With the recent launch of Facebook’s New Pages Layout for Businesses, hopefully you have found it easier to take advantage of the benefits Facebook offers both small companies and major brands alike. Previously in this blog, we covered How to Connect Your Twitter Account with Your Facebook Page, so I wanted to show you how to do the reverse. With the new Pages layout, this process has gotten incredibly simple…

You may have heard the rumors, the buzz, the adulation, and now the complaints. There’s a new social media tool in town and it calls itself Quora. Quora describes itself as “A continually improving collection of questions and answers created, edited, and organized by everyone who uses it.” While I’ve been following the Quora surface buzz for awhile, it never struck me as anything more than an interactive wiki. In fact, I secretly thought its real appeal was its non-mass adoption and use by “high-ranking” social media folks in the know, and honestly, I didn’t want to take the time to play with a hip new toy that wasn’t useful to me. As it begins to fall from grace however, I find myself drawn to delve deeper into this seemingly web-retro tool and see what it offers the digital sphere.

Yesterday marked the inaugural “What’s Next DC – Your Marketing Communications Roadmap” Conference. Marketers, PR Specialists, Web Development Companies, Technology Experts, Associations, Government Organizations, Social Media Addicts, and more converged on George Washington University in Washington, DC to listen, learn, share, and network. Whats Next, the brainchild of Tod Plotkin of Green Buzz Agency in Arlington, VA, was born of Plotkin’s frustration with the fluff and sales pitch-iness of typical events, and so he set out to create something different. His goal was to keep people engaged constantly with good information and make sure they got any questions answered that day. While not quite an “unconference” like Nonprofit 2.0, it was a veritable assault of information lined up with no breaks (except for a quick lunch) in short bursts with scheduled “niche conversations” and “floating experts” on the side. Captico sent 3 emissaries: our Lead Developer, Todd Fisher; a Project Manager, Bob Wolfe; and New Media Coordinator, Corrie Davidson (me).

Yesterday I joined my fellow Captico mates on a trip down to DC to attend the What’s Next DC? Conference. Overall the event was a good one – my applause to Green Buzz Agency and other’s that helped to put the event together.

Several days ago, Peter Kafka over at All Things Digital, covered an onstage-interview at CES (Consumer Electronics Show) by Kara Swisher of Twitter CEO Dick Costolo. Its a great read to get a look at where Twitter sees itself going and what it’s priorities are. Plus Dick is a pretty funny character. Below are some highlights that I found noteworthy, but I suggest reading the original article for a better picture and for Peter’s great coverage…

How much is too much? At what point do we overwhelm our websites with links to, lets be honest, 3rd party sites? Are we driving users away from the very place we purport to use social media to drive them to?

In previous articles we have shown you how to add Facebook Like and Share buttons to your site and how to embed a Tweet button on your site – you can even see our Twitter feed on the right of this blog and retweet or share on Facebook this article from links below (we hope you do)! We are obviously big fans of engagement through social media, and while perhaps we need to take it a step further on our own site (stay tuned for our forthcoming redesign), I think some people might be taking it too far.

Following our recent articles on Generations Online in 2010 – Statistics, Who’s Online? A look at Who Is, and How People Are, Accessing the Internet, and Twitter Statistics and Info on Usage, we now present part of the findings of a survey by Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project on social networking site usage across the generations.

The fine researchers at Pew Internet and American Life have released their findings on what differently-aged internet users are doing online. “There are still notable differences by generation in online activities, but the dominance of the Millennial generation that we documented in our first “Generations” report in 2009 has slipped in many activities.” This is good news for marketers trying to reach older customers online who are quickly embracing (and even surpassing their younger cohorts) online life.

“Eight percent of the American adults who use the internet are Twitter users. It is an online activity that is particularly popular with young adults, minorities, and those who live in cities.” – Pew Research Center, December 2010

In less than 4 years, micro-blogging/social networking site Twitter has grown to tens of millions of users. With that, we have seen its demographics change as people adopted the tool, brands embraced the medium, and celebrities popularized it. The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project recently released a new report on who is using Twitter. We will take a look at that data in this article.

This week Washington, DC played host to the annual Government Video Expo. In addition to an exhibit hall full of equipment and technology (and more displays playing Avatar than I ever care to see again) there certification classes, paid conference sessions, free presentations, and community meetings. The Expo runs Nov 30-Dec 2 2010, but I attended yesterday to scope out the scene, walk the tradeshow floor, and see what the manufacturing industry had to offer. In this article I will talk about the presence (and lack) of social media among attendees, and advice on how to get work as a freelancer for government agencies, in addition to mention some of the sessions I attended.