Are you on Twitter? Can I add you on Facebook? Do you have a blog? These questions are quickly becoming the currency that occupies the same space that business cards do. Colleagues, customers and other contacts expect to be able to keep in touch with you in between business deals and social media is the way to do it. But which social media platforms are best for your business?

There are almost too many to choose from. We could fill up this entire page with social networking platforms and social media outlets—there are that many—but for now, let’s stick to the big five:

Twitter is a traditional media darling, which is a bit deceptive. You’ll read about Twitter at least once or twice a day in The New York Times or The Independent, which may make you believe that being on Twitter is ... Read more »

While Facebook's amorphous privacy policy and byzantine sharing preferences have many social media users on the defensive, other startups are cashing in by offering kickbacks for users willing to share their information. Foursquare and GoWalla first began building buzz with their partnerships with big name companies like Pepsi and Starbucks, who offer users perks and discounts if they check-in nearby. Even non-commercial ventures are cashing in on location-based mobile marketing. For example, VisitPA, the tourism board for Pennsylvania, is enticing tourists to historical sites with custom Foursquare badges for check-ins at places like Gettysburg ("PA 4 Score & 7") and regional restaurants ("PA Shooflyer").

Bloggers have long used pay-per-click (PPC) advertising to monetize their blogs. PPC networks, such as Google Adsense, Kontera and Vibrant offer bloggers two primary methods for integrating advertisements into their content. Now, InfoLinks has joined the fold of advertisers who are offering money making opportunities to Google Blogger blog owners. The new InfoLinks widget allows bloggers to automatically integrate in-text ads into their posts.

After trumpeting a chain of highly publicized victories for its Google Apps for Education suite of online applications, the Mountain View search giant lost ground to its latest arch rival: Microsoft. Live@Edu, Microsoft’s competing product against Google Apps for Education (which rolled out in Los Angeles in October 2009 and Oregon in April), has become the cloud-based solution of choice for the Kentucky Department of Education. Live@Edu brings streamlined, low cost, scalable computing services for the state’s 700,000 students and faculty. That includes cloud-based email accounts and calendars for each user, 10 gigabytes of mail storage, 25 gigabytes of file storage and access to online collaboration tools, such as document sharing, video chat, instant messaging and mobile e-mail. And the price for all of this? Zero dollars. In fact, the Department is stating that the move to Live@Edu is saving them $6.3 million in costs. Not bad.

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Advertising revenue helps sustain websites large and small. While there are a number of ways to maximize your ad revenue, there is one aspect that is often overlooked: ad placement. Simply put, ads placed in certain areas get more clicks, which means more revenue. Ad placement is an excellent place to experiment since it lends itself well to trial and error without substantially altering the functionality of your site. Try out some of these principles and see if they help you earn more money from your website.

If you’ve ever spoken to a web designer—whether amateur or professional—you’ve likely heard the term "above the fold.” This term refers to the simple concept that items that appear on the page without scrolling get more attention. The same is true for advertisements. Ads that appear above the fold tend to ... Read more »

Today, Microsoft Office 2010 officially hit the shelves—most of which are digital. Microsoft’s suite of business, home and academic productivity applications has long been known for its byzantine pricing and marketing efforts which, in spite of heavy coverage by the media, few consumers get a full grasp on. It seems that no matter what price someone pays for a Microsoft Office product, they always get the vague feeling that they could’ve paid less. And in many cases, it’s true.

Part of the challenge is that there are numerous licensees running numerous different versions and editions of Microsoft Office. While some consumers are buying new PCs with stripped down OEM-versions of Microsoft Office 2007 pre-installed, entire corporate departments are still running Microsoft Office 2003 Professional. Add in the slew of academic discount versions available and it can be tough to peg a definitive price on the latest and ... Read more »

This week, Hewlett-Packard introduced a new line of smart, web-enabled printers. Among other newfangled features, the HP Photosmart Touchsmart Web printer eschews cables, cords and drivers for a slick new method for printing: via email. Each printer comes with its own email address. The printer connects to the Internet wirelessly via a home or office router and prints any documents emailed to it, whether it’s from a laptop, desktop or a smartphone.

But the Internet connectivity has another function other than convenient, wireless printing: HP collects user information in order to send more targeted ads via Yahoo’s advertising network. The printer also serves as a news delivery device (you can set it up for timed delivery of news items from outlets such as MSNBC and Yahoo) and this service is subsidized by advertisements that are printed along with your subscriptions. There’s a certain amount of tradeoff that has t ... Read more »

Twitter users logging in today had mixed reactions to a novel new sight on one of the hottest social media outlets to begin dabbling its toes in the waters of ad revenue: an inconspicuous little golden box with the words "Promoted.” The sea changing graphic accompanied a link to the Toy Story 3 trending topic, making Disney Pixar Twitter’s official first customer for their promoted trending topic program. According to CNN, getting Toy Story 3 to show up in that right-hand column inorganically (i.e. without meeting the discussion volume threshold that would land it in the hot trends normally) cost "tens of thousands” of dollars. It’s still too soon to say whether Disney Pixar’s investment was worth it, but as far as Twitter’s efforts, it’s arguable that the rollout of promoted trends was a success.

Advertising networks are getting more sophisticated everyday. And while some of us appreciate it when Amazon knows us better than ourselves and can recommend our next great read, some people find it creepy when the advertisers seem to know too much.

When Steve Jobs announced iAds during WWDC, he touted it as a revolutionary way to make mobile advertising more engaging for iPhone users and more profitable for app developers. Like virtually all platforms on the web today, iAds collects certain user data in order to send more relevant ads your way. This could be something as simple as what time of day it is or what country you’re from or something more complex, such as how many travel-related apps you have installed on your iPhone and how often you use them. This manifests itself by displaying certain ads that the iAds network believes you are interested in more often than ones it thinks you might not be interested i ... Read more »

Landing pages are king when it comes to snagging new customers, and most web developers have it down to an art. But here’s a curveball: what if users are visiting your website from a smart phone or mobile device? 

The entire experience has changed and there are new rules for mobile landing page optimization. Whether you’re running a mobile advertising campaign or you’ve simply noticed that many of your users are visiting from their iPhone, Blackberry or Android phone, then you’ll have much to gain by following some of these basic tips for mobile landing pages: