Basic Information

These basic information fields, including the company website URL, the locations, and the main industry, are what should be filled out first. Because the URL is hyperlinked automatically, this is especially crucial, because it both gives the company website a link and encourages LinkedIn users and visitors to visit the site.

Company Description

Because it is placed at the top of company profile, this field is very important. The company description is a large text field that can hold a large amount of information. It does cut off after 4 lines or 2 sentences (depending on length), calling for readers to “read more”. Because many users may not click the “read more”, put the most important information in these beginning lines.  Information that can be placed in this field includes services offered, mission statement, and main overview summary.

Company Blog RSS Feed

This is an easy field to fill out, if you know the company’s blog RSS feed URL. For many blogs, the address is usually http://www.companyblog.com/rss/ or http://www.companyblog.com/feed/. This field is important because LinkedIn will automatically populate the company’s latest blog post, thus driving more traffic to the company website.

Company Specialties

Because users can search for specific keywords in fields like these, filling out the specialties field can help the company profile be found on LinkedIn. Be sure to use succinct keywords that are search terms that people may be searching for on the website. For instance, an internet marketing company should have “social media marketing” in the field instead of “We do Facebook and Twitter for clients!”. This makes the profile much easier to both read and be searched.

These are just some of the fields that are important when filling out a LinkedIn company profile. Filling out the entire profile can further increase the likelihood of attracting potential employees and customers.

I first recommend dipping your toes into these resources:

• The Elements of Typographic Style Applied to the Web
• A Short Course On How To Improve Your Website’s Typography
• 10 Incredible Sites to Improve Your Typography Skills
• Just My Type

Depending on your interest and goals you probably won’t need to devour every word and concept in there but it’s great to be exposed to possibilities and limitations of the medium. Ideally it would be great for you to understand why blank space (whitespace) is a good thing, when large or small type is appropriate, or why you shouldn’t use the likes of Comic Sans and Papyrus.

But it’s not so easy figuring those things out by simply absorbing material, so some exercises are also worth checking out. Here are some games, both web-based and iOS-based, that will test your typographic sensibilities:

Shoot the Serif

One of the first lessons you’ll learn in typography is figuring out the difference between serif and sans-serif fonts, and more importantly, what qualities each one have. Shoot the Serif, as the name implies, is a shooting game that challenges you to weed out as many serif fonts as possible in a given time.

Kern Type

Even with advanced design tools and typefaces, kerning—the proper spacing between glyphs—should not be overlooked. Kern Type lets you arrange letters to achieve their optimum spacing and appearance. See which typefaces are in use and improve your spatial recognition in this iPad-friendly web app.

Shape Type

From the same folks behind Kern Type, Shape Type lets you edit various letterforms until you arrive at their correct shape. This is pretty advanced stuff for type newbies, but again it’s a great exercise in concepts such as proportion and give you a better sense of how fonts are designed.

Type Connection

Type Connection helps you learn how to pair typefaces in a “dating game” fashion, giving each font family a persona based on the look and feel they exude. Pick a matching strategy, a second font, and see if their “date” prove successful. At the end you’ll get an explanation why or why not the pair works.

Want more?

If you can’t get enough of the typographic goodness, see also The Font Game for iPhone & iPod touch, Typography* Star, and The Rather Difficult Font Game.

For those who are unfamiliar, live chat is a way for you to speak with a professional online if you are having any problems. This eliminates the waiting on the phone or having to find a quiet place to try and explain your problem. You can live chat anywhere and at any time as long as you have a computer.  For someone with a lot of experience “chatting” online, this feature is a must-have in a web hosting provider.

However, the live chat feature may not be worth it for everyone. Consider some of the reasons live chat works and some of the reasons that it still has its problems for a web hosting provider:

Web Hosting Providers Who Love Live Chat

The majority of web hosting providers do offer live chat. Some of the top web hosting providers such as HostGator, Just Host, and my personal web hosting provider iPage, offer live chat for several reasons:

• Speed – Live chat allows a web hosting provider to talk with a user immediately because staff can talk with more than one person at a time. Most people ask questions that can be answered quickly by a professional, so this cuts down on time for everyone.
• Quality – Someone using the web hosting providers live chat feature usually does not need to be a paying customer. If someone wants to simply check the quality of answers and speed of the live chat before making a purchase, he/she can do that.
• Convenience – As discussed above, live chat is convenient. You can do more than one thing while you have a live chat going. You ask your question, you surf the net and then when the provider gets back to you, you can jump back on the “call.”
• Cost – From the web hosting providers’ perspective, live chat software is much less expensive than having to hire a bunch of employees. Because employees can talk with more than one person at once, live chat software is usually the less expensive choice. You can learn more about choosing live chat software here.

In general, web hosting providers want to offer the most up to date features, and live chat is certainly one of them. This allows a web hosting provide to stay on top of the competition. However, not all web hosting providers see it this way.

Web Hosting Providers Who Opt Out of Live Chat

One of the most popular web hosting providers, GoDaddy, does not offer live chat. Although this comes as a surprise to most, there are actually quite a few reasons that live chat isn’t as good as it appears on the surface:

• Priorities – Live chat does not allow a web hosting provider to prioritize different issues. If someone has an urgent matter, he/she is going to have to wait in line.
• Server Problems – Chat will not work if the server is down where the live chat software is hosted. This could cause a panic and the phone lines to ring off the hook. For some web hosting providers, there isn’t much of a system in place when live chat isn’t working.
• Technical Support – Live chat professionals can fix smaller problems, but if you have a technical problem those speaking with you via live chat will not be able to help. You will be given a ticket and then the IT team gets back to you in a few days. This makes live chat somewhat of a waste.

Ultimately, the decision to go with a web hosting provider that offers live chat or that does not offer live chat is up to the future website owner. It’s important for a new website owner to consider whether or not the live chat is easy to use, think realistically if talking via the Internet works for him/her, and then consider the other features offered by web hosting providers. Is live chat more important than other features a web host can offer? For me, live chat is a priority, but for others live chat is just an extra.

Does your web hosting provider offer live chat? Have you found this to be a feature worth having for a new website owner? Let us know in the comments!

Photo Credit: noracaron.com

Amanda DiSilvestro is a writer on topics ranging from social media to business promotional items. She writes for an online resource that gives advice to small businesses and entrepreneurs for the leading business directory, Business.com.

Social media fatigue or burnout is becoming more and more of a problem for both consumers and businesses, as the availability of new and exciting social media networking sites like Pinterest and Instagram are gaining millions of users a month. However, for most people, there is a tipping point between being able to handle it all and feeling overwhelmed. A new study reports that approximately 50% young people feel that keeping up with their social media accounts is too time consuming.

On a corporate side, a company or organization has two obligations– to prevent consumers from getting burned out on corporate social media posts and to prevent company burnout from employees.

Social media fatigue can be prevented by making the additional effort to continuously publish engaging and interesting content. Part of that is not always talking about company and its products. It’s important to remember that many people get on social media networks to relax and connect with their personal interests, not to be pushed with advertising and product promotions over and over again.

Some content that can keep users’ interests is to post cartoons, trivia, contests, and general discussion questions that may relate to current events (such as holidays and pop culture events like the Grammys). Relating to customers on their personal interest level can help make your company present themselves as part of the customer’s life, instead of a business that is always advertising to them. Try to tie in this type of content to your industry where it is relevant, but don’t make it cheesy or advertising. For instance, a popular mobile texting app might have good success with a cartoon about the perils of texting as depicted to the left (comic courtesy of OffTheMark.com).

This is the type of humor that users who use a mobile texting app might appreciate and even share, yet it doesn’t directly promote the mobile app itself.

To prevent employee burnout, it may be useful to divide and conquer. Have one social media employee handle Facebook and/or Twitter, while another may handle Pinterest, Google+, and LinkedIn. A group publishing calendar can help coordinate publishing efforts and cut down on duplicate content. When dividing profiles, it is important to have good communication to make sure the overall social media strategy remains the same. Dividing up profiles can help employees from becoming overloaded by having to handle and update several profiles on a daily basis.

Being proactive and aware of consumer and employee social media burnout can prevent both sides from being overwhelmed and can help make social media an engaging and positive community.

While, fortunately, many of these legal misconceptions have been slowly dying off as the Web has become more and more aware of these issues, some have managed to stick around and get circulated repeatedly.

So, before you fall victim to some bad legal advice you found online, here’s a few of the more common (and more dangerous) pieces you are likely to encounter.

1. Fair Use Will Protect You

A lot of people believe that just about any copying can be justified as a “fair use”, especially when it’s used on a blog or in a YouTube channel.

The truth is that fair use can’t actually protect you from anything. Fair use is not a right, it’s a defense that has to be asserted after you’ve been sued. It’s basically saying that the use was infringing, but that you are not liable for damages because the use was fair.

Asserting a fair use defense and winning it is expensive, time-consuming and risky. The only reason more people aren’t sued over fair use cases is because filing lawsuits, especially ones likely to fail, is also expensive and time-consuming.

Furthermore, fair use is actually a very narrow set of exemptions in the law based on four factors that has to be weighed by a judge and/or jury. Until such a ruling comes down, all one can do is say what is likely a fair use and what is likely not.

In short, fair use is always a gamble. However, this doesn’t mean that it isn’t important for bloggers, just that it isn’t a free pass to copy what you want without a second thought.

2. You Can’t Get in Trouble if It’s the Truth

While honesty is certainly an admirable quality in blogging, it isn’t an absolute guarantee that you won’t run into any legal trouble.

Though truth is a defense in a defamation case, meaning someone can’t win a libel suit if what you said that hurt their reputation is true, there’s a huge difference between what is true and what you can prove is true.

If you attempt to assert a truth defense, the burden of proof is on you. Proving something is true is often difficult even when it clearly is the case. If you don’t have the evidence to back up your claims, a truth defense is almost useless.

But even if you can prove something to be true, if the facts are also private, then you’re looking at a privacy lawsuit, for which truth is not a defense at all. Divulging private facts about others is never a good idea ethically or legally, regardless of the veracity of those facts.

3. Everything on the Web is Public Domain

This myth and piece of bad advice comes from a confusion in terminology. Legally, the term “public domain” means that something is without copyright protection and can be freely copied. However, to a layperson, the term “public domain” means something that is out in the public, meaning everything on the Web.

Unfortunately, it’s very easy for something to be in the public domain in the common sense of the word but not be in the public domain in the legal sense. In fact, with current copyright law, everything enjoys copyright protection from the moment it is created and does so, in cases of individual authorship, for the life of the author plus seventy years (in the U.S.).

What this means is that very little on the Web is actually in the public domain and it’s best to assume that everything you see online is copyrighted until you can prove otherwise.

4. If I’m Being Funny, It’s OK

There’s a mentality among many online that the court jester can do things the serious blogger can not. Basically, many believe that, as long as you’re being humorous about what you’re saying and doing, that there won’t be any legal consequences.

Unfortunately, that’s far from the case.

On matters of copyright, while it is true that parody is heavily protected under fair use (see the caveats to that above) satire is not. Parody means using a copyrighted work to make fun of the work itself where satire is using a work to make fun of something else, usually society at large.

Parody, such as what Weird Al does with most of his music, is generally acceptable under the law but using a song to overlay in a video to make fun of the contents of that video is not as protected, at least not as parody. In short, using copyrighted content to make fun of something other than that content itself is still likely an infringement.

From a defamation standpoint, comedy can protect you in the statements are so outlandish that they are unbelievable but even things said in jest, if they can be believed and harm someone’s reputation, can put you on the wrong end of a lawsuit.

In short, even when joking, be careful what you say or do.

5. I’m Anonymous, No One Will Find Me

Finally, if you want to ignore all sane legal advice and do stupid things on the Web, there seems to be many who believe that there’s a “Get Out of Jail Free” card in simply not putting your name to anything you do. Basically, the idea is that if no one knows who you are, they can’t sue or arrest you.

While that is true in theory, the problem is that complete anonymity is almost impossible online. While not putting your name to your work certainly makes you harder to locate, someone sufficiently motivated, most likely, can still find out.

Your IPSs, email providers, social networks and other services you use can all be compelled to give information against you. Furthermore, as you travel the Web, you are leaving traces everywhere you go data that can be accessed by those eager to build a case against you.

Perfect anonymity online requires not just a great deal of technical knowledge, but, more importantly, that you be flawless with its execution at all times you’re online. In short, it’s probably not worth the trouble unless you’re doing something pretty serious.

In short, while anonymous blogging might keep your boss or spouse from knowing what you’re writing online, don’t expect it to provide too much legal protectin.

Bottom Line

In the end, the old adage about not believing everything you read online holds doubly true for legal advice. Take everything you read with a grain of salt (including this column) and check your sources.

When in doubt, ask an attorney or, at the very least, do your own research.

Getting these facts right is important if you want to stay out of court, so its worth taking the time to understand what’s going on.

Social media advertising can be a great way to reach customers in a medium where a large majority are very active; logging on almost every day (and some for multiple times per day). It allows businesses and organizations to reach customers in a way they might not be able to otherwise. For instance, a user may not find a company’s blog or website, but could have a higher chance of being exposed to the brand and its products on a social media site. While there are a great deal of benefits that may come from social media advertising, there are still a few downfalls, which can make this type of brand exposure not so desirable. The pros and cons and their respective importance will most likely differ between each company.

Determining the Benefits

One of the main benefits of social media advertising is obviously the possible exposure it has. The right social media campaign can reach thousands or even millions of social media users each day, either for a long period of time or just for a single day. To get the type of exposure needed, it’s important to highly target any social media campaigns. Facebook does a great job of allowing advertisers a variety of targeting options, such as age range, interests, gender, and even relationship status. Twitter is relatively new to the advertising field (compared to Facebook), so their targeting options aren’t as plentiful.

Another benefit of social media advertising is the immediate results it can provide. Because of the immediacy of social media, companies and organizations can experience a large swell of website visitors, new customers, or Facebook fans all within a single day, depending on the effectiveness of their ads. This type of viral activity can be great for events and product launches.

Evaluating the Costs

Obviously, the biggest downfall of social media advertising is the cost. For some targeted campaigns, competition can be very high, leading to high rates for clicks on social media ads or sponsored tweet impressions (views). For certain industries, the cost to run a viral campaign of this magnitude can be significant, up to thousands of dollars per day.

Because of this, social media advertising on a large scale may not be a viable option to small businesses. While locally-targeted campaigns on Facebook can usually be quite affordable, a small business is less likely to purchase a nationwide sponsored tweet than a major brand like Pepsi or Amazon.com.

