First, after logging into your Google Plus account, look in the column on the far right hand side of the page. At the bottom, you’ll see an icon that you can click on in order to create a new Google Plus page. Once you click on the link, you’ll be taken to another page where you can choose the category of your page – local business or place, product or brand, company or organization, arts / entertainment or sports, and other (in case your page doesn’t fall into any of the previous categories).

After picking your category, you will be taken to another page where you choose the name of your page, and can add a website url if you wish. You can also choose with whom you wish to share your page. After completing the final steps of agreeing to the TOS, and confirming that you are authorized to create this page, you will be taken to another page where you can setup your page’s appearance, title, and description. Note – if you choose the category ‘local business or place’, Google Plus will use the telephone number attached to your account to verify the address on Google maps.

After completing the first part of your Google Plus page setup, you will be taken to another page where you put in a few words about what the page will be about, and put in a profile photo for your page. Once that is done, you can then let people in your circles know all about the page that you’ve created. This is a very nice touch in that its great for marketing just about any Google Plus page. Another note: any comments or posts that you make while within the back office of your page will be sent on behalf of your page.

Overall, Google Plus pages looks like a great way for businesses to better connect with their customers. Businesses, and various organizations would be able to better connect with their customers by offering, not only various offers to people that visit the Google Plus pages site, but also to share pictures, and different tidbits of news about the company. You could also use the Google Plus page to run contests, and conduct surveys to find out about what your customers are thinking – in general, and about your brand. The Google Plus page can be a great tool for promoting your business without spending a lot of money – but there’s a catch…

There are two main marketing areas you can focus on when using your Google Plus page to promote a business, or organization – promotions / advertising, and SEO. Currently, it is much easier to use a Google Plus page for Search Engine Optimization purposes over just regular promotions, and advertising unless most of your customers are already using Google Plus, which would probably be true if your business is in the tech industry. Fortunately, Google treats the Google Plus pages like any other website (as long as you have your privacy settings set so that your Google Plus page can be viewed by everyone) which means that your customers should be able to easily find your page from an online search, or your page’s url. As far as the effectiveness of having a Google Plus page would be for getting more customers, or visitors to your website, it is too soon to tell, but it is better to go ahead, and set up a page now, and nothing happens than not setting up a page, and have Google Plus suddenly become popular.

Marketers, bloggers, brands and businesses worldwide are always looking for engaging new ways to connect with their audiences, and social media platforms seem to be the latest way of doing so. Wealthy corporates will swear on making use of advertising space on such sites to boost conversion rates and improve website traffic, but what good is that to the little guys?

The following article tackles how businesses, brands and bloggers of all sizes and niches can utilise social media platforms to market their Internet content for absolutely free. Whether you’re trying to market Internet video, photos, products, podcasts or written articles, this post will provide you with the real social media 101 marketing approach.

Facebook
Facebook is certainly becoming the talk of the town of late. Controversial changes on the site are definitely putting the platform back into the limelight after Google+’s popular implementation on to the World Wide Web just a few months ago.

Interestingly, despite the new changes unfolding on Facebook the most successful marketing strategies still remain the same. Posting links to your content in your status, sharing it with your Friends and posting it in Groups and Pages that are on brand with your content are always the essential places to start. Although you must always be careful you’re not spamming users uninterested in your niche. Try to stir up interaction with your content with users and pages relevant to your subject, topic or niche as such users will be the most interested and responsive to the content your marketing.

One of the new features Facebook has brought out that benefits social media marketing is their new ‘Subscribe’ feature. This new function is a fantastic way to keep the ‘Friends’ interested in your online activity up to date with your latest content at all times.

LinkedIn
LinkedIn may seem like a very ‘business’ social media, but it is full of great marketing avenues. There are thousands of Groups and Discussions cropping up across the site that could be very relevant to the content you’re trying to market. Be sure to reach out to these specific Groups and get involved in these Discussions using your content. Whip up conversation and debate through the content you are marketing, the more engagement you can create, the better.

