1. Over-Posting – I see this mistake made over and over again. In most cases it happens because small business owners have great intentions and want to be active on the social networks, but they either don’t have time throughout the week or they just plain forget. When they do remember, or do have some marketing time, they jump on Facebook, don’t join any conversations or start new ones, but post about five status updates, links and news information in a 15 minute time frame.

2. Not Enough Time – Maybe 15 minutes is all the time that you have for Facebook, and if that’s the case then you might want to consider adding some help to your marketing team. By over-posting, you’re not giving followers a reason to be interested in your company, you’re giving them a reason to “unfriend” you. Take your time with posts. If you do only have 15 minutes on Friday evening to get your Facebook marketing done, put up your most interesting status update in the first minute, spend 12 minutes seeking out new friends and conversations, and in the 15th minute post your second most interesting status update.

3. Unbranding Your Business – Facebook is a great resource for keeping up your small business brand. It’s important to ‘stay in character’ and to ‘stay in business mode’ while spreading information about your business brand. Playing games, talking about personal issues, or posting inappropriate pictures will kill your brand. Spending time on Cityville and Farmville from your Facebook business pages will only show that you’re not professional and not concerned with how your business brand appears to others.

A year after seventh grade teacher Elizabeth Delmatoff started a pilot social media program in her Portland, Oregon classroom, 20% of students school-wide were completing extra assignments for no credit, grades had gone up more than 50%, and chronic absenteeism was reduced by more than a third. For the first time in its history, the school met its adequate yearly progress goal for absenteeism.

At a time when many teachers are made wary by reports of predators and bullies online, social media in the classroom is not the most popular proposition. Teachers like Delmatoff, however, are embracing it rather than banning it. They argue that the educational benefits of social media far outweigh the risks, and they worry that schools are missing out on an opportunity to incorporate learning tools the students already know how to use.

What started as a Facebook-like forum where Delmatoff posted assignments has grown into a social media component for almost every subject. Here are the reasons why she and other proponents of educational social media think more schools should do the same.

1. Social Media is Not Going Away

In the early 1990s, the Internet was the topic of a similar debate in schools. Karl Meinhardt was working as a school computer services manager at the time.

‘There was this thing called the Internet starting to show up that was getting a lot of hype, and the school administration was adamantly against allowing access,’ he says. ‘The big fear was pornography and predators, some of the same stuff that’s there today. And yet…can you imagine a school not connected to the Internet now? ‘

Meinhardt helped develop the Portland social media pilot program after Delmatoff saw his weekly technology segment on the local news and called to ask for his advice. In his opinion, social media, like the Internet, will be a part of our world for a long time. It’s better to teach it than to fight it.

Almost three-fourths of 7th through 12th graders have at least one social media profile, according to a recent survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation. The survey group used social sites more than they played games or watched videos online.

When schools have tried to ban social media, now an integral part of a young person’s life, they’ve had negative results. Schools in Britain that tried to ‘lock down’ their Internet access, for instance, found that ‘as well as taking up time and detracting from learning, it did not encourage the pupils to take responsibility for their actions.’

‘Don’t fight a losing battle,’ says Delmatoff. ‘We’re going to get there anyway, so it’s better to be on the cutting edge, and be moving with the kids, rather than moving against them…Should they be texting their friends during a lecture? Of course not. They shouldn’t be playing cards in a lecture, they shouldn’t be taking a nap during a lecture. But should they learn how to use media for good? Absolutely.’

2. When Kids Are Engaged, They Learn Better

Matt Hardy, a 3rd and 4th grade teacher in Minnesota, describes the ‘giddy’ response he gets from students when he introduces blogs. He started using blogs in his classroom in 2007 as a way to motivate students to write.

‘Students aren’t just writing on a piece of paper that gets handed to the teacher and maybe a smiley face or some comments get put on it,’ he says. ‘Blogging was a way to get students into that mode where, ‘Hey, I’m writing this not just for an assignment, not just for a teacher, but my friend will see it and maybe even other people [will] stumble across it.’ So there’s power in that.’

Delmatoff says that at first her students were worried they would get in trouble for playing because they actually enjoyed doing activities like writing a blog.

‘But writing a blog, that’s not playing, that’s hard work,’ she says. ‘Karl and I started thinking we were really on to something if kids were thinking that their hard academic work was too much fun.’

Her students started getting into school early to use the computer for the social media program, and the overall quality of their work increased. Although Delmatoff is adamant that there’s no way to pin her class’s increased academic success specifically to the pilot program, it’s hard to say that it didn’t play a part in the more than 50% grade increase.

