We presented to the Corpus Christi chapter of ASTD earlier this week on Social Media for Trainers. We jam-packed the presentation with social technologies you can use before, during and after training sessions to increase engagement, attentiveness, feedback, efficiency in research, and much more. Check out the slides.

Apologies, everyone, for being a bit tardy this week. But, better late than never, we’ve rounded up some of the top stories in the social media world to help you stay up to speed with trends and developments that will enhance your online marketing strategy and experience.

Be on the lookout every Monday for news, tips from pros, reviews, emerging technology, and a whole bundle of thought-provoking articles on this ever-developing, exciting world of social media.

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Should We Be On Twitter? Is Twitter right for you? Well, do you have something to talk about? Josh Klein elaborates on the best use of this potentially very powerful social media tool, and whether or not it will be useful to you.

Small Business News: Selling Integrity. Social media is about building relationships. But there’s a right and a wrong way to do it. Small Business Trends talks about the best ways to establish yourself as a brand that people really “like”.

Do SMBs on the Web Get More Sales? It’s what you want to know. Will using social media actually raise your sales? Small Business Trends brings you an interesting study with some encouraging graphs and discussion.

How To: Use Social Media Lead Generation. “51% of Facebook fans and 67% of Twitter followers said they were more likely to buy the brands they like on Facebook or follow on Twitter” How will you take advantage of this and up the amount of leads you generate?

We’re no saints. We’ve made our own fan page mistakes. But please, allow us to have taken the lumps for you. Here are a few common fan page mistakes we run into time and time again. If you’re guilty of one of the mistakes here, don’t fret: we’ve provided the antidote.

Mistake #1: Wrong page type

If you’ve ever paid attention to the Info tab on fan pages, you know one thing to be true: All fan pages are not created equal. Step number one when creating a fan page is to select what type of fan page you want. It would seem that Facebook is attempting to confuse you right out the gate.

Here are your choices:

You are probably tempted to select local business. After all, most of us are pretty proud to be a local business. But you’re short-changing yourself if you pick this option. Here’s what you’ll end up with:

The Info tab fields for a Local Business fan page include hours of operation, options for parking and public transportation, and a website address. That’s great for a retail location or a venue, but it stinks for the rest of us.

The Antidote:

Choose a page from the middle section (as shown above) and here’s what you’ll get:

Quite a difference isn’t it?

Unfortunately because it’s a permanent setting the only way to undo it is to delete your fan page and start all over. If you’ve got less than 25 fans, go for it. You’re not losing much, and you can probably get them back.

Mistake #2: Default Wall Settings

The moment I lay eyes on a fan page, I can tell if the person knew what they were doing or not. And it’s all due to the way Facebook set up the default Wall posting settings. Unless you’re Coca-Cola or Dave Ramsey, your fan page should not have the Fans and Page Wall posts divided out.

The whole point of a fan page is user interaction. The reason it’s OK for Coca-Cola and Dave Ramsey to separate Wall posts is that they have so many people posting on the Wall, they wouldn’t be able to get the Page posts to stand out enough for people to see them. They are literally drowning in fan posts. I hope that for you someday, but it’s probably not today.

The Antidote:

An easy fix for this one. Simply click Edit Page, then select Posts By Pages and Fans.

Now you’re interacting!

Mistake #3: No applications or customization

There is a whole world of applications available for Facebook fan pages. A business can use these applications to streamline social media efforts (think blog posts auto-posting to your fan page), perform functions (conduct polls, for example), and turn your fan page into a mini-website. So, to utilize none of these is, in our humble opinion, a mistake.

Antidote:
Start browsing the Applications on Facebook that can be part of your Facebook strategy. Steer clear of applications that are clearly made for personal pages, like FamilyTree, and gravitate toward those that will help you achieve what you want to do with less effort or add functionality to your page.

Some of our favorite Facebook fan page applications: FBML, PollDaddy, Extended Info, SocialRSS, Poll, Reviews, RSSGraffiti, SlideShare,

Mistake #4: Spam-worthy page suggestions

We’ve all experienced that friend who just won’t stop sending his or her fan page suggestion over and over again, day in and day out, despite many pushes of the Ignore button. One of two things is happening here: either the friend who is suggesting it is blindly clicking the Select All button on their friends when they are suggesting the page without realizing that it is being sent to the same people again (whether or not it was ignored), or the friend is intentionally spamming his or her friends.

Antidote:
So how do you go about increasing your fans without spamming your friends who have ignored previous page suggestions you’ve sent? Do not send mass page suggestions every day. You will be spamming people. And that creates ill sentiment, which you generally want to stay away from in the social media sphere. Do one mass suggestion when you first create the page, and then just send periodic (say, once every month or two) page suggestions.

You can also use the Lists function to group your friends into lists according to geography (city, state, university, etc.), relationship to self (family, friend, client, colleague, etc.), political persuasion, and so on to ensure that you aren’t sending irrelevant page suggestions.

Every week we round up some of the top stories in the social media world to help you stay up to speed with trends and developments that will enhance your online marketing strategy and experience. Be on the lookout for news, tips from pros, reviews, emerging technology, and a whole bundle of thought-provoking articles on this ever-developing, exciting world of social media.

One Password To Rule Them All: If we have a million passwords, we can’t remember them. If we use the same passwords for multiple accounts, we risk the dangers of hacking. Landon Fraley reviews some popular password management tools so you’ll never have to use the same password again while still maintaining security.

12 Ways To Make Your Blog Posts More Credible: Anyone can start a blog, but how do you set yourself up as an authority on your topic? Darren Rowse offers some at-times surprising advice on establishing yourself as a guru.

Blogosphere Trends+ Writing Great How To Posts: How-To posts and videos are good for your readers and good for you. Better still, they apply to any and all industries. Here’s a look at bloggers using this week’s top stories to fuel their how-to posts.

If Your Company Went Out of Business, Would Anyone Notice? Bill Taylor of the Harvard Business Review addresses the mortality of business in tough economics times and discusses three ways companies can establish meaning and value, including forming unique relationships with customers.

Why Twitter’s New Ads Are Ingenious: Mashable CEO Pete Cashmore talks about Twitter’s new “Promoted Trends” ads and why they will help Twitter grow without filling your news feed with unwanted ads.

We had a great time presenting at the SCORE Social Media for Small Business seminar last week. With 135 inquiring minds in the room, we saw a lot of business owners and non-profits getting it – social media works! Here are the slides from our presentation.

As we prepared for our first conference last November, we recorded local user statistics for a handful of the most popular social networking sites. Out of curiosity, we pulled the same statistics late last month – only six months later. Even we were surprised with the growth and diversity in those participating in social media. But we knew we couldn’t keep all this information to ourselves. So we produced a special report: The State of Social Media in Corpus Christi.

Click here to download your copy.

Inside, you’ll find charts showing the rise in participation in social networking sites over the past six months, how much of the Corpus Christi area population is participating, which sites capture older demographics, which the college-educated prefer, and which networking sites singles prefer.

You’ll also hear from local business leaders about their thoughts and experiences with social media. And we also included case studies on a handful of local businesses that stand out as models of what successful social media marketing looks like.

We hope this report is a great resource for you to learn more about the state of social media in our market. We see the current state of social media in Corpus Christi as one of expansive growth and opportunity.

Technologically, we are a city moving forward.

Download your copy now.