The most social aspect of LinkedIn, and the area where you can get the most ‘quick wins’ is through your Profile’s status. Statuses are where users tend to operate in a very ‘Facebook’ mentality. Your LinkedIn Connections are always far more likely to interact with your content through ‘Likes’ and ‘Comments’ on your status than any other post you submit to the site. The reason for this is that your status updates will appear in the newsfeeds of your Connections on their home screens without them having to actively find it in Groups or Discussions.

Twitter
Twitter is a social media where marketers make a lot of mistakes. Stale ReTweeting and auto-posting articles is never a good way of engaging with your Followers, yet many marketers always do. There’s nothing more unappealing than a bland Tweet with a generic hyperlink.

The secret to marketing on Twitter is to become an engaging and useful Twitter user. This is sadly not something that happens overnight. Building a following and creating a community on any social media site takes effort and hard work to reap its rewards. Creating good relationships through personalized @’s and Direct Messages to Followers helps to create a solid connection with your Followers, which will benefit you a great deal in the long run. Once you’ve become a user Followers want to look out for in their news feeds, your content will start getting those sought after shares and ReTweets.

If you’re a solo-preneur or just a very busy individual, you might not have an awful lot of time to build a strong Twitter community. If that’s the case, a slight substitute is to make the Tweets that occompany your hyperlinks as engaging and inviting as possible. Doing so will help to boost your click through rate and improve the interaction Followers have with your Profile.

Google+
The geeks of the world may get a bit furious at the following statement, but Google+ really is a lot like Facebook, especially when it comes to marketing approaches. You’ve got the ability to use your status updates, private messaging, like-ing (+1), friend-ing, sharing and so forth. However, Google+ does have one very exciting marketing addition, which I like to call ‘sector specific marketing opportunities’.

In Google+ these sector specific marketing opportunities are called Circles, but if you take an Internet marketing approach to Google+, what Google has created (whether directly or indirectly) is the ability to target specific sectors of individuals for you to market towards. This means that you can steer your marketing approaches towards any specific group. Whether your Circles are made up of future clients, users interested in your niche, past customers, business peers or even fellow marketers, you can market your content to each of these Circles in the most beneficial way possible to that particular Circle. This is a new kind of marketing freedom that is seldom seen on other social media platforms ,and should be picked up by Internet marketers especially asap.

Summary
By using and utilising social media platforms you can give your content the fantastic power of ‘word of mouth’ promotion. Creating ‘word of mouth’ promotion through your content is a well and truly priceless marketing attribute, yet it can be exceptionally prosperous for any brand, business or blog. Social media platforms are incredibly powerful, and their tools and features give you the opportunity to market your content successfully, efficiently and effectively.

To start off with, Google+ frowns upon using a name other than a person’s name for your Google+ page (this action may even get your account suspended which in turn may affect other Google products associated with your Gmail address). Therefore, the best businesses to market on Google+ are those where YOU are the product, or you are branding yourself as the lead of the business. Here are some businesses that would do well with marketing on Google+:

– Consultants
– Realtors
– Doctors
– Lawyers
– Dentists
– Authors
– Publishers
– Gurus / Experts
– Businesses Where YOU Are The Product Or Brand

Essentially, any business where you are branding yourself, or ones where you want people to think about your business whenever they see you would be just right. It should also be noted that Google+ works extremely well for those who wish to market themselves as an expert in a field (such as internet marketing, construction, health and fitness, etc.). With Google+ being a social network, it would only be logical that you talk about or discuss your business on your profile page. As long as your marketing efforts appear to be a natural extension of what you would do in real life everything should work out just fine. For an excellent example of “marketing without the appearance of marketing” check out Chris Pirillo’s Google+ profile page. There are many topics that could be covered when talking about marketing on Google+. In order to avoid information overload, this blog post will focus on using pictures in your profile, and in your photo gallery.

