i need to survey our current userbase to get their input on what features they want us to implement. we’re going to implement them all, but this would help us prioritize, also would help us get through to these users what kinds of features they can expect to see.

also we can link to this surveymonkey in the template space. ultimately john will be putting polling in here (the dailykos feature set).

Social Media Marketing Strategies By Rich Ord – Thu, 10/18/2007 – 12:20pm.

A WebProNews reporting team covered the SMX Social Media in New York City this week and delivered lots of unique video interviews and session reports.

For you eBusiness professionals reading WebProNews here are my top ten tips from the conference coverage that may help you become a social media marketing guru.

» What are the best social media marketing startegies? Comment…

1. Fish Where the Fish Are Participate in social networking communities that consist of people targeted to what you are selling. It is much better to find a smaller niche “microcommunity” where you can have a networking impact than just spending all of your time on major social media sites like Facebook. Consultant Michael Grey adds, “You have to try to figure out where does it fit best for you and then try and go after that”.

2. Promote Yourself, Not Your Product The temptation with social media marketing is to directly promote your product or service. Try to avoid this “Amway” approach at all costs! How often have you been to a party at a friends house and someone starts selling something to you. It just doesn’t feel right and you usually look to avoid that person the rest of the night. This goes for social media sites a well … use them to network, don’t use them to sell.

3. Get Experience In Social Media Before Marketing Don’t try to use social media sites until you understand the communities. Rand Fishkin states, “Go into these communities, participate in the forum before you ever start trying to market yourself, your brand or website. That will give you the best possible grasp on what to do and how to do it.”

4. Don’t Rush Your Social Media Link Bait Online Marketing Consultant, Brent Csutoras advises not to rush your social media link bait. He states, “Make sure it is a valuable piece. Don’t rush your social media link bait. Take the time to make it something valuable. In the end you really want people to link to you. If they don’t think your stuff is quality they are not going to link to you.”

5. Big Companies Should Create Social Marketing Strategies Social networking is not just for entrepreneurs and small companies. PR Strategist Adam Sherk suggests that enterprise companies should create a strategy for participating in social media. Above all companies should be “transparent” and “visible”.

6. Give Them What They Are Looking For Sarah Hofstetter of 360i offers tips when first beginning to use social media. Sarah says, “Figure out what it is you are trying to reach out about, who your target audience is and just make sure that you align the message with who you are trying to reach out to. Find the right kind of assets to promote to those target audiences. Make sure that you give them what they are looking for, not what you think they are going to be looking for”.

7. Watch For the Woahs of Social Media Marketing Using social media sites like MySpace to market your product or service isn’t always a good idea. Cindy Krum of Blue Moon Works says companies should be aware that “people may judge your brand based on the people you affiliate with”.

8. Don’t Dilute the Quality of Your LinkedIn Network Helen M. Overland of Non-Linear Creations talks about how to bring in quantity without losing the quality of your LinkedIn Network. Helen states, “You should build that core central quality network and then contact a couple of people who are open networkers with lots of people in their profile and add them to your network. You can then talk to all of their first and second degree contacts. You can potentially talk to a quarter million people on LinkedIn this way. That’s an easy way to add volume to your network while at the same time not really diluting the quality of your network.”

9. Be Careful With Social Media News Sites Social news sites like Digg, Reddit, and Netscapeis are very popular and also very tricky to use to your marketing advantage. From WebProNews, “In large part, using Digg as our measuring stick, that involves getting chummy with the top 100 contributors, who control about 56 percent of what makes to the front page.” Advice includes creating titles and descriptions that make people want to read more, creating an identifiable avatar for yourself and understanding what they like and don’t like.

10. Play Safe In WikiPedia President of Netconcepts, Stephan Spencer states, “WikiPedia is not a very safe place to play. Yes, it’s the encyclopedia anyone can edit, but it’s not necessarily the encyclopedia everyone should edit.”

Using Notes to quickly note down and access useful information on the Web

Notes is a way to quickly store and access information in the form of text notes that are stored in a panel in Opera’s Hotlist.

To access the Notes panel, open Opera’s Panel selector and choose Notes or press Ctrl+6.

To create a new note, click “New note” in the Note panel or simply start typing in the bottom pane of the Notes panel. The title of the note in the top pane is simply the first characters of the contents of the note.

To rename a note, change the first part of the note’s contents.

You also have other possibilities when using Opera’s Notes. Notes can be inserted into both Web forms and e-mails, and a note can also store the location for the Web page from which it was created, in case you wish to visit it later. Paste clipboard contents to note: You can paste the contents of your clipboard to a note by selecting “Paste to note” from the “Edit” menu. Copy text on Web page to note: Select text on a Web page, then right-click, or use Hotclick, and choose to “Copy to note” from the context menu. When you do this, a globe icon appears behind the note icon, and you can double-click the note to go to the Web page the note was created from. Double-click a note to insert it in a Web page form: If you are filling out a Web form, double-click a note in the Notes panel to insert the contents of the note into the form field where the focus from the keyboard cursor is. Down arrow in text fields to access notes: Pressing the down arrow key in a text field opens a dropdown with access to your notes for insertion. Right-click in forms to insert notes: Right-click in any form field (textarea or text field) and select “Insert note” from the context menu to insert any note in any form field. Double-click a note to insert it in an e-mail message: If a note is not connected with a Web page (there is no globe icon), double-clicking it when not in a Web form will compose a new e-mail, placing the note in the body of the message. Send note by mail: Right-click a note in the Hotlist and select “Send by mail” to create a new e-mail and automatically insert the contents of the note in the mail body.

You can also make it easier to organize your notes by placing them in folders.

Deleted notes are stored in Trash. To permanently delete these notes, right-click on the “Trash” icon in the Notes panel and select “Empty trash”. Please note that Trash can be renamed and have contents like any other note if you wish, but you can still identify it by its icon.

Notes are stored as plain text on your system. Notes are stored as plain text in the file “notes.adr” in your Opera settings folder (see Help > About Opera). This means that it is not a good idea to use Notes to store very sensitive information. In the very least, you should bear this in mind when using Notes for password, bank account information, and similar, and secure your system accordingly if you want better security.

Helen M. Overland of Non-Linear Creations talks about how to bring in quantity without losing the quality of your LinkedIn Network. Helen states, “You should build that core central quality network and then contact a couple of people who are open networkers with lots of people in their profile and add them to your network. You can then talk to all of their first and second degree contacts. You can potentially talk to a quarter million people on LinkedIn this way. That’s an easy way to add volume to your network while at the same time not really diluting the quality of your network.”