosting and stream for both recorded and live video feeds.

L

Lifecasting - Lifecasting is a continual broadcast of events in a person's life through digital media. Typically, lifecasting is transmitted through the Internet and can involve wearable technology.

Like - A “Like” is an action that can be made by a Facebook user. Instead of writing a comment for a message or a status update, a Facebook user can click the "Like" button as a quick way to show approval and share the message.

Link Building - Link building is an aspect of search engine optimization in which website owners develop strategies to generate links to their site from other websites with the hopes of improving their search engine ranking. Blogging has emerged as a popular method of link building.

LinkedIn - LinkedIn is a business-oriented social networking site. Founded in December 2002 and launched in May 2003, it is mainly used for professional networking. As of June 2010, LinkedIn had more than 70 million registered users, spanning more than 200 countries and territories worldwide

Lurker - A lurker online is a person who reads discussions on a message board, newsgroup, social network, or other interactive system, but rarely or never participates in the discussion.

M

Mashup - A content mashup contains multiple types of media drawn from pre-existing sources to create a new work. Digital mashups allow individuals or businesses to create new pieces of content by combining multiple online content sources.

MySpace - MySpace is a social networking website owned by News Corporation. MySpace became the most popular social networking site in the United States in June 2006 and was overtaken internationally by its main competitor, Facebook, in April 2008.

MyPunchbowl - MyPunchbowl.com is a social network that facilitates party planning and provides members with ideas, invitations, favors, gift registries, photo/video sharing, and more.

N

News Reader - A news reader allows users to aggregate articles from multiple websites into one place using RSS feeds. The purpose of these aggregators is to allow for a faster and more efficient consumption of information.

Newsvine - Newsvine is a social news site similar to Digg in which users submit and vote for stories to be shared and read by other members of the community.

O

Opera - Opera is an open-source web browser. While not as popular as Firefox, Opera is used as the default browser on some gaming systems and mobile devices.

Orkut - Orkut is a social networking website that is owned and operated by Google. The website is named after its creator, Google employee Orkut Büyükkökten. Although Orkut is less popular in the United States than competitors Facebook and MySpace, it is one of the most visited websites in India and Brazil.

P

Pandora - Pandora is a social online radio station that allows users to create stations based on their favorite artists and types of music.

Permalink - A permalink is an address or URL of a particular post within a blog or website.

Podcast - A podcast, or non-streamed webcast, is a series of digital media files, either audio or video, that are released episodically and often downloaded through an RSS feed..

Posterous - Posterous is a blogging and content syndication platform that allows users to post content from any computer or mobile device by sending an e-mail.

PostRank - PostRank monitors and collects social engagement related to content around the web. Essentially it helps publishers understand which type of content promotes sharing on the social web.

Q

Qik - Qik is an online video streaming service that lets users to stream video live from their mobile phones to the web.

Quantcast - Quantcast provides website traffic and demographics for websites. The tool is primarily used by online advertisers looking to target specific demographics.

R

Real-Time Search - Real-time search is the method of indexing content being published online into search engine results with virtually no delay.

Reddit - Reddit is similar to Digg and Newsvine. It is a social news site that is built upon a community of users who share and comment on stories.

S

Scribd - Scribd turns document formats such as PDF, Word and PowerPoint into a web document for viewing and sharing online.

Search Engine Optimization - Search Engine Optimization is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a website from search engines via unpaid or organic search traffic.

Second Life - Second Life is an online virtual world developed by Linden Lab that was launched on June 23, 2003. Users are called "residents" and they interact with each other through avatars. Residents can explore, meet other residents, socialize, participate in individual and group activities, create and trade virtual property and services with one another, and travel throughout the world.

Seesmic - Seesmic is a popular desktop and mobile social application. Using APIs, Seesmic allows users to share content on social networks such as Twitter and Google Buzz from the same application.

Sentiment - Sentiment is normally referred to as the attitude of user comments related to a brand online. Some social media monitoring tools measure sentiment.

SlideShareBlogThis!