Whenever someone checks out your profile picture on your Google+ profile page, there should be two things they should be able to get from looking at it – what kind of image you project in real life, and how you want to position yourself, and your business in society. In regards to image, you want your picture to convey the kind of person people would meet when they stop by to visit you at your business. For example, lets imagine that we have three different consultants: a marketing consultant, an internet marketing consultant, and an investment advisor. For the marketing consultant, the picture that they would use should show that the consultant is sincere about their business without appearing too serious or dogmatic. However, since a marketing consultant has to work to stay on the cutting edge of the marketing industry, the profile picture should also reflect a spirit of innovation. In order to show an innovative side, the consultant could hold up an unusual marketing product that people would want to know more about. The overall look would be something that catches the eye without going overboard.

The internet marketing consultant, on the other hand, would take a slightly different approach in regards to choosing their profile picture. The overall message their profile picture needs to convey would be “I can help you make your business a huge success on the internet”. An unusual background image might work well, or a thought provoking background setting showing where a potential client could end up if they followed the advice of the internet marketing consultant. Some profile pictue ideas for the internet marketing consultant would be: the consultant shown sitting in a lawn chair on the beach at a lavish resort, or behind the wheel of an expensive automobile, or perhaps standing on the patio of an exquisite mansion, and so forth.

For the investment advisor, the picture should convey trust. The words on the profile page will help to describe what the consultant can do for their clients, but the picture, at a glance, should instill a feeling of honesty, integrity, and trustworthiness without being boring. The profile picture is definitely important, but what is also almost equally important are the pictures in your photo gallery.

Even though you’ll mostly be using your Google+ profile to promote your business, you will still need pictures in your photo gallery to help give people a REASON to visit your profile (unless they already know you). With Google+ you can choose which pictures are displayed at the top of your profile, which will be helpful in giving you something that people can make comments on. In regards to what type of pictures to use in your photo gallery, let’s look back at our three fictious examples. For the marketing consultant, it would probably be best to use pictures of ads that the marketing consultant either created, or ads that have been very successful regardless of who put them together. In the description, the marketing consultant can describe what makes that particular ad effective or not effective, or perhaps a funny caption or annecdote.

The internet marketing consultant would want to add some interesting and / or funny pictures to their Google+ photo gallery, but this would also be a great time to put in some useful diagrams. For instance, a chart explaining the latest evolution of the online marketing sales funnel which shows how consumers use the internet to research, and ultimately choose which businesses they do business with would be a great picture to add to the internet marketing consultant’s photo gallery.

The investment consultant could put up charts, and graphs to show where the stock market will be within the next 10 years, return rates for basic investments, or even a simple graph showing how much money someone could have made if they had made a $10,000 investment at 20, 30, or 60 years old. Also, since the investment consultant is wanting to convey a feeling of trust, integrity, and stability, it might be wise to put up a few family photos as well. Professionally done group family photos tend to create an aura of stability – even if that is not actually true in real life.

Once the pictures have been uploaded to the Google+ photo gallery, you can start posting links to your pictures as status updates using headings to make it all look natural. For example, using the “$10,000 investment over time” picture as an example, a link to the picture could be posted in the investment consultant’s status bar with a headline that reads “If only people realized how much money they could have saved up if they started saving earlier…”. Also, creating status updates will make it much easier for others to know what kind of content you have available on your profile, and hopefully entice them to make comments on your pictures. The comments made by those people will be available for viewing by the people in their circles, who will also make comments. All of these comments will eventually lead to driving more traffic to your profile. As illustrated in the above scenario, a very strong domino effect can easily be created by simply posting pictures, and making mentions of those pictures in your status updates.

You can also post links to pictures from other websites in your status box to accomplish the same thing. They do not have to be pictures directly related to what you do. If you can find something thought provoking or controversial, that will work as well. Just be sure it is something that you wouldn’t mind being associated with (remember: Google+ may be a social network, but its still a social network run by Google – the world’s largest search engine at the present time).

The general idea with pictures on your profile is that they should get your point across without having to spend a lot of time explaining them, even on the pictures that are in your gallery. People should be able to understand why you have that picture there with or without the short summary. With that being said, controversial pictures should be mainly used to draw attention to your profile, and therefore should just be picture links shared in your status updates. Use other less provocative pictures within your photo gallery to build and support your branding. This, of course, does not apply to you if the business image that you want to project is a controversial one. Either way, use your photo gallery to house pictures that directly reflect your business. Remember: the cute puppy in the window gets the people into your store, but what actual things your store has to offer should be the main topic of conversation.