Those who are new to social media learn quickly that it is not easy. Having a personal Facebook page and a personal LinkedIn account can sometimes give the impression that social media is “easy,” but it is quite a different story when you begin social media marketing for a company. Working with social media for your company requires you to juggle many different social media accounts at once—your personal company LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Google+—and this can get overwhelming. These social networks are really the “must-have” social networks when you’re first starting a business, but it will only get tougher as StumbleUpon and Reddit are added to the mix.

Remaining active on so many different accounts is tough because you want to make sure that your messages are different and sporadic, and you want to make sure that you’re taking the time to really connect with influential people in your field. One way to help make things a little bit easier is by utilizing what is call a social media dashboard.

Social Media Dashboards for the Small Business Owner

A social media dashboard is simply just a tool that you download that will help you keep all of your different accounts in one place, side by side. Dashboards are also interactive, so you can tweet and share right from the dashboard as opposed to constantly going to a bunch of different sites. Consider a few of the dashboards below:

1. Hootsuite – This is probably the most popular social media dashboards. It syncs up Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter and offers a free, pro or enterprise options. The dashboard is online based, but you can add it to your WordPress blog for more advanced social analytics. Hootsuite also allows you to schedule tweets.

2. TweetDeck – If Hootsuite isn’t the most popular dashboard, TweetDeck takes the cake. This dashboard allows a user to schedule tweets and flip back and forth between social media accounts. I am a fan of the clear side by side layout. You always know what your followers are sharing in real-time. It is available for a desktop or online.

3. Sprout Social – This dashboard is great because you can check out the demographics, track relevant keywords, and even monitor competitor activity.   This dashboard is much more advanced than the others and supports Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Yelp, and Foursquare. Unfortunately, it comes as a small coast, but you can try the tool for free before getting into any payment agreements.

4. Argyle Social – This dashboard is all about the analytics. More advanced companies usually use this dashboard because it’s great for companies that have a strong social media presence and are very active on all accounts. Naturally, this tool also comes at a price.

5. Seesmic – This free tool allows you to schedule social shares, has alert settings and real-time updates, and gives you a view of all the different posts as if it were a conversation. It works with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare.

I have been utilizing social media dashboards for quite some time, and I feel that they have made all the difference in my social media efforts. Because everything is clear and organized, I’m not only able to relax but I’m able to improve all of my social media efforts. I am able to better make sure that my messages are being sent at optimal times of the day and not repetitive of other team members.

Do you use a social media dashboard to help manage your social media efforts? What is your favorite dashboard and why?

Amanda DiSilvestro is a writer on topics ranging from social media to business credit cards. She writes for an online resource that gives advice on topics including business proposals to small businesses and entrepreneurs for the leading business directory, Business.com.

One of the things that makes social media both unique and just like all the other forms of communication is the fact that people rely on their friends and acquaintances to gather information on things that they should buy, eat, and go to.  The more involved companies are in social media, the greater the trust factor can increase. There have been many studies done on the trust component of social media, regarding both online friends and brands. Here are some interesting statistics, according to SocialMediaExplorer.com:

• 64% trust social media more if the dialogue is open to both positive and negative comments
• 60% trust social media more if the author or sponsor is responsive
• 38% trust social media more based on the size of the sponsor or authors following

This boils down to the fact that social media users are more likely to trust what is being said about brands and products online if they are objective (meaning they include positive and negative feedback) and the author or sponsor answers any questions or comments. The faster a user has their question or complaint answered by a company representative, the more trustworthy the company and brand seems.

Using it to Your Advantage

Besides gaining valuable customer insight, companies can also use the power of opinions on social media to their advantage. Calling for feedback in a fun and positive way can help further the conversation while also helping drive customer engagement. To increase involvement, companies can do the following:

• Ask customers to vote on new products
• Have customers vote on user submissions for various contests, such as videos about new products or new company jingles

Have a dedicated social media strategy that includes these types of posts and online activities can help increase trust because users feel more open and comfortable sharing their opinions. They know that their feedback will be taken and appreciated by the company. This is proved furthermore when brand representatives communicate and respond quickly.

Rewarding Opinion

If customers can feel like their feedback and opinions are valued, even negative feedback can be beneficial to a company. Many times, a customer will not bother to give feedback (rather it is positive or negative) if they believe it won’t be appreciated or responded to. Reward customer opinions by offering exclusive incentives, such as discounts and sweepstakes via online communication channels like social media. Once customers  how they can benefit from sharing their views, the more likely they will respond, thus increasing trust and fostering a long-term relationship.

It’s important to remember that blogging is, for the purpose of the law, the same as running your own newspaper or TV station. Every time you hit publish, what you wrote is going to be shot out to people all over the world and, with that power, comes a great deal of peril.

If you don’t want to be sued or threatened (with any seriousness) over your blogging activities, you need to take a moment and understand the laws that govern what you’re doing. I’ll be going over these areas in greater depth over the next few weeks and months here on Performancing, but for those who want to take their education into their own hands, here’s the ground your legal education should cover and why.

1. Copyright Law

Copyright law covers works of creative authorship including writing, photos, artwork, music and movies. It grants the creator or the copyright holder a set of exclusive rights over that work and offers penalties for those who infringe upon those rights.

This one is pretty straightforward. When blogging you are going to use the works of others in some way. Unless you write your own blogging platform, develop your own theme from scratch (using only your code and images), create all of your content and never use a photo/video from someone else, you’re going to want to know how to use the works of others without getting in trouble.

On the flip side of the coin, you should actively expect that your work will be used by others as well, legally and illegally. So, it makes sense that you should also know what your rights are so that you can respond appropriately when needed.

In short, knowing copyright law not only keeps you out of trouble, but it also helps you protect what you worked hard to create. It makes good sense to at least understand the basics.

2. Trademark Law

Where copyright law governs works of creative authorship, trademark law deals with logos, slogans and other items used to identify a business, product or service.

Bloggers bump into trademark law whenever they talk about businesses and their products. This includes reviews, news and any other instance where you might want to mention company or its offerings.

Fortunately, trademark doesn’t place too many restrictions on the use of the mark, mainly focusing on not using the mark in a way that implies a relationship that doesn’t exist, but issues become especially thorny when dealing with using trademarks in domain names and in site titles.

It’s best to be familiar with trademark law before starting up a site, especially if it is about a business, product or service. However, knowing what’s in trademark law also helps prevent companies from intimidating you unduly with empty threats.

In short, it’s an important law to know.

3. Defamation Law

When blogging about people and companies you need to be aware of the importance of being truthful, in particular saying only things that you can prove to be true or are clearly a matter of opinion.

The reason is simple, saying untruthful things about people that harm their reputation, especially online, can land you on the wrong end of a libel lawsuit.

Defamation law covers both libel, written defamation, and slander, spoken defamation. However, most of what one would be dealing with online would be libel, as slander deals solely with transitory statements, meaning things that aren’t fixed into some permanent form.

You need to know what kinds of statements are defamatory and what kinds of statements are acceptable. A few words can be the difference between a perfectly legal statement and a major libel lawsuit.

Regardless, if you talk about others in your blog, even if you don’t identify them directly, you need to understand defamation law and where the lines are drawn.

4. Privacy Law

Privacy law governs the disclosure of private and personal facts about people. This makes it so that, in some situations, even making completely truthful statements can be seen as harmful.

