Just 139 of the Fortune 500 corporations maintain public-facing blogs, only 29 more than in 2009. With 92% of companies now incorporating social media into their marketing efforts, it’s no longer sufficient to just “be there” on social networks. Today’s most effective marketers are optimizing content across channels, coordinating search and social marketing activities with traditional PR, and measuring their web presence and performance with sophistication. What do buyers really want from social media marketers? It’s not what you almost certainly think.). MORE >>

According to recent research from eConsultancy, “Paid search consumes the largest portion of online lead generation budgets, accounting for 28% of spending (in 2010), up from 22% in 2009.&# In addition, more than half of companies that use paid search increased their budgets for it last year. There’s no question that paid search delivers leads, and no question that AdWords is the big dog in the PPC world. Yet many marketers struggle to optimize this channel in the face of increasing competition, changes to Google results pages (e.g. When should you use the AdWords Editor? MORE >>

Searchers Using Longer Queries in 2009 by Small Business Search Marketing. in 2009, while 4-word searches increased from 13.3% For companies, email newsletters still rate as the tactic offering the highest tangible improvement (67%) but a whopping 44% – almost double the percentage from 2009 – have discovered that social networks helped increase their online customer engagement. in 2009 to 11.3% What are the latest trends in search? Which industry segments are most actively discussed in social media? Who’s really using which social media networks? Matt McGee. MORE >>

Olivier Blanchard serves up an entertaining and informative rant about the continued inability or refusal of many social media professionals to explain the ROI of social media, writing “As annoying and curious as it was, back in 2009, when so many so-called ‘experts’ and ‘gurus’ couldn’t figure out how to explain, much less determine the ROI of anything relating to social media, it is inexcusable today.” The notion of using social media for business has gone from cutting edge to commonplace in an amazingly short time. B2B Social Media Guides. MORE >>

But after rapid growth in 2009 and 2010, the study found that “There has been little or no change in the number of companies using corporate blogs (0%), Facebook (2%) and Twitter (2%) in the last year.” The most rapid increase in adoption has been in the use of social networking, which has nearly doubled since 2009. Reports, surveys, studies and infographics are among the most popular content posted and shared across social networks. We’re all hungry for data. Marketers, we’re told, need to think like publishers. General Social Media Statistics. hours to 6.3 MORE >>