If done right, you can drive tons of highly targeted traffic to your profile with just a few simple pictures, and status updates. Just keep in mind – a picture is worth a thousand words, so make sure that the pictures that you choose to utilize in your marketing efforts say the right things about you, and your business.

Disclaimer: Please note: If your Google+ account is suspended for ANY reason, it may adversely affect your other Google related products (ex: your corresponding Youtube account could also get suspended).

There is no point in having amazingly written blog posts that no one is interested in reading, and not interested in sharing with others. But again, while tracking your online marketing is important, it can also be a tedious, and time consuming task. I have spent literally HOURS each week trying to figure out which tweets are making the most impact, and which Facebook posts are being read, and shared throughout the social network. For a long time, I have longed for something that could make tracking the effectiveness of online marketing something that is easy and simple to do. With the Unilyzer Social Media Dashboard, my laborious search for a robust online marketing tracking tool may be over.

If you have many social media accounts that you track on a daily basis, then the Unilyzer Social Media Dashboard is definitely something you need to consider investing in. This online tracking tool allows you to track your results from popular social media networks like Twitter, and Facebook, and puts the results all in one convenient, and easy to use dashboard. When you visit their website at http://www.unilyzer.com you can click on the “Tour The Unilyzer” button to watch a video that clearly explains why the Unilyzer is such a useful tool. One of the things that I really like about the Unilyzer Tool is that it obtains tracking information automatically. This may not seem like a big deal, but I have used several tracking tools where you have to put in the URL of the site that you want to track EVERY TIME. If you have at least 15 social media sites that you wish to examine, then you already know how much time is wasted just putting the page URL into the tracking software or website. With the Unilyzer Tool, you put in your URLs once, and the site takes it from there. Not only does the Unilyzer Tool save you time, it also presents the data in an easy to read, and fun to look at format.

As useful as spreadsheets can be for tracking, they can also be VERY boring to sift through. Columns, and columns of figures can be confusing, and frustrating to deal with. With the Unilyzer Tool, the data is presented in colorful charts, and graphs where you can figure out what’s happening with your social media marketing campaigns at a quick glance. The Unilyzer Tool also utilizes trending arrows, similar to the ones that show the movement of stocks on the New York Stock Exchange. Plus, it is easy to tell whether or not there has been movement in the amount of people that visit your site, view your video, or if anyone is sharing links to your page. You can also compare different social media sites side by side to see if marketing efforts on one site, are doing better or worse than another. This is great news for those who have wondered if putting a video on one site would do better than putting it on another. The Unilyzer display will show you if your Facebook fans are sticking around your site, or if your tweets on Twitter are being retweeted. Definitely helpful information when you’re tracking the effectiveness of your online marketing efforts. Along with all the charts, and graphs, you can also check out your Uniscore – one score that measures the effectiveness of all your social media marketing campaigns put together.

If you’ve ever had your website examined by an online website grader, then you are familiar with getting a score for your website. Along those same lines, your UniScore is one unique number that gives you a measure of all your social media marketing accounts. The UniScore takes into account the size of your online networks, the quality of visitors to your site, and the click through rate your site is experiencing.

Keeping track of your online marketing campaigns is very important in order to get the most out of your marketing efforts, and maximize your ROI. There are few sites that even come close to doing what the Unilyzer Tool does. In short, for those who are serious about tracking the efforts of their online marketing, and social media campaigns, the Unilyzer Social Media Dashboard is definitely something worth looking into.

PeopleBrowsr, the Social Search engine and analytics company, has launched ReSearch.ly, a product for online marketers, brand managers and social media experts to get real-time analytics and conversations from the social web. ReSearch.ly provides demographic data, sentiment analysis, real-time and historic mentions and viral analytics for any keyword.

