Today, Genius.com announced that Genius URLs, which are shortened URLS that can be inserted into any social media conversation- or even Google AdWord, can be branded making it the first marketing automation company to offer this service. Why is this a big deal? Want to learn more about branded URLs? Click here. Tweet This! Share this on LinkedIn. Share this on Facebook. Stumble upon something good? Share it on StumbleUpon. Share this on del.icio.us. Digg this! Share this on Reddit. Email this to a friend? Subscribe to the comments for this post? MORE >>

Now come the predictions that Facebook is going to take over the search market from Google and with that, some way-out-there notions that Facebook will REPLACE email marketing. Whether you’re a large enterprise with big budgets for focus groups or survey, or a 1 woman shop, make sure you have that all important conversation with your customers (and just as important, your COMPETITORS customers) about “how did you hear about us?&#   If the answer is “I searched on Google and found you&# , make sure you know whether they found you through the organic results or an ad.  MORE >>

Google Adwords is the next step up and also provides geo-targeting and other defining criteria. For more sophisticated web sites Google and others offer online commerce modules you can integrate with your site. Last week I gave my 5 tips for bootstrapping sales and marketing for small businesses. Now here are my top tools to execute on those tips. Tip #1:  Get your first customers “manually&#. You likely won’t need a full-blown (i.e. “expensive&# ) customer relationship management (CRM) system to get started. As for media preference (i.e. Shameless plug approaching…. MORE >>

We plan to release more cool features every week or two – some of which include: merge contacts , Salesforce.com integration , Facebook/LinkedIn Pages support , google+ support , deals , contact history , and more. The hyperbole and linkbait strategy combine to announce that the past two weeks have been a big deal for the entire Genius and LeadRocket teams. On December 6th we announced Public Beta availability for our new social sales and crm application called LeadRocket. Engagement is what LeadRocket is all about. We think it’s simple – but let us explain. How could this be? MORE >>

Simple tools like Google Website Optimizer can help you design A/B experiments. A/B Testing is the process of comparing an alternative marketing campaigns against a baseline by changing one variable (typically a subject line, offer or other content) to determine which version performed better. The benefit of A/B testing is that you are testing two versions at the same time so you’re negating the influence of special events, like seasonal influences, press mentions or industry events. The more successful version is then distributed to a wider audience with greater success. MORE >>