8 Transformational Leadership Lessons From Seth Godin

Yesterday in Boston, author and speaker Seth Godin took the stage at John Hancock Hall. The event was part of a tour to promote his new book, Linchpin, and several members of the HubSpot team attended the morning half of the event.  The morning focused on Godin speaking and making his case for change.

What was the key takeaway from these few hours? All of Godin’s ideas and books can be condensed into one simple word: Permission. After listening to Godin discuss a variety of subjects, ranging from the current economic revolution to the failures of higher education, one thing is clear. The man is completely obsessed with permission.

The Two Sides of Permission

Godin uses permission in two vastly different ways to address his points.  It is clear through books like Permission Marketing and Tribes as well as his talk today that he believes effectively marketing to people in today’s culture requires their expressed permission.  An individual or company needs the permission of a group or tribe of people to be able to join and then eventually conduct commerce with the group.

Godin’s other focus of permission is positioned sharply on the other side. While individuals and companies need permission to market products and services outside the company, to make great products, or “art,” as he calls it, employees need to do great work without waiting for permission.  He maintains that most people are great at doing what they are told, but not good at solving problems that everyone else is afraid to solve. He believes that successful companies in the future will be filled with employees who don’t wait for permission and instead tackle the tough problems head-on.

Impossible and Perfect

Impossible and perfect are the two biggest principles stopping people from progressing, says Godin. Industries at certain times are perfect. For example, record companies in the 1970s. During this time, demand for their product was huge. They had free advertising through radio and a strong hold on distribution. Today, the record industry is in shambles because its time of perfection has passed.

Problems seem perfect because they can't be solved. Revolutions create opportunities for things that seem impossible. For example, when Henry Ford first sought to mass produce the automobile, it was viewed as an impossible task. The balance between impossible and perfect is what stops individuals and organizations from seeing opportunities in front of them. Godin believes we are in the middle of the biggest economic revolution in history.

He explains that now you don't need a big office building and a large company to create and distribute a product and build a successful business. Instead, he argues that today we need connections and problem solving skills to build great companies. There is no map in this economic revolution. Value today is created by solving a problem no one has solved before.  It is easy to copy others, but the challenge is building your own map.

8 Marketing Lessons From Seth Godin

1. Spamming People Doesn't Work Like it Used To - People who spam others have determined that it doesn't pay for itself like it used to. If you look at companies that are growing (e.g. Zappos), they don't do a lot of advertising.  They do just a little bit of advertising to keep their investors happy, but have realized that personalized messages will always do better than spam.

2. People Like Doing What Other People Are Doing - We like to be like each other. People strive to fit in and find their own groups, so marketers who facilitate this will win.

3. Ideas That Spread Win, and Free Ideas Spread Best – Godin explained that he made more money by giving away his book, Idea Virus, than he made on his previous New York Times best-seller. Free ideas create demand, and demand can always be monetized.

4. Remarks Make Something Remarkable - When people comment on something, then it is remarkable. The old model, which focuses on companies making average products for average people, is not remarkable. Companies that aren't remarkable can't grow quickly.  By making products worth talking about, then companies can become remarkable.

5. What We Make and How We Make It Has Changed – In today’s economy, people are buying experiences and conversations. Godin provided the example of LittleMissMatched, a company that sells unmatched socks that provide a point of interest and conversation for young girls.

6. You Have the Opportunity to Lead a Tribe - Tribes exist today, and they're looking for leaders. You don't have to have charisma to be a leader. Leading gives leaders charisma. The internet is the ultimate extension of communication to help organize tribes. Don't waste time trying to convert non-fans; instead, work to strengthen existing tribes.

7. Lots of Alternatives Exist - Choices are now rampant, so people or companies that are perceived as the best or the leaders are more successful. People have been trained to be good at a lot of things, but not to be the best at one niche skill. Difficult opportunities are the ones worth doing.

8. Don't Be Afraid to Be Indispensible - Lots of opportunities exist to be a linchpin, but most people and companies are scared of being great and indispensible because it's hard and scary. By overcoming this fear, marketers can become critical to business success.