ReSearch.ly identifies people who are talking about a particular interest, and then instantly drills down to uncover rich data about that Interest Graph, including location, sentiment, gender as well as related word clouds, hashtags, links, @names, etc.

From their press release today, here is some more info about ReSearch.ly:

ReSearch.ly fires off 40 simultaneous searches for any topic and gives brand managers the ability to target specific demographic segments (i.e. women in the San Francisco area) with unprecedented granularity and ease.

Degrees of Separation
Similar to the way LinkedIn shows how people are connected through their professional network, ReSearch.ly shows how Twitter users are connected. This information is critical for brands who rely on the trust of their network when making connections.

Real-time trending and sentiment charts
ReSearch.ly provides up-to-the-second charts depicting mentions count, sentiment for any keyword and how a keyword relates to a tweet going back 30 days.

Viral Analytics Integration

Any keyword search in ReSearch.ly can be instantly translated into a comprehensive analytics platform on the fly. Brand managers can visualize how popular messages moved through the network and identify influencers for their brand and market in real-time.

With communities growing around ideas or interests, rather than through social connections, engagement is emphasized on finding and generating content and putting it in context. As PeopleBrowsr’s Brian Solis, explains, “Brands understand they need to engage customers often while cultivating communities, and they are constantly looking for ways to efficiently participate in relevant conversations.”

Facebook has recently been under fire (a lot, I might add) for privacy issues and privacy concerns. I have even written about Facebook email privacy that has gone awry. Many people (not me) are concerned about what they share amongst their friends on Facebook. Some of my family members are concerned about other people (mainly the public) learning about what they post on Facebook. Maybe it is just me, but I honestly do not share anything online that I would not want anyone to learn about: everything I share online is an open book.

Nonetheless, Facebook has recently added a feature in their last major update that allows you to download your information. You can download all of the information that you have shared on Facebook. In case you are interested in doing that, Here is a little tutorial on how to download your information on Facebook.

Before I get to the actual directions on how to download your personal information from Facebook, keep in mind that Facebook gives you this security warning:

Security
This is a copy of all of the personal information you’ve shared on Facebook. In order to protect your information, we will ask for authentication to verify your identity.

WARNING: This file contains sensitive information. Because this download contains your profile information, you should keep it secure and take precautions when storing, sending or uploading it to any other services.

If you agree to this, that there may be sensitive information that you’re downloading from Facebook, then go ahead and do the following:

First, you must have a Facebook account. I would recommend that you download the information from your Facebook account if there is actually enough information to download. If you have not been active on Facebook, there might not be any sense in saving the data.

Secondly, you need to log into your Facebook account. Go to www.Facebook.com and log in.

On the upper right side of the screen, there is an “Account” link. Click on the little arrow and you will see a drop-down menu. It looks like this:

Then, click on the “Account Settings” link.

Next, you will be brought to the Account Setings Tab. You will want to scroll down to the Download your Information section on that page. Then, click on “Learn more”:

You are then brought to the “Download Your Information” page as shown below:

Once you get to this page, you need to click on the “Download” button towards the bottom of the page. This will start the download process (you will be given a popup to verify the download).

Facebook will compile your information and notify you via email when the download is complete.

At this point, I have not actually received notification via email that my download is ready for download. In fact, I would expect it to take quite some time to prepare, as I currently have over 4,000 friends and have my Facebook account for several years now. I am extremely active on Facebook. As soon as I get ahold of the data (my Facebook data), I fully plan on “dissecting it” and taking it to the next level: I fully plan on posting all of this data on a website somewhere in experiment of sorts: to allow the search engines to fully crawl it.

The explosion of the internet and social media may be the fastest change in human history. No longer are individuals passively listening and viewing advertisements; now they’re “twittering” and posting their opinions on Facebook along with other social media sites. For little companies, social media’s ever-emerging presence is really a dramatic game-changer that can have a large impact on their bottom line.

Success Secrets of the Social Media Marketing Superstars by Mitch Meyerson is a new book that shows you how you can be successful in social media.

