Frequently I speak with Chief Marketing Officers )CMO's(, Business Development Specialists, Product and Brand Managers regarding Social Media engagements and they always ask: "How many customers am I going to get directly from my Social Campaigns? What's going to be my CPA, my ROI and my ROAS? What Immediate sales will I get?" To this I respectfully respond: "Stop! Don't look at Social as a direct response marketing channel.

With great design and implementation you can break all the rules and still be successful. This, by any other means, shouldn't have worked. It shouldn't have reached the ridiculous number of 3,338 diggs after being posted just 4 days ago. It was Flash animation. It was an advertisement for a product. It was selling you something. But as the submitter 'ad-hater' #1 stated : If all advertisements were done like this, I might actually start reading them. What happened?

I'll admit it, I am a search addict . I search all day long morning, noon and night; on the move on my mobile, at home and at work. Each day, 7 days a week, I spend no less than 4 hours conducting well over 150 queries, searching and scanning search engine result pages 2, 3, 4 even 10 pages deep. Organic results, I can't get enough of them. Descriptions, domains, URLs, Titles; I'm sick and obsessed with them. I search at least 4 different search engines ,

Yesterday, Chris Sherman from Search Marketing Now presented another webinar jammed packed with useful information. This session entitled ' Multi-National Search Marketing: Effective Strategies for Global Marketers ' was sponsored by iProspect and moderated by Claire Schoen. Chris was a perfect speaker due to his experience covering search and search engines since 1994. He is the author of several books, including 'Google Power'.

Last week I spoke to Richard Dalton from Newsday and gave him my thoughts on Microsoft and Yahoo coming together for a story he was doing. The article ran in today's paper and can be seen here . Here are my thoughts from the piece: Chris Winfield, president of 10e20, an Internet marketing company based in Fleetwood, agreed that neither Microsoft nor Yahoo can effectively compete individually against Google. Microsoft's search capability is a few year's behind Google's,

The web is competitive. You need an edge. Social media marketing is becoming an essential tool to optimizing an online presence and creating strong connections with your audience. It is undeniable. With billions being spent online each year, social media is gaining in popularity as a valuable resource. 4 out of 5 Americans read blogs and 57% of adults online watch or download videos. The stats keep going on.

On Tuesday, I did my friend Shoemoney's show on WebmasterRadio. We talked about how to get started with public relations, how to create a "USP" and most importantly how to become a great resource for reporters. Check out Jeremy's post here or listen to the full podcast below. And be sure to tune in to Shoe's show every Tuesday at 6pm EST on WebmasterRadio )it's always entertaining and informative(.

When Neil H. Borden came up with the Marketing Mix and Professor E. Jerome McCarthy grouped the Mix into "the 4 Ps" they were probably not considering 21st century marketing and promotion channels on the Internet. After all, this was in the middle of the 20 th century and Google, Yahoo and MSN/Live.com search engines and Internet Social Networks did not exist at that point. Still, this enduring and universal marketing concept applies to the web.

I get angry when I see companies buy pricey media such as print, television, radio or outdoor and they don't take advantage to tie that media buy to the web in an effective way . What do I mean by this? Take for example a large billboard on the side of the highway that has a message about a specific offer from a company, and the only web address displayed is the company's main domain name eg, www.company.

In the olden days a sociologist had to find people and recruit them to fill out long arduous forms. Today there is Facebook, and these sociologists are finding out that people generally love to talk about themselves. It is fun to talk about my interests, social networks and life! Check out the New York Times article 'On Facebook, Scholars Link Up With Data'. I would imagine this is being used in many other ways and will be being used more frequently in the future.

I remember when I first experienced the power of the Internet. I was in middle school hanging out with a friend. We decided to use the computer in my father's office and got online to chat. Of course that led to starting trouble within the chat room and getting kicked out, but the feeling of connecting )even if it was very juvenile and idiotic( was lasting. Well both myself and the internet have evolved since then )thankfully(. We are in the midst of Web 2.0. I mean,