We’re posting the best articles of the year to help you get 2011 off to the right start! original on viral campaign measurement posted on July 15, 2010) Old Spice has turned their “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like&# ad campaign into a viral sensation by having the “Old Spice guy&# respond to people’s comments and tweets via videos which were posted on YouTube (click on the response videos on the right) — my favorite is below. Analytics Best Of Marketing Social Media Strategy2010 in Review! from a combination of sources. Thoughts? MORE >>

Convert PowerPoint presentations to Flash, or into YouTube videos? social media monitoring tool that tracks your brand and keyword searches across Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Youtube, Google Buzz, Blogs, and News, and reports results hourly. Actionly also includes Twitter account management and analytics tools. Proclaim Messenger enables you to easily combine pre-recorded or live video with PowerPoint presentations to produce video email campaigns (with full analytics), one-off video sales emails, or hold live one-to-one or small group video chats. Create animations? MORE >>

Whether it’s a local tweet-up or a major conference, this knowledge could be useful to help you plan what events you should sponsor or where you should set up your next booth&# ). As social media monitoring and integration with CRM systems improves, marketers will have the metrics and analytical tools to more accurately assess the value of various social media efforts and continually improve them. Michael Cohn offers a helpful checklist for organizing social media efforts, from setting goals and listening to engaging your audience and selecting the right tools. What to do? MORE >>

Which tools are most helpful? Jennifer Laycock reports some fascinating statistics and insights from a HubSpot study, revealing factoids such as: the average Twitter user has about 300 followers and follows 170. Brian Solis provides a wealth of statistics that answer these questions and more, e.g., 87% of Americans said they were familiar with Twitter in 2010, up from just 26% in 2009. The Ultimate List: 100+ Twitter Statistics by HubSpot. ** 5 Stars. Twitter stats and analytics tools – top 10 by Social Media Today. How you can use it most effectively? MORE >>

With the amount of helpful content about social media marketing growing faster than Facebook’s user base or Lindsay Lohan’s court appearances, it’s tough to keep up. Here’s a modest contribution to help with that effort; more than six dozen of the best, most bookmark-able articles and blog posts about social media tactics, tools and strategies written so far this year, by leading writers like John Jantsch , Lori Dicker , Lee Odden , Lisa Barone , Jay Baer and many more. HOW TO: Create Custom Backgrounds for Twitter, YouTube, & MySpace by Mashable. MORE >>