“The stats document a revolution. Facebook added 100 million users in less than nine months, one in six higher education students enrolled in an on the internet course, YouTube became the second largest search engine within the world and about 80 percent of businesses use LinkedIn to discover employees,” states Mitch Meyerson, author of Success Secrets of the Social Media Marketing Superstars. “Businesses can’t afford to ignore the rise of social media marketing.”

Meyerson shows company owners these ideas for maximizing their social media achievement:

1. Begin Strategically With Your End Result In Mind

The use of social media is certainly on the rise and it’s no surprise that much more and much more companies are jumping on board to become “social” companies. To use social media and make a profit, though, you have to know precisely why you’re utilizing it. What are you hoping to accomplish with social media?

Do you want to connect with prospects, develop conversations, build your brand, construct your mailing list, or generate revenue? Perhaps you need to do all of these things. Which may be the most important for your organization and how will you manage your efforts?

2. Construct a Human Connection

At the other end of each and every social media conversation is really a individual just like you. They have particular concerns, hopes and dreams that affect their daily lives.

Listen to what they are saying, be empathetic and build bonds. Examples of this consist of acknowledging personal details for example birthdays or providing warm introductions to likeminded friends and colleagues.

3. Track and Measure Your Social Media Advertising Efforts

To reach your goals it’s essential that you monitor the progress of your social media advertising efforts. You are able to most quickly enhance what you measure. If your goal is to measure visitors, sales or Search engine optimization ranking, here are some other free of charge tools that may help:

– Google Analytics and Feedburner.com are essential, free of charge tools to assist analyze your company’s internet website or blog visitors, subscriber count,keyword optimization too as additional trends.
— Bit.ly enables you to shorten your links and track the click-throughs.
— Statsaholic.com compares rankings along with other info on up to three web sites at a time.
– Xinureturns.com is excellent for adding a URL and receiving a load of helpful statistics ranging from search engine optimization (Search engine optimization) to social bookmarking and much more.

There are lots of much more to be discovered with a Google search.

Success Secrets of the Social Media Advertising Superstars by Mitch Meyerson presents the priceless secrets, strategies, tactics and insights of much more than 20 of today’s social media elite. Handpicked by Meyerson, the book presents the following authors and topics:

Success Secrets of The Social Media Marketing Superstars by Mitch Meyerson presents the priceless secrets, strategies, tactics and insights of more than 20 of today’s social media elite. Handpicked by Meyerson, the book presents the following authors and topics:

Mari Smith: Facebook
Deborah Cole Micek: Twitter
Barbara Rozgonyi: LinkedIn
Julie Perry: YouTube
Brian Clark: Psychology of Social Media
Gary Vaynerchuk: Building Mega-Followings
Joel Comm: Success Qualities
Chris Brogan: Building Communities
Keith Ferrazi & Tahl Raz: Relationship Strategy
Starr Hall: Building Profits
Dan Janal: PR Strategies
Michael Stelzner: Go Viral
Ann Handley: Creating Content
Andy Willbes: Personality
Craig Valentine: Communicate with Impact
Denise Wakeman: Business Blogs
Paul Colligan: Podcasting
Chris Garrett: Social Bookmarking
Kim Dushinski: Mobile Marketing
Shama Kabani: Online Video
Dave Evans: One Hour a Day
Mitch Meyerson: Online Marketing

Success Secrets of The Social Media Marketing Superstars

Entrepreneur Press * $21.95

ISBN 13: 9781599183770 * ISBN 10: 1599183773

Want to read more about the book? Take a look at what my friend Brian Clark has to say about it.

Facebook Fan pages are different than “being on Facebook” and having your own personalized User ID on there. Facebook Fan pages are different, and they’re essentially a type of interactive “web page” that are on Facebook. Each Facebook fan page has to have a User ID associated with it as an “admin” or “administrator” of that Facebook Fan page. Take a look at the search results on Facebook for “Matt Cutts” (Mr. Cutts is the head of Search Spam at Google):

If you look at the search results for “Matt Cutts”, the Matt Cutts Facebook Fan Page that I created a while back is shown at the top of the list. Certainly there is an algorithm for why one Facebook Fan Page appears first versus second or further down the list. But what’s important to understand here is that a Facebook Fan page is different than your actual personal Facebook page. So let’s take a look at the actual Facebook Fan page I created a while back for Matt Cutts:

If you are creating a Facebook Fan page either for yourself (wow, that’s incredibly vain, right?) or for your business, there are elements that you need to add. First, make sure that you have plenty of “eye candy” on there. If possible, add as many photos and videos on there, as well. If there is a website or blog associated with the business, you will want to add some content from that and link out to it.