Do you agree with Godin’s ideas?

via blog.hubspot.com

For more articles like this one checkout Rent Roll Growth

Experts Agree: Gen Y Will Not Grow Out of Social Networking [STUDY]

In a survey conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, an overwhelming majority of technology experts and stakeholders believe that social networking and online sharing is more than just a fad for today’s youth.

More than two-thirds of those surveyed indicated that the Millennial generation — otherwise known as Generation Y — will continue to use social networking tools as they mature into adult life stages and have families of their own.

The research is part of Pew’s fourth “Future of the Internet” study which includes responses from selected experts and Internet() users who were asked to think about “the future of the Internet-connected world between now and 2020.”

When it comes to Millennials, 67% of experts in the respondent pool agreed with the following statement:

“By 2020, members of Generation Y (today’s ‘digital natives’) will continue to be ambient broadcasters who disclose a great deal of personal information in order to stay connected and take advantage of social, economic, and political opportunities. Even as they mature, have families, and take on more significant responsibilities, their enthusiasm for widespread information sharing will carry forward.”

Pew found that the experts believe the advantages and social benefits of sharing personal information online far outweigh the consequences, an attitude that these young “digital natives” will carry into adulthood. A survey response from a Mozilla programmer exemplifies this notion: “Unless Generation Y has a collective privacy-related epiphany, they will continue to happily trade it for convenience.”

There’s even consensus that society may learn to forgive these teens of their youthful errors in judgment online.

Those dissenting with the majority (29%) believe that Generation Y will lose interest in social networking and age out of sharing personal information online.

At the rate teens are using social networking sites, it’s easy to see why the experts believe social media usage will grow with younger generations as they mature. Where do you stand on the subject?

[img credit: foreversouls]

via mashable.com

For more articles like this one checkout Rent Roll Growth

3 Social Media Tips for Small Businesses by Author Erik Qualman

In the below video, I pick Erik's brain for some tips on how small businesses can use social media better. Watch below.

Tip 1: Build your business using social media while considering the principles of Socialnomics, or social commerce. 78% of people care about what their friends think, and only 14% care what advertisers think. Soon we'll be making the majority of our purchase decisions by considering what our friends say online. 

Tip 2: Businesses' number one obstacle is time, so begin using social media tools in baby steps. When arguing the value of reallocating time to social media, emphasize the valuable real-time feedback you'll be receiving from consumers and potential customers.

Tip 3: The three steps to using social media effectively are: listen, interact and react. Many people forget the last step and don't respond when someone says something negative about their products or services. Use both negative and positive comments as feedback to improve your business. 

For more social media statistics and information, watch Erik's social media video below.

 
What do you think? Do you agree with Erik's tips or have any additional advice

via blog.hubspot.com

For more articles like this one checkout Rent Roll Growth

Facebook Places Arrives on the iPhone

Version 3.2 of the Facebook() iPhone app has arrived in the app store, and while it comes with several new features and bug fixes, it’s the arrival of Facebook Places that makes this update one to remember.

Revealed earlier today at a press event at Facebook’s headquarters, Facebook Places is the company’s attempt at geolocation. Similar to Foursquare(), Places allows you to see where your friends are or to check in to nearby locations.

The updated app prominently puts Places front-and-center when you first open up the new app. “See where your friends are and share where you are” is the message that greets users when they first open up Facebook for iPhone. Tapping on the Places icon takes you to a menu where you can either scan where your friends have recently checked in or check in to a location yourself.

The checking-in process is still a bit buggy though (I can’t refresh the page with all of my friends’ checkins), and for some users the option to check in or add new places won’t be available until Facebook completes the rollout of its new geolocation product.

Places isn’t the only new addition, though. Facebook for iPhone now has added privacy options for status updates; now you can set who sees individual status updates. Messages to multiple recipients now display all of the participants, rather than just the sender. Finally, for all of you that are constantly uploading videos and photos to Facebook via the iPhone, there’s good news for you too; the updated app uploads multimedia in the background, as long as you have iOS 4.

Have you downloaded the new version of the Facebook app yet? Are you going to use Places on the iPhone? Let us know in the comments.

via mashable.com

For more articles like this one checkout Grow Your Rent Roll