3. Safe Social Media Tools Are Available — And They’re Free

When Hardy started using blogs to teach, he developed his own platform to avoid some of the dangers associated with social media use and children. His platform allowed him to monitor and approve everything the children were posting online, and it didn’t expose his students to advertising that might be inappropriate. He later developed a similar web-based tool that all teachers could use called kidblog.org. The concept caught on so quickly that his server crashed in September when the school year started.

Many mainstream social media sites like Facebook and MySpace are blocked in schools that receive federal funding because of the Children’s Internet Protection Act, which states that these schools can’t expose their students to potential harm on the Internet.

Kidblog.org is one of many free tools that allow teachers to control an online environment while still benefiting from social media. Delmatoff managed her social media class without a budget by using free tools like Edmodo and Edublogs.

4. Replace Online Procrastination with Social Education

Between 2004 and 2009, the amount of time that kids between the ages of 2 and 11 spent online increased by 63%, according to a Nielson study. And there’s no reason, Meinhardt argues, that schools shouldn’t compete with other social media sites for part of this time.

He helped Delmatoff create a forum where she would post an extra assignment students could complete after school every day. One day she had students comment on one of President Obama’s speeches; another day she had them make two-minute videos of something on their walk home that was a bad example of sustainability. These assignments had no credit attached to them. ‘It didn’t get you an A, it didn’t get you a cookie. It didn’t get you anything except something to do and something to talk about with other students.’

About 100 students participated. Through polls taken before and after the program, Meinhardt determined that students spent between four to five fewer hours per week on Facebook and MySpace when the extra assignments had been implemented.

‘They were just as happy to do work rather than talk trash,’ Delmatoff says. ‘All they wanted was to be with their friends.’

5. Social Media Encourages Collaboration Instead of Cliques

Traditional education tactics often involve teacher-given lectures, students with their eyes on their own papers, and not talking to your neighbor.

‘When you get in the business world,’ Meinhardt says, ‘All of [a] sudden it’s like, ‘OK, work with this group of people.’ It’s collaborative immediately. And we come unprepared to collaborate on projects.’

Social media as a teaching tool has a natural collaborative element. Students critique and comment on each other’s assignments, work in teams to create content, and can easily access each other and the teacher with questions or to start a discussion.

Taking some discussions online would also seem to be an opportunity for kids who are shy or who don’t usually interact with each other to learn more about each other. A study by the Lab for Social Computing at the Rochester Institute of Technology, however, found that this wasn’t the case. The study found that using educational social media tools in one of the Institute’s courses had no measurable impact on social connections.

Delmatoff argues that with her students, however, new connections were made. ‘If you’re shy or you’re not popular or any of those hideous things that we worry about in middle school — if you know the answers or have good insights or ask good questions, you’re going to be really valuable online.’ she says. ‘So I started to see some changes that way.’

6. Cell Phones Aren’t the Enemy

69% of American high schools have banned cell phones, according to figures compiled by CommonSense Media, a nonprofit group that studies children’s use of technology. Instead, Delmatoff’s school collected student’s cell phone numbers.

Delmatoff would send text messages to wake chronically absent kids up before school or send messages like, ‘I see you at the mini-mart’ when they were running late (there’s a mini-mart visible from the school). She called the program ‘Texts on Time,’ and it improved chronic absenteeism by about 35% without costing the school a dime.

‘The cell phone is a parent-sponsored, parent-funded communication channel, and schools need to wrap their mind around it to reach and engage the kids,’ Meinhardt says.

(Via Mashable!.)

Although the number of people worldwide who are using social networking services and engaging with social media continues to climb, the number who describe themselves as ‘creators’ of content — those who publish their own blogs, create and upload videos, and so on — is falling, according to new research from Forrester. The research firm found that the number of content creators either fell or stayed the same in most of the major markets it surveyed for its latest Consumer Technographics study, including North America, China and Europe.

Although the decline in the number of content creators isn’t dramatic — the percentage of users who fell into that category in the U.S. dropped to 23 percent in 2010 from 24 percent a year earlier — it is still a concern, said Forrester analyst Jacqueline Anderson. ‘A lack of growth in social creation translates into a lack of fresh ideas, content, and perspectives.’ According to Forrester’s survey, one-third of those who spend time online in the U.S. regularly watch user-generated videos on sites like YouTube, but only 10 percent of online users upload videos they’ve created to such sites. ‘The traits required to create social content are unique, and at this moment, the consumer market interested in these behaviors has plateaued,’ Anderson said.

Forrester’s research classifies social-network users into a number of categories — including Creators, Conversationalists, Critics, Collectors, Joiners and Spectators — based on their responses to survey questions about what they typically do on social networks and services.