What’s important to note, though, is that you are going to be the administrator of that Facebook Fan page. The administrator (Facebook refers to it as the “admin” of the page) has the rights to edit the page and to add and remove content on that page. In order to “protect” your Facebook Fan Page, it’s absolutely imperative that you have more than one “admin” of the page. I recently experienced a situation where an important Facebook Fan Page for a large business was disabled “automatically” by Facebook’s internal system. Apparently Facebook has safeguards in place that will automatically disable Facebook Fan Pages if certain activity occurs and there is only one admin of that Facebook Fan Page. Certainly if you want to protect your Facebook Fan page it’s extremely critical that more than one admin is assigned to the page.

Research for the article, “How Effective is Facebook Marketing?”, was conducted by Utpal Dholakia, associate professor of management at Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business, and Emily Durham, a Jones School alumna and founder of Restaurant Connections, a Houston-based restaurant consultancy.

Dholakia and Durham asked customers of Dessert Gallery (DG), a favorite Houston-based café chain. Prior to the study, Dessert Gallery did not have a Facebook presence.

The research, based on surveys of more than 1,700 respondents over a 3 month period, found that compared with typical Dessert Gallery customers, the Facebook fans:

· Spent 33 percent more at DG’s stores.
· Had 14 percent higher emotional attachment to the DG brand.
· Had 41 percent greater psychological loyalty toward DG.
· Made 36 percent more visits to DG’s stores each month.
· Spent 45 percent more of their eating-out dollars at DG.

According to Dholakia, the results of the study indicate that Facebook fan pages provide an effective and low-cost way of social media marketing.

Dholakia said Facebook marketing programs may be specially good for iconic brands, which seem to attract a higher percentage of their customer base as Facebook fans.

Paul Dholakia is a William S. Mackey, Jr. and Verne F. Simons Distinguished Associate Professor of Management at the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management, Rice University in Houston, Texas. He has a master’s degree in psychology, and a Ph.D. in marketing from the University of Michigan, a master’s degree in operations research from the Ohio State University, and a bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering from the University of Bombay. His research interests lie in studying motivational psychology of consumers and online marketing issues such as virtual communities and online auctions. He also studies relational aspects of consumer behavior. He has published in a number of marketing and management journals, and consults with firms in financial services, energy, health-care and other industries.

Marketers online have always wondered: How much would it have cost to attract the same media exposure through traditional advertising? Many of the answers have been released in a new report called The General Sentiment Media Value Report™. This report attempts to calculates the dollar value of the buzz, content, and conversation taking place online.

General Sentiment has published its 4th Quarter 2009 Media Value Report, a breakdown of the top performing brands across news and social media web sites for October through December 2009. Generated using General Sentiment’s core media measurement and sentiment analysis infrastructure, the report ascribes attempts to assign an advertising dollar value to a brand’s media exposure.

General Sentiment uses patent-pending technology based on 5 years of research directed at Stony Brook University. The system automatically determines the volume of mentions and sentiment value regarding a brand, company or person. Blending this data with website traffic and online news readership figures, the MVR determines the purchase-equivalent dollar value of the brand exposure across more than 30 million sources.

The technology sector has dominated once again with significant social media value generated over coverage of new product releases and innovations. One surprise was Ford rising to the seventh position, as the company benefited in the media from strong sales reports while competitors suffered from lingering bankruptcy discussion.