Once again, if you talk about other people (and you almost certainly will) it pays to know what is considered a private fact and when it is acceptable to disclose them publicly.

To be honest, this isn’t an area of law most bloggers run into simply because most are talking about things already posted online, but if you are ever tempted to disclose something that hasn’t already been published by the person it involves, you need to know where the lines are drawn so you don’t find yourself being sued and losing.

5. Contract Law

Realistically, everyone should know the basics of contract law including how to read a contract, what makes a proper one, how to sign it, etc. Everyone signs agreements regularly, whether it’s loan papers, gym memberships or software license.

However, as a blogger, you are going to be a LOT more involved in signing contracts than most. Everything from the terms of service for your video host to a redistribution agreement for an aggregator will have you signing away rights and protections and you’ll want to know exactly what you’re agreeing to.

A good primer on contract law isn’t a bad idea for anyone, but it’s an especially good idea for a blogger.

Bottom Line

Obviously, getting even a good primer in all of these areas of law is going to be time consuming. However, it’s time well spent and, fortunately, there are guides such as the EFF Legal Guide for Bloggers that can give you a pretty good start.

Unfortunately though, these aren’t areas of law that are routinely taught in school. The reason is that, unless you’re going into mass communications, they aren’t applicable to most fields of study. However, as a blogger, you effectively are functioning as a journalist and are bound by the same laws.

So, unless you want to go to either law school or get a mass communications degree, these are things you’re going to have to take the time to learn on your own.

It may be a hassle, but it’s much less of a hassle than getting stung by them in court.

How often should you redesign your website? Probably not as often as you’d like. There are lots of constraints to consider, after all, since time, energy, and money are all precious commodities not everyone is willing to part with on a frequent basis. A redesign seems to be a whole new project on its own, and an opportunity to do a spring cleaning of sorts on one’s website.

But maybe the question shouldn’t be about a redesign that is defined by a complete overhaul, where everything is thrown out and a large number of resources are required each time.

I think the hesitation or the lack of shift in how redesigns can be perceived comes from the general hesitation in the way websites are used. It’s still something technical that requires a limited class of people with a certain expertise.

Still, it’s worth looking at the process of updating a website differently. Try breaking down the activity into smaller, less intimidating chunks. Worry less about having to put the site in maintenance mode and see how feasible it is to tweak in the public eye, where instant feedback is easier to come by than ever and a good way to build a relationship with the audience. The good stuff stays, the bad stuff goes. Think of it as an continuing evolution rather than a halt-then-redo.

This philosophy keeps you attuned to every aspect of the site, and not only when it’s convenient. It helps you look beyond the visual aspect and avoid jumping on the bandwagon with every new trend that comes out. This way you get a chance to really examine whether an idea is effective when it ships.

Of course, for a site to withstand frequent edits it also requires a sturdy enough foundation, from underlying HTML and CSS for the layout to the publishing platform for the features. If your site’s somehow lacking in that department right now, it may be best to go with something solid to build on first.

Giveaways

Giveaways are an easy thing to incorporate into social media while tying in the Olympics. Because social media engagement and participation usually thrives on current events and happenings, holding Olympic-related giveaways can be a great way to make customers feel more connected to a company’s social media presence. This is because the company is involving itself into what customers currently care about, such as events like the Olympics. As mentioned previously, Rafflecopter is a great social media and blog giveaway tool. It makes automating giveaways extremely easy, and it is free to use.

Building Community

Besides giveaways, another way to drive engagement through social media by using the events in the 2012 Summer Olympics is to post conversation builders. This may include asking trivia questions about current Olympic events (e.g. “Who won the Gold medal last night in synchronized swimming?”) as well as posting photos from the events with proper copyright approval. Because many Olympic-watchers are getting into the events every evening, giving customers an outlet to discuss it via Facebook, Twitter chats, Google+ Hangouts, and more can help build a larger community on the company’s profiles.

Conversation builders can also be tied in with giveaways— prizes could be given for the first correct answer to a question or users can post photos from the Olympics to win trips, company products, or other items.

Sponsorship Opportunities

If a company is based in London or does a lot of business in the United Kingdom, then there may be several different sponsorship and advertising options available for reaching participants, fans, and the staff of the 2012 Summer Olympics.  Unfortunately, the deadline for advertising on the Olympics grounds has passed (it was March 31, 2012) but many London newspapers, stores, restaurants, and other establishments that will experience an increase in business may be looking for sponsorships, advertisers, or partnerships during the Olympics.

Giveaways, community building, and sponsorship opportunities are all great ways to tie in the 2012 Olympics with your company’s social media strategy, as with any other global or major event. The Olympics are a part of human history, which makes it a great opportunity to bring companies and individuals together in a positive way.

The most compelling reason would be for those who use other Google products to have seamless services. Our previous infographic about Google outlined the development of the company from it’s humble beginnings to the corporate giant it is today.

More Whitespace

This is probably the most noticeable change. Most of the information is shifted onto the left side. Users are already lamenting the whitespace on larger monitors; luckily Lifehacker has already shared a Chrome and Firefox extension that helps remove the whitespace on your own browser, making the information the main focal point (note: this will only work on your own browser. Another user who doesn’t have the extension installed will still see the default whitespace). However, the whitespace also gives Google+ a cleaner look. To compliment this uncluttered look, choose a simple profile photo and cover image.

More Emphasis on Photos

The cleaner look includes a great emphasis on photos and images, including a bigger profile photo to the right hand side of the profile information and a cover image, much like the cover image that is on the new Facebook Timeline layout, which was made mandatory by Facebook for all pages on March 30, 2012.Make sure the cover image and the profile picture are not blurry or distorted and offer a good initial impression. Additionally, add photo albums of company events, products, and employees to make the page more personable.

Redesigned Navigation

The navigation menu is now along the left hand side of the page, instead of at the top. It includes seven main headings:

1. Home
2. Profile
3. Pages
4. Explore
5. Photos
6. Circles
7. More

These menu items are pretty self-explanatory; hovering over the menu item on some will cause an option menu to appear (For instance, hovering over the “Pages” item will cause of a list of all pages the profile you are logged in as has administrative control over).

Trending and Suggestions

The ‘Explore’ menu item will take the user to a trending and suggestions panel, which lists “What’s hot” on your Google+ network; what is currently trending on Google+, and other things that a user can do on Google+, including video chats with up to 9 users at once and who to follow on the growing social networking site.

These are the main changes that happened on Google+ this week. Google representatives are also working on improving online chat and video quality, which is all tied into a user’s GChat contacts. As Google+ continues to grow, expend the search engine giant to continue to change and shape this networking site to make it more of a substantial force in social media.

They may be the butt of jokes, but everyone is happy to know a lawyer when they need one.

However, as talented and as useful as they are, they are still only human. They can’t predict the future, they can’t read other people’s minds and they can’t possibly know everything, even about their chosen fields.

So, if you ever find yourself needing the services of a good lawyer, bear in mind that there are many questions even the best and brightest can’t possibly answer. While there are many to choose from, here are four of the critical ones to be aware of when it comes to suing someone or being sued yourself.

1. Will I Get Sued For This?

The truth is that, in the U.S., anyone can be sued by anyone else at any time for any thing. Sure, most outrageous lawsuits against you will be tossed quickly and likely with penalties for the person filing the frivolous suit, but all that it takes to file a lawsuit is someone with the interest and resources to make it happen.

