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Communications Report for April 27th 2011 – AndreaVascellari.com

Metrics & ROI – 2011 Trends: Turning Data Into Action; Mobile; Social Marketing – Most marketers understand the value of good customer data, but they still struggle to organize and use it effectively: 62% cite “turning data into action” as their top marketing issue in 2011, according to a report by Unica.
Companies increase outsourcing for SEO, PPC and social media: survey – The report is based on a survey which polled 900 client-side advertisers and agencies. It found that the number of companies handling SEO exclusively in-house fell from 51% in 2010 to 44% in 2011, and the number handling paid search in a similar fashion dropped from 47% to 38% over the same time period.
25 reasons why you should be blogging – The main benefit of a blog in terms of search engine optimisation (SEO) is that it builds backlinks to your pages. If your content is good then people will discuss and share it, creating links to your pages on their websites, their own blogs and through social platforms like Twitter.
TEDxEdges – Ricardo Sousa on Teen Entrepreneurship – @ricardojrsousa – Wow!
Free and Easy Email Reminders with FollowUpThen – Handy tool.
6 Smart and Effective Email Marketing Tactics – Here are several simple, emerging email marketing methods with which brands are seeing success.
IAB: Internet Advertising Reached $26 Billion In 2010, Display Grew Twice As Fast As Search – Compared to other forms of advertising, Internet advertising surpassed newspaper ads in the U.S. last year ($22.8 billion) and is now second only to TV ($28.6 billion).
Google’s collateral damage after algorithm changes, illustrated – TNW Google – SEOBook has created an interesting infographic that details the effects that changes to Google’s algorithms have had on the web.
Search Marketing To Grow 16% This Year [REPORT] – Search marketing will grow 16% this year to $19.3 billion and 74% of North American ad agencies say their clients use Facebook, according to a study released Wednesday.
Cost of Facebook Ads Jumped 40% This Year [REPORT] – Search engine marketing grew 17% year-over-year primarily because of increases in the retail and finance categories. Display advertising showed a 300% jump in exchange ad inventory and a 30% cost-per-thousand (CPM) decline, which Efficient Frontier attributes to “greater gains in reach and efficiency within the ad exchanges.”
Google Research Shows How Online Ads Drive Offline Sales – The relationship between online search advertising and online sales can be easily quantified, and that’s part of what makes Web advertising so powerful compared to its print and broadcast counterparts.
HOW TO: Improve Engagement on Your Brand’s Facebook Page [STATS] – Here findings along with tips about when and how to make the most of a Facebook post.
2011 Social Media Marketing Industry Report – A significant 3300 social media marketers provided valuable insight.
Moblie Marketing & Tagging Infographic – Infographic.
7 tips for a killer Facebook landing page – A great Facebook landing page should turn visitors into subscribers, engage people, and encourage them to explore your products and services further.

Communications Report for January 13th 2011 – AndreaVascellari.com

Participation in Real-Time Social Media Increased 20% in 2010 – Blog writing declined by 4%, and forum participation decreased by 11%. Participation in real-time social networks and microblogs, however, both grew by 20%.
Momentfeed is Google Analytics for the Real World – With the proliferation of location based services, it would seem that there is a real opportunity to better understand how people go about their daily lives.
YouTube Reports 200m Mobile Daily Mobile Views, 2.0 App for Android – 75% of respondents say that mobile is their primary way of accessing YouTube.
HOW TO: Create a World-Class Online Community for Your Business – 9 steps businesses must take in order to make their online communities world-class.
Are We Too Obsessed With Facebook? [INFOGRAPHIC] – Some highlights about Facebook usage, 2010 trends, adoption numbers and a great deal more.
5 Predictions for Small Business in 2011 – Here are my five predictions about how small businesses will continue to adapt to changing technologies as we move into the new year.
Email, Social Media to See More Marketing Dollars in 2011 – Email and social media are the top tactics marketers worldwide expect to increase budgets on in 2011.
10 Online Tools for Better Attention & Focus – A handful of the best apps for fighting back against the constant distractions of our digital lives.
44% of Online Sharing Occurs Through Facebook [INFOGRAPHIC] – Impressively, 44% of shares occurred through Facebook in 2010, up 33% from last year. That number does not include shares done via Facebook’s “Like” button, which means the actual, universal percentage of shares through Facebook is likely higher.
5 ingredients of smart online commerce – Seth’s Blog – Few things they do that make them successful online.
Exploring the Twitterverse – With Twitter at the center of the stellar system, apps orbit at different rotations based on their design and functionality.
6 Predictions for Digital Advertising in 2011 – Whether they choose to go big or small, the social web equips advertisers with significantly more consumer data points than ever before to improve the targeting and relevance of online advertising.
5 Predictions for Small Business in 2011 – Predictions about how small businesses will continue to adapt to changing technologies as we move into the new year.