While most countries and regions saw continued strong growth in the number of people who fall into the ‘joiner’ and ‘spectator’ categories, Japan was the only country that showed a rise in ‘creators,’ growing from 34 percent in 2009 to 36 percent in the past year. The number of people who joined social networks grew fairly strongly in Europe and in China, but not as strongly in North America — where social networking has already made strong gains in usage. In August, research from Nielsen showed that the amount of time U.S. Internet users spent on social networking had climbed by more than 40 percent.

The fact that the majority of social media and social networking users do not create content is not a surprise — for example, Harvard research has shown that 90 percent of the content on Twitter is created by 10 percent of the users, and similar percentages of observers vs. creators can be found on YouTube and other sites and services. Although the web and social networking allow anyone to become a content creator and publish whatever they wish, it seems that a majority of users are happy to consume what others create.

(Via GigaOM.)

We already know that Facebook is the web’s biggest time sink. If you look at the average amount of time (according to Nielsen) users spend on the social network, Facebook is a clear winner over sites such as Google or Yahoo.

Now, according to comScore, Facebook is also first when it comes to the total amount of time users are spending on the site. In August, U.S. web users spent 41.1 million minutes on Facebook, which was about 9.9% of their entire web-surfing time in that month. In this same period, people spent 39.8 million minutes on all of Google’s sites, and those include another huge online timesink – YouTube.

comScore puts Yahoo in third place, with U.S. web users spending 37.7 million minutes on its sites, which was about 9.1% of their web surfing time in August.

The numbers are even more impressive when you consider that Facebook had just overtaken Yahoo in July, and in August last year U.S. web surfers had spent less than 5% of their online time on the social networking service.

Still, it hardly comes as a surprise: Facebook has been growing steadily in the last couple of years, and in July it announced it had over 500 million active users.

If Facebook keeps growing, a year from now Google may find itself far behind Facebook when it comes to web users’ minutes. But does Facebook have room for growth? Mark Zuckerberg predicts the site’s userbase might even reach one billion. The number doesn’t sound too far-fetched, given that Facebook still has room for international growth — for example in China and Russia.

Of course, comScore only counts users from the U.S., so the global picture is still blurry. But the facts show that Facebook users spend a huge amount of time on the site, and it’s a worrying stat for Google. Google’s many online properties (Gmail, Search and YouTube, to name a few) have vast influence and reach. But right now, without a large social networking property (Orkut doesn’t count as serious competition to Facebook anymore), Google will have a hard time snatching users’ time from Facebook’s hands.

(Via Mashable!.)

Yesterday I received an email from one of our readers, asking on what social media sites he should try to secure his name (which can be either his personal name, or his website/business name, depending on what brand he is trying to promote).

In my opinion there are two that are absolutely a must: Twitter and Facebook. All the others are optional. Depending on the type of business you have some niche social sites might be compulsory too. For instance, if you are a photographer you should try to secure your name/brand on Flickr too.

That being said, if you have time available it could be a good idea to secure your name on as many social sites as possible. This will solidify your brand and enable you to interact with your audience/customers on many different platforms.

There is a web tool that helps with this task. It is called namechk.com.

You just need to put the desired name on the search box and the tool will check whether it’s available on not on around 150 social media sites. You can also use it as a list of the sites where you can go and create a profile, as some of them will also let you place a backlink to your website.

(Via Daily Blog Tips.)

This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.

In a world where small businesses with corporate blogs receive 55 percent more traffic than small businesses that don’t blog, companies should be taking note on how to improve their blogs, attract more readers and get more results.

But still, a lot of companies with corporate blogs seem to be bogged down in uniformed policies and simply aren’t thinking outside the box. Afraid to take on colorful personalities or step a bit outside of their company’s happenings, many corporate blogs employ an official tone announcing the play-by-play updates of company news. This is just one mistake that businesses are making in the blogging world.

There is a laundry list of issues that need to be addressed when it comes to improving corporate blogs, but here we’ve narrowed down the key elements that companies should focus on. Here are 10 tips for corporate bloggers hoping to make a positive splash in their communities.

1. Establish a Content Theme and Editorial Guidelines

When creating a product or service, you must be able to define the value that it’s bringing to consumers. In the case of a blog, you need to clearly define the focused theme that your team will follow. Choose a blog name and theme that fits well with your company’s expertise, but don’t be afraid to branch out into a larger space. Your blog should provide pertinent information for consumers interested in your area of business.

