Only minutes after Google released its answer to Twitter and Facebook, Google Buzz, there has been lots of talk about how Buzz will change social media marketing strategies. Has it? So far, even social media marketers and interactive marketing professionals including Mashable and Forrester’s Augie Ray has published their take on Google’s potential Twitter or Facebook rival.

While it’s too early to predict how Google Buzz will fare in the social media sphere, it’s easy to tell the difference between Buzz and its competing social sites. Whether you like it or not, Google is abuzz with something fresh and new when it released Buzz. How will this affect your social media marketing strategies? Here’s how.

Aggregate email and status feed into one.

Not everyone who send emails use Twitter or Facebook. Some Gmail users don’t easily buy into social media sites. Admit it, they’re the types who would rather send and receive thousands of emails everyday than post updates or send tweets. By integrating Gmail and Buzz, Google makes it easier for you to reach those who had reservations about using other social networking sites.

Google Buzz “filters” relevant updates.

I don’t know about you but half of the tweets and Facebook updates I receive are irrelevant. You can’t get rid of the noise and it’s hard to filter messages unless you “unfriend” someone, which is highly unlikely So here comes Buzz with its relevance filtering feature. It’s a quite smarter way of decluttering your space without the need of “unfriending” your friend.

A potential ad strategy.

Yes, Google is still Google. On Google Buzz’s main page, there’s a feature that reads: “Just the good stuff: Buzz recommends interesting posts and weeds out ones you’re likely to skip.” Let’s not speculate too much about Buzz but to recommend what’s interesting may mean another potential ad strategy for Google. Whiles this feature seems to be a part of decluttering your space, users will likely receive data Google wants them to read.

While it may seem as if everyone knows about Twitter and Social Media, this isn’t necessarily so. There are offline businesses of all sizes and types, B2B and B2C that have never heard of Twitter. And there are also businesses who, while they may have heard of Twitter, have no clue what it is or are confused with all the social media jargon and don’t know how Twitter can benefit their business.

If you have an offline business or serve a business who is yet to use Twitter, this article offers 9 practical tips on using Twitter to grow your business. They require an investment of time, but cost little or nothing and can pay off in spades for your business.

1. Monitor your industry – Type in your industry keywords into Twitter’s search and you can find what people are saying about the industry, trends and more. Twitter can give you a wealth of information. You can also follow your competitors, see what their followers are saying and they can follow you.

2. Monitor your competitors – Once you open your Twitter account start following people and include your competitors. You can follow their tweets and conversations. They can follow yours too, so look at this in the context of sharing rather than simply competitive intelligence.

3. Track conversations about your company and brand. Whether you are taking part in the conversation or not people are probably talking about you. They are talking to their friends and people they know. Twitter allows you to listen to what’s being said as well as join in.

4. Enhance customer service. Smart businesses are using Twitter to help out their customers and seeing the dividends as they are able to answer many questions in real time, creating more loyal customers

5. Grow sales. While selling directly isn’t recommended on Twitter you can grow your sales pipeline simply by being seen as the place where people can get answers. If people are interested in you and trust you they could become customers and sources of referrals.

6. Gain exposure. Does your company have the solution to a pressing problem? Write a useful article and tweet about it on Twitter. Not only will your article get you traffic, your followers will immediately go and read what you’ve written and may re-tweet it to their friends. If you post it on your website that could mean more traffic from Twitter.

7. Tweet your blog posts. These days if you don’t have a business blog you’re nearly invisible. Blogging is an inexpensive way to get found, find new business and get your name out. You can “tweet” each new blog post from your business blog.

8. Do market research. Want feedback from customers? Post a poll on your website. Use twitter to invite people to take the poll. Then share the responses via Twitter. Post them on your business blog and don’t forget to tweet that you’ve posted them. Market research doesn’t come much cheaper than this.

9. Launching or re-launching a product or service? Tweet about it to your community. Get them involved in the build-up and they are much more likely to tell their own followers and friends about it.

Whether you are a B2B or B2C offline these are just a few of the ways you can quickly use Twitter as part of your marketing. Make sure you take advantage of them.

Have you ever thought to make use of social media for Search Engine Optimization and web marketing? Do you know what it is? Well according to a definition by Wikipedia, “Social media are primarily Internet- and mobile-based tools for sharing and discussing information among human beings. The term most often refers to activities that integrate technology, telecommunications and social interaction, and the construction of words, pictures, videos and audio. This interaction, and the manner in which information is presented, depends on the varied perspectives and “building” of shared meaning among communities, as people share their stories and experiences.”

In other words, social media is one of the ways to share any news, article, photo or even video with a big number of people. For instance, you can find videos on you tube, articles on Myspace and pictures on Flickr which are some of the sites.

These days one can find a large number of social media websites. It is also noteworthy that all these sites specialize in one specific niche or another. Yet, one can still find some that are not sticking to any one of them.

The sites can be used in following ways for search engine optimization and marketing:

Social media networks

Some of good social media networks that can be used for SEO are MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Digg and Ask.

