One thing I’ve noticed from internet marketers is that there seems to be a great divide on the concept of what gets the best “bang for your buck” with internet marketing. There are the “marketing traditionalists,” as I like to call them, who focus their efforts solely on search engine optimization and online paid advertising, and then there are the “new age” marketers who believe that digital and social media is the marketing wave of the future. My biggest issue is with the divide itself. Why focus your efforts on one aspect of marketing when you can take the two practices and marry them? Moving forward, you can call me the Minister of Marketing, because I am about to pronounce Paid Search and Social Media as husband and wife.

Building the Foundation for Marriage

Paid Search/SEO and Social Media need each other like a fish needs water, but for different reasons. Many traditional marketers aren’t viewing their targeted search from a brand identity perspective, which is a big mistake. As a devout supporter of social media, I know how important it is to participate in social brand engagement as a way to create an active dialogue with consumers around products and services. The main goal is to build brand value and connect with consumers, with the secondary goal of driving traffic, and, ultimately, sales. It’s important to stress that if you are looking to drive traffic for instant sale conversions, social media is not going to give you direct results. On the other hand, most marketers know that using paid search and standard SEO practices will primarily drive sales, leads, and conversions, but they don’t expect the short text of their paid search ads to do much for branding.

We understand that as a business, you have a limited marketing budget (and a good chunk of that budget goes to non-digital marketing efforts). Fortunately, most social media resources are free, so you are only paying for as little or as much time spent engaging those campaigns. If, in addition to that, you are willing to set aside a decent budget for paid search, you ‘ll find it’s incredibly easy to track and analyze the conversations as they happen. Many supporters of social media find the communications that happen from it (and the traffic generated by it) aren’t quite as easy to quantify… yet.  Luckily, Google is constantly changing their search algorithms to cater specifically to social media. In 2009, Google struck a deal with Twitter, rumored at $15 million, to integrate tweets into keyword related Google searches. And in January 2010, Google also integrated real-time search technology to surface blog posts and news content as they hit the Web – dramatically improving the previous five to 15 minutes its spiders would take to crawl the Web.  And it’s only getting better.  This is great news for social media marketers who are providing great, consistent content with search-friendly titles.

Something New, Something Old and Something Borrowed

As a business with a digital presence (website, blog, social networks, etc), it is imperative to embrace paid search (old), social media (new) and SEO (borrowed). This is why: By creating social content that attracts an engaged audience, marketers can then craft targeted paid search campaigns to “capture” this audience and turn them into buyers, thus making it easier to quantify and analyze success with social media through the powerful analytics available with paid search. It’s easy to make your social media updates “search friendly” by using hash tags on twitter, optimizing blog titles to include searchable key terms, and submitting your content to high-traffic social networking sites like Digg, Facebook, LinkedIn etc. Not only are you constantly building your social network, you are inevitably increasing your Google page rank each time you link to someplace other than your website, thus driving organic search results.

A Match Made in Heaven

Both YouTube (71 million unique users each month) and Facebook have already married their social foundation with page search. With Google behind YouTube, it is not surprising that they offer paid advertising to users through several options, including self-service ads, brand channels and affiliate advertising. YouTube advertising aside, I’d like to take a moment to focus on Facebook ads.

Currently Facebook boasts somewhere in excess of 400 million users. As a business with an established social media presence, you would be crazy to not want to tap into those numbers. Thankfully, paid search has “gone social” with Facebook advertising. Facebook advertising has taken the concept of text link advertising like Google AdWords and paired it with one of the more popular social media avenues available to businesses:  the Facebook fan page. If you are a business who is currently promoting your content through a Facebook Fan page, then with as little as $100/month you can easily set up an ad campaign. Facebook ads offer you two options: You can choose between a cost per click (CPC) model where you pay only for clicks or a cost per thousand (CPM) model where you pay per 1000 ad views. Most research suggests that the CPC model is slightly more effective in terms of ROI (return on investment).

One of the best things about Facebook advertising that distinguishes it from Googles online advertising model is the ability select who sees your ad using a number of variables, including keywords. You can target by geography, age, gender, education, relationship status, workplace and keywords. This all comes back to social engagement vs. traditional paid advertising, and that with socially targeted media, you must think in terms of targeting a specific demographic to promote content, value and brand awareness and not directly selling a product or service. The most successful use of ads on social networks is to create deeper engagement so you have the ability to sell once trust is built.

Building a Long-Lasting, Successful Marriage

Like any successful marriage, there are many aspects that lead to long-lasting love and success. The same goes with the pairing of traditional paid search and social media. Here are a few tips to optimize your internet marketing efforts and boost overall ROI.

1.    Get Friendly (search-friendly that is) – Make sure your social media campaigns (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn etc.) are appropriately tagged and indexed, and that the metadata for your pages include your top keywords. This will allow people searching for your brand content to not only find your paid search ads and natural search results, but to find your social media content as well.

2.    Experiment (outside of the bedroom) – Facebook and YouTube both allow for keyword targeted advertising, but the way that these ads work is vastly different from how advertising works on Google. Facebook ads allow you to target users based on preferences they list on their profile. YouTube’s advertising system allows you to target specific user queries. However, remember the queries that occur on YouTube are different than those on Google, because users on YouTube are searching for content, not products. You can find success by experimenting with different search terms on both.  Put yourself inside the head of a user on Facebook or YouTube. What interests in their Facebook profile might draw them to your Fan page?  What queries on YouTube might lead them to click on your ad? You can use both Facebook and YouTube’s powerful analytics to gauge what key terms are working best and tailor your campaigns to maximize results.

3.    Communication is Key (for a successful marriage) – Analyze the topics and discussions taking place around your social media campaigns, and then source these discussions for new keywords you can use in paid search campaigns on Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Whatever people are talking about, bid on keywords that reflect these conversations.  Google has an amazing Keyword tool that allows you to compare global search results for keywords so that you can determine popularity (and ultimately cost) for terms you are bidding on in your advertising campaign.

Overall, for any successful digital marketing strategy (like any successful marriage), you really need the whole package: A well-designed website, a social media presence, a blog, a working knowledge of SEO, good communication, brand awareness, social interaction and a decent budget dedicated solely to paid search (Google AdWords, Facebook, YouTube, etc). If you have the budget, the time and the know-how, you will find much success in the power that exists behind marketing your products and services on the internet. Many agencies, like Pomegranate, offer fully integrated digital and social media strategies and campaigns to help get your company’s internet marketing efforts off the ground.

For more tips like this, you can follow me on Twitter @ReneeGannon

As Pomegranate’s resident Social Media expert, it was high time I got my hands on a smart phone.  I had been contemplating the iPhone for some time, with little motivation to move forward.  Born and raised on a PC, I never really jumped on the Apple train, having been quite loyal to my Microsoft-based products for a good portion of my natural-born life.  Some would see this as a curse.  I might have to agree.

As a loyal Verizon customer since 1999, I began the search for a new phone.  I owned an LG Voyager for about a year but wasn’t feeling satisfied with its performance; it was time to break-up and move on.  I started casually dating the LG EnV touch, but that relationship was short lived, leaving me with a bitter taste in my mouth and a jaded outlook towards media-based phones.  I was determined to put myself back out there and meet the love of life; a phone that was, by definition, perfectly seamless for all my social networking and data management needs.  Blackberry?  Droid?  Eris by HTC?  As a supporter of Google services for years, I decided it was time for an Android-based phone with Google integration.  It was safe to say I was fully in love with Google and was desperately wanting to take our relationship to the next level.