Once you’ve chosen an area to cover, create a set of editorial guidelines that your bloggers will follow. Guidelines can include appropriate verticals and topics to cover, as well as how and when posts should be written.

A clear goal and theme for your blog will make it easier for users to know what to expect. For example, Dogstuff, an online shop for canine gifts, toys and supplies, hosts a blog called Dog Blog. The blog is simple and to the point, and it’s more than evident that the blog is about dogs. The theme is specific enough for readers to understand what they may find, but it is such a broad topic, that almost limitless posts are possible.

2. Choose a Blogging Team and Process

Choose a team of core bloggers to begin your blogging adventure. Select individuals that are knowledgeable and comfortable writing about the areas you would like to cover. Also, it’s key to choose people who write well and have a great online presence.

Train your bloggers on the editorial guidelines and decide what type of writing and editing process you would like to put in place. Some companies prefer to elect an editor or group of editors to have a final look at all blog posts, while other companies allow their bloggers to publish directly. Figure out the level of comfort you have with your blogging, editing and publishing process and implement a procedure that works well for your team.

3. Humanize Your Company

A company blog is an opportune place to let down your hair and get to know your customers. Think of it as a conversation between people, not between a brand and one person. In order to have a conversation, you need two people — a blogger and a reader.

Give your corporate bloggers the freedom to be themselves. Encourage them to have their own personalities and writing styles. This type of diversity is more representative of your company than any monotonous tone that you could manufacture on your own.

Always keep in mind that your blog is about people connecting and conversing with people, not a corporation. Throw away that ‘corporate’ concept, and you’ll be ahead of most.

4. Avoid PR and Marketing

If maintained correctly, your blog will act as a repository of real analysis and opinions provided by your company’s fine employees. The type of insight and expertise that a blog can demonstrate is far more useful than any PR pitch that you could post. Stay away from trying to sell your readers. There are appropriate venues for that, and your blog shouldn’t be one of them.

Continue to add to the conversation, adding value for your readers. Your opinions will be priceless. And for the times that you don’t have an opinion on an important topic, gauge your community’s opinion by taking a poll or interviewing key people.

Lululemon Athletica, a yoga-inspired athletic apparel company, constantly adds value to its community through its blog by providing posts on topics that their core followers would appreciate. Some of the most recent posts were on how to do a handstand, protect the lower back, and explore a new city.

Readers will get a taste of the massive knowledge bank available at your company. Take your mind off of marketing, and you’ll find that the analysis that you provide sells your company better than a press release ever could.

5. Welcome Criticism

Oftentimes, corporations shy away from opening up their websites and blogs for commenting and interaction, because they are afraid of the harm that criticisms may cause. Make it a policy to welcome criticism, thinking of it as an opportunity for feedback and improvement. There are lots of ways to deal with negative feedback, so don’t be afraid to open up to your community.

6. Outline a Comment Policy

Be aware that if you open up your blog for full feedback (which you should), you will get a variety of comments — constructive, complimentary, hateful, and spam. Be prepared for everything. Create a comment policy that your team can follow, and make sure everyone is on same page. Outline the types of comments that should be responded to, deleted or passed along for follow-up.

7. Get Social

Make sure your blog is open for comments and utilizes share tools, such as Facebook, Twitter and Digg. Share tools allow your users to pass along your content. Why not allow your readers to promote your work?

Put forth an effort to respond to comments or forward them on when a specific employee could offer the best expertise in that area. Make sure each employee maintains a personable tone when responding to comments, so that readers know that your bloggers are genuine.

Lastly, if you haven’t done so already, implement a social media strategy for your blog, creating the appropriate profiles across social networks that your readers and customers are active on. Usually, Facebook and Twitter are a good start, and YouTube is a must for video-sharing. When you post on your blog, announce the new post on your social networks and ask for your readers’ opinions on the subject.

Promote your social presence on your blog, by implementing links, buttons and widgets that link to your social profiles. This will enable readers to stay connected with you across platforms. Whole Foods’ blog, Whole Story, for example, displays its social links prominently at the top of the blog.

8. Promote Your Blog

Just as you would promote any other company initiative, get the word out about your blog. Share the URL on your website, social networks, business cards, e-mails, and advertisements.

Without promotion, building an audience can be difficult. Get behind the quality work that your team is putting into the blog and promote away.

9. Monitor Mentions and Feedback

One way to get a pulse on your blog and its effects on the community is to monitor mentions and feedback. Set up Google Alerts for your brand, blog name and any keywords that might be relevant. Search on Technorati and Twitter for those set terms.

To make things easier with Twitter, set up custom search columns in a Twitter client, such as Hootsuite, Tweetdeck or CoTweet. The columns will update in real time, keeping you up-to-date on brand and blog mentions at all times.

