What's a twitter/Facebook post worth to your sales pipeline?

Are you investing the right amounts of time and resources in new media marketing? What's your measuring stick for getting the right mix? Here's a short survey with several insightful questions from my friends at ic stars for small business owners (and anyone else who is interested in learning more about web marketing trends).

Some of the questions address preferences on the frequency of dialog (i.e. pages or videos per week), or with summary vs. detailed reporting, and how much a qualified lead is worth. You can choose to participate with or without disclosing your company, and your input contributes to making this grassroots research more complete, as well as letting you know how the rest of the participants responded.

Whether you are just curious about the crowdsourced response or would like to find out more about what ic stars is planning to do with the final results, take a look at the survey and think about the significance of asking yourself these timely questions.

ic stars is an outstanding technology training program in the city of Chicago. Take a look at the kinds of things they are doing here.

Top 10 Twitter Rules

Speaking of twitter, if you're a twitterphile/twitterholic with half a million followers, you already know what works for you. If you're still skeptical that there's any real value in conversations made up of 140-character sound bites, here are ten rules that will help you to keep it real in both your "following" and "followers" columns.

10 Rules for the Twitter Neophyte

(don't follow the white rabbit.)

* does twitter stand to gain from a "Facebook Exodus?"

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Healthcare and Twitter

If you've been watching the news, you've seen a kind of grass-roots approach to politics in the recent proliferation of "town hall meetings" on healthcare. Rather than just a platform for lawmakers to describe their positions, these are advertised as forums for discussion. Healthcare is a perfect topic as it resonates with so many people on different levels, especially the notion of adopting a federal "one-payer" system, but the number of people taking the time to attend an open meeting in August is still remarkable.

With the new hyperindividualism of the web, especially the rise of social networking sites, we think differently about who's listening. Just a few short years ago, there was much more "rational indifference" to this part of the political process. Showing up at the polls or watching a primary debate were still a duty and privilege, but with no expectation that your voice would stand out from the buzz. Enter Twitter, where you can have anywhere from hundreds to hundreds of thousands (in short order if you're @Oprah) listening in at a given moment to whatever you can fit into 140 characters or less.

It isn't even that surprising that if we stand up at one of these meetings it may show up on youtube or even national news the next day. (Jewel thieves in London this week burst out onto the street and were immediately being recorded on cell phones of passers-by.) Better get used to it. Everyone gets their ten minutes of fame - anytime.

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Synchronicity 2.0 (mashups)

Is it CNN or is it Facebook?  To quote the inimitable Bo Jackson, "Both."  

It's a cool mashup of CNN's video coverage of the inauguration with all your friends' simaltaneous discussion in a live forum. Apparently the idea went over fairly well as the site was maxed out on user-spots shortly before the ceremony started.  It's been unmashed again now, but bookmark the link for the next memorable event that comes up.

It was a good day for Twitter too.  The growing deluge of the world's most transient blog posts had about five times the normal amount of "tweets per second" during the ceremonies.  Of course, depending on who's in your "following" list, these might be anything from, "I just ate a bagel" to "Watch my new life-coaching video."  But here's a new twist on it - again with an interesting mashup.  Yahoo! has gotten together with the folks at Twitter to create "Tweetnews," which matches up the latest headlines and their sources with the related "tweets." This adds a bit of authenticity to the frivolity (and immediacy) of newsflashes on Twitter with a measure of mainstream corroboration.

Remember when the future was in plastics?  Now it's in mashups.

Who Is Steven Furtick?

Albert Einstein said the thing he wondered most was, "Is the universe friendly?"

Lately people are wondering why Britney shaved her head, why Brad Delp committed suicide with a note on his shirt about being a "lonely soul," who Anna Nicole Smith's child's father is, and why so many successful people are in rehab.

According to today's blog engine list on Technorati, people are wondering, "Who is Steven Furtick and why is he beating out typical #1 topics like Twitter at the top of the Technorati list? You may be surprised to learn he's the pastor of a church called Elevation in North Carolina who reads Seth Godin's marketing blog among others. Steven's gotten "addicted" to Technorati in the last couple weeks and now that he's at the top, you guessed it, he's in rehab (from Technorati that is).

And then some people, like Paris Hilton (#7 on the list), aren't wondering anything.

Congratulations and best wishes for a happy Easter Steven!