What is it about a Google phone that makes it stand apart from the rest, you ask? Most importantly, Android is an open-source, Apache-licensed operating system that Google makes available free of charge to device manufacturers who can add their own application genius for download in the marketplace. Basically, there’s no single, unified Android platform like there is for the iPhone which means you get a much greater amount of diversity, hardware and software, than the iPhone. You get Android 2.0 with Google’s proprietary push Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Voice, YouTube, and Google Maps Navigation with live street view rolled in. And because of the nature of open source software, the Apps Marketplace is a veritable smorgasbord of delicious and (very often) free applications that are sure to enhance your mobile experience. If you’re heavily invested in Google and all its glory, then you’ll have absolutely no problem making the switch.

Is it safe for me to say that the Droid is, hands down, the best smart phone currently out there?  Considering I have little to no experience with the iPhone or Blackberry, I’ll leave the full-blown comparisons to the true smart phone aficionados.  My focus here is simply on the Motorola Droid.  Maybe I’m biased, but I can assure you my bias comes from a very special place, having already logged hundreds of Droid usage hours since the phones inception into my busy social life.

Now for the fun part!  First, I’ll feature the specs of the Droid, then I’m going to feature some of my favorite applications, including apps for data/time management and apps socializing your life.  Keep in mind, all applications listed are FREE, and generally speaking, there really isn’t a need to pay for great apps on the Droid.  Thus is the beauty of open-source software!

The Specs

•    Platform/Processor: Android™ 2.0 with CDMA 1X 800/1900, EVDO rev. A, Arm® Cortex™ A8 processor 550 mHz, 802.11 b,g WiFi access

•    Playable Formats: AAC, H.263, H.264, MP3, MPEG-4, WAV, WMA, OGG, eAAC+, AMR WB, AMR NB, AAC+, MIDI

•    Video Capture Rate: DVD quality (720×480 resolution) up to 24 fps capture; up to 30 fps playback

•    Email: Corporate (Exchange 2003 and 2007), Gmail™, IMAP, POP3, attachment and browser document viewer (Microsoft Office® and pdf)

•    Camera: Image stabilization, real-time color effects, scene modes, location tagging; 5 MP; 4x Digital Zoom with Flash and automatic focus; image edit tools include cropping, rotating and geo-tagging.

•    Phone Book: Unified contact list (Gmail™, Exchange, Facebook™)

•    Google Services: Gmail™, GOOGLE Calendar™, GOOGLE contact sync™, GOOGLE latitude™, GOOGLE maps street view, GOOGLE maps™, GOOGLE maps™ navigation beta, GOOGLE quick search box™, GOOGLE talk™, GOOGLE™ search by voice, YouTube™

•    Web Browser: Webkit HTML5 with geo location and multiple windows, Adobe with Flash Player 10.1

Simplify Your Life –  5 Must-Have Time/Data Management Apps for Droid

•    Advanced Task Killer Free — This app allows you to stop running background processes or apps in memory. The Android operating system can run multiple programs and apps at once, which is a wonderful feature yet if not carefully monitored, can drain your battery faster than you can say iPhone killer.

•    Astro File Manager — A data management must-have!  This app allows you to manage files on your phone without the need for a computer, including access to the SD card and the ability to backup Android Apps to the SD card as well. Operations you can perform: copy, paste, move, delete, open with other apps, create and manager folders, etc. You can select multiple files to perform actions and search for files.

•    Dolphin Browser — Kind of like Firefox for Android, this browser gives you a better Mobile Internet experience.  Features: gesture, sync Google bookmarks, download YouTube videos, Multi touch, save cache to your SD card, tab view, and theme pack support.  You can also set your own gesture drawings for web navigation functions (stop, forward, backward, refresh, bookmark, etc)… nifty!

•    gTasks — For the busy consultant or business owner on-the-go, this app conveniently allows you to sync your task/to do lists from your Android phone to your Google Tasks from either Gmail or Google Apps email accounts. gTasks offers a solution to an issue surprisingly not solved by Google in their Gmail client. More beautiful, you don’t have to login nor grant permission to the app as it just works with your Gmail/Google Apps account(s)!

