Location technologies are transforming how we experience, navigate, and ultimately better our world. From the global to the local, here are #10Ways geolocation is a positive force for good.

Social media has changed the world. It has revolutionized communications on a global scale, and the transformation continues with every status update, blog post, and video stream. The global citizenry has become a global network.

Since becoming widely adopted just a couple years ago, social media has supercharged social action, cause marketing, and social entrepreneurship. Indeed, the true value hasn’t been the technology itself but how we’ve used it. Today, a second wave of innovation is defining a new era and setting the stage for change over the coming decade.

Mobile technologies will extend the global online network to anyone with a mobile device while enabling countless local networks to form in the real world. We’ve decentralized media production and distribution. We’re doing the same for energy. And we’ll continue this trend for social networking, social action, and commerce.

The combined forces of smartphones, mobile broadband, and location-aware applications will connect us in more meaningful ways to the people, organizations, events, information, and companies that matter most to us—namely, those within a physical proximity of where we live and where we are. Can location-based services (LBS) change the world? Here are #10Ways:

1. Checking in for Good: If Gowalla and Foursquare have taught us anything, it’s that people respond to simple incentives. By offering badges, mayorships, and other intangible rewards, millions of people are checking in to the places they go. Apps like Whrrl take this a step further and enable like-minded “societies” to form on a local basis. The next step is for these apps to add greater purpose by encouraging more meaningful checkins and offering corresponding badges and stamps, thus mapping the cause universe. Or for a dedicated app to be developed that rewards conscious consumption, social responsibility, and civic engagement. Yes, the CauseWorld app features a cause element, but it’s not about cause-worthy places.

2. Eating Locally: Sustainability demands that we source our food as close to its point of production as possible. Many so-called locavores subscribe to the 100-mile diet, which requires that one “eat nothing—or almost nothing—but sustenance drawn from within 100 miles of their home.” Given the difficulty of accessing and verifying this information in order to live by this standard, there’s a geo-powered Locavore app. It gives you info on in-season foods, those coming in-season, farmer’s markets, and links to recipes. This rather simple app is clearly just the start. In time, location-aware apps will guide us not only to the grocery store or farmer’s market but through them. All the while identifying foods based on our particular diet or sensibility.

3. Political Organizing: In the next presidential election, politics will not only be local but location-enabled. We saw the power of social media in Obama’s 2008 landslide victory. In 2012, location-based apps and technologies will play a central role in how campaigns are organized, managed, and ultimately won. Much of this will be visible through mobile apps and location-aware browsers. Activists and volunteers will be more empowered. Voters will be more engaged in the moment, right down to casting their votes. Behind the scenes, though, we’ll see massive new sets of data available to campaigns for targeting, empowerment, and optimization. The party, candidate, and/or cause that has the best handle on geolocation will have a measurable advantage. (The Elections app will soon be updated for 2010.)

4. Finding Green Businesses: The web has effectively replaced the paper Yellow Pages as a way to find local businesses and services. However, this “stationary web” experience is quickly being supplanted by the mobile web and mobile applications, which give us access to this information when we most need it. The Yelp and Around Me apps are popular ways to find restaurants, coffee shops, or hotels wherever you are, but what about green-rated businesses? Greenopia has transformed its printed, local guides into a dynamic, nationwide mobile application that lets you find local, green-rated businesses in any category. No more paper and a much better experience. The Green Map app is another that facilitates discovery and connects us to local green environments.

5. Traveling More Efficiently: We’ve had access to GPS navigation systems and static traffic information for some time, but only now are we seeing the full potential of these technologies. With access to more detailed traffic information that is specific to your route and updated in real time, we can minimize congestion and maximize traffic flow (as much as physically possible). The new turn-by-turn MapQuest 4 Mobile app is a good start, as you can get traffic alerts specific to the route you program. However, user-generated information from apps like Trapster and Waze can crowdsource more specific details, such as whether to avoid an intersection due to a toxic chemical spill. Or, if you want to avoid automobiles altogether, Google Maps makes it easy to use public transportation and take a bike.

6. Scanning for Ethical Products: With online shopping, we’ve become accustomed to reading reviews and making comparisons before we buy. This can now be done in the physical world through games like MyTown and services like Stikybits. By scanning a product barcode using a smartphone camera, you can unlock a treasure of additional information (not to mention deals) that can help with your purchase. This might include where it was produced, how far it traveled, the reputation of the manufacturer, chemical contents, carbon footprint, or the full lifecycle analysis. Location-aware applications can also transform commerce itself by giving us better access to local inventories and locally-produced goods. Whether it’s fruits and vegetables or books and electronics, if something can be found within blocks of your current location, it makes no sense to ship it from afar.