Communications Report for December 6th 2010 – AndreaVascellari.com

Online Advertising Sucks – How often do you hear about a traditional mass media company shifting to a “digital first” strategy? Those companies may want to take a look at this…
How the Fortune 500 Use Social Media to Grow Sales and Revenue – The truth is, there are only five different ways the Fortune 500 use social media. Seriously — just five. And once you know what they are, you can figure out which ones would be most useful for your business.
College Students Admit To “Shocking” Text Messaging Habits in Class – According to data released from Nielsen this fall, that age group sends around 1,630 texts per month – roughly three texts per hour.
Research Examines What Motivates People to Comment Online – The study examined user activity specifically to try to gauge the influence of “emotional content” on users’ behavior. Using sentiment analysis, the researchers looked at content, separating “objective” and “subjective”, and then examined users’ responses
How 10 Year Olds Explain Cloud Computing – They explain cloud computing in a simple, clear way. They don’t see limits to the cloud. They see it as infinite, accessible anywhere, any time.
Intelligently silence Gmail conversations with “Smart Mute” – If you enable “Smart Mute” from the Labs tab in Gmail Settings, muted conversations will only appear in your inbox if a new message in the conversation is addressed to you and no one else, or a new email in the conversation adds you to the “To” or “Cc” line. Once you enable Smart Mute, mute behavior will change across all versions of Gmail: web, mobile, Android, etc.
Study: Two-Thirds of Marketers Integrate Social Media and Email Marketing – Just because social media may be a new addition to your marketing mix doesn’t mean email marketing should be eliminated. In fact, social media can help to enhance your email marketing efforts.
The State of Small Business Online Marketing Budgets [REPORT] – According to the survey, 54% of respondents indicated that their businesses currently have websites. Regarding website features, the vast majority (80%) of websites include general business information, while customer service (45%), lead generation (35%) and e-commerce (30%) features trail in at a distant second, third and fourth places. A mere 13% of businesses reported having a blog.
YouTube top search term in Japan for third year running – #trends A survey by Yahoo! Japan of the most used search terms in 2010 has shown that YouTube is still the most popular search term in Japan for the third year running.
How To: Build a private collaboration site on WordPress.com in 5 minutes – #productive & #smart
Introducing the PostRank Facebook Analytics App – This new Facebook analytics application, which will help publishers solve not one, but two problems at once…
Popularity does not equal influence on Twitter: Seeking influence – only one in 318 messages containing an internet address is “retweeted” the researchers found.
Social Media Case Study: Cold Stone Creamery – The payoff goes well beyond greater customer engagement; Cold Stone’s promotions add to the bottom line by moving people from their computers to physical stores.