•    Remote VNC Lite — This app is recommended for network-savvy individuals only (or those who are smart enough to know someone who is network savvy).  Remote VNC Lite is an extremely convenient VNC client that allows you to control your computer from anywhere directly on your Droid phone!!  You can share same smart UI with Remote RDP (another app, only UI shared, no RDP support), connect to any Windows, Linux, Mac with VNC server installed, RealVNC  recommended for better performance (unless you are running Windows Vista, which RealVNC isn’t compatible with – alternative recommendation is Ultra VNC which runs on most operating systems).

Get Social & Have Some Fun — 5 Must-Have Social Apps for Droid

•   Foursquare — If you’re like me and you work from home, then you know how important it is to get out of the house and resurface in society from time to time.  When a friend turned me on to the Foursquare app for Droid, I was hooked!  Foursquare is a location based social network that incorporates gaming elements and a point system. Users share their location with friends by making a “check in”; you connect with others and can see where they’ve been and vice versa.  You can even link it up to your favorite social networks (Facebook, Twitter) and have your location updated automatically whenever you check in.  Pointlessly social yet highly addictive!  Add me on Foursquare!

•    eBuddy — Need a place to harness all your chat buddies?  eBuddy’s free instant messaging application supports multiple chats instantaneously for AIM, Facebook, ICQ, Google Talk, Yahoo, and MSN Messenger. You can sort by network or by screen name, with network icons identifying which network your buddy is on. Some other features Droid users should love include optional audio notifications for new messages, status updates, emoticons for every IM service, and automatic reconnect if their internet connection is lost.  If this app doesn’t satisfy the social butterfly in you, nothing will.

•    ALOQA – Their tagline:  Always be a local.  This app is perfect for people who, when out, want everything local at their fingertips with the simple touch of a button.  This truly is instant gratification at its finest. This GPS based location app brings “channels” to wherever you are.  Find the nearest Starbucks, gas stations, theaters, bars & night clubs, shopping centers, WiFi hotspots, restaurants, hotels and even personals! They partnered with great resources like match.com, yelp, last.fm and hotpads.com.  Never again will you be at a loss for anything. Ever.

•    Qik — This app is for video and film junkies, and although I don’t consider myself one, I was was lured into the ease and awesomeness of this app very quickly. Simply register an account online and once this is done you can right down to business by plastering your embarrassing videos on the internet. In fact, recording a clip and uploading it to your personal space at Qik is so easy you might not even be aware you’ve done it. With one touch of the big green button, you can be recording “live” in an instant. It automatically triggers the upload procedure. While you’re recording your video, Qik uploads the completed portion onto the Qik servers. It’s incredibly slick and astonishingly fast (especially if you’re on a WiFi connection). Once your videos are uploaded, you can share them with friends by directing them to your own personal Qik page or linking them to your favorite social networking sites such as Twitter, YouTube and Facebook.  I have mine set to update to all three, automatically.  In the instance you are filming something that you don’t want to “go live”, you can always pre-set the video setting to private before recording.  Afterall, there are just some things your mother shouldn’t see.

•    Twidroid – If you’re a Twitterholic like me (the first step is admitting you have a problem) then you need to get your hands on Twidroid, a full-featured Twitter client that includes direct messaging, photo posting, replies and background notifications for Android. Good news!  You can do virtually every Twitter function from the Android App that you could from the web, including: direct messages and  @reply to your friends, post pics, paste a URL and set your location with the new Geo feature pulling your location from the GPS. Also, you can Search Tweets and can set background notifications too!  Follow me on Twitter!

If you are a brand that offers an interactive service or product that is relevant to a target demographic of social media fans and fanatics, you might want to consider taking a moment to reevaluate your current online presence in order to move forward in 2010.  How can you do this?  Well, first let’s take a look at a few of the top social brands of 2009 and see what they are doing right.  According to Virtue’s SMI, iPhone, Disney, CNN, MTV, NBA, iTunes, Wii, Apple, Xbox and Nike rounded out the top 10 social brands in 2009, respectively.

