Nancy Hendrickson

An online quipster poised the question: “How do you measure the return on investment (ROI) of social media marketing?”  He then answered his own question with “You don’t.”

Fortunately, that’s not exactly true.

As  businesses scramble to set up Facebook, Twitter and MySpace pages, analysts are scrambling to discover how impactful their company’s SMM has been. For some, the answer is “we can’t measure this,” but others believe there are statistics that reflect their SMM’s effect.

I use Google alerts all the time to keep track of topics of interest; right now I have alerts set to deliver the latest news on Amazon’s Kindle, best practices for website design, and copywriting (of course).

If you run an online business, Google alert is the best (free) notification service around.  Using it, you can track topics in The other day I discovered a Google-alert type service for those of us who Tweet (you DO tweet, don’t you?) using Twitter.

The service is TweetBeep and here’s how it works. First, set up a free account by picking a username and password. Then, choose the keyword alerts you want to track, i.e. your name, company name, topic of interest. Unlike Google alerts, don’t use quote marks for exact phrase matches.  You can exact phrase match by ticking the box on your alert. Pick how often you want to receive alerts, and that’s it.

Oh yes – you can also set up your TweetBeep to only receive alerts from specific Twitter accounts – a convenience I like when I’m tracking conversations from a specific individual.

Internet Market Strategy For Serious Online Marketers

Whether you have a yen for yard sales or a passion for pets, there’s an audience hungry for your articles. I found mine during a trip to Roswell, New Mexico back in the mid-90s.

Since the “Roswell incident” of 1947, alien autopsies and government cover-ups have become cultural icons and hot collectibles-thanks in part to the unexpected popularity of WB’s Roswell. Who knew TV’s sexy aliens and their glow-in-the-dark hickeys would heat up the auction circuit as well as the small screen?