Getting more sophisticated, you should look into social media brand management tools, such as Radian6, for monitoring keywords across social sites.

10. Track Everything

You’re probably accustomed to tracking everything, and your blog is no different. If your blog is a page on your website, make sure your current web analytics tools are set to track all the same data that it monitors on your website. If you don’t currently have a web analytics tool, check out Google Analytics, a free analytics tool with an easy-to-use interface.

At the minimum, make sure you’re tracking site traffic, where referrals are coming from, and traffic-wise which posts are doing best. Learn from the data and adjust your blogging guidelines accordingly.

(Via Mashable!.)

This past week certainly flew by at the speed of Google Fiber. If you didn’t get the chance to take in all the how-tos, app reviews, and business tips found here on Mashable, rest assured, we’ve gathered them into another convenient resource buffet, fully stocked for some all-you-can-read weekend enjoyment.

This week’s edition includes some easy ways to make a difference with social media, a look at how video conferencing technology is improving education, some new social strategies for businesses of any size, and much more.

Social Media

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• Dear Foursquare: This Is Not the Right Time to Sell

  The location-based network’s extraordinary growth and buzz have caught the eye of Internet heavyweights, notably Yahoo. But if the Foursquare team aims to be a worldwide game-changer like Facebook and Twitter before them, it may be wise to forego the big pay day and keep on truckin’.

• 9 Ways to Do Good With 5 Minutes or $25

  Social media makes it easier than ever to make a difference. Whether you can donate a little bit of time, or a little bit of money, check out these easy ways to contribute on the web or on your phone.

• How Social Media Can Effect Real Social and Governmental Change

  Transparency, open APIs, and free-flowing information are just a few of the ways societies and governments can be improved. This post discusses some important social media campaigns that have made a difference.

• 4 Tips for Tapping Into Twitter Conversations
  Twitter is so much more than just sending updates and links into the void — it’s the world’s real-time conversation. If you want to take part, heed the advice in this post.
• Exclusive: Tour the ‘If I Can Dream’ Command Center [VIDEO]

  The interesting new reality/online video hybrid show ‘If I Can Dream’ hit the web on March 2nd, and its impressive production and technical values have turned more than a few heads. This exclusive tour of the show’s HQ sheds some insight on the unique experiment.

• 5 More Ways to Go Green for Earth Day

  Earth Day may have come and gone, but that doesn’t mean you’re off the environmental awareness hook. Explore these social strategies for going green any time of year.

• How Social Media Helped Travelers During the Iceland Volcano Eruption

  The Icelandic volcano eruption cost millions in airline revenue and left thousands stranded, but it may have opened new windows of communication. See how travelers and airlines took advantage of social channels to relay vital information that call centers and websites could not.

For more social media news and resources, you can follow Mashable’s social media channel on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook.

Tech & Mobile

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• HOW TO: Give Your iPhone a Spring Clean

  With so many tempting apps available for download, it’s easy for your iPhone to get cluttered. Well spring is here, and it’s time to organize your mobile life. Check these tips on streamlining your beloved handheld.

• 5 Ways Classrooms Can Use Video Conferencing

  Web-based video chat has allowed students to connect with a world of experts and curricula that were previously unavailable. Take a look at these five examples of high-tech education in action.

• 10 Free iPhone Apps to Help You Go Green for Earth Day

  Environmentalism doesn’t stop at your desktop. Staying green on the go can be a little bit easier with these 10 resourceful iPhone apps.

• 10 Excellent Examples of Recycled Gadgetry

  If you’re all about gadget-themed decor and apparel (and who isn’t really?), you won’t want to miss these awesome products, built from the circuits and wires of yesterday’s tech.

For more tech news and resources, you can follow Mashable’s tech channel on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook.

Business

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• Why It’s More Important Than Ever To Be an Early Adopter Brand

  If your business aims to compete at the speed of social media, it’s critical that you be ahead of the curve on the latest trends. This post discusses why.

• HOW TO: Reignite Your Business Network Online

  Without a viable network, your business probably wouldn’t be successful. If that old Rolodex or business card pile is growing stale, here are some tips for reconnecting online.

• How Recruiters are Using Social Media for Real Results

  Social media has opened up a whole new channel for recruiters to scout. Here are some tips from the pros who have landed great candidates from the social web.

• How Companies Can Use Sentiment Analysis to Improve Their Business

  What are people saying about your brand on the web? Is it good or bad? How bad should it get before you intervene? These questions can be answered by employing a sentiment analysis strategy.

