I enjoy the research published by the Pew Internet and American Life Project because it is not motivated by any particular agenda. So it came as a surprise to me to learn that they are reporting that 19% of those recently surveyed use Twitter or “some other form of status update service (not quite sure what they mean by this). This is up from 11% only 1 year ago. I know that Twitter is fast-growing but since Pew generally reports more conservative numbers than other surveys this is impressive. Additionall, the same survey is showing that the median age for Facebook users is rising: Up to 33 from 26 only 1 year ago–big jump!

I saw this interesting case study from MarketingProfs that details how a social media monitoring software company called Techrigy is using Twitter as the primary lead generation tool.  The presentaion includes their impressive case study plus basic tips in how to monitor conversations on Twitter to find users with whom to engage.  The only shortcoming [...]

I am generally in favor of Facebook business pages as long as the business has a reasonably interesting content strategy, the willingness to committ sustained time and energy to it, and the willingness to cross-promote it in througout their marketing efforts. However, there is one thing thaty bugs me about Facebook relative to some of the other popular social sites such as Twitter and YouTube. On Facebook there is no way to search for and engage potential new fans without using Facebook advertising to get to them. I know Facebook does not want to commit the same sins as MySpace and create a platform for spammers but I have to believe that there can be a way to implement fan site invitations that would not be intrusive.

I love this article by Mark Collier that describes the groundswell caused by a simple Tweet by an independant musician with a loyal following. The is such a great example of simple principles of social media communications.

• It’s not about “me” but about “we”
• Embrace participation
• Be willing to be spontaneous

Sometimes a picture tells the whole story and I just need to get out of the way.

I hear more questions about how to use Twitter than any other social media marketing platform. Most of the time these come from people who are fairly highly skeptical that it could be of any use at all to them. Fair enough. Here are ten great uses of Twitter (that are also likely to be profitable ones) borrowed from this great article at Socialnomics.com.

A recent study by Pear Analytics sought to determine the content of what is being posted to Twitter. They took 2,000 tweets in English from the public timeline over a time span of two weeks, with 200 tweets captured each half-hour from 11am – 5pm CST daily. They then categorized tweets into six different types: news, spam, self-promotion, pointless babble, conversation, and pass-along value. Pointless babble won with 40.55% of the sample.

A recent Nielsen Company study has confirmed that the percentage of Twitter users 25 and younger is significanty lower than the percentage of the same group on the web as a whole. This indicates that Twitter’s recent growth is fueled completely by adult users which runs counter to most people’s intuitive sense that young people are mavens with all things social media.

On their blog last week Twitter announced that they are correcting follower and following counts with the end result being that “follower counts will drop for some people. In particular, those with large followings may see significant changes as we correct for spam accounts and data inconsistencies.” It is interesting to see that they are taking lessons from the fate of MySpace and fighting misuse of their system before it becomes too rampant. What does this mean to you?

Google is now spidering Tweets and pulling them into search engine result pages (SERPs). This means that if you Tweet for a specifc business reason and are concerned about your online visibility you will want to take some steps to make sure that your Tweets are optimized for organic search. Here some tips to help you get Twoogled: