Now, there is a day dedicated to the fabulous field of social media. Today, June 30, has been designated Social Media Day. This day, created by Mashable, was designed to be a global celebration of the revolution of media becoming a social dialogue.

To celebrate Social Media Day, there are more than 460 meetups in 74 countries around the world that will take place tonight. In the Phoenix area, Social Media Arizona is hosting the Tempe Social Media Day Meetup at MADCAP Theater from 5-7 p.m. Guests will have the opportunity to meet other social media enthusiasts in the area and give a verbal, in-person Tweet about why they love social media, their favorite social media tool or their successes with social media. If you can’t attend the meetup, you can stay involved with the activities by following Tweets that include #smday.

Will you be at MADCAP tonight? What are you doing to celebrate Social Media Day?

How can this benefit B2B companies?

If a customer or prospect comes across the Twitter Place page associated with your business, he or she can view the Tweets and check-ins listed on that page. If someone has never heard of your business before, that feed can have a huge impact on that person’s first impression of your business.

So, B2B companies, make sure your corporate Twitter account is associated with your office location before you Tweet, and inform co-workers who are on Twitter to associate their Tweets with your business’ location while they’re at work. This will enable your Twitter Place page visitors to connect with your employees. And, I think it’s important for employees to make a connection with customers and prospects that goes beyond the products or services a business sells.

Twitter Places is now available. Below your tweet box you will see “Add a location to your tweets.” Simply click on the “Turn it on” link.

Do you think this feature could benefit B2B companies?

Obviously Twitter’s business model is evolving as we speak, and surely its technology will continue to evolve to compensate for this. I’ve put together a few predictions for how I think Twitter will evolve to be more useful to marketers

1. Contextual tweets: I see more Twitter-gration in the future. Twitter will integrate with other platforms like Facebook, 4square, Google and whatever is next. Therefore, Tweets can be prioritized by what you’re searching for, where you’re located, your most recent update, etc.
2. Opt-in DMs: Marketers will be able to respond immediately with customized DMs to Tweets like: “I’m looking for a good e-mail marketing software with Salesforce.com integration, please DM me.”
3. Automatic segmentation: Currently, you need an application like Hootsuite or Tweetdeck to organize Tweets, but I think Twitter will develop more sophisticated segmentation algorithms, so you’ll be able to receive messages that are most relevant to you.

Do you have other Twitter predictions? How do you think other social media applications will evolve to be more relevant to B2B marketers? What’s next for social marketing?

As PR professionals, it’s our job to educate our clients and bosses about the importance of social media and online reputations. Much like great print coverage, social media conversations deliver valuable information about a company or brand directly to current and prospective customers and influence opinions.

In my opinion, the best part about social media is that you can participate in the conversations about your company or brand that are already happening and you can engage with your customers on a more personal level.

Instead of sharing your daily thoughts 140 characters at a time, Dribble gives you 400 x 300 pixels of space to share visual creativity. Another great feature is that, like Twitter, Dribbble allows you to “follow” your favorite designer, illustrator or developer and keep up with what they are working on.

As Twitter can be helpful to trend what’s happening in this great b2b world of ours, I believe that Dribble can also help us keep up with all things design related and keep things fresh!

Are there any other b2b resources you use to keep at the top of your game?

With ratings data, demographics, psychographics and the like, it can be easy to figure out when people listen to the radio or watch T.V. But, how do you know when they’re logging onto Twitter?

According to Fast Company, the best time of day to Tweet in the U.S. is 9:00 a.m. PST, because people are getting to work on the West Coast and taking lunch on the East Coast. The best time to Tweet if you want to be re-tweeted is at 4 p.m. on Friday.

But what about YOUR target audience?

Luckily, there are a couple tools that will reveal when your followers are logging on:

• Tweet O’Clock is ideal for seeing the best time to Tweet a particular person
• When to Tweet analyzes ALL of your followers and recommends the best time to Tweet

Another thing to consider is repeating your Tweeting. It’s OK to repeat a.k.a. re-tweet useful Tweets because people log on to Twitter at different times throughout the day. Once every six to eight hours is a good amount of time between re-tweets. Be cautious not to do this ALL the time, because it could border on spamming. Speaking of Spam, please don’t Tweet about what you ate for lunch.

How do you decide when to Tweet? Have you tried either of these tools?

With social media trending all over the Web these days, social media links have become a part of just about every Web site and blog. And from this, designers are finding various, unique ways to customize these buttons. To cater to the ever-growing demand for such tools, unique Web sites offering freebie icons have been hunted and gathered.

There is a handy new list of 40 New and Trendy Free Social Bookmark Icon Sets available by YouTheDesigner. Take time to check out the list and download your favorites or browse and get inspired to come up with your own.

It’s evolving, mysterious and a blank canvas for marketing creativity and strategy. I think it’s safe to say that everyone involved in social media is learning as they go. And, while there are some nay-sayers about ROI for social media, there is one point that can’t be argued. Social media can help improve your Search Engine Optimization (SEO), when done effectively, of course.

So, HOW can social media improve your SEO?

1. Direct Links. Social media sites provide links. Lots of links. Google likes links. Google ranks sites with lots of links to them higher than those with very few links. Add links to your Web content on sites like Twitter or leave comments on blogs with relevant links to your site.
2. Keyword-optimized content. Have you noticed Tweets showing up in Google search results? Google and Yahoo index Tweets, so keep adding content to social media platforms for added visibility. The more valuable your content, the more likely someone else is to share it with their network.

How are you optimizing your social media content? Here are some helpful tools for Social Media Optimization.

First, you can’t just set up these accounts, post a few things and let them sit. To maximize your efforts, you must constantly update, tweet, friend, connect, write and reply. It’s about developing and distributing fresh content that your audience will be interested in and carrying on conversations, which takes a tremendous amount of time—and, time is money.

Also, social media is about listening and reacting quickly if your brand comes up in conversations. This takes planning and diligence in monitoring, which takes time, time you pay your employees and agency partners for. At Canyon, we developed guidelines for social media participation that our employees must abide by—this document wasn’t free to develop.

Oh, and technically, since social media tools are web-based, internet connections, mobile devices and bandwidth is all paid for through your ISPs and wireless providers.

Have you been able to spend the time to maximize your social media efforts? Has your social media involvement resulted in enough return to justify the investment? Still think social media is free?

photo courtesy: www.flickr.com/photos/Sean_McColgan

These new campaigns focus on the less positive qualities of Domino’s Pizza and boldly state ‘their crust taste like cardboard and their sauce like ketchup.’

My question is: Is it ever a good idea to bash your own brand?

Rebranding can be a challenging project for any company, but the strategy behind a rebrand is often more important than the ‘new and improved’ image. While Domino’s Pizza’s ad agency is known for making bold statements, I wonder what focus group research, if any, was done to determine that customers were unhappy with its pizza. Domino’s Pizza’s ads give the impression that Twitter was an important source of customer feedback. With the rebrand, Domino’s has tried to off-set its own harsh critics with less-obvious tactics designed to show the favorability of its new product.

What do you think of Domino’s Pizza’s marketing direction? Will customers internalize too many former negative qualities that Domino’s is bringing to light or will customers embrace the new product?