7. Networking Neighborhoods: One of the hottest categories in geolocation is neighborhood networking. The vision for many of these apps is to strengthen the very fabric of our communities. With DeHood, you can keep track of what’s happening in your neighborhood, share your favorite places, and grease the wheels for actually meeting people. After all, if you’ve made contact through the app, it’s a lot easier to say “Hello” in the real world. Blasterous is another that lets you share information locally, whereas BlockChalk does this on an anonymous basis. Finally, NeighborGoods uses your street address to facilitate one-to-one borrowing and trading of useful stuff. In the end, making connections with your neighbors can lead to safer, more productive, and more sustainable communities.

8. Tracking Environmental Disasters: The size and scope of environmental disasters appears to be growing. In 2008, we had the Tennessee coal ash spill, which was billed as “the largest environmental disaster of its kind in the United States.” And that was before we realized it was three times bigger than originally estimated. More recently, the BP oil spill set daily records for “largest environmental disaster in the U.S. ever.” In each case, geolocation technologies can be used by engaged citizens to monitor and track the effects. They can be used by response teams to coordinate containment and cleanup efforts. Ultimately, these technologies can be used to accurately measure the size and impact of a disaster in order to better understand its damages and costs.

9. Viewing the World Through an Eco Lens: Augmented reality (AR) follows geolocation as one of the hot trends in mobile technology. It enables you to view the world through a smartphone camera (or similar device) and see layers of geo-specific content or information. One of the most popular apps is Layar, an augmented reality browser/platform that lets you choose specific data layers or experiences. The potential for green- and cause-related content is tremendous. You might view green-rated businesses, LEED-certified buildings, or virtual GHG emissions as they enter the atmosphere. Combined with smart meter technology, you could see the most efficient and inefficient homes around you in real time. And for the cynics among us, you could view our mountains, forests, rivers, and oceans as they once were…before the effects of climate change and so many environmental disasters.

10. Capturing the Moment: Better access to information about what’s happening around us—right now—can dramatically improve quality of life. This sense of “geospatial awareness” is possible through today’s smartphones, whereby a piece of content or information—a moment—is captured and preserved based on the unique time and place in which it occurred. It is essentially to document spacetime. Protests, natural disasters, sporting events, parties, political crises…real-time information about anything happening anywhere at any time, as well as the history of what happened. This will take several years and a number of different applications to realize. In the end, though, it will revolutionize how we access and consume content. It will complete the democratization and decentralization of news and information…based on time and location.

Cautionary note: Privacy is the single biggest issue in the LBS industry. It’s important to understand what information you are sharing with regard to your location and with whom.

Author’s note: We’ll be hosting geolocation events for Social Media Week in Los Angeles this September. This is the third in Max Gladwell’s #10Ways series of distributed blog posts. It was published simultaneously on as many as 300 blogs.

Here’s are my favorite highlights on what he calls his social trinity to which he has followed faithfully to drive more than 36 million pageviews to his work:
1 – All points of available exposure for your assets
2 – Identify all points of private contact
3 – Study popular sections of the social network
Bonus: reach out to influential users for your topic.

Remember that you are dealing and communicating with people. The digital networks are only tools.

View Neal’s social media policy post for further info.

Last time, I had led you through a collection of my top 10 favorite social media infographics. They were meant to convey a story – each in their own way as well as the set in its entirety.

This time, I’ll be leading you through a more industry specific approach in infographics – technology.

1 – The History of Location Technology

Mashable serves up an interesting historical perspective on the origins of location based technologies.  Smoke signals, anyone ?

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2 – State of the Internet

Focus.com has a wonderful visual of the state of the Internet. Wonderful colorful slices of age/gender/and country demographics.

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3 – What People are Doing Online

It is interesting to not only break down online users by age demographic  – clustering by Internet usage is fascinating when you see how it plays out by age:

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4 – The Cost of Technology

Interesting look at how today’s toys size up against gadgets of yesteryear:

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5 – The Rise of Netbooks

GigaOM reports on the rise of netbooks from 2008-2010. This is an important advent in tech history, as it allows the user to have a semi-powerful machine built to access cloud computing:

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6 – What is Cloud Computing?

If you were wondering what cloud computing was from the last infographic’s reference, Wikibon does a good job laying out the basics of Cloud Computing and Software as a Service (SaaS):

Via: What is Cloud Computing?

7 – The History of the Rickroll

No advancement of technology list would be complete without it

Via: Online Schools

8 – Online Gaming Stats

One of the best things about the Internet these days is the explosive growth of depth and complexity of online gaming:

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9 – Phishing for Your Money

Unfortunately, the Internet isn’t just fun and games. Lots of phishing attempts are out to get into to your bank account:

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10 – What is HTML5?

With all the news about the Apple iPad not supporting flash in favor of HTML5, I thought it would be useful to end this infographic list with some demystifying of what HTML5 actually is:

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So you’re ready to take the plunge into the world of Facebook pages.  Maybe you already have but are looking to be better? Here are some tips that you’re sure to glean something, no matter where you are on the scale:

1 – Make Your Logo Stand Out

Note that the image on the left of the main content area only has a standard width – most people don’t take advantage of how tall to make them.  Facebook lets you make 200×600 images, so take advantage of what everyone else who isn’t reading this post doesn’t know

2 – Create a Custom Landing Tab

Facebook pages have tabs.  By default, the first tab uses see is the wall tab.  You can easily make your Facebook page more engaging by making a custom tab.  Note this is for users that are not yet fans haven’t yet hit “I like this.”  Tamar has a great post on this in further detail.

3 – Get More Fans

If you know your way around Facebook, you probably know how to bring fans to your page.  It helps if you are already an established brand or if you’re showing up in Facebook / Bing search results.  If all else fails just put a quarter in Facebook’s meter and pay up for Facebook advertising.

4 – Keep Your Content Fresh

There are a number of apps that you can feed in content from elsewhere: Ping.fm, Hellotxt, Selective Tweets and Hootsuite all come to mind.  One in particular I’d recommend is RSS Graffiti, as it can parse an RSS feed and still give the fans people that like the page a preview image.  You should also mix in content you manually place on there as well as content from other sources.  Come on, you’re heard this already about Twitter.  The rules apply on Facebook as well.

5 – Get a Vanity URL for Your Page

Many of us remember the Facebook vanity url gold rush of last year, but what was rolled out a bit quieter was the Facebook fan page vanity names.  Simply go to the the Facebook username page and click on pages (note: you’ll need at least 25 fans).

6 – Expand Beyond Facebook

Your presence on Facebook should be known outside of Facebook too and the interactive Fan widget.  The Facebook widgets page offers a variety of widgets and fancy things that include most anything you’d be looking for, regardless of your ability level.   My favorite is the Facebook fan box which offers one-click access to your on-site website visitors to become fans of your Facebook presence.

7 – See What Others are Doing

Here are a couple of Facebook pages I enjoy:

Viperchill

Our friend Glen at Viperchill does a good job showing the user the interactive landing tab, effective logo, fan diversity and varying content and is using RSS Graffiti – keep up the good work, Glen!

SEO Dojo: Before

Our friends at the SEO Training Dojo have just started the process of fleshing out these tips.  We see here that the fan base is only underway and there is no custom landing tab.  The logo could be larger and content needs to be updated.

Update: SEO Dojo After:

The Dojo got a facelift

Bonus Tip: Utilize the Facebook Like Button

Be sure to now use the like button, so you too can be a cool kid

Seriously though, it basically turns any non-Facebook page into a Facebook page using the new Facebook Open graph.  More info here on the Facebook developer page.  There’s a handy code generator there, so no special programming skills are required.

What other tips and tricks do you recommend for Facebook Pages? Let me know in the comments.

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2010 is becoming the year of Internet laziness. Many have given up blogging (yes, not updating your blog in the last few months counts as giving up too) and have joined the ranks of the Twitterverse.

One simple tip will get you noticed above most Twitter users: Spend an extra 30 seconds before automatically retweeting.

I know we’re all in a hurry. We all want to be the first to broadcast or re-broadcast the latest and greatest. That’s why we camp outside the Apple Store to be among the first to have an iPad. Tweetmeme has given us an easy out from leaving meaningful blog comments – one simple click and we’ve retweeted.

Since everyone can do this just as easily, you won’t stand out! What’s the solution? Meaningful retweets.

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I recently ran a story about 10 Social Media Infographics that received over 1,100 retweets and was featured by Guy Kawasaki. It probably wouldn’t be a good use of my time to respond to every single person that retweeted. What’s interesting is that very few people took the time to make additional comments. Here are a couple that caught my eye:

@ManiKarthik

@SocialGrow

You’ll notice that I did not list the other 1,110+ retweets here, so clearly you can stand out…even without being the message originator!