Communications Report for December 6th 2010 – AndreaVascellari.com

Online Advertising Sucks – How often do you hear about a traditional mass media company shifting to a “digital first” strategy? Those companies may want to take a look at this…
How the Fortune 500 Use Social Media to Grow Sales and Revenue – The truth is, there are only five different ways the Fortune 500 use social media. Seriously — just five. And once you know what they are, you can figure out which ones would be most useful for your business.
College Students Admit To “Shocking” Text Messaging Habits in Class – According to data released from Nielsen this fall, that age group sends around 1,630 texts per month – roughly three texts per hour.
Research Examines What Motivates People to Comment Online – The study examined user activity specifically to try to gauge the influence of “emotional content” on users’ behavior. Using sentiment analysis, the researchers looked at content, separating “objective” and “subjective”, and then examined users’ responses
How 10 Year Olds Explain Cloud Computing – They explain cloud computing in a simple, clear way. They don’t see limits to the cloud. They see it as infinite, accessible anywhere, any time.
Intelligently silence Gmail conversations with “Smart Mute” – If you enable “Smart Mute” from the Labs tab in Gmail Settings, muted conversations will only appear in your inbox if a new message in the conversation is addressed to you and no one else, or a new email in the conversation adds you to the “To” or “Cc” line. Once you enable Smart Mute, mute behavior will change across all versions of Gmail: web, mobile, Android, etc.
Study: Two-Thirds of Marketers Integrate Social Media and Email Marketing – Just because social media may be a new addition to your marketing mix doesn’t mean email marketing should be eliminated. In fact, social media can help to enhance your email marketing efforts.
The State of Small Business Online Marketing Budgets [REPORT] – According to the survey, 54% of respondents indicated that their businesses currently have websites. Regarding website features, the vast majority (80%) of websites include general business information, while customer service (45%), lead generation (35%) and e-commerce (30%) features trail in at a distant second, third and fourth places. A mere 13% of businesses reported having a blog.
YouTube top search term in Japan for third year running – #trends A survey by Yahoo! Japan of the most used search terms in 2010 has shown that YouTube is still the most popular search term in Japan for the third year running.
How To: Build a private collaboration site on WordPress.com in 5 minutes – #productive & #smart
Introducing the PostRank Facebook Analytics App – This new Facebook analytics application, which will help publishers solve not one, but two problems at once…
Popularity does not equal influence on Twitter: Seeking influence – only one in 318 messages containing an internet address is “retweeted” the researchers found.
Social Media Case Study: Cold Stone Creamery – The payoff goes well beyond greater customer engagement; Cold Stone’s promotions add to the bottom line by moving people from their computers to physical stores.

[Communications Report] for October 1st 2010 – AndreaVascellari.com

Your LinkedIn Profile on Facebook – How-to guide.
How General Motors used social media to avert a crisis – Social media is speeding everything up, creating challenges and opportunities for marketers. This is especially true (sometimes painfully so) when a public relations issue comes up. Though social media can make an issue spread faster, smart marketers also see the opportunity to use that speed to quickly correct the issue.
What digital skills should a PR PRO have? « A view from Silicon Valley – The main point of debate for most agencies is whether they should embed digital skills across the agency or simply create a group of digital gurus. This is a real challenge and hard to get right…
Facebook, Twitter okay on the job, B.C. government tells employees – British Columbia is creating new guidelines for how public servants use social media such as Twitter and Facebook, and is encouraging their use in everything from forest-fire updates to citizen input on policy decisions.
£2.5bn a year wasted on marketing emails dismissed as spam – 64% of respondents said that if the emails were more relevant to them they would be more likely to read them. The research found 73% of consumers believe businesses send marketing emails regardless of their relevance to the recipient. – via Cynthia Wee @Its_A_Cyn
Blending Paid, Owned and Earned Media for Branding – eMarketer – Some of today’s greatest success stories in branding blend ingredients from the three kinds of marketing media: paid, owned and earned. Paid media is advertising inserted next to another’s content; owned media is brand-created content; and earned media is getting someone else to provide content about a brand.
10 Examples of Amazing Viral Marketing Videos – These 10 videos provide great examples of what it takes to make a video that can capture the attention of millions and market your product in the process.
Twitter.com Keyboard Shortcuts – Handy.
Social Media Working Better for Retention Than Acquisition – Social media marketing has been around for several years, and as marketers begin to converge on best practices and use the channel in more uniform ways, it is emerging that their top goals are brand awareness and cultivating customer loyalty. Conversely, customer acquisition through social media is less important.
No analytics for Google Instant – It would have been easy for Google Analytics to reveal how much traffic Google Instant is driving, but Google seems to be keeping this information under wraps.