• 5 Unique Ways to Use Twitter for Business

  Contests, customer service, recruiting — it’s all been done on Twitter. If your business is looking for some fresh ideas, be sure to check in here.

• 8 Social Media Strategies to Engage Multicultural Consumers

  The purchasing power of multicultural consumers is growing exponentially. If you want to reach them, you need to understand how to connect. This post has some tips on using social media to do so.

• 5 Masterminds That Have Redefined Startup Life

  Along the road of Internet entrepreneurship, there have been thought leaders who took risks, and changed the game for everyone. Check out these five profiles of some of the most influential minds in tech business.

• Why Retention Should Be Your Top Priority in Social Media Marketing

  If your business model hinges only on how virally your product is shared, you may be missing the bigger picture. For long-term sustainability, customer retention is key.

• Top 10 YouTube Tips for Small Businesses

  YouTube is a too-often neglected channel for promoting your business. Because it’s free and has incredible reach, it’s the perfect platform for small businesses to set up shop. Here are 10 best practices to note while exploring your web video strategy.

• HOW TO: Add Blogger Outreach to Your PR Plan

  The opinions of bloggers reach far and wide, making them a great vehicle for your brand. If you haven’t added blogger outreach to your PR arsenal, read these tips for best results.

For more business news and resources, you can follow Mashable’s business channel on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook.

(Via Mashable!.)

Another week down, and another chance to gather all the social media wisdom from the experts and put it to good use for your personal brand, your business, or for plain old fun.

Check out these indispensable resources which include an exclusive peek inside YouTube’s inner sanctum, a swath of in-depth iPad coverage, and some essential social business tools.

As if that’s not enough, there are always those hilarious cat videos.

Social Media

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• How a Facebook Group Helped Reunite a Band for Charity

  The band God Street Wine became popular in the 90s and played their last official show in 1999. But thanks to a group of fervent Facebook fans, the band is reuniting in NYC for a good cause.

• Top 10 Recut Movie Trailers on YouTube [VIDEOS]

  We’ve picked ten of the best recut movie trailers on YouTube that add a horror angle to the most light-hearted of films.

• 3 Ways Live Events Improve Online Communities

  While there is a lot of chatter about online communities, less is said about how to connect your online community members with each other, or with you, offline. Check out these three tips for improving your online community.

• The History of Location Technology [INFOGRAPHIC]

  Location-based social networks may be hot now, but location technology is nothing new. This infographic explores the history of location tech from primitive to advanced.

• Exclusive: Inside YouTube’s War Room

  Whether positive or negative, whenever a major social site rolls out a new feature, users respond very loudly. For their recent redesign, YouTube was prepared.

• Top 10 Funny Cat Videos on YouTube

  Whether you want talking cats, surprised cats, dramatic cats or nom-noming cats, this lists should tickle your funny bone with ten examples of the finest feline vids on the Internets.

• HOW TO: Clean Up Your Facebook Profile

  With all your friends, Fan Pages, apps, and friends’ apps, your Facebook feed can get pretty hairy. Check this guide for some quick tips on cleaning it up.

• 3 Tips for Managing Your Online Reputation

  As we spend more of our social lives online, our reputation becomes harder to manage across many networks. Here are some tips for keeping tabs on how the web perceives you.

• 6 Ways Brands are Using Social Media For Real-World Action

  Businesses should start thinking about new ways to mobilize their social media audiences to take action in the real world. Here are 6 great examples of just that.

• 5 Ways Mega Charity Events Can Harness the Power of Social Media

  Mega charity events like Twestival and 12 for 12k have demonstrated fantastic principles for grassroots cause efforts. These 5 pointers came from social media experts in the non-profit sector.

For more social media news and resources, you can follow Mashable’s social media channel on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook.

Tech & Mobile

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• iPad App Hands-on Reviews: Twitterific, Netflix, and ABC [VIDEO]

  Want to see some of the most anticipated iPad apps in action? Check out these video reviews.

• 10 Great Sites for Watching Video on Your iPad

  As we know, Apple and Flash (by Adobe) do not intend to play nice anytime soon. However, there is hope for mobile web video in the form of HTML5. Here are 10 sites that utilize the new code to render video on the iPad.

• 3 Ways to Destroy an iPad [VIDEO]

  Whether for marketing, science or sport, some individuals are more interested in destroying the iPad than in ogling its sleek design. Check out these three videos and quench your thirst for techno-destruction.

• 10 Awesome Apple iPad Cases

  Apple’s iPad hit shop shelves last weekend, so we thought we’d bring you the best cases you can currently buy — as well as some coming-soon options that might be worth holding out for.

