In 2009 we saw exponential growth of social media. According to Nielsen Online, Twitter alone grew 1,382% year-over-year in February, registering a total of just more than 7 million unique visitors in the US for the month. Meanwhile, Facebook continued to outpace MySpace. So what could social media look like in 2010? In 2010, social media will get even more popular, more mobile, and more exclusive — at least, that’s my guess. What are the near-term trends we could see as soon as next year? In no particular order:

1. Social media begins to look less social

With groups, lists and niche networks becoming more popular, networks could begin to feel more “exclusive.” Not everyone can fit on someone’s newly created Twitter list and as networks begin to fill with noise, it’s likely that user behavior such as “hiding” the hyperactive updaters that appear in your Facebook news feed may become more common. Perhaps it’s not actually less social, but it might seem that way as we all come to terms with getting value out of our networks — while filtering out the clutter.

Have you ever skipped a paragraph because it just looked to large? If you’re like most people, the sight of a huge block of text is repelling more than inviting—especially in the blazing-fast pace of online navigation.

If you’re worried that your site is text heavy, then it probably is. Here is an exercise that can help you trim your text while keeping all the essentials intact.

If you are just starting out in the small business or home business world you may feel a bit overwhelmed about all that needs to get done. You maybe asking yourself, “what needs to get done?” or “I have my business license, a lawyer, a building, a website and a few clients, if I keep up the good work, word will spread and pretty soon people will be dragging themselves over here for MY business!”.

However, that is not always the case, it takes time, determination and organization. I’ll say that again – Organization! You need to understand where your clients are coming from, how much traffic you are getting to your website and the ability to call them. Actually, there’s quite a bit more that you need to know – but this article is about the tools you can use to HELP you run your business.

Ok, so let me start naming off websites that are great tools to help you run your business:

1. Google Analytics

Google Analytics gives you the ability to view how much traffic your small business website is getting. It can tell you what pages they visited and what keyword from the google search brought them to your site. It also has the ability to tell you what browser they used, what internet connection they were on, how much time they spend on your site and much more. But the important thing here is that you can learn where your visitors are coming from. This is important why? Because it let’s you know your “niche”. knowing your niche is important to gathering traffic and clients. This service is free

2. ZenDesk

“Zendesk is a professional, customer support help desk with a full featured back-end for your customer reps and support agents”. This simply means that you can provide support to anyone who has a question related to your business. They can submit a ticket and you can respond to a ticket. Simple as that. This service starts at $9 a month

3. Skype

Don’t have a phone for your business? No problem. Take skype for a spin by using your computer to talk to people. There is a variety of subscriptions to choose from and you can even get a personalized phone number. Plus talk to people on other computers that use skype, absolutely free. There is a free version and paid subscriptions available

4. Google Apps

Google Apps is an all in one:

• e-mail
• calendar
• documents
• sites
• Postini

Google Apps start at $50 per user, per year, and if it’s just you, well that’s just $50! You can write a document straight from the browser, then e-mail it with google e-mail and even create your very own google site for your small business (however I would recommend using an actual service your website to make it look professional)

5. MailChimp

MailChimp gives you the ability to send out a mass e-mail or Newsletter to all of your registered clients. A newsletter is vital as it can contain important information, alert about sales, what’s new or pretty much whatever you want to talk about to them. It can definitely help you keep in touch with them. MailChimp starts out with a free subscription; you can register up to 500 people and send 3,000 e-mails a month

6. Merchant Circle

Get your small business listed in search engines, create newsletters, create a blog as well as ads! Heck, with their paid subscription you can build an entire site with them. Pricing starts at $6.99 per month. (I personally use this for my photography freelance business, however I have not used it enough nor paid to use their services; it’s a nice thought and has brought me a little more traffic to my website-that much I know)

7. Wordpress

One more tool I’d like to mention that can greatly help your business, keep in touch with contacts and a better way to “get personal” is to create an online blog. Having a blog for your business is personal, it lets people know how things are going, bad, good and ugly parts as well as learn about who you are specifically. Some business owners don’t like to get “attached” to their clients, however I feel that by showing and proving to them who I am as an individual greatly helps business. You do not only keep a client, but possibly make a new friend.

Ok, so I mentioned many great areas of different tools that can help your business succeed and whether or not you try them is up to you. Most of these services are absolutely free and if you like it, then why not pay for it if it’s helping your business? They help you and you help them, it’s a win, win situation!

The latest addition in Twitter is known as the “Twitter list”. This concept was developed so business owners can leverage their business while getting maximum results from the micro-blogging portal.

Those who have been using Twitter since its development have probably noticed the layers of effectiveness in this tool.  The micro-blogging concept was designed to help you share your thoughts with others, advertise your business with short ideas and to link to like – minds that are interested in your business or profession.  However, this foundation has now expanded to include a new way of getting in touch with those you want to communicate with.  The Twitter List is one of the most important additions for profiles.

It does not matter whether you are new to marketing online or you are experienced, in order to be successful, how you decide to present your product or service will determine the outcome. In this article, I will just briefly share a few of my thoughts on the internet marketing of products and services in which I have personal experience, the work from home business industry.

When you study those who are successful, very successful in internet marketing, copy only those whose income is millions of dollars each year. These entrepreneurs all have different methods, based upon the areas in which their particular markets are. So let us take a look at a couple of different ones.

#2 People Forget

About every 3rd Christmas I buy my wife jewelry. I go to the same guy every time. He works out of a small loft space in a warehouse with no storefront. The only way I can remember how to get his contact information is that I know that he is the brother of my mother-in-law’s best friend. So I have to call my mother-in-law to get his name. I’m sure you get my point. People Forget. They not only forget where they might have bought an item last, they also forget that they might need to get a haircut, get their teeth cleaned, workout, clean their gutters, wash their windows, service their car, or book their summer vacation.

Directory submission is not as easy as adding URLs to search engines. The latter only adds your URLs, press the submit button and then take a rest to wait the results. However, directory submission takes more complicated steps:

1. category selection
2. website title and description
3. contact details.

If you have no idea about which category is suitable for your website theme, you had better use your targeted keywords to search the directory and review the websites and its descriptions on the results retrieved from your searches. Some web directories provide guidelines that are suggested to read before submission. Another method to find categories that match your website topics is to search the web directory by using the names or URLs of your competing websites and see what categories those sites are listed under.

Marketing is basically the process of getting a person to recognize and consider your product. It’s easy to get caught up in the details of marketing and focus on questions like:

“Should I do direct mail or e-mail?”
“Facebook is hot; do I need to do Facebook? How about LinkedIn?”
“Everybody watches TV; should I do cable TV?”

I started this blog to give advice on advertising and marketing but came across this “experiment” the other day and it really made me think. As successful as we may try to become through advertising and marketing our companies, we need to remember to not forget about what happens next once the customer calls. This article is something I found and did not write nor participate in, so I cannot verify the accuracy of the information. If you take it for what it is, regardless of the origin and accuracy of it, you will still hopefully walk away with something useful.

For all of the SEO my company does for clients, the one thing I continue to push them to do on their own is to constantly try to increase the number of inbound links pointing to their site. It is still the most important part of securing a top search engine position. I tell them that it’s not just about internal linking, adding great keywords or the presence or absence of titles and alt tags – it’s also about getting websites to link to yours. So what are some ways to increase that?