[Communications Report] for September 1st 2010 – AndreaVascellari.com

What People Think of the Ad/PR Biz | Reuters – One-third of respondents voiced a positive view of the advertising/pr industry (6 percent “very,” 27 percent “somewhat.”) Twenty-seven percent were “neutral.” Twenty-five percent expressed a “somewhat negative view,” while 11 percent were “very negative.” (The rest didn’t venture an opinion.) The numbers aren’t significantly different from those yielded by last summer’s edition of this annual survey.
Is it time for a Chief Social Media Officer? | ZDNet – The role may not be prominent now, but it will happen.
New report on “The State of Mobile Communications” – Now is the perfect time for businesses to jump into mobile communications, says “The State of Mobile Communications,” a newly issued report by Burson-Marsteller and Proof Integrated Communications. The report provides recommendations based on the implications of a range of key mobile research reports.
5 Tips to Maintain Social Media Momentum – Servant of Chaos – One of the challenges with social media is that it’s easy to start and it’s easy to stop.
The UK’s media consumption habits – Ofcom released its seventh annual communications market report last week. Its a goldmine of information about media consumption habits in the UK and is worth reading in full, the internet section in particular.
Facebook Usage Still Rising in Europe, but UK Growth Slows – eMarketer – The Facebook juggernaut rolls on in Europe, but the first sign of declining growth rates has appeared. In particular, the site’s meteoric expansion in the UK is tailing off.
Skype Etiquette – Some good tips to keep in mind when using Skype by Michael Arrington
Pre-recorded TV viewers cut out ads – The increasing use of digital television recording devices means fewer viewers will watch advertisements. Online video adverts have failed to make an impact on consumers with only 3% citing them as the kind of ad they were most likely to pay attention to.
Want an SEO job? Check out the Daily Mail’s robots.txt file … – This is actually a great idea!
10 Tips For Aspiring Community Managers – Tips from community builders on what it takes to land a job and be effective at cultivating community.
The Value of a Social Media Fan….Priceless – CPM models are generally used to price traditional media ads which represent only a monologue selling a specific product and are not customized to measuring the overall value of social media. Facebook “impressions” are a completely different kind of media where more often than not, the post should be as divorced as possible from trying to make a sale and are more about creating dialogue, brand awareness and positive social conversation which indirectly leads to higher sales.
Top 5 Mobile Advertising Trends To Watch – After a tough 2009, advertisers are expected to increase mobile and digital marketing budgets over the next year. With this in mind, it’s essential that advertisers keep up-to-date on their options in the mobile space. Here, we’ve laid out five mobile advertising trends to watch over the coming year.
Infographic: The Geosocial Universe – This infographic, created by Jesse Thomas of digital creative agency Jess3, shows the relative size of social networks and online services such as Skype, Gmail, MySpace, Twitter and Foursquare, and also shows the proportion of their user base that access the service via a mobile device.
How to Handle an Employee’s Controversial Online Comment – Stuff just happens. In most situations, though, the most important factor is how the situation is handled.
5 Items to Delete From Your Website Today – When we add ideas and actions, websites become more complicated. Complication creates confusion and often translates to lower effectiveness.
Youtube stars making 100000 plus per year: Tech Ticker, Yahoo! Finance – There are 10 independent YouTube stars who made over $100,000 in the past year, according to a study done by analytics and advertising company TubeMogul.
5 Huge Trends in Social Media Right Now – What follows are five of the hottest social media trends right now. Each are influencing our social, online and mobile behaviors in significant ways.

[Communications Report] for July 29th 2010 – AndreaVascellari.com

Coca-Cola forced to pull Facebook promotion after porn references – The Coca-Cola company has pulled an internet promotion campaign, after parents accused it of targeting children by using references to a notorious pornographic movie.
Facebook introduces Questions – New Feature – Ask the Facebook community a question on any topic and get quality answers from people in the know.
HOW TO: Help Employees Talk About Your Brand Online – The question boils down to this: If a brand is supposed to give customers something to identify with and add meaning to their lives, shouldn’t helping employees express themselves as individuals help the brand as well?
Old Spice polishes its monocle smile all the way to a 107% sales increase. – According to Nielsen data provided by Old Spice, overall sales for Old Spice body-wash products are up 11 percent in the last 12 months; up 27 percent in the last six months; up 55 percent in the last three months; and in the last month, with two new TV spots and the online response videos, up a whopping 107 percent.
How Big Brands Take On Social Media – Nice video interview with Bruce Upbin and David Armano.
Convert Twitter lists to RSS feeds with one click – You can’t create more than 20 lists. There’s no function to combine lists, and managing list entries is only slightly less difficult than if you’d chiselled them into marble. Alex Kessinger created a simple web app called Twitter Lists 2 RSS. Copy the URL for any Twitter list, paste it into a field on the app, and with one click, you get an RSS feed.
Google Maps Gets a (Much-Needed) URL Shortener – The web addresses of Google Maps that you shared with your friends used to be unmanageably huge, but Google has just solved that problem with a new Labs feature that dramatically shortens Maps URLs.
Two Arrested In Venezuela For Tweeting Banking Rumors – According to Reuters, the authorities claim that the tweets were aimed at destabilizing the Venezuelan banking sector and that “a man was arrested in possession of a cellphone used to send the first illegal Tweet, and that detectives had also detained a woman and seized hard discs and computer equipment from her.”
Recorded Future – Temporal & Predictive Analytics Engine – Amazing research tool.
Prince: “The Internet Is Over” – Is Prince missing out on something by withdrawing himself from the web? Or could he be correct; is the Internet just a fad, after all?
Exclusive: Failwhale Over San Francisco! – LOL
Signs of Social Media | Friday Flickr Fix – This Flickr group is focused on how brands are promoting their social media presence. It includes consumer packaged goods flowing it into their packaging to signage and how it’s injected into the built environment by any brand with a physical location, including food, retail and banking.
The Future of Online Socializing – The social benefits of internet use will far outweigh the negatives over the next decade, according to experts.
Consumers engaged via social media are more likely to buy – An impressive 51% of Facebook fans and 67% of Twitter followers are more likely to buy the brands they follow or are a fan of.
Twitter Users “More Likely To Get Job Interviews” – Apparently, Twitter users write better CVs and are more likely to be shortlisted for job interviews than the average jobhunter.