• 5 Fantastic Free iPhone E-book Reader Apps

  In case you’re not grabbing an iPad any time soon, we’ve pulled together a list of five free apps that offer you e-book reading abilities on your iPhone.

• 4 Web-Based Meeting Schedulers Reviewed

  A slew of online applications are attempting to eliminate the headache of scheduling meetings. Here is the run down of four applications that just might make the logistics a little easier.

• 3 Reasons to Get Excited About the Apple Game Center

  This summer, the iPhone and iPod touch will get an operating system update (iPhone OS 4.0) that will include a new service called the Game Center. Here’s why we’re psyched about it.

• The 10 Best ‘Get a Mac’ Ads

  Love them or hate them, Apple’s iconic ‘Get a Mac’ ads made a huge impact on pop culture. We’ve learned that the campaign is slated for the deadpool, and rounded up ten of our favorites.

• 10 Free Services to Monitor Your Site’s Uptime

  You can’t sit staring at your website(s) 24 hours a day to ensure it’s up. Fortunately, there are free services out there that can do it for you.

• How Publishers Plan to Monetize iPad Content

  The release of the iPad has the publishing world wondering if paid digital content will put the industry back in the black. A few publishers are already taking some interesting approaches.

For more tech news and resources, you can follow Mashable’s tech channel on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook.

Business

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• 5 Tips for Using LinkedIn to Find Star Employees

  Successful business people are always looking for their next rock star employee. The good news is that the latest LinkedIn stats – 60 million professional profiles spanning 200 countries – would indicate this is a good place to look.

• Top 5 Ways to Make Your Site More Fun

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(Via Mashable!.)

You’ve created a Facebook fan page and people are frequenting your page.  But do you really know how many people visit your page, what areas are popular and what parts of the world your visitors come from?

Facebook Insights shows some demographic information on your page, but is limited to information about interactions with your fans.  The free Google Analytics tool offers more sophisticated and comprehensive data.  Adding Google Analytics to your fan page can be done easily but requires some special steps.

One of the limitations of Facebook fan pages is they can only run limited JavaScript. Google Analytics needs JavaScript code included on a page to correctly track visitors in the traditional way.  And running JavaScript won’t work on your fan page…

However, there is a new solution.  Using free and opensource FBGAT (Facebook Google Analytics Tracker), you can get Google Analytics working on your Facebook fan page. Now you can track visitor statistics, traffic sources, visitor countries, and keyword searches with all the other powerful reporting of Google Analytics.

What follows are the instructions to set up Google Analytics tracker on your Facebook fan page. (Note: Your fan page must use an HTML application like static FBML for you to use this method.)

#1: Create a Google Analytics account

If you already have a Google Analytics account, create a new website profile to separately track visits to your Facebook fan page.

Where it says ‘Add a Profile…’, simply paste your fan page URL or use Facebook.com.

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After the step above, Google will display your tracking code. The tracking code generally looks like this: UA-3123123-2.  Note: Google will tell you to activate the website.  You do not need to do this.

#2: Get your tracking images

The way to work around the Facebook JavaScript limitation is to generate custom images. FBGAT is a free tool that will generate your custom image code to track visits on each of your Facebook fan pages.

The above screenshot shows what the code generator looks like.

Here’s what to include in the fields shown above:

• Analytics Code: This is the tracking code that you got in step #1. (It is very important that you enter this correctly.)
• Domain on Analytics: The domain name you created in step #1 (use Facebook.com if you used it in step #1).
• Page Link: This is to let you track the page on Google Analytics. What would you like to call your page so that you’ll recognize it in Analytics?
• Page Title: This is for your reference.

After clicking the ‘Generate Code’ button, you’ll get a code which you’ll need to copy in full. You’ll have to generate a separate code for each fan page you want to track and place it as shown in step #3 below.  Note: If you have multiple pages powered by FBML, you can do this for each page.

#3: Add the code to Facebook

Place the code generated as shown within your Facebook page using an app like Static FBML.  Programs like Static FBML allow you to add HTML to your pages.  By simplify editing your Static FMBL pages and inserting the code from step 2, Google Analytics will track all visits to those pages.

You can place the code anywhere as long as it does not disrupt functionality of your existing page. I prefer the top or the bottom of the page.

That’s all there is to it. The tracking has begun. Google Analytics will now need about 24 hours to show you a report of your visitors.

Tracking Visits to Your Fan Page Wall

The wall might be your main page. To track this, again you will need to create a page with static FBML. The only difference is that to show this on the wall, you are required to make it a box. Just click on the (add) on the Box, and it will be added to the wall. To change this setting, click on ‘Application Settings’ under the FBML that you would like to create as a box. As with other pages, please note that you have to create a unique tracking code for this page as well.

