The Weekly RAP for January 25, 2013

Like most small-to-medium businesses, senior living communities are finding themselves in a tight spot marketing-wise. The marketing efforts that used to bring new residents are less and less effective, and a plethora of “experts” are talking about new ways to market, social media, online tools, and a wide variety of other well-intended advice and ideas.

Social media is the two-way communication in Web 2.0 and has expanded far past individual use. Social media monitoring and engagement, and social media security for business, have become an essential part of brand management and planning for organizations and it is now commonplace for both individuals and businesses to have accounts on FaceBook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Google+. With the popularity of social media on the rise it is imperative that you keep your sensitive information secure.

If you’re a business owner struggling to see the value that Twitter offers, don’t feel bad because you are NOT alone. For many, this social networking platform, at least initially, appears to be just a fast moving stream of superficial chatter that, at best, offers a temporary distraction from the daily grind. But, what if I were to tell you you could easily generate high quality leads for your website simply by sharing short, compelling messages about your business from Twitter? Would you be interested?

Keep the following 75 inbound marketing statistics handy as you create content and do your SEO in 2013. If you like some of these stats, please tweet them!

The Wayback Machine from the Internet Archive, one of the most useful and important Internet research tools, recently reached a major milestone…The Wayback Machine now provides access an index containing more than 240 billion URLs (about five petabytes of data), with archived pages dating back to 1996.

A swarm of new business tools coming to phones and desktops near you promise to boost efficiency and streamline collaboration by borrowing social features from the likes of Facebook and Twitter. But do they really work?

I am amazed at how much Debba Haupert (@girlfriendology) was able to cover in one short session at NMX Las Vegas.  Debba’s session on Pinterest proved to be very informational and provided practical advice and tools that marketers can use to better engage their followers.

You finally get connected to the person you have been pursuing. Maybe it’s the client of your dreams. Perhaps it’s the mentor you always wanted. Maybe it’s that perfect recruit or potential partner. It doesn’t matter, you want them to listen and they have agreed to give you time. Now you need to put the odds in your favor.