Billing itself as a “keyword analysis and comparison engine,&# Qirina is a simple but useful SEO evaluation tool that helps users understand a site’s position in the keyspace, assess the quality of the site’s on-site SEO, and identify competitors in search. Looking for an easy way to create a cool graphical email signature with trackable interactive buttons? Supplement your email list with your contacts’ social network info? Find out if the username or vanity URL you want is still available across dozens of social sites? Create video emails? Create animations? 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. Cheat Sheet to Help You Conquer Social Media by Fast Company. by Kuno Creative. MORE >>

It helps to be creative, curious, articulate, friendly and helpful. True, there are guidelines as to what works well (being sincere, helpful and knowledgeable) and what doesn’t (trying to use social media sites as one-way broadcasts of your marketing brochures), but the field is new enough that many of the “rules&# are still being written. Though social media marketing is rapidly advancing in terms of adoption and sophistication, many marketers and business executives still struggle with it. Social media is so easy we can hire an intern to do it. Argh, no! MORE >>

52% of CEOs who are active in social media say that it helps their companies rise in search rankings, and 48% say that social media has generated qualified sales leads.  ( 41 Stories ). Though social media marketing is now used in about 90% of companies, techniques, platforms and best practices continue to evolve.  Should you include Pinterest in your mix? Increase use of video marketing? Is blogging coming back or trailing off? What will likely be the hot trends in social media over the next couple of years? Social Media Stats and Demographics. Marketing Pilgrim ). MindJumpers ). But 3.1 MORE >>

For those fed up with the hype and “shiny sparkly&# type enthusiasm often exhibited in posts about social media, Niall Harbison provides a breath of fresh air: brutal honestly about both the benefits (you have incredible freedom, it complements other forms of marketing, helping other people really works) and the limitations (it’s not a quick win, your friends aren’t your customers, it’s easy to spend too much time there) to be mindful of in using social media for small business marketing. Adoption soared. 85% of Inc. Mistakes were made. by iMedia Connection. MORE >>