If your sole concern is staying out of court and not having to spend money on legal fees, your best bet is to never upset anyone for any reason for as long as you live.

Of course, that’s pretty much impossible, so your best bet is not to avoid upsetting people, but to avoid breaking the law so that any lawsuit that does come your way frivolous and easily defeated.

You can’t ensure that you’ll never be sued, but you can make yourself almost impossible to sue successfully.

2. How Long Will Litigation Take?

When a new case starts up, there’s simply no way to know when it will end. Some cases are settled within a few weeks after being filed while others can drag on for years or decades.

There are many factors that affect how long litigation takes, How open are both sides to settlement? How complex is the case? Will a jury trial be required? Etc. Also, it’s important to note that most of litigation is about negotiation and delaying tactics are often a part of negotiation. It’s not uncommon for one side to try and drag things out to raise costs and push for a better settlement.

There’s simply no way to know how long a case will take when you start it and the best any lawyer can do is give you an idea of how long similar cases have taken in the past. However, even that information can be misleading as there are always outlier cases that drag on many times the length of what an ordinary case should have taken.

3. How Much Will it Cost?

For lawyers, time is literally money and, since there is no way to know how long a case will go on, there’s no good way to know how much it will cost.

In many cases, if your lawyer feels you have a strong enough case, he or she will take it on a contingency fee basis, meaning they will take a percentage of your winnings. However, they can’t know or promise how big those winnings will be either. Also, it’s worth noting that these fees often wind up being higher than an hourly rate since the lawyer is taking a risk.

That being said, there are some legal services that are generally provided for a flat fee (such as bankruptcy) but litigation is simply too unpredictable for that.

As with other questions on this list, your lawyer may be able to give you an idea of what similar cases have cost, but there’s no way to know what the exact total will be, especially considering that there are always outlier cases that take up far more time and money than normal.

4. Will I Win If I Go to Trial?

If your case goes to any kind of trial, there’s simply no way to guarantee that you will emerge the winner. While good evidence and good presentation can make winning a near-certainty, there’s no way to guarantee a win.

Judges and juries are unpredictable. Cases can take strange turns very suddenly, mistakes happen and nothing about litigation is completely foreseeable.

The result is that, while in a perfect world there would be no way to lose a case with the law and evidence on your side, but there are plenty of ways to do just that.

So, while you can be 99% sure that a case is going to go your way, you can never be 100% sure and you can’t be certain what you’ll receive if it does. This is why most lawyers work hard to keep their clients out of court.

Court is simply too expensive and unpredictable to be a good place for most disputes.

Bottom Line

The problem is pretty straightforward. Your attorney is hired to represent you and your interests, but your side is less than a third of the equation in a legal dispute.

Though you can work hard to end a dispute quickly and easily, if the other side has no such interest it can be Hell trying to get even a simple matter resolved.

Your lawyer can only tell you what he or she is going to do and not how the opposing side will react, how the judge will rule or what a jury might decide. Your lawyer can only control their portion of the case and that can only steer things so much.

The best thing you can do, if you are caught up in a legal dispute is hire the best lawyer you can and trust them to represent you to the best of their abilities.

It won’t guarantee and outcome but it’s certainly better than going it alone and you, for better or worse, are facing the same uncertainties as the other side in the case.

That should provide at least some comfort when things seem to be taking forever or are going rough.

Kony 2012

On March 5, a California nonprofit organization known as Invisible Children posted a 30-minute documentary video online that was intended to highlight the crimes committed by Joseph Kony, the rebel leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda. The video went viral and quickly received more than 35 million views. It was shared on Facebook and discussed on Twitter by both celebrities and concerned citizens. The video calls for the capture and prosecution of Joseph Kony.

Effect of Social Media

Forces have already been fighting the Lord’s Resistance Army for several years, including the Ugandan army, Congolese army, South Sudanese army, and Central African Army. However, it wasn’t until this film debuted on social media websites that the rest of the world truly took notice of the crimes in Uganda. Now, millions of people have seen the video and are outraged by the actions of the rebel leader. They are calling for his capture, and many are demanding that the United States intervene in Uganda.

Criticisms

The Kony 2012 film has drawn criticisms on the grounds that it oversimplifies the problems in Uganda. In addition, some people have said that the video elevates Kony to the level of a celebrity, and others say that a military solution is inappropriate. Parody videos have also appeared online, which may take away from the seriousness of the issue. Still, many of the victims in Uganda have said that stopping Kony is all that matters and, if the video aids in his capture, it is well worth it.

Social Media in Politics

This situation sheds a great deal of light on the power of social media. Despite the criticisms of the Kony 2012 campaign, it is likely that this video is the first of many that will eventually go viral online. If such videos had been available on social media in the past, it is possible that other dictators, such as Saddam Hussein or Gadhafi, may have been captured or removed from office more quickly.

Because social media reaches so many citizens at one time, social and political organizations are able to distribute their messages much more effectively. In addition, social media allows such organizations to release their messages in a form that people are more likely to watch, such as short videos. In light of these facts, social media’s role in international and domestic politics will only grow.

About the author: Jon Dawson is a lawyer and professional writer living in Indianapolis. He is a frequent contributor to legal, health, and technology related blogs.

Entitled the “Three Needs Theory,” this is built on the assumption that we all have three motivating drivers, and one of these will be more dominant than the others.

These three motivators as described by McClelland are:

• Achievement
• Affiliation
• Power

Always on the lookout for a new twist for articles on blogging, it struck me how well this theory describes why we get involved with, and continue suffering for, out blog.

Below, I’ve described the characteristics of each of the motivators, and how they relate to blogging.

My thoughts in each area are provided, how about yours?

Achievement

High Achievers differentiate themselves from others by their desires to do things better.

These individuals are strongly motivated by job situations with personal responsibility, feedback, and an intermediate degree of risk.

In addition, high Achievers often exhibit the following behaviors:

• Seek personal responsibility for finding solutions to problems
• Want rapid feedback on their performance so that they can tell easily whether they are improving or not
• Set moderately challenging goals and perform best when they perceive their probability of success as 50-50

How those motivated by Achievement approach blogging:

From a design standpoint, blogging is all about solving problems. As a blog is never truly ‘finished,’ we’re constantly tweaking the blog to improve aesthetics, usability, marketing, etc.

Blogging provides nearly instantaneous feedback through services like Google Analytics; watching the numbers grow and countries light up on the map (as we hit reload over, and over, and over) gives us a happy glow inside.

Money is definitely a motivator! Yes, it’s okay to say that making money is one of the reasons we got into this business. For ‘High Achievers,’ money is often used as a measure of how well we’re doing. Again, how we’re doing is right at our fingertips day and night.

One of the great (and not so great) things about blogging is there is plenty of opportunity, but no guarantees. We’ll take days researching and writing an article expecting a lot of traffic only to be disappointed, then an article we whipped out in 15 minutes goes viral.

Affiliation

People with the need for Affiliation seek companionship, social approval, and satisfying interpersonal relationships.

People needing Affiliation display the following behaviours:

• Take a special interest in work that provides companionship and social approval
• Strive for friendship
• Desire relationships involving a high degree of mutual understanding

How those motivated by Affiliation approach blogging:

Many bloggers get into the business strictly because they like working with others. Meeting people on-line with similar interests, solving each others’ problems, etc, is a primary motivator.

Blogging, especially blogging to a specific niche, can be viewed as a virtual clubhouse, or even support group, providing a common location to read articles and discuss favorite topics with friends.

For those seeking social approval, blogging is a veritable cornucopia of positive reinforcement. The use of social media such as Facebook and Twitter, not to mention Likes, +1, and Shares, and comments provides bloggers with real-time affirmation 24/7.

Power

An individual with a need for Power is likely to follow a path of continued promotion over time.

Individuals with a high need for Power often demonstrate the following behaviors:

• Enjoy being in charge
• Want to influence others
• Enjoy status and recognition

How those motivated by Power approach blogging:

Blogging allows us to be our own boss. While most of us don’t have the option to blog as a full time job, at least our blog is one thing in our lives that we have complete control over in terms of design, content, marketing, etc.

For many of us, our blog allows us to be the authority on the topic we’re writing about. It’s a definite motivation knowing our readers are coming to us for our views on a subject, and even subscribing to our blog to read our next offering.

Finally, seeing our articles rise to the top of Google searches, watching comments grow, and basically watching our numbers increase is a definite boost to our ego. Watching even small spikes increases our status in the blogosphere.

Summary

Keep in mind that none of this is a bad thing, and we’re all motivated by Achievement, Affiliation, and Power as part of our passion to be part of this craziness.

Hopefully, this has given you some perspective; please let me know how this relates to you.

Rick is the owner/author of ‘More Better Smarts,’ supplying practical wisdom to help improve your life at work, home, and play. Visit Rick at www.morebettersmarts.com.

Plugins can be an easy way to increase Twitter Followers and likes on Facebook. They are fairly easy to add for webmasters or developers onto the backend coding of the site and usually begin working immediately. Additionally, plugins are available straight from the social media sites themselves, thus making them more likely to work accurately and not add on any additional code or bugs that aren’t necessary. There are some third party plugins and widgets that can connect to Twitter and Facebook using their API, but unless the original developer plugin isn’t working, these aren’t usually the best option.

All plugins may not be a direct call-to-action to follow or like the company, but any involvement via social media can increase a company’s brand awareness and overall social media success.

Twitter

There are several ways that webmasters can add Twitter plugins (called buttons on the Twitter website)to their websites to get their visitors involved with the company’s Twitter account. These include:

• Share a Link: Allows a user to tweet a link to a certain blog post or web page on a website.
• Follow:  Takes the user to the company’s Twitter account to follow them
• Hashtag: The user can tweet a company or custom hashtag that has to do with a company’s blog, current product campaign, or other type of imitative.
• Mention: Lets the user write a tweet that @ mentions the company’s Twitter handle.

Twitter also has four different kinds of plugins for websites, which they call widgets. They include:

• Profile Widget: displays the most recent company Twitter account updates
• Search Widget:  displays search results on Twitter in real time (which wouldn’t necessarily be beneficial in increasing Twitter followers, unless the search term was for the company’s twitter handle)
• Faves Widget: highlights the Twitter account’s favorite tweets
•  List Widget: displays certain lists of Twitter followers that the profile had put together

Facebook

There are several difference Social Plugins on Facebook for website developers. These include actions to Like, Subscribe, Send Content via Facebook, and more.

Additionally, webmasters can also add a Facebook Like Box to the sidebar or static area of their site. You can add the Facebook Page stream or thumbnails of current Facebook profile likes.

Additionally, it is possible to only have the Company Page name and then the like button, with the number of likes.

Installation

Through the Twitter and Facebook plugin pages, developers can select their preferences to build the custom widget. Once all the preferences are selected, the page generates a code that is copy and pasted into the backend of the website as instructed.

It would seem at first glance that no, businesses absolutely are not taking advantage of YouTube. This is most likely because YouTube appears to be entirely video based, and many companies do not think of themselves as being a company that produces videos. Although this may not work for every type of company, any company that has something to teach has an opportunity to benefit from YouTube. Creating a “How-To” video or a humorous video of people in your company is a great way to get people interested in a company through YouTube.

Once you brainstorm with your team brainstorm video ideas, shoot the video, and get it uploaded and ready to go, it’s time to start optimizing. Just as with any search engine, content on YouTube can also be optimized to help increase success.

Move Over Lady Gaga: How to Get Your Company in on the YouTube Scene

Just as with a search engine like Google, this process is also called search engine optimization (SEO). You can rank well with YouTube as a whole, meaning if someone types in a search query your page could potentially pop up. This is the ideal way to gain visibility on YouTube. You can also optimize the actual page where your video appears. When ranking in both cases, there are a few places you’ll want to include your keywords:

1. Title – This is arguably the most important place your keyword should appear. Just like when optimizing for Google, having this keyword at the beginning of the title adds a little bit of extra push for your video. In fact, many experts say that having your keyword at the front of the title is even more important when working with YouTube.

2. Description – Naturally, the description is the second most important place you want to put your keyword. This is one of the only opportunities you have to add content to your YouTube page, so you want to take advantage. You should also include a link back to your company website for those who want more information. Most companies choose to put this at the top of the description to make sure it doesn’t get cut off.

3. Tags – Tagging helps a search engine to classify a website correctly. YouTube also offers a place you can add tags, so you will want to make sure you don’t skip this opportunity to use your keyword for optimization.

4. Backlinks – Just as with Google, having other authoritative pages linking back to your website will help you rank well on YouTube. You can do this by linking back to your video in any piece of content you write (not necessarily on YouTube) and your video should gain some more visibility.

5. Transcriptions – Publishing the script of your video in your description works great for those who are hard of hearing or prefer to read along with a video. Not only is this user-friendly, but it’s a great way to improve the keyword density on your page. However, this usually only works for shorter videos.

YouTube doesn’t actually see the videos that you are posting, so it relies completely upon the content surrounding the video. This makes optimization very important. When you have a traditional piece of content, you have many opportunities to include your keyword; however this isn’t always the case with a YouTube video. Although YouTube does allow brands to buy an upgraded version of YouTube, most start out trying to optimize the page on their own.

Does your company have a presence on YouTube? How did you optimize your YouTube page?

Photo Credit: pandia.com

Amanda DiSilvestro is a writer on topics ranging from social media to phone systems. She writes for an online resource that gives advice on topics including VoIP to small businesses and entrepreneurs for the leading business directory, Business.com.

1. Spell Out The Specifics

First and foremost you want to introduce yourself, and briefly explain what you do. “Your most important details should go in the first sentence,” according to Brand Yourself.

You want put it forward with intention and a strong sense of purpose. Your goal should be to move readers, and engage them so they’ll be compelled to click through to your site. Consider using phrases such as:

• The first in his/her field
• Blog Owner
• CEO of… even if it’s only a website, it is technically the truth.

2. List Your Accomplishments

Once you’ve explained who you are and what you do, you should include your important accomplishments. These will give your previous statements credibility and intrigue. You won best business blog of 2011? Get readers curious enough to want to find out why.

• Choose the most prestigious award/honorable mention, etc. Make the most of the little space you have to work with.

3. Involve Readers With Links

This might be the most important aspect of any good bio – in fact, it’s the reason you write a bio in the first place. When you guest post, the goal is to get an influx of traffic back to your site or social media platforms. If you don’t include links, you’re missing out on the whole point.