Also, keep in mind that you the original content owner has a responsibility of keeping the initial message user friendly.

Try a retweet preview of your initial Twitter name, title, and shortlink and be sure to keep it around 120 characters to allow for ample retweet space.  Our friend Tim Nash goes into further explanation on the topic.

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Not everyone follows Stumble closely, so let’s go through some of the most recent updates:

1 – Being More Publicly Visible

Garrett Camp, the co-founder has certainly done his fair share of appearances at events but it was good to see that the SU team came out for a South by Southwest Party!

2 – Improved Advertising Network

Why should Facebook ads, sponsored Tweets, Digg sponsors, and FourSquare mayor rewards have all the fun? SU has gone through and dramatically improved their advertising network, most notably adding the option of paying with a credit card and not just PayPal.

3 – Interactive Badges!

This is the improvement we’ve all been waiting for.  With all the Tweetmeme retweet and Facebook share buttons out there (yes, Digg and Reddit have them too) we have long been hoping for an interactive StumbleUpon badge.  This was previously available from SU if you were a major publisher but now anyone with a website can add an SU badge with pride (and hopefully some traffic, too ).

4 – StumbleUpon for Chrome

SU’s latest news into the mix is adding StumbleUpon toolbar to Chrome:

This is a wonderful addition to the web toolbar and Su.pr, StumbleUpon’s link shortening tool.

Kudos to you again StumbleUpon, for all that you do!

1 – World Map of Social Networks

Let’s start at the 50,000 foot view, shall we?

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2 – Age Distribution on Social Network Sites

Is age distribution targeting more your thing? Pingdom put together an excellent overview by social network:

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3 – Social Media Periodic Table of Elements

As we previously reported, our friend and fellow Advertising Age Power 150 member Eyecube created another great visualization called the social media periodic table of elements:

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4 – The Conversation Prism

No social media infographic collection would be complete without Brian Solis’ Conversation Prism:

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5 – The Boom of Social Sites

Focus.com put together an outstanding visual showing both the size and timeline of social communities:

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6 – Make Social Media Work For Your Company

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7 – Hubspot Twitter Territory

Hubspot of Twitter Grader fame nailed it with a slick infographic showing how each state’s Twitter usage compares to the national average:

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8 – How Twitter Got Attacked by DDOS

If you’re a frequent Twitter user, you’ll remember the great DDOS attack as a period of social media withdrawal:

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9 – Air Force Web Posting Response Assessment V.2

While we’re on the subject of Internet security, we’d be remiss to not mention the US Air Force’s blogging assessment flowchart infographic:

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10 -Visualizing 6 Years of Facebook

We thought that the best way to round out this list would be to celebrate Facebook’s recent 6th anniversary – Muhammad Saleem put together this excellent infographic over at Mashable:

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Instead, many site owners hide their Excalibur (or light saber, if that’s more your thing) in a dark corner somewhere and rarely bring it out into daylight. But, if you’re brave enough to fight off the spiders, bats, and killer dust bunnies, you’ll be able to expand and grow your business far beyond its current expectations.

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Where Businesses Go Wrong

I love writing and I love working with my clients, but if there’s one thing that drives me around the bend, it’s this common scenario:

A client contacts me looking for a piece of link bait, buzz content, or a marketing plan. So, I have them fill out a profile, we discuss goals, direction, and all the other specifics. But, as soon as it comes to choosing a topic, they disagree with every one of my suggestions. In the end, they choose a standard topic with a frame that confines their article to ’safe’ subjects and constraints. The piece never generates much attention, and they end up disappointed.

Now, I’m not saying I always come up with the best topics to match a business all the time. I’m human. But, these clients turn down most good topic suggestions because they’re terrified. They’re scared stiff they might upset or offend someone. They’re worried they may come off looking silly or stupid and damage the brand they’ve worked so hard to build. Sadly, they likely do more damage to themselves by not taking a risk than they ever would have if they’d have just bit the bullet and done something a little differently.

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Bring Out the Chutzpah!

If you look at the Internet’s most successful people, particularly big-name bloggers, you’ll see they have one common trait: they’re not afraid to get creative. They’re different and not afraid to cause backlash, offend someone, or have someone walk away hard feelings. They’re not trying to fit into a specific mold, or at least not a standard one. Most struggling companies and websites, however, are.

