If you are running your business online or just happen to have an online division, you have probably taken the time to build a presence for your business on Facebook, Twitter, and other top social media sites. But there is more to social media than just opening an account on Twitter or Facebook. You are going to need to be involved and active on these sites. That’s where content tools come in. They make it easy to share and discover new content and track your own content’s progress. If you are taking time to share your work on these top social networking websites, you may as well track it all as well.

If you are looking for powerful social media tools to share and discover content online, here are 5 content tools you should try:

Thoora: a very easy way to discover the top content online. It keeps track of tweets, blogs, and everything in between. It also shows you the number of articles and posts about each entry and the frequency of mentions as well.

Cadmus: Cadmus is a real-time service that manages your stream (Twitter, FriendFeed and RSS) by displaying the most relevant content for you. A great tool to keep track of stories about your brand and staying on the top of your content.

Continue reading 5 Fresh Social Media Content Tools For Business

There are thousands of social networking sites available on the Internet these days, and everyday a few more pop out of nowhere. Every business, whether large and small, should take time to get familiar with those networks that can provide it with a decent return on investment. Small businesses, especially, need to be involved in the popular social networking sites in their niche to get the word out about their business and save money in the process. But even if you are not interested in pursuing social networking services at this point, you should take time to register your brand name.

Going through hundreds of websites to search for your name and reserve your name can be time consuming. Not if you are using some of the social media profile management tools that are available. They not only save you time reserving your brand name across the social media, they make the process painless. If you are looking for such a tool, here are 4 social media username tools you should check out:

NameChk: lets you find out whether your favorite username (which should be your brand name) is taken on those popular social networking websites.

My Friends Call Me: very similar to the above tool. I do love the fact that it classifies the social networks so you know which one applies to your niche. It’s pretty slick too. Continue reading How To: Secure Your Name Across Social Media

Facebook is a great community to be a part of to catch up with old friends, keep up with the current ones, and even find contacts and new friends. A lot of people do use Facebook to just waste their time, and there is nothing wrong with that. Everybody is responsible for themselves and their own times. If you are a business owner or want to start an online business, you can’t afford to do the same. There are plenty of ways that Facebook can help you take your business to the next level and make some money in the process as well.

Paul Dunay has done such a wonderful job with his presentation on this topic, that everyone should take time to go over his recommendations on this subject.

1. CafePress: I have talked about CafePress and how you can make money from it in the past. By using Facebook, you can sell products on Facebook and put more money in your pocket. Here is the app that lets you do just that. Continue reading 5 Ways To Make Money On Facebook

Whether you own a business or just have a blog that you are treating as a hubby, you are going to have to drive traffic to your  business if you want to survive. You can always try paying for traffic and get lots of traffic with pay per click marketing, but that is going to depend on your budget. It’s so easy to spend a fortune and blow through your budget without making real profits. Pay per marketing is effective but you have to be very good at it, and even then you’ll have to combine multiple tactics (SEO, offline, …) to manage your cost per acqusition and increase your margins.

One of the best ways to drive traffic to a website is by using social networking and bookmarking sites to get the word around it. Think about it. If your site is submitted and dugg on Digg.com, you are going to get a whole lot of free traffic that you wouldn’t get otherwise. And if you have real good content or services that you can offer to your visitors, there is no reason your site won’t get some love from Digg or other social networking community members. Let’s not forget the SEO ramifications of submitting your pages to social bookmarking sites either. Not only you get back-links that could help you climb the search engine rankings, you may even get ranked for highly competitive keywords through your pages on social bookmarking sites.

Taking advantage of social bookmarking sites is a no brainer, but there are hundreds of them around and submitting each page to these sites can be a hassle. Most of these sites require you to create an account and verify them before you can use their service. You’ll also have to manage your passwords, secret questions, and so on. It’s just too much hassle for a business owner to go through. And you can use your time on other more important chores. Thanks to social bookmarking automation services such as Social Maximizer, you won’t have to do it all by yourself.

Social Maximizer is a cool social media automation service that lets you submit your pages to hundreds of social bookmarking services without having to lift a finger. You will have to set a title and description for each entry, but you won’t have to create accounts and submit stories by hand. What I love about Social Maximizer is the fact that unlike other social bookmarking automation services, you get to choose what goes live. That way you can not only avoid spamming these networks but also get more value out of your each entry.

Services such as Social Maximizer are life savers for your business. They let you concentrate on more core business activities and still drive you lots of free traffic to bring down your costs per customer. Best of all, they don’t spam these social bookmarking sites, which means you won’t get banned. Best of all, they don’t cost much (18 cents per submission in Social Maximizer’s case). If you own an online business and are looking for more traffic, Social Maximizer is a no brainer.

Everybody is talking about the social media these days. Just a few days ago we had Kutcher vs. CNN in the first Twitter challenge. The goal was to reach one million users on Twitter and also contribute to a great cause in the process. The social media industry may be maturing, but there is still a lot of money to be earned. Let’s not forget that as great as Facebook, FriendFeed, and Twitter are, they are not perfect. You all probably remember myspace and its dominance a few years ago. Where is it now? It’s barely holding on. Things change quickly in the social media, and that means entrepreneurs are always going to have the opportunity to make money with their products and services. If you are willing to learn new things and think outside the box, there is no limit to how much you can earn in this industry. With that in mind, here are a few ways to make money online from the social media:

1. Paid applications: writing an application for Facebook and Twitter is one of the best ways to make money online. As long as you provide a unique value, there is no reason you can’t monetize your work.
2. Free applications: free applications can help you get a lot of traffic back to your site and even promote your other products. You can’t beat free.
3. Services: there are many services that you can provide to folks who want to get in on this whole social media thing. You can help them achieve more followers or promote their businesses online. You could teach them how to get started with the social media. Consulting and coaching is one of the best ways to make money in this market.
4. Videos: you can take your service to the next level by creating a video product that shows people how to do things. It’s more than consulting. It’s teaching a lot of people how to get things done.
5. Products: you can always create products that let people do more with the social media. This goes back to item number 1 but these products will address a set of needs. You can create a program that lets people grab information from various social media sites and track their reputation across these networks. The sky’s the limit here.
6. Corporate services: most corporations are still not on board with a lot of things that are going on in the social media. They are proactively looking for solutions that help them manage their reputation and get more out of Twitter and Facebook. What a better way to make money than offering these companies a solution they can work with.
7. Reports: you can always sell reports as long as you provide real value. You can also put together a book if you have gotten real results on sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

There are many other ways you can make money on social networking sites. The sky’s the limit here. You can create all kinds of mashups and get more specific with the above tactics. Social media is here to stay. Why not make