It’s official: Google has just announced Google Buzz, its newest push into the social media foray. This confirms earlier reports of Gmail integrating a social status feature.

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ViralHeat has both the price point and the feature set fit for the company that wants to get on top of its image and perception on the social Web but can’t afford to bring a social media expert on board – and on salary. The learning curve is suitable for the DIY set and the analytics it provides are self explanatory, not riddled with indecipherable, industry jargon.

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What would happen if you changed the cadence of your multi-step lead nurturing campaign? How would changing the campaign tempo affect response rates, sales conversions, opt-outs, etc?

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I just finished reading an article in Business week claiming that Microsoft has come to terms with Apple and Bing will become the search engine on the iPhone (most likely OS 4.0 release). A deal with Verizon last summer made Bing the default search engine on most Verizon (non-Android) phones. In my opinion this is HUGE and a clear signal of Microsoft’s intentions.

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I’ve said before that social media is an amplifier for businesses online. Facebook is a big amplifier! The interconnectivity of it’s members and the ability to share purchase decisions, is, of course a great opportunity. Especially if you have a process in place to connect and make offerings to those members.

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The minute you get a big head is the same minute that reality smacks you and you realize that you aren’t as cool as you think you are. So self-adulation is something I try to stay away from. But self promotion? That’s a whole different story.

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Whether you’re part of the SEO industry or you’re a small business owner, I’d ask you to remember to place common sense at the top of your marketing strategy arsenal. Stop thinking about what will benefit you or your rankings and start asking yourself in all honesty if a tactic is going to benefit your users. If the answer is no, you need to move on to a new idea.

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Advertising needs visuals in the same way that lyrics need music, if you want to drive your words into the minds of your prospects. Without a visual hammer, an advertising campaign is almost certain to fail.

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It’s great to get recognition for your small business and it’s even better if that recognition comes with great prizes. This list of competitions and awards for small businesses is updated every two weeks and brought to you as a community service by Small Business Trends and Smallbiztechnology.com.

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Widgets are mini web applications that you can insert into your website and/or social networks. They’re a popular way to add interesting third party content to your web presence. In this post we look at the top web widgets from Yola and Widgetbox. It’s clear from our analysis that widgets are well past the early adopter stage and are now very mainstream.

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