When companies fail get creative, they fail to demonstrate to a visitor or potential customer they’re different or better than their competition. And let’s face it, this is vital. If I go car shopping, I look for the one that makes me go ‘Yes! That’s the one I want’. If I want to buy a dress, I look for the one that looks better than all the rest. When I vote for a political figure, I vote for the one that stood out as being different and portraying the type of person I want representing me. If you don’t stand out, there’s no reason for someone to choose you!

Even businesses in the real world are learning this hard reality. Take the Apple/PC commercials, for example. One of the reasons they’ve been so successful is because they were funny, but they’re also quite creative. They appear different from any other commercial that’s been on TV or Internet lately. Comparing themselves directly to PC was risky, and let’s face it, they could have been facing some serious legal trouble had they done it wrong. But, they bit the bullet, they took the risk, and it’s certainly paid off.

Most people who own a PC or Apple have seen these commercials or heard them at one point in time or another. These commercials have also spawned numerous spoofs, generated all sorts of links to spread its reach, and even helped build and emphasize the brand. In the end, Apple comes off looking like THE high-end, elite product. It looks trendy and people want it because it’s different and THE thing to have.

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Using Your Own Chutzpah

Other brands and businesses can do the same and it doesn’t have to cost millions of dollars or an entirely new marketing campaign either. It could be something as simple as creating an article that’s different from anything else out there; something that shocks, amazes, or maybe it’s even a little controversial. The important thing to remember when getting creative is that you need to sound intelligent, show professionalism, and you need to demonstrate all the qualities that you want your customers to associate with your business. Otherwise, you could end up doing more harm than good.

Outspoken bloggers and popular blogs have this down to an art form. These guys tell their stories straight up. There’s no beating around the bush and no candy coating. They give their opinions straight out and don’t care whether somebody likes it or not. In fact, they like it if somebody disagrees because it creates buzz, interest, and it gets people passionate and emotional about the subject.

This, my friends, is what drives sales and pushes people to follow your call to action. This is the exact same thing a writer works hard to accomplish in a piece of sales copy. You don’t need to be a jerk to accomplish it either.

If you want to take your site over the threshold and bring it into the realm of success, do yourself a favor and get out of your own way. Take the leap. It’s worth the risk. Worst-case scenario, this online world gets just a little more interesting!

Based in the Canadian Prairies, Angie Nikoleychuk (Haggstrom) is the Senior Copywriter & Content Consultant for Angie’s Copywriting, a premium business copywriting service providing offline & offline content to organizations of all sizes. In addition to online copywriting, Angie is a diehard coffee addict, avid Twitter user, and enjoys chatting about SEO, SM, branding, marketing, and business. (Besides writing, of course!)

There is no question that social media is hitting the mainstream. It is evolving into a major part of the Internet, developing hordes of devoted users and advocates who are raising their hands in the air and creating virtual Mexican waves* with their ability of share information almost completely unrestricted around the world and its all good.  Thing is, people aren’t doing the Mexican wave the world over…yet.  Welcome to Europe.
(*note – cultural point one.)

Brian kindly pointed this out this idiomatic difference. You know that thing in a stadium where some people stand up and throw their hands in the air and the next row does it and so on until it comes back on itself?  In the USA its called a “Doing the Wave,” while in Europe it’s called a “Mexican Wave.”  Mexico is way closer to the States than Europe.  Go figure.

Back to the point.

The USA and Europe are different.  We all know this but it tends to be overlooked somewhat mostly because of assumption more than anything else.  We simply assume that things are the same when, if we take a second, we realise that they are very different, and being aware of these differences can make the process of making connections and engaging that much simpler.

Lets just think about the USA first.

People from New York are different from folks in California and Texas and even from Washington DC.  Americans know this instinctively and react accordingly to accounting for gender, race, home base (the country, the city, the mountains or the beach), age and eduction.  Differences aside, all are Americans and regional differences in culture or outlook are still relatively small compared to Europe.

Over the last few years social media has surged forward and upward with the USA adopting, adapting and developing the tools, etiquette, formalities and understanding as you require it and basically taking it through the initial teething problems associated with any new invention or technology, probably helped along by the very same reason in the previous paragraph.  Now its hitting Europe.

Now lets take a second and think about Europe. It’s different.  Very Different to the States and the differences are obvious.  First and foremost there is a huge language barrier.  That’s a no-brainer right there – language has split Europe up and actually curtails social media as each country and community created are heavily influenced by their own mother tongue. This also causes fragmentation in the general consensus of the web and where we all “hang out”.

Not sure what I mean?

Have a look at this short list of social networking sites in Europe.