Obviously there is something to be said about large brands like iPhone, MTV and Disney, whose massive online presence will dominate conversations on sites like Twitter and Facebook easily and without much promotion or buzz.  People are already following these brands and wondering what they’re up to, so it’s only natural that they would measure highly on a social media scale of measurable conversation.  This is not to say that all is lost for a smaller, less renowned brand as long as it already has an established presence on the web.  The key to success in moving forward with brand socialization is changing faster than you can say “let’s chat!” and now is the time to reevaulate your brand’s social outreach for the coming year.

There are a few crucial steps you can take to make your brand more social in 2010.  Many of these include solutions that adapt to the ever-changing method of how we access information on the web, mobile and world wide.  Facebook fan pages are becoming dynamic rather than just a place to update real-time status with simple news and information.  The key to socialization here is interactivity and we believe that this list of straightforward suggestions will help keep your brand moving in a social direction for the new year.

Offer a Free iPhone Application

Develop a fun, engaging and branded iPhone application that can be given out as an incentive for signing up for a company mailing list.

Make the Mailing List Extremely Accessible

Enable users to opt in to receive your marketing offers & news directly from your Facebook page or Website.

Create Polls

Let users interact with simple, fun, multiple choice questions and see results in real-time

Offer Surveys

Give users the chance to weigh in on various topics for brand insights

Utilize Slide Shows

Create a photo slide show of customized content, complete with variable speed, transitions, background music and full branding

Offer a Built-In Twitter–Chat Application

Incorporate a branded Twitter-Chat application directly on your website or blog that allows other Twitter users to chat in real time.

Offer Games and Trivia

Offer branded games and trivia that lets users compete for status, leader board rankings or just for fun

Branded HD Video Player & Playlist

Add high-definition videos to your website or blog, complete with branded video player watermarking

Sweepstakes

Run a contest on Facebook with in-page registration that will make it easier for users to participate and recommend entry to their Facebook friends.  Promote on Twitter as well as other social networks.

Couponing

Reward users for taking actions like answering a survey, uploading media or sending a gift and add extra incentives for every Facebook fan or Twitter follower that also signs up.

If you know me, than you know I’m a huge fan of Twitter. Twitter, although hard to explain to your average web 2.0-illiterate person, is really quite simple. I thought, ok, if I had to explain Twitter to my Mom and she could understand it, than anyone could. I have yet to successfully explain gmail to my Mom so you can see what I’m working with here.

To define Twitter in the most simplistic way is easy: twitter is 140-characters-or-less-microblogging.  For each “blog” posted, you have 140 characters (not words) to get your message across.  Across to who?  Well, whoever thinks your interesting enough to follow.  Twitter is also social messaging.  Twitter is also news reporting.  It is anything you want it to be, without having to type a lot and these days, who has time to do that?

So who follows you and who do you follow?  That is a good question and one that I will answer shortly. First, I ask you to stop reading and go join Twitter.  Once you’ve joined, come back here and read this super awesome tutorial that explains everything you may (or may not) have wanted to know about Twitter. But first, follow me. There’s my shameless self-indulgent plug.  Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, you may read on.

Ok, so you’ve caved in and joined Twitter.  Now you must follow people. Simply click on the “find people” link and go to town.

Think of your interests.  Do you like news?  cats?  chocolate? cooking?  UFOs?  Do a search for whatever topics tickles your fancy and see what comes up.  As you can see from the exibit A below, I typed in “news” to the search box under “find people” and low and behold, a list of many news sources are filtered. For example: cnnbrk aka CNN Breaking News has 1,598,634 followers placing them at the top of the search results.  The number of followers decrease as you go down the list.  Following a person or organization on Twitter is so easy, even your Mom could do it (well, not my Mom… yet). Just click on “Follow” and voila! you will now see that person’s updates on your personal feed.

