Screen Pilot getting a mention in a recent article on Clickz.com

Bridging the Data Gap – By Sean Carton, ClickZ

There are also some interesting new integrated measuring tools, such as those available from CognoVision, which focus on out-of-home; Screen Pilot, which provides integrated measurement of mobile and online advertising effectiveness…; and ongoing efforts from the Advertising Research Foundation to figure out how to bridge the gap between media and measurement.

Twitter is such a viral way to connect with prospects and existing customers that many businesses are incorporating Twitter as part of their marketing strategy to promote a product or service. Businesses tend to have more than one person participating in the conversation on Twitter and that    can become difficult to manage.

Now there is a solution to the problem in HootSuite.

HootSuite is a professional Twitter client that allows you to manage multiple Twitter profiles, pre-schedule tweets, and measure your success. It’s the ultimate Twitter toolbox!

Some of the key features of HootSuite include:

• help your images go viral
• track statistics – show not only summaries but individual tweet statistics
• a company or organization with more than one contributor can be managed easily over various Twitter accounts
• create groups and embed columns
• automatically feed your RSS to your Twitter stream
• HootSuite with Ping.fm allows you to update your Facebook, WordPress, LinkedIn, and more
• schedule Tweets
• click on the search bar and locate current trending topics, search keywords and monitor your brand
• report spam
• and much more!

Some companies that are using HootSuite to manage their Twitter presence include: National Geographic, Disney, Fox, People Magazine, Dell, Huffington Post, TMZ, US Army, MSNBC and BET to just name a few!

HootSuite is currently free. All you need to do is go to HootSuite and sign up for your free account.

As much as there is a multitude of social media sites outhere, there equally seems to be a great deal of tools to help you figure out what’s going on with your brand names, reputations, etc etc. So we’ve picked a few of the best free apps to help you measure, monitor and generally navigate your way through the social media forest.

1. HowSociable? – A simple, free, tool that can measure the visibility of your brand on the web across 22 metrics http://howsociable.com
2. TweetScan – search for words on Twitter http://tweetscan.com
3. TweetMeme – View the most popular Twitter threads occurring now. http://tweetmeme.com
4. Addict-o-matic – A nice search engine that aggregates rss feeds, allowing you to quickly see the areas where a brand is lacking in presence http://addictomatic.com
5. Posterous – Posterous is the dead simple way to put anything online using email. http://posterous.com
6. Viral Video Chart – Displays top 20 most-viewed video (1, 7, 365 days). Includes view counts and charting.http://viralvideochart.unrulymedia.com
7. Pixelpipe – Upload photos, video, and audio files once through the Pixelpipe Media Gateway and distribute your content across over 100+ social networks, photo/video sites, blogs, and other online services. http://pixelpipe.com
8. eKstreme – is a keyword research tool with one simple aim: to find out who’s talking about a certain keyword.http://ekstreme.com/buzz
9. Keotag – making it easy for you to track if someone tags a page using your company or product name.http://www.keotag.com
10. Social Mention – search aggregation for various sources, from blogs to social sites. http://www.socialmention.com

A lot of brands and business have Twitter accounts, Facebook Fan pages and other social media site accounts. Are you making the most of them? Not only can a properly enhanced account or page profile give you that clean, professional look and feel, it can also help your SEO.  Popular social media sites means great link strength – that means if you have a link to your website from these accounts, then the text on your key pages will have an effect on your SEO strategy. For example, what do you have written in your About Us text on Twitter? The ‘About Us’ box is a great place to include relevant content and keyword-rich descriptions. But it’s not just about SEO, in fact, the reason why you have a social media presence in the first place, actually overrides the SEO benefits.

So, here are some quick tips you can implement today…

1. Ensure your About Us copy contains your keyword rich story. This is often identified in search algorithms as a key component of SERPs. Make sure your words are contained in this copy whether it be Facebook, Twitter, MySpace or Yammer sites and others.
2. Keep it fresh! Social media for brands is all about the here and now and things that can be acted upon.  Your Facebook page should contain things you want people to do, to take advntage of, to be rewarded for having followed you or adding you as a Fan.
3. Video and images: These digital assets are becoming more and more important in SERPs and social media. Posting video content into your social sites that’s relevant and that has viral opportunity will get circulated.
4. Social media isn’t a hard sell – make sure you don’t turn people off with pointless postings, content or hard sells. Remember, it’s social, the recipient will dictate for themselves what’s important and what’s not. Give them the content to make that decision on while at the same time building your brand and experience you want to deliver through content that supports this strategy.
5. Know what people are saying. Use sites like SocialMention.com to get quick and easy reports on content relevant to your brand.
6. Need more characters in Twitter? If you use the web based interface for Twitter, long URLs automatically get shortened using bit.ly so you don’t have to worry about long URLs – thus giving you more room for your message.
7. Take advantage of background images to ensure your key photography or product shots are upfront and center. Get away from boring standard backgrounds that look the same as everyone else’s profile pages.

In our next installment on the social media front, we’ll be covering some key tools you should be using today to ensure you’re monitoring and building your social media presence and opportunity. But if you need a hand giving your social media tactics a boost, get in touch.