[Communications Report] for June 12th 2010 – AndreaVascellari.com

Mobile Uploads Spur Facebook Video Growth – Facebook’s nearly half a billion users are now uploading 20 million videos each month, many of which are shared through mobile phones.
10 ways to keep tabs on ‘live’ hashtag chats on Twitter – Twitter chats are increasingly growing in popularity, providing participants with a specific time and place to discuss pertinent issues and share knowledge. Before you can get stuck into these lively sessions, you need to consider which application / tool is best suited to the format in question.
21 Rules of Engagement in Social Media – While businesses now have access to these rich channels, the true promise of social media however, lies in the direct connections that are forged between people who represent companies and the people who define markets of interest.
Social media monitoring review 2010 [report] – In-depth review of the leading social media monitoring tools.
Top 5 Social Media Ethics Concerns for Lawyers – The people in charge of lawyer ethics oversight in your state see social media either as just another form of communication, or as a special threat to client confidences and attorney decorum. Do you know what rules apply to you?
Costolo: Twitter Now Has 190 Million Users Tweeting 65 Million Times A Day – Most users, says Costolo, don’t Tweet at all, but rather use Twitter as a consumption media. How many of those 65 million Tweets are automated spam is not clear.
How Consumers Interact with Brands on Social Networks – eMarketer – The social networking audience in the US has reached critical mass. eMarketer estimates that 57.5% of all US Internet users, or 127 million people, will use a social network at least once a month in 2010. By 2014, nearly two-thirds of Internet users will be on board.
Building Trust with Empowered Consumers – The top three sources that influenced purchase decisions for US Internet users were friends and family sought out for their opinion (53%), friends and family who offered their opinion (49%) and online research (49%).
Social Media No. 1 Emerging Channel for Lead Gen – Lead generation was marketers’ first priority, with 66% saying it was their greatest concern for 2010, compared with just 17% who chose brand awareness.
The State of LinkedIn – The most represented industries are hi-tech (16%), finance (12%) and manufacturing (10%), while engineering (15%), sales (11%), administrative (9%) are the most common job functions.
Klout is the standard for influence – The goal is to accurately measure that influence and provide context around who a person influences and the specific topics they are most influential on.
From Facebook, answering privacy concerns with new settings – By Mark Zuckerberg (CEO Facebook)…
Official Google Blog: Search more securely with encrypted Google web search – Good or bad for analytics, tracking, etc. ?
Use LinkedIn Effectively – LinkedIn is the de facto online social network for business types. The thing is, lots of people are “on there” but aren’t necessarily using it to the fullest.
The best creative marketing examples on YouTube – YTShowandTell’s Channel.
100 Incredibly Useful & Free Mac Apps – Some handy ‘Productivity’ and ‘File Sharing and Transfer’ apps.