Fortunately for you and your gazillion or so gmail contacts, Twitter, like any well oiled social network, always has the ability to import contacts from outside sources.  See exhibit C.

I highly recommend you check out the suggested users; it’s a library list of celebs, famous personalities, interesting politicians and other people who probably have no relevance to your interests but are highly entertaining.  I recommend you start off by following 100 or so interesting people plus your closest friends and family members.

The next step on the Twitter learning curve is to learn the Twitter lingo, use it (don’t abuse it) and learn how to promote yourself as an interesting person that everyone and their mother (but mine) would want to follow.  By doing this, y0u will soon be on your way to gaining multitudes of followers each and every day.

What do I do to get more followers?

I always say to people engage, don’t enrage.  There are certain silent rules with Twitter that will give you that extra edge if you know them well and follow them silently.  Some of the rules you will learn as you go, others I will graciously tell you now so that you may look like less of an idiot when you are tempted to ask questions like ‘what the f does follow friday mean?’  Here are a list of popular Twitter terms and situations that you absolutely MUST know. Grab a pen. Take notes.

Followers and Following -- The upper right hand corner of your homepage shows you the number of people who are following you, the numbers of followers you have and the number of updates you have submitted, to date.  See exhibit A.

@PersonsTwitterName -- When someone types in @PersonsTwitterName in their Twitter status update box, it automatically links that peron’s Twitter name in the feed.  See exibit F.  As you can see, OliviaWilder responded to me by typing @ReneeGannon in her update box. This has hyperlinked my Twitter name.  This means that EVERYONE who is following OliviaWilder can now see my name as well. Why is this important? Because they can now click on my name, go to my Twitter page and follow me when they realize how awesome and fantastic my Tweets are. See exhibit X.

You can also “respond” to a person’s tweet by clicking on the small arrow on their update.  See exhibit M.

You’ll notice the highlighted 80 in the upper right hand corner. That is simply the number of characters you have left (out 140) for your message.  When you’re done, click reply and in a mere second, your response shows up in your feed and theirs.  Now don’t get too excited yet, there’s more fun where that came from.

RT -- RT means “re-tweet”.  RTing is a courtesy given to re-sharing interesting information that you saw on someone else’s tweet or website.  Sure, you could shamelessly steal the link to that interesting article or that witty pun someone else just posted, but that’s just bad twitter karma.  RTing is crediting your source. You would do it in a research paper or even a blog article, you should do it in Twitter too.  It’s a nice and friendly way to say “I think this person is so cool, I’m going to pass on what they said and give you the opportunity to follow them.”  The more you retweet stuff, the more people will be willing to retweet what you say too.  Spread the love, people, spread the love.  You will notice a marked increase in followers the more you RT people’s stuff and they return the favor.  See exhibit 12.

You will also start to see “retweet” icons on web pages, making it easy for people to share articles quickly and easily from site-to-twitter in rapid way.  Time is money, so any site that makes Tweeting an interesting article easiest, already has the edge.  Mashable does a fine job of this. See exibit 1-C. Notice the retweet button that lists the number of times this particular article has been RT’d on Twitter.  Super cool.

Tiny URL -- TinyUrl.com. Everyone knows that a looong URL can pretty much kill all of your 140 character allowance.  Using tinyurl.com allows you to shorten that long URL into a tiny one that you can copy, paste and re-share with minimal character usage.  Bigger is not always better.

Follow Friday or #FF or #followfriday- Follow Friday occurs every Friday and was created by some brilliant person who probably didn’t have enough followers.  It’s a way for people to give shout-outs to multiple Twitter users who they want their Twitter followers to follow. I know that sounds confusing. It’s like standing on your Twitter soapbox and yelling “Hey you guys!!!! Follow these people!!”  The idea is that your followers will follow those people and vice versa. Follow Friday is a good day to increase your followers.   The more shout-outs you give to others usually means the more chances you have of getting FF shout-outs from others.  You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.  There’s that itch, right in the middle <scratch, scratch>.  It feels so good.

