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Social media has “a new sheriff in town” called Google +. Google has gotten into the social media space in a huge way recently and in only 3 weeks has amassed about 20 million users. What is it? How is it different from Facebook, LinkedIn and some of the other social networks? Is there a business application for this? How will it affect online marketing activities? There are many questions about Google + and this post is only an intro to this exciting new online network.

Companies are talking a lot about social media marketing and trying to figure out what to do. Many think having a Facebook page is the biggest priority. No doubt Facebook is important – after all 600 million users ain’t bad. But what many lose site of is their reputation online and what people are saying about them online. This IS social media and many call it Online Reputation Management (ORM).

Search engine marketing spend is about to become the "little brother" to display marketing in the next few years according to some industry experts. By 2015, these experts expect marketing spend on Display to be just shy of $22 billion while they predict search marketing spend that year will come in about $21.5 billion. Display marketing in this context includes online video, banner ads, rich media and the like. While I was surprised by this at first glance, when I think about the emergence of video, I become less surprised. After all, YouTube has become the third most popular website (after Google and Facebook) and is considered by many to be the second most popular search engine after Google.

Social media marketing has so many new and emerging opportunities. One of the most popular these days are the daily deal sites - Groupon and Living Social being the most prominent. However, there are more deal sites popping up all the time targeting more niche spaces. These properties have brought many great deals to consumers, including me, but are they working for the merchants? This post provides some suggestions about how to make one element of social media marketing, the daily deal sites, work financially for the business.

A recent survey by American Express and SEMPO revealed that small and mid-sized businesses (SMB’s) are investing more in social media than in search engine optimization. Considering the challenges in measuring social media ROI, I was ambivalent about this finding. I mean on one hand I am not surprised businesses are really interested in social media. After all, it is what everyone seems to be entranced by. On the other hand, search engine optimization is such a powerful tool to actually generating leads and it can be more easily measured.

GroupM Search and comScore, two reliable sources of research about online buying behavior, recently released findings of a new study that focused on the impact and search and social media, and the synergy of each channel. The results were quite interesting and may provide insights that could alter your current search and social media strategies. A meaningful excerpt from the study revealed the following:

Much is being written about the success of sites like Groupon and Living Social. A recent blog post expressed concern that these kinds of location-based promotional sites will ultimately lead to merchants competing on price only. An excerpt from the post read as follows:

Going through some of the finer points in Google Analytics - Conversion University caused me to ask "why don't more people embrace the richness of web analytics data?" I think about some of our clients and many people I run in to who are struggling to be effective marketers and then I look at the power of the data you can get from Google Analytics. I just shake my head in amazement that more aren't embracing the data.

2010 was an exciting year in the world of online marketing. The Bing and Yahoo search alliance, Google Instant, new mobile devices and even a major motion picture about the rise of a social network. While it's hard to tell what the next year holds, I don't think anything is slowing down - in fact, I see momentum building even more and more.

During my many years in the marketing business and through my involvement with the American Marketing Association I've been exposed to several people from ad agencies. Nearly all are bright, motivated, talented people and the work they produce is often awesome. Their capabilities are broad but one area that's seldom an agency specialty is web analytics data, and unfortunately many don't utilize the power of this valuable resource.