[Communications Report] for March 22nd 2010 – AndreaVascellari.com

The State of Social Marketing Integration – According to data from eROI and eMarketing & Commerce (eM+C), US marketers spent 13% of their online marketing time on social media in 2009, the second-largest share of any tactic.
Facebook | Intro to Facebook Search – Here’s the ‘what’ of Facebook search. Great post…it makes me think about Facebook VS Google…Who’s gonna win the search battle in future?
Facebook Reaches Top Ranking in US – The market share of visits to Facebook.com increased 185% last week as compared to the same week in 2009, while visits to Google.com increased 9% during the same time frame.
Italian Police Use Facebook to Capture Mafia Fugitive (via @leahdemilio ) – This is actually pretty interesting…isn’t it?! 😉
BBC News – The top 100 sites on the internet – The data used to generate the interactive treemap visualisation were collected by the Nielsen company and covers the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Brazil, US and Australia. The figures represent unique users for the month of January 2010.
Social Fans More Likely to Buy – More than one-half of Facebook fans said they are more likely to make a purchase for at least a few brands, and 67% of Twitter followers reported the same.
10 Useful Website Analytics Tools – Here are some suggestions.
Google – public data – The Google Public Data Explorer makes large datasets easy to explore, visualize and communicate.
New Startup Ideas – I’m always surprised in finding that many startups don’t think at all about certain key elements. This document gives a good structure that I wish more entrepreneurs would keep in mind.
10 Search Engines to Explore the Deep End of the Invisible Web – The Invisible Web refers to the part of the WWW that’s not indexed by the search engines. Most of us think that that search powerhouses like Google and Bing are like the Great Oracle…they see everything. Unfortunately, they can’t because they aren’t divine at all; they are just web spiders who index pages by following one hyperlink after the other.
35 Great Social Media Infographics – Here’s a collection of terrific social media infographics that might come in handy.
GigaTweet – Counting the number of twitter messages – This makes you think…
1 in 4 Facebook Users Come From Asia or the Middle East – O’Reilly Radar – Asia’s share of the more than 400 million active Facebook users recently surged past 15%.
Toyota Turns To Twitter To Repair Its Image – Toyota has been dealing with negative backlash from the massive safety recalls of its vehicles; and is even suffering in terms of sales. So what does the company do to repair its image? Turn to Twitter, of course!

[Communications Report] for March 4th 2010 – AndreaVascellari.com

Foursquare Sees Its Name in Lights in Vegas – An enormous digital display pulls checkin data via Fousquare’s API and displays the latest tips and to-dos, as well as the mall’s mayor, for all onlookers to see.
Special Report – Marketing to the Millennials – One of the most evident changes is social networking, which is embraced by 75 percent of the Millennials, compared with 50 percent of the Generation X members (ages 30 to 45) and just 30 percent of Baby Boomers (aged 46 to 64).
Getting the Most Out of Twitter, No Posting Necessary – A COMMON reason given by those who have yet to try Twitter: “I have nothing to say.”… well…
E-Commerce Sites Freshen Up to Grow Sales – Among those sites that will refresh their looks, better organization and updating of home, category and product pages are top priorities, followed by better search engine optimization.
The State of the Twittersphere 2010 – According to the report, Twitter’s user growth peaked at 13% in March 2009 falling to just 3.5% in October 2009. And while this is the most recent date for which HubSpot has access, it is revealing nonetheless.
Lady Gaga And The Death Of The Login – 9 out of 10 people creating special purpose web accounts are doing so using their social networking platforms.
How to Create a Successful Company Blog – Is it worth blogging, and if so, what they should blog about.
Facebook Drives 3X Traffic to Broadcast Than Google News – A key difference here might be that people are sharing news on Facebook that has an aspect of immediacy. When something big is happening in the world, some news is breaking, we might tend to look toward media outlets where we expect to find breaking news – broadcast media.
Study: 61% of small businesses accomplish identifying & attracting new customers via social media. – Social media usage increased to 24%, from 12% the year before.
Roadmap: Make your corporate websites relevant with social integration (via @jowyang) – Companies and orginizations are confused by the wide variety of choices that social networks offer to help them connect to their customers. Jeremiah created this menu to help them in understanding.
Social networking, phones grow as news sources – 26% of people are getting news through mobile devices.
10 Tips for Successful Twitter Fundraising – It takes more than posting multiple tweets a day to get the job done.
5 Simple Twitter Listening Tips Every Marketer Should Know – Good overview on the basic steps you need to get the best out of your Twitter searching and monitoring.
E-Book on building and sustaining brand communities – Radian6 – (direct PDF download).