Direct Messages or DM: A little thank you goes a long way with Twitter and direct messaging is a great way to do that.  Direct messaging is also great if you want to send someone a more personal note that is not broadcasted for all to read.  Not everyone has direct messaging enabled (most celebs and large organizations don’t), but if they do, it’s like sending someone a short, 140-charactered email. To send a message, simply click on said person’s Twitter page, and click on “message”.  Start typing.  Hit send. Easy, right?

To read your own direct messages, go to your own Twitter page and click on “Direct Messages”. It tells you how many you have and who they are from.

#Hashtags: Hashtags are a community-driven convention for adding additional context and metadata to your tweets. They’re like tags on Flickr, only added inline to your post. You create a hashtag simply by prefixing a word with a hash symbol: #hashtag. What?  Ok basically hashtags were developed as a means to create ”groupings” on Twitter, without having to change the basic service. First, follow @hashtags on Twitter. They will follow you back automatically, and your hashtags will be tracked. Next, start using hashtags in your tweets, preceding key words.  I don’t use hashtags that much, but it all depends on your personal Twitter preference.

Trending Topics -- Ok, you’ve admitted to be an ‘in-the-know’ junkie.  You want to know what people are talking about.  You love to know what the most popular topics are and get in on the action.  If you do, than Twitter is definitely the place for you.  On the right side of everyone’s Twitter page is a list of “Trending Topics”. They are basically a list of real-time keywords that are the most popularly or widely used words on Twitter at any given moment.  Many are references to current events or breaking news.  Others are random or funny terms that probably make no sense without doing further research.  You can click on any trending topic to see exactly what people are saying about them.  You can also search for ANY topics on Twitter using the handy, dandy Twitter search page. For trending topics, see exhibit $.

As you can see, most of those probably don’t make sense to you.  I’m going to click on “Hulu Desktop” and see what people are saying about it.  As you can see, it appears that Hulu has offered a desktop application. Cool!  You can follow the links people are sharing and in no time, you’ll be accessing Hulu from your desktop too. If you want to get listed in any trending topic feed, all you have to do is mention the trending topic at hand.  Now don’t try to get crafty and start listing ALL the Trending Topics in one update.  That is considered to be spamming and is BAD Twitter ettiquette.  Be a good tweeter, not a bad one.

Twitter Applications -- With every rock solid social network comes a plethora of applications that are designed to make your internet addictions just a tad bit easier.  Developers have been working furiously to come up with the most awesome, user-friendly Twitter applications possible.  There is TwitterFox, Twhirl, Tweetdeck, Twitpic and the list goes on.  Without going into details, you can check out this super cool article from TechCrunch that lists the Top 21 Twitter Applications available.

The Twitter Language -- A new twitter language has developed since the birth of Twitter and it’s increasing popularity.  I believe that evolution will soon lead us to a new Twitter-super-race where people speak in Twitongues, referencing Twitter happenings and phenoma that are beyond comprehension to the English language.  To brush up on your Twitter language, check out the Twittonary (the Twitter Dictionary).  It’s addicting. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

All in all, Twitter is a fun and easy application that allows you to stay in the know, connect with interesting people and waste time when you should be working.  Don’t tell your boss that you’re reading this article.  Twitter can become an addiction or just a fun way to pass the time while you surf the net.  Twitter can be your dream come true or your wildest nightmare.  Before you let Twitter take ahold of your life, you can now feel informed before taking the plunge.  There is still so much about Twitter that I didn’t list here.  If I forgot something important, feel free to leave it as a comment.  I’m still learning, just as you are.   You’re probably sick of reading this anyway and my fingers hurt from typing so I am ending this now.  Good luck with Twitter; I hope it becomes everything you ever hoped it would be.  Now stop reading this article and follow me already!  Feel free to RT this article if you like it.  I’m just sayin’!

As a bonus, I’ve included this highly entertaining twitter song. Enjoy!