One of the tools I didn’t mention in the most recent book, Social Media Metrics for Dummies (available June 2012), is the Google Analytics Apps Gallery. This book is designed to teach you metrics fundamentals and get you started on your measurement journey, or to increase your skill set if you’ve been taking a DIY approach to metrics for a while. Once you’ve got some metrics under your belt, you might find some of the tools here helpful.

Even more important, however, is the ability to list your tool if you are an app maker building a tool around metrics.  That link takes you to the submission form to get your app listed in the Google Analytics App Gallery. From there, you want to try to get listed in Editor’s Picks – this is achieved by good reviews and good ratings of your app by users.

Calls from startups who haven’t closed their funding round yet, from people looking to use the web to find work (or to hire), from small businesses struggling to see results or from mom and pop stores that are winging it on their own.

So from now until the end of May 2012, if you are a small business or start up, you can book some time with me by phone to do just that, at a special hourly rate just for you. I hope it helps you.

Once you get through the PayPal process, you’ll be taken to a Tungle.Me link to suggest some times for our call.

I’m on the East Coast most of the time (03801) and in California some of the time (90272), so you’ll see some days have longer available hours for the West Coast.

Time:

1 Hour $103.00 USD 1.5 Hour $155.00 USD 2 Hour $206.00 USD

Don’t like PayPal? Me either. I also use Skype and Dwolla – email me to arrange that.

One of my Twitter connections wanted to spark a discussion on unique hiring practices. His tweet about doing Spouse Interviews for new hires to find out about their personal lives happened to catch my eye, and I felt compelled to reply. Setting aside the legal ramifications of this practice, the ethical ramifications loom large to me. Everyone deserves to be able to separate work and life.

We’re in an age of dwindling privacy; of purposeful transparency and all of the ramifications of that lying under the surface as we march forward online playing our games, creating things, listening to music or watching movies, blogging, connecting to brands and people, and connecting to friends.

Even as I love the optimistic potential of the new technology landscape for health, connection, education, creativity and more, I am concerned with the divergence between that optimism and the positive ramifications of these technologies and the blurred ethical lines from people in positions of power. It’s not OK for an employer to require a Facebook password anymore than invading a potential employees life with a spousal interview is (and don’t get me started on the lack of understanding of the internet and these technologies in government that lead us to things like CISPA).

When hiring and looking to verify education, experience or other facts online, the same rules apply there as in the real world. It’s just that simple. This causes some interesting issues in an age where people can be careless with their privacy – posting public photos of their weekend warrior lifestyle or airing their private opinions in a way that becomes public (Facebook posts have led to several firings in recent years, and have become a common cause of divorces and other problems).

I’d love to hear from human resource managers, CEOs and others out there who are struggling with this new fire hose of information about potential employees at all levels. What kind of ethical decisions is this introducing into your company that you didn’t face before? Have you put policies in place to guide folks through this aspect of hiring in a tech age? Do you move forward assuming that if the person didn’t remember to set a privacy setting it “makes it ok” to use that info to make a decision? I’d love to get a dialogue going about this with you.

To spark your discussion, below is the conversation I had on Twitter that got my brain turning about this in more depth than just advising clients that professional social media sites like LinkedIn and professional blogs were great places for vetting employees but that personal social media sites are a touchier area.

I am very excited to see my hard work hit shelves and I hope it helps folks learn about metrics and how to implement them in their social media and on their web sites.

I’m already starting to see the book appear in mentions around the web, and I appreciate the sharing and recommendations very much.

The official short link for the book is http://bit.ly/smmfd and the official hashtag for talking about it on Google Plus and Twitter is #SMM4D – I’ll keep the link updated to the best places to buy it as we go forward.

Interested in measuring social media? Pre-order “Social Media Metrics for Dummies” by our pal @leslie amzn.to/GWbBoS

— Eloqua (@Eloqua) March 29, 2012

You can’t write a book in a vacuum, and I was able to include tips, tricks and tools from many metrics heavy hitters that I’m proud to call friends. This gives you a more well-rounded view of metrics, instead of a single “my way or the highway” approach. I am so looking forward to seeing the book on shelves, and will have a publication date for you soon. The publisher assures me that there will be ebook editions for all of the major devices as well.

I did a brief talk as part of a series of sessions by a very interesting and diverse group of music industry types at music 2.0 in Boston, MA this week.

I thought I’d put up the slides and record some fresh audio to give everyone a refresher.

If you can’t see the QuickTime movie below for whatever reason, Google Plus for Music is also on my Slideshare channel.

One thing I didn’t go into in my talk, mainly because it was a little advanced and I only had 15 minutes, was the Hangout With Extras feature. I highly recommend checking this out if you are an artist looking to collaborate as it pulls in Google Docs (lyrics) and other features to allow you to actively talk, chat, edit and record while in a Hangout. It’s the little blue link that appears on the “get your mic ready” page when you begin a Hangout.

One of the things that rankles as a marketer in 2012 is the assumption that because you have access to something – technology, restaurants, shopping, money, infrastructure, education – others do also. Traditional marketing may be changing but not quite at the pace the social media bubble would like. Many people who can afford TV (don’t forget how many can’t) still watch TV live (though many now also live tweet shows with their friends). People who love music still experience concerts without a cell phone in hand for Instagram, Facebook/Fousquare check ins or Twitter commentary, choosing instead to enjoy the show itself. People in certain parts of the country still use phone books, read the paper and buy real books (I know! Shocker!).

Are those traditional media elements and traditional marketing tactics becoming less effective as that population shrinks? Yes. But that population is a bigger demographic than many think, and we do a disservice to those that aren’t as connected as we are to forget they exist or to choose to leave them behind (or, in the case of this reviewer, mock them).

We can also learn a lesson from people like our intrepid Olive Garden food reviewer (a writer for decades, by the way) – while the internet was busy harping on her having written a “serious” review about Olive Garden (I’d say “knowing her target audience” instead, folks – perspective) she was out living life: playing bridge and enjoying a full life outside of a computer box. Perhaps those marketers that are going to be most successful as we transition from one world to a new world are the ones who remember to also step into the big blue box outside their window once in a while to get real world connections and experiences that will broaden their scope.

Meanwhile, I loved the response from her son in the Wall Street Journal. A lovely and poignant look at his mom and her many talents.

One example is Sprout Social. I hear someone talking about it, and get interested in seeing behind the curtain – I think it might help a client. I sign up, set it up, then a (different) client project takes priority. I spend two weeks on actual work for clients, and not on a 14-day free trial. At the end of the “14 day free trial” I get the email message that I have a report waiting – this serves to remind me that I’d signed up for a trial and not used the service.

I sign in to see what the report says and get a note that I have to pay for the service.  Well, fair enough – if the Sprout service is awesome, I’d love to. But could Sprout have shown me the report first to entice payment, since I’d had no logins with the service at all during the trial period? Or could Sprout have made it a trial of “14 (fourteen) 24-hour login and use periods” instead of “14 days in a row”? That way I would have actually seen the program in action.

I realize this is a problem specific to someone who does what I do for a living that needs to be an early adopter of just about everything, but I can’t help but think that it would be helpful for the average user who also is busy running a business as well if all freemium models went to “uses” and not time frames for their trials.

What do you think? Is the freemium by time frame trial model broken? How would you change it?

If infographics are the new hotness, the least infographic makers can do is spare us from bad infographics.

A poor infographic design completely negates any good information contained in the image (and don’t get me started on infographics full of nothing but fluff information or outdated statistics).

Good infographic pointers:

1) Relay solid information in a fact-based story arc leading to a single vital point or conclusion in a concise way using good, easy to understand graphics

2) Make HTML infographics, not the usual bitmap infographics

(example: The State of the Internet Now! Notice how alive it is, and how concisely the information is displayed on the page)

3) Keep the information above the fold! We hate scrolling to read a mile-long infograhic. It detracts from your facts and your story.

(bad infographic example: This infographic on Work-Related Stress Deaths may contain great info, but I stopped caring as soon as I had to a) zoom in to see it b) start scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, scrolling….)

(better infographic example: This infographic on how the US highway system mapped like subways is great – it’s above the fold and highlights information on scroll over.)

4) Don’t make me download a PDF to read your infographic. It’s rude. Open in the browser. If you want to have a download or print option, fine, but don’t make it automatic. I dislike that as much as I dislike auto playing video and audio on a website.

5) Don’t blind the reader with garish, clashing colors or text that is too small. There is no substitute for good design. Make your infographics easy to read.

6) Put your infographic to the napkin test. Pre-map it to make sure your information and decision paths make sense.

In the end this popular information tool has become popular for marketing businesses instead of just relaying ideas and knowledge. That’s fine, but you can’t lose the knowledge element in your quest for marketing.

I hope you found it useful. Here is this morning’s transcript

Read more: http://livewire.wmur.com/Event/Got_A_Tech_Question_Ask_Our_Expert#ixzz1nmhFoxAg