The top two brands in the survey, Microsoft and Google, together generated about $1.3 billion in purchase-equivalent advertising value from news providers and social media. Other notable brands in the top 20 included Citigroup, McDonald’s, Disney, and American Express. Including Ford, those five companies were mentioned frequently and favorably enough to earn the equivalent of more than $1.2 billion in paid advertising.

1. GOOGLE $669,629,305
Google topped the rankings of the Q4 Media Value Report, with multiple products and innovations creating buzz in the marketplace. Google made a big push into the smartphone space with their Droid and Nexus One handsets. The company’s recent acquisition of AdMob, a mobile ad service, further highlights their strategy going forward. The new Chrome OS, which boasts a fast, simple and secure platform, was announced last quarter, generating considerable discussion on Google’s entry into the PC market.

2. MICROSOFT $648,732,726
Microsoft’s success with its earlier launch of Windows 7 continues to create buzz, particularly in News Media. However, the new Google Chrome OS raised a potential threat to Microsoft as it will be a cloud-based operating system. Also creating news exposure was Microsoft’s announcement of its plan to layoff 5,000 employees. On a more positive note, in December, Microsoft and Yahoo announced that they finalized their planned Internet search and advertising partnership agreement.

3. SONY $294,308,077
In the 4th Quarter, Sony announced the launch of its new online store, Sony Online Services, which sells videos, books, games and movies to compete against Apple’s iTunes store. However, 3D television has been the big story for Sony as they push these units out the door. This initiative has been put in place to bolster revenue as Sony perceives 3D television will be the answer to their woes.

4. APPLE $293,237,918
This December saw rumors of Apple’s latest high-tech gadget, the tablet computer, planned for a roll out in early 2010. Apple made a further move into the internet music market when it purchased one of the market leaders, Lala. Lala allows users to listen to a song once before purchasing and storing online. In other news, Nokia filed suit against Apple claiming the iPhone infringed on 10 patents held by Nokia.

5. YAHOO $291,766,667
Yahoo announced a world wide shutdown of operations from December 25th to January 1st to find new ways to cut costs in the recession. In early December, Yahoo and Microsoft announced the execution of their partnership plan mentioned above. The move is perceived as a positive one for both companies as Microsoft looks to better compete against Google and Yahoo seeks to cut costs further.

6. INTEL $285,685,964
Intel has been in the news frequently in the past few months, mainly due to the recent antitrust cases that led to a billion dollar settlement with rival chip maker AMD. Intel, which has battled anti-trust cases for years in Asia, Europe, and the State of New York, settled with AMG for $1.25 billion after offering large rebates and co-marketing arrangements to keep partners from switching to competitors.

7. FORD $185,905,704
Ford made the Top 10 list again as it continues to report strong results while other American car producers struggle. Reaction was positive when Ford announced further capital investment in its Brazil operations as it plans to invest $2.3 billion over the next five years to improve factories and increase production in the country. United Auto Workers (UAW) and Ford have been in talks over new contracts.

8. IBM $150,381,178
Blue Insight has been all over the news media in the 4th Quarter as IBM announced the rollout of its internal cloud environment with over a petabyte of information. IBM plans to make this cloud service available to customers as well, dubbed IBM Smart Cloud Analytics. Also of note in Q4, IBM acquired Guardium, a market leader in real-time enterprise database monitoring and protection.

9. CITIGROUP $131,326,011
Citigroup announced a planned $15 billion stock offering to repay its TARP bailout funds and was the last Wall Street giant to finalize the Government repayment. Amidst Citigroup’s plans to raise equity, Kuwait’s sovereign wealth fund sold its stake in Citigroup at a $1.1 billion profit. The question remains as to what will happen with the US government’s equity stake in Citigroup.

10. HEWLETT-PACKARD $115,896,188
Rounding out the top 10, Hewlett-Packard made big moves in the M&A market. HP announced the acquisition of 3Com, a provider of competitive network and data center products, for $2.7 billion. Analysts lauded the acquisition as a way for HP to bolster its business in China.

The Fourth Quarter Media Value Report was created using General Sentiment’s proprietary software, which “listens” to more than 30 million online sources. To see the report in its entirety, visit www.generalsentiment.com