Take Facebook as an example.  While it has dominated across the majority of Europe it still misses out in Germany, Russia, The Netherlands, Ireland, Portugal and Austria as the most popular social networking platform.

While this is kind of understandable from Russia’s perspective due to culture as much as language, the one that stands out for me is Ireland, a modern, established and in the majority English speaking nation but one which has not “jumped on the bandwagon” making it somewhat of an exception especially when its closest neighbour, the UK is the top user of that very same platform.

Lets think about cultural differences then. Its just so damn complicated that we to some the whole thing will be like talking to aliens and, far be it for a beer drinking Irish man who’s kissed the blarney stone to fall into stereotypes but the only way to address it without writing a 63 part novel is, yep, you guessed it..by looking at stereotypes.

Ireland

Getting us out of the way first, (us is “the Irish”) we tend to swear a lot on twitter, and in most other forms of social media and we are the Mayor of most of the pubs in the world on FourSquare, even if we haven’t been there in person we still somehow manage it.

United Kingdom

The British are a diverse lot who cant really be nailed with any single stereotype today but tend to frequent the major social English speaking social networks such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Bebo scores high here as well.

France

The French don’t tend to hang around on English speaking social networks (non!) and congregate on their own French built and run sites like SkyRock (the 6th largest social network in the world).

Germany

The Germans mainly hang out on XING and “make business” in efficient and straightforward ways as this social stuff is a waste of time when there is work to be done or if they are feeling a little frisky they head over to Yigg.de… dont ask, I have no idea what it means.

The Netherlands

The Dutch are spending most of their time on Hyving and the Swedish, Norwegians and Danish all tend to stick together and will frequent places like Playahead while the Polish are familiar with Nasza-klasa.pl (you can try saying it, I sure as hell can’t).

Spain

The Spanish enjoy staying in touch in a relaxed and not so pressurized way via the Tuenti network that’s still invite only or via their own version of Digg, Meneame and the Italians decided that they didn’t like the blue bird on twitter and prefer to play about on Meemi (which is, as far as I can tell, a complete rip off from Twitter anyway but well, who’s bothered really).

Are you guys in the USA starting to get the picture now? It’s not so cut and dry is it?  I’m jealous really, that in the USA the barriers to speak to anyone else in the country are so low even across thousands of miles – but not here!

Take it from some one who grew up in a society (ever heard of Ulster and “The Troubles”?) that was divided by colour (favourite colour not race), religion, sport, politics, education, history and language and is used to the nuances and differences between towns and villages not more than 3 miles apart, this type of cross culturalism is second nature to me.

Finally, we have to start thinking about even further afield, to countries outside the “west”. China has a massive social networking community on Qzone, Brazil favors Orkut and even Iran is incredibly active online with its social networking community Cloob.

How do you approach it and how will you react when something strikes you as “not normal” in the social media realm simply because it’s foreign.  Is it just “not normal” to you? How are we going to reach across these divides in the future to take full advantage of the web and the potential for interconnectivity, if in fact we can ever achieve it.

The reason for this post is to have a rather fleeting consideration at the little things about social media when the physical restrictions are removed and we all get “more connected” between the USA and Europe and indeed the rest of the world. What cultural differences will we realise and how will we react to them, how will we engage across cultures and how will we appreciate and understand others point of view and ideals and what can we learn from them.

I didn’t intend this post to be scientific, but rather more observational and reflective as a means to consider social media in Europe in comparison to the USA and what it means. I hope it has provoked something for you to consider.

Paying By Credit Card: Most people try to get on an invoicing plan with the search engines whenever they can, but I try to stick to credit cards as often as possible.  Why?  Because the credit cards I use pay me in points, and those points can be used for all sorts of other work expenses.  If you’re budgets are big enough those points could even pay for some or all of your corporate travel!

Bing Cashback: Bing literally pays people to search by using cash back incentives when the people buy from a PPC ad.  This works by the advertiser giving a discount on a product, and Bing using that discount to entice people to save money when they’re looking to purchase items you carry.  The best part for advertisers is a percentage of your PPC spending from Bing gets deposited into a cashback account that you can use for those discounts.  So sign up, and encourage people to save.

Fraud Credits: Click fraud is inevitable, and most engines will give you a monthly credit back for some click fraud.  Most of the time they see it up front and don’t even charge you for it.  However, it does happen, and when it slips through the cracks you can file a claim to get some money back.  This post about click fraud shows you how.

Have your own ideas?  Share them in the comments, and help others put their money to work!