What do you think? Will you be able to better justify your Facebook marketing with this added insight? Please comment below.

(Via Social Media Examiner.)

Editor’s note: In the following guest post, Fliqz CEO Benjamin Wayne reveals some of the secrets of using video to help boost the search results rankings of your website. Fliqz is an online video platform.

As most search engine optimization (SEO) experts are aware, getting a first-page Google result is harder than ever. Not only do Google’s search and indexing algorithms continue to evolve in complexity, but Google has given over more and more of its search results real estate to ‘blended’ search results, displaying videos and images towards the top of the first page, and pushing down—and sometimes off the page—traditional web results that would have otherwise competed for top rankings.

But where problems arise, so do opportunities. Although Google’s newfound enthusiasm for video has created more competition for fewer traditional search results, it has enabled sites with video assets—even sites that would otherwise score poorly in the Google index—to successfully achieve first-page rankings. In fact, Forrester Research found that videos were 53 times more likely than traditional web pages to receive an organic first-page ranking.

Here’s what a blended search result looks like for the search query ‘777 built in 4 minutes‘:

Those images at the top of the search results are video thumbnails, and today, there’s only two ways to get there:

1. Upload your video to YouTube.

The advantage of this is that you are 100% certain to be indexed into Google’s search engine. This does not guarantee you’ll get a first-page result, but at least it ensures that Google knows your content exists.

The drawback, of course, is that anyone who clicks on a YouTube result will be taken to YouTube, which may be fine if your goal is branding (i.e., you only care that people watch your video). If your goal is driving traffic, as is typically the case with SEO, this won’t be a successful strategy.

Your other alternative is:

2. Video SEO

Video SEO is a set of techniques designed to make sure that:

• Google finds your video content
• Google successfully indexes your video content
• Google will display your video content when specific keywords are entered as search terms

Here’s how to make it work:

You Need Video Content

Google is fairly flexible in what it considers to be video content. You can use actual video footage, but screen captures, slide shows, animated PowerPoint slides, and other content will work just as well. Google can’t actually ‘see’ what’s inside the video content, so it relies on title and other meta-data to determine what content your video actually contains.

Submission, Not Discovery

With traditional web pages, Google utilizes crawlers to discover and index web content. Unfortunately, Google can’t read Flash very well (although it is trying), and as a result, most video content is invisible to Google’s search crawlers. Therefore, the best way to appear in Google’s blended search results is to submit your video to Google using a Video Sitemap. This is similar to an XML sitemap, but is formatted specifically for video, and only contains information about your video content. It is submitted using Google’s Webmaster Tools.

The most common error in Video SEO is to assume that because you have submitted the web page on which a video resides, that the video content itself is being indexed.

You’ll also need to make sure that you have a robots.txt file on all video pages, to ensure that Google can easily verify that the locations on the Web you’ve submitted do in fact exist, and that they contain embed codes which indicate the presence of a video.

Title and Title Tags

When ranking videos, Google primarily considers the match between search keywords and the video title. Although Google allows you to submit other meta-data such as description and keywords, these currently don’t have much influence on your search ranking. Google likes it when the title tag of the page matches the title of the video, and will give a higher weighting for results where this is the case.

Video SEO is Long Tail

Like traditional SEO, you’re much more likely to see results with Video SEO if you target more specific, or longer tail, search terms. A video titled ‘Dog’ is unlikely to produce a first-page ranking, while a video titled ‘German Shepherd Police Dog’ will be more likely to score well in Google’s algorithm. Since Google can’t determine the actual content of the video, you might consider submitting the same video multiple times with different titles that match potential search terms.

New and Small Don’t Matter

With traditional SEO, the age of a website is an important consideration for Google in deciding its ranking. Google also considers things like the number of pages on the site, and the number of links to the site, along with the importance of the places those links originate.

In Video SEO, none of this matters. This means that even new sites and small sites can compete on equal footing with larger and more established players. Publishers who are too small or too new to even consider traditional SEO can still be taking advantage of Video SEO opportunities.

For the Foreseeable Future, Video SEO is a Winning Strategy

As time goes by, Google’s discovery and indexing of video content will no doubt become more sophisticated, and as competition for video results increases, it will become harder for sites to achieve these first-page rankings. However, the number of web pages still massively outnumbers indexed video assets, and for as long as that continues, publishers will have an opportunity to jump to the top of Google’s search results through Video SEO.

(Via TechCrunch.)