Radium

Listen up all you social media guru’s and experts. A new year is upon us and 2010 is sure to bring about some changes in the social media landscape. The biggest change? Companies will start demanding that their social media investments drive revenues and not just simple web metrics. Page views, site traffic and increased followers aren’t going to be enough to justify a continued investment in social media – you need to link your efforts to sales and conversions.

A recent survey of global CMO’s conducted by Bazzarvoice highlighted that “81% of respondents expect to link their annual revenues to their social media investment in 2010, up from just 44% of CMOs in 2009.”

The study also went on to show that “53% of respondents are unsure about their return on Twitter; 50% are unsure about the direct value of LinkedIn; and 50% are not sure how to measure the impact of industry blogs on business metrics.”

If you’re like most bloggers your probably rely on a Retweet button to help push your content out to others. But if you simply installed the default code, you may not be getting the credit you deserve. To make sure that you’re not missing out on potential followers take a minute to ensure your buttons are configured correctly.

This post will cover four of the more popular Retweet buttons; tweetmeme, Retweet, Topsy and the tweetcount widget by backtype.

I’m not going to spend this blog post convincing you that your business can benefit from a well thought out social media strategy. I think you already know that. In fact, most companies now realize that social media isn’t a fad and can provide some serious results. I’m simply going to ask you one question: do you have time for social media?

Another popular form of this question is “who is going to do all this stuff?” While it may seem funny, it’s one of the most important questions to ask before diving into a new campaign. Unlike some other forms of marketing, social media requires a constant investment of time and effort.

How much time does social media take?
It’s less “Build it and they will come” and more “Build it, take care of it, staff it, ensure it has all of the proper resources and then they will come.” Building a successful social media presence is like establishing a friendship. It’s not going to happen over night and it’s going to take a lot of effort on your part to develop.

Forecasting your time investment
I don’t know if there is an absolute way to quantify the time requirement but the considerations below should help you estimate the level of time needed to properly manage your campaign.

In the spirit of the holiday season, Radium is offering 5 promotional Google AdWords coupons valued at $100 each! These coupons entitle the recipient to $100 of free Google AdWords advertising. If you haven’t tried pay-per-click marketing yet, this is a great opportunity to test it out risk-free.

To be eligible for this promotion you must meet the following criteria:

• Must currently operate a functioning website. No under construction websites.
• Coupons can only be applied to new Google AdWords accounts (less than 2 weeks old).

To enter the contest simply:

• Leave a comment below (OR)
• ReTweet this post on twitter

Winners will be chosen at random. Good luck!

Even though the music industry gets all of the press about piracy, stealing software is still alive and well. Actually, with the proliferation of torrent sites, it’s probably easier than ever to pirate software. But this isn’t a post about software piracy. Nope, this is a post about reaching potential customers is places you might not expect.

Rosetta Stone is a leader in proprietary language-learning software. If you’re not familiar with the product, their language software is priced per level per language, i.e., level 1 Spanish. With each language consisting of three levels and each level costing around $200, the software is not cheap. And, needless to say, software with a high price tag will be subject to piracy.

So the question becomes:
Can a person actively searching for an illegal copy of software be convinced to pay for it?

Most companies would probably say no and simply pretend these people don’t exist and hope they go away. But Rosetta Stone doesn’t appear to be ignoring this group and actually is going out of their way to target them.