• Blog – Link to your blog or your best blog post. You can link to your blog or website in general or send them to an enticing page such as your “about me.”
• Contact info – Next to your site, linking to your social media outlets is crucial in inviting others get into contact with you or become engaged with your work.

Don’t Forget…

Buzz Words

Most websites prefer it to be no more than 2 sentences. Thus, when putting together a robust, yet minimalistic bio, it’s important that you make the most of the few words you do have.

• Keywords – Your bio should be filled with keywords to increase your potential for SEO.
• Bold language – You want to use words that will make your bio stand out – award winning, leader, pioneer.

Personal Touch

When all is said and done, you want to be relatable. While you’ve accomplished much in your career, you’re a human just like everyone else. Use your first sentence for professional accolades and the second for a personal mention. There are a number of specifics you could include here:

• Hobbies: Other than blogging, what do you enjoy doing? Hiking, swimming, collecting old coins?
• Family: Are you inspired by your wife and small child? Readers can relate to this emotion, perhaps more than a great accomplishment you’ve achieved.
• School: Are you taking classes? Expanding your career? Do you have future aspirations?

Next time you sit down to tweak your existing bio or pen a new one, be sure to include the most important information; with only two sentences, you have to attract each and every reader. Be bold, short, and concise because it’s your one shot and it needs to be enough.

Bio: Jessica Sanders is an avid small business writer touching on topics from social media to telemarketing. She gives advice on various topics for lead generation resource, Resource Nation.

Image credit: Notifyworks.com

If you want to learn more about the social media industry, follow these top social media influencers on Twitter. Whether you are a social media marketing specialist or just interested in the industry, these experts provide valuable links and resources that you may not find elsewhere.

1. iJustine: Justine Ezarik is an Apple queen and does an amazing job at all things social media. She maintains an active presence on so many social media sites, it’s hard to believe how she does it. She is mainly known for her YouTube videos, but this girl is EVERYWHERE!
2. Scott Monty: Scott Monty is the head of social media for Ford Motor Company. What may seem like an overwhelming responsibility to some has been a platform of success for Scott, who often speaks at social media conferences and explains how to use Ford’s strategies in other industries.
3. Adam Ostrow: Adam is the Senior Vice President of Content and Executive Editor of Mashable.com, the extremely popular social media and internet news blog. He shares a behind-the-scenes look at what it’s like working for Mashable while also re-tweeting great content and links.
4. Jay Baer: Jay Baer is a celebrated social media consultant and author. His book, the NOW Revolution continues to be a hot seller and he also writes great content at http://www.convinceandconvert.com.
5. Sarah Evans: Sarah is a great speaker and focuses on social media, public relations, and blogging. She does a great job with answering others’ questions and helping people when they need it. She also has a great perspective on industry trends.
6. Mari Smith: Mari is amazing at Facebook and Twitter marketing. She regularly produces video tutorials and blog posts on MariSmith.com that makes new concepts and marketing techniques easy to understand and implement.
7. Michael A. Stelzner: Michael founded SocialMediaExaminer.com, which is an amazing wealth of social media marketing information. Each article is heavily researched and contains great information.
8. Shelly Kramer: Shelly is part of V3 Integrated Marketing, which is based out of Kansas City, Missouri. V3 does a great job of both promoting the social media industry in Kansas City and in general.
9. Jeff Bullas: Jeff is a consultant and speaker specializing in social media, internet marketing, blogging, and content marketing.  He blogs at http://www.jeffbullas.com, which gets over 100,000 hits a month.

These are just some of the social media influencers who would be beneficial to follow on Twitter.

Who else do you think would be beneficial social media-wise to follow on Twitter?

If you’re a blogger, or blogging is part of running your business, then it might seem as if there isn’t a great deal you can claim. After all, blogging is a solitary activity that doesn’t seem to accrue a lot of expense.

But the truth is there’s a lot that goes into blogging and, while you’ll likely want to seek out the help of a tax professional before claiming any of these deductions, there are a lot of things that could easily help you keep more of your money.

With that in mind, here are just seven suggestions to get you started though, without a doubt, there are many, many more out there that you can consider.

1. Internet Fees

Your hosting fees are a fairly straight forward deduction but, if you do most of your blogging from home, your Internet access could be as well if it’s used primarily for business.

Likewise, any services that you subscribe or use, such as backup services, security tools or theme clubs that you’ve joined, are also likely deductions waiting to happen. Likewise, anything that you purchased for the purpose of reviewing on your site, such as movies or songs, can also be a deduction.

In short, if it’s online, it’s a part of running your blog and you paid money for it, there’s a good chance it could be a deduction.

2. Physical Equipment

If you bought a new computer over the past year for blogging, that’s a fairly straightforward deduction. However, smaller things can add up as well. Mice, keyboards, speakers, monitors, etc. may also be deductible. Same goes for webcams, microphones, mixers and anything else you use with your site.

Don’t forget to include any software that you bought, such as podcasting or video editing software as they might be potential deductions as well.

3. Travel-Related Expenses

If you went to a conference or did any sort of traveling for your blog, gas, dining, hotel expenses, conference fees and other costs incurred while on the road may be deductions you can claim.

The same goes for rental cars, airfare or any other expenses that you paid in the process of traveling for your blog.

This is a big part of why it’s important to keep good records whlie you’re on the road as these expenses can add up quick and amount to a huge deduction in April.

4. Office Equipment and Supplies

Hopefully you don’t do your blogging on a bare concrete floor in a darkened room. If you’ve purchased tables, chairs, lighting, decorations, cleaning supplies or anything else to make your office work it might be something you can deduct.

Likewise, don’t forget about the office supplies you use, pens, pencils, paper (including printer paper) and even sticky notes could all be deductions. Little things add up so keeping good records can save you a great deal of money down the road.

5. Rent and Utilities

If you rent an office to work out of, that rent likely becomes tax deductible as does any utilities you pay while there. This includes power, water, gas, garbage removal and anything else along those lines.

If you work from home, you may still be able to claim a portion of your mortgage and household utilities if you have a home office that’s separate from the rest of your house.

Just remember, any thing you pay to keep your office open and functional is a probably deduction just waiting to happen.

6. Promotion

If you purchased any advertising for your blog/business, this includes Google Adsense, or spent any other money on promotion, it is likely a tax deduction. This promotion can include any money you spend to get the word out about your site, from email marketing to guest blogging.

Also, don’t forget about the promotion that you do in the physical world. Business cards, letterhead, signs, shirts, anything that you have made to promote you and your site can also be a deduction.

7. Other Communication Expenses

While Internet expenses may seem more obvious, there’s a lot of other ways that you communicate as part of your site and business. For example, your cell phone may be deductible (in whole or in part) and fax services, phone fees or other costs you incur related to your business may be deductible as well.

This can include your Skype, Google Voice, Grasshopper or any other phone services you subscribe to. In short, if you communicate with it, paid money for it and use it for your business, you need to consider it as a possible deduction.

Bottom Line

Of course, with all of these you should likely check with a tax professional first before claiming any deductions. Also, you should be certain that you have adequate proof of the purchase before marking it on your return.

If you need help with that, it may be a bit late for this year but next year you might want to consider using Shoeboxed, a service that makes it easy to organize and store receipts online so that it’s simple to get them together and get cracking on your taxes.