They are some of big social networks working to share new and updated information with a big number of audiences. There use is always a fine idea for the purpose of SEO.

One can easily make his/her own profile on any of the networks by simply registering her/himself. You can make your own posts and can even join different communities to raise a cause. These social networks have huge traffic and if one gets popular there, it simply means big traffic on your website. Though this is a bit time consuming for search engine optimization but it is worth it. And if you chose only some of really good ones it can save your time as well.

Social bookmarking sites

Another use of social media is through social book marking websites. Evident from the title, these are sites where you can bookmark a site. In other words, you can book mark any specific webpage whether it is content or video.

So how can you actually use a social bookmarking site? It is easy. For instance; you have published a new post on your website and you want people to see that page, simply use social bookmarking sites. Go there and post the link of that specific web page. And that is it.

Among some of really good social bookmarking sites are del.icio.us, Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Ma.gnolia.com and many more. They are a big step in distributing your news or link to a very large number of people. Not only these bookmarking sites have big search engine optimization advantages but also divert more people to your website. Moreover, this traffic results in generation of comments and links as well, working as a marketing strategy.

Social medial marketing is has turn out to be the principal means of promoting in the preceding few years.

Media sites similar to Twitter, YouTube, MySpace and Facebook have blown in to the main-stream and developed into

the most trafficked sites in the world. Facebook drives more traffic per day then the largest search engine Google. Not anything similar to this as ever existed that is available to ordinary marketers like us to their message to the world at very little cost through merely a computer and internet access. This is the reason interactive media marketing is so eye-catching.

Nonetheless there exists a dark truth to interactive media. Certainly it costs no money to advertise on, although you sacrifice something ultimately more valuable, your time. A large amount of MLM owners do not know how to employ social media marketing strategies well and in an competent manner, if they are knowledgeable in interactive media strategies, some may realize how to utilize it in a useful manner but don’t use it in an efficient manner. This is the reason social media sites have turn out to be colossal time wasters for a lot of network marketers and a stumbling block to creating their MLM success.

Now don’t misinterpret, I’m not slamming social media, I for my part adore interactive marketing media. In truth it is not the interactive media that is the issue, it is how interactive media is used ineffectually by most marketers. There are oceans of network marketers advertising their business opportunity and products to an audience that really don’t give a hoot opportunities. Individuals on social media don’t couldn’t care less about your business opportunity or how splendid you compensation plan is. Social media is about you, who you are, what value you offer,, how you can stimulate greatness.

The most effective social media marketing strategy is to advertise yourself by offering value, sharing the good and bad with your followers. When you build your business around you, your name and create a following of people interactive media marketing will work. That’s because social media is a technology that is entirely based on the practice of growing relationships and that the reason it’s taking over the internet. Your answer to creating you MLM success story will be found in the closely controlled use of these interactive media marketing as a instrument to achieve trust and connection with your followers.

Take into account that social media and marketing is not about your MLM opportunity its about YOU! Are you a leader who can inspire greatness and mentor business partners to accomplish success, being the one who gives value is of significant importance when attempting interactive media marketing strategies.

If you really plan to grab the social media bull by the horns I advocate you go out and begin learning additional information on internet marketing. Start produce brief instructional videos, not about your company or products but about marketing, tips and tricks you acquired from marketing, personal development or about your lifestyle. Even if its something plain as being with your family on a week day while almost everybody else is at at work. Make sure to all the time have a solid call to action at the closing, that lets your audience what you would like them to do, so that you can collect your MLM success.

Are you falling behind in the whole web 2.0 frenzy? Are you lost about where to start and what the heck it is all about? Well I am here to help you a bit with one of the fastest growing sites in history, Twitter.

Besides making new “friends” and contacts, Twitter is also be a great research tool. You can use the search at search.twitter.com to find the latest tweets or the same interests on virtually any topic that you wish.

This can be an awesome way to keep track of any new articles happening on any topic that you choose. Each search has a feed that you can add to your favorite RSS feed reader and automatically see all the new events happening on Twitter for that particular topic.

For example I wanted to know what is being said about me. I could go to Twitter Search and get all of the latest tweets directly into my Google reader by just searching my name, then clicking the feed link to be delivered to my RSS reader. My favorite reader is Google but they all work about the same, you just need to choose one.

It really is very easy to do, all you need to do is click where it says feed for this query. Then you can grab the entire url and copy and paste it into your feed reader. Some will just automatically take you there.

You should be always be following your name, any products you have to keep track of what is being said. I know if someone replies using @MyTwitterID it will show on your Twitter time line but if someone just uses your name in a tweet it won’t show up unless I am following them. You should also always add a Google alerts to your name as well.

It is always nice to know when someone is saying something good and even more important to know if it is bad because that why you can nip it in the butt before your reputation gets ruined which has happened to many people since the big web 2.0 frenzy as happened. However it is great for finding scammers and such so there are good things about it as well.