In the meantime though, it might be worthwhile to check your email and your drawers around your house to see what receipts you have laying around and if any of them could become deductions for you and your business.

Many people lose money not because they didn’t put the effort and time into their business, but because they weren’t looking at the whole picture when it came time to decide what was a business expense. If you stop thinking of a blog as simply being a site where you post your writing and see it as a part of your physical life, you can start to understand just how much you’ve spent on it and how much you should deduct.

Once you do that, you’ll likely find that taxes are much less of a burden then they once were.

Both Bing and Google are now using social media activity to help shape and determine search engine results pages (SERPs). This is based off the notion that a user will be more interested in seeing content that their friends and others in their social network have already shared or read versus content that hasn’t been accessed by anyone in their circle.

Because of this, companies need to get more proactive on a positive, community-driven social media strategy that can help drive engagement and promote user activity via social media.

The first step towards creating a positive and engaged social media presence is to have SEO-crafted social media profiles, and then to cross-connect and promote the company’s social media and websites. Be sure to have the company’s URL featured in all social media profiles. This type of cross-linking will help the company have a respected and consistent online presence.

Once the company has set up their online presence, begin promoting customer social sharing and involvement. Install the Facebook Like Box, Twitter follow buttons, Google+  plugins, and a LinkedIn company badge in the company’s header, sidebar, or footer. Then, install social sharing buttons (like the Sharebar WordPress plugin) into all blog posts or applicable content pages.

It’s important to remember that even though sharing buttons and plug-ins may be installed, the content needs to be interesting and original in order to actually be shared. Write and publish content that is original, has a catchy headline, provides a service or teaches a lesson, or brings up ‘tired’ ideas in a new way.

Besides making sharing this type of original company content easy, holding contests through social media and blog posts (Rafflecopter is a great social media involvement contest tool) can not only influence customers and visits to share content, like posts, and follow or connect via social media, it also increases positive brand awareness. Many users are more likely to read blogs and social media posts that give away desirable prizes alongside useful content than blogs that simply talk about themselves and share the same links repeatedly.

Even though high-quality repeated sharing through social media can influence SEO rankings, it’s important to be involved in social media for the right reasons. Namely, to get involved in the conversation about the company that is already happening (whether the company is there to respond or not), to share new products and services, and to help customers use their company in the highest capacity possible.

Graphic created on Wordle.

Dribbble shots exemplifying current design trends (by Damjan Stankovic, Ryan Putnam, William Szilveszter, Zulal Ahmad, Nat Al-Tahhan, iconshock, Ashish Thakkar, Seth Nickerson, Matt Gentile)

In the recent Smashing Magazine feature, Symptoms Of An Epidemic: Web Design Trends, Mr. Brunborg lists the popular design techniques and elements that has hit the community these past few years as the replacement the glossy, glassy gradients of the “Web 2.0 look”. It’s realism and skeumorphism meets textured and traditional. Get your bingo cards ready and check these bad boys off:

• Stitching
• Zigzag borders
• Forked ribbons
• Textures
• Letterpress
• 19th century illustration
• Muted tones
• Justified or centered typography
• Skeumorphic features

Taking pride in good design

Vintage type treatments on modern products (by Alex Rinker)

I think the perspective missing in that article is that there’s a large sense of pride in creating graphical elements that imitate real life, since those things stir something in casual, non-designy people the same way they like other forms of eyecandy, or candy in general. There’s also a certain rush, a unique treat in the experience of gazing upon and using such interfaces as you are transported to a slightly different era, yet at the same time enjoy all the affordances that current technology has achieved. It’s like the appeal of Steampunk, which is an amusing marriage between the aesthetics found during the steam engine era combined with the bells and whistles of the modern world.

It may be easy to create the amateurish version of these elements these days, but the truly dedicated designer will spend hours on end perfecting every pixel. If it’s a rushed, half-assed job, it will reflect on the design, and will tell everyone you were just trying to jump on the bandwagon the same way you wanted a “Web 2.0″ site, without even caring to figure out what that meant. If it’s a carefully crafted design, the quality will shine through.

Utmost attention to detail in icon design (by Román Jusdado)

I could even dare say that this trend is an on-going challenge among designers. An unspoken contest where one is able to say “I can pull that off” using these familiar objects as the common ground. Of course a more worthy challenge would be to use every form of inspiration in the universe and not be restricted to these elements, but that’s another context.

On a less cynical or narcissistic note, I like to think that designers, especially those for the web, consider themselves artisans and craftsmen that are very particular if not attached to their creations. When they use these current design trends, they tend to evoke those same qualities: authentic, vintage, nostalgic, imperfect, unrushed, simple, imperfectly polished, organic.

What does this mean for you?

Are you succumbing to the trends just because it's in, or because you believe it's a good fit for your brand? Hipster Branding is a blog that mocks the current "hipster" aesthetic craze by redesigning popular logos into that look.

What does this mean for non-designers, clients, and the like? It means this list of trends is getting to a point where you have to ask: where do you draw the line between being “hip” by adapting such an aesthetic, and being a “fashion victim” by slapping on too many of these styles at a time?

The other, more important question of course: do these design elements fit the message that your company, product, or service is trying to promote? Or are you just blindly following the bandwagon because you feel like it, or your designer feels like it?

Below is an infographic looking at how they have grown and expanded in a mere 6 years from just 2 employees to 200 and over 50 million users, all on word of mouth advertising!

This infographic design was created by Infographiclabs.com

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More and more consultants and professionals in the internet and social media marketing realm are using their smartphones (especially the Apple iPhone) to stay connected and maintain their online presence. There are several social media marketing applications available for the iPhone for free that can allow a social media marketing consultant or professional to stay connected and updated on the go.

Popular Social Media Applications

Twitter: Twitter allows the user to add multiple accounts and switch between them.  You cannot post on two accounts at one time. However, the interface is easy to use and loads quickly.

Facebook: The newest Facebook update allows users to write wall posts and publish photos onto the pages they are administrator of, but they cannot delete posts or comments.

LinkedIn: However, the LinkedIn application only allows for one account to be logged in at a time. The LinkedIn application is good for reading posts by other users, accepting requests, and sending InMail. Users cannot edit groups or company profiles.

Blogging Applications

WordPress: The iPhone WordPress application has a lot of versatility and allows users to add, update, and view posts on multiple blogs through the one application. Users can also view and edit pages and approve blog post comments.  Additionally, if users have added the stats plugin, they are able to view basic stats about their blog, including traffic.

Tumblr: Tumblr iPhone app users can post photos, video, audio, quotes, links, and text from their phone, as well as handle multiple blogs via the single application. Tumblr posts can also be scheduled or tweets can be customized. Users can search the iPhone contacts to see if they have a Tumblr account.

Blogger: The Blogger application allows users to monitor and edit more than one blog and add photos instantly to posts. Users can also labels, save drafts, or automatically publish posts.

Social Media Marketing Applications

Sendible: The Sendible user via an iPhone experiences a similar interface to the online computer version of Sendible.com. Users can send the same message from multiple accounts as well as schedule when messages go out. Sendible has a free account version, as well as paid monthly membership, depending on usage and accounts.

Tweetdeck: Tweetdeck is similar to Sendible, but most users use the free version of this service.

These are just a sample of the several iPhone applications that are available for internet and social media marketing professionals.

What are your favorite iPhone applications?