G’day ladies and gentlemen.

This week we’ve decided to give you a roundup of some new articles that do a lot of different things. It’s been a busy week and we didn’t want you to miss out on some important and helpful information that’s been popping out of Mashable in particular. So, in an old fashion tip of the hat to Mashable, we present you with some of this great content getting you up to speed on what’s up with all of these different platforms.

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What’s Up With Smartphones? Well, we’ve got tips for you to make your app more discoverable. It has to do with optimization, in-bound leads, and customer reviews. Oh by the way, soon your phone may be able to tell you when you’re sick. When will we see the phone that tells you what the right thing to do is?

What’s Up With Twitter: They’re putting promoted tweets in your timeline in the Next 2 Months. And by the way, I hope you like the new twitter. Because the old one is dead.

What’s With Facebook? They’re experimenting with comment ads. This is an interesting move, and is a nifty new idea that you may want to start considering. With this addition to the ad strategy, en element of engagement is instantiated that wasn’t present before.

What’s Up With LinkedIn? They’re perpetually getting better, and now they’re using column ads and profile promotions to encourage follows and recommendations, similar to some of the features on Facebook’s right hand interface column. Imagine, on the side of your LinkedIn page, “you might be interested in applying for this job”.

It’s the stuff of what you are, your essence, your worth and value–it’s your content. The thing that sets you apart from the next guy is your potential and what you produce and put out into the world with that potential. Getting a bit too philosophical for you? The word content starting to sound funny when you say it? Well let’s look at it this way:

How is content marketing any different from product marketing? It is true that product is a kind of content, but content can mean a variety of things. It can mean a video, white papers, sharing a presentation on Slideshare, a blog post—in short, business generated, not-for-sale product. Most content takes the form of releasing information, expertise, or instruction to a viewer, reader, onlooker, what have you. Product marketing is, in the first place, trying to get you to purchase a product. While content marketing is, in short, driving you to consume and enjoy information that may be of use to you.

Then what’s the point? Well, we’ve got some videos from the Neovia Summit last week premiering shortly, but for now suffice it to say that this kind of content marketing allows people to know, like, and trust your business–ultimately leading to sales. But, for the good of business, your heart has to be in the right place or you’re just another dude throwin’ ads in my face. Dig?

But let’s put our feet back on the ground and dig our cleats into the turf. What we have here are a series of articles that demonstrate quality content marketing, and offer practical, bottom line advice on how to use it. Remember to check our Facebook page and Twitter for updates on when those videos are coming out.

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Three steps to generate higher ROI from content marketing. You’ll see the beginning of this article, which has some helpful stats on the efficacy of particular content marketing strategies. You can read the rest for a free membership, but hey, we’re not gonna make you.

How 3 Companies Took Content Marketing to the Next Level. Learn from the best! Husbpot, mint.com, and American Express all chime in here.

The Importance of Writing Well For Social Media Content. We know it’s important to write well (DoNt wEee!!!^&) in any circumstance, but why does that sentiment seem to evaporate in some social media contexts? Humanities students unite! Writing makes the social world go round after all.

5 Step Model For A Killer B2B Content Marketing Strategy. These guys really do have an impressive content marketing model, from extensive planning to evaluation. Take a note or two, and, when considering content you’d like to produce, think: what kind of content would I like to see as a social user?

11 Ways to find new content for your social strategy. Every businesses #1 worry in content marketing is? “What do I talk about?” Don’t worry, this happens to everybody, ourselves included. Luckily when Social Media Examiner had this problem, they decided to talk about what to do when they had that problem. Thanks SME!

3 Advantages of Using Content Marketing for SEO. Something you certainly want to consider in your content marketing strategy.

image from richesinnichesblog.com

That’s right. My business partner, Neovia’s administrative and financial head cheese, and our friend, Kendra Kinnison, is leaving us. Those of us who know Kendra are familiar with her passion for business and start-ups. For those of you who don’t know Kendra, we’re pretty sure she holds some kind of south Texas business ownership title. She’s had her hand in many businesses over the years, and over the past two years, she’s helped birth Neovia Solutions, 3eWerks, and Imagine More.

We’ve always admired Kendra’s energy and stamina, and we often wondered at it. Turns out, we were right to wonder. In her own words, “…It’s exhausting. The energy and attention needed for each of those projects created a life that was anything but balanced. Beyond that, it ultimately led to more reacting than planning, not a good business strategy.”

Read more about her decision on her blog here.

As for Neovia Solutions, it’s business as usual. We’ve known for a few months that we were headed in this direction, and any changes we needed to make were made then.

Happy trails, Kendra.

Thank you for helping Neovia Solutions get started and grown into what we are today. I can say that without her I may never have been able to make the leap to start a business on my own. The past two years have been a wonderful ride, and it’s a bittersweet goodbye to our fearless leader as she heads in a more balanced direction with her life.

Everybody’s got their social media platform of preference, none necessarily better than the other. Ultimately, the success of your campaign rests less in your tools than in your use of those tools. So this week we tackle one of them–one that was around long before Facebook, Twitter, or what we now consider the big players in social media: blogs.

Blogs are particularly effective for establishing yourself as a thought leader in your field, but different types of blogs need to be managed in different ways. So below we offer you a variety of recent articles covering the advantages and techniques of the blog form. Enter the blogosphere!

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Why Your Self Hosted Blog Is More Valuable Than Your Facebook Page. The power of Facebook is quite near undeniable, but in the end might not be what you need. There are certain advantages blogs have, including the opportunity to be paid for ads (rather than pay for them), more effective SEO qualities, and more.

7 Ways Guest Posting Can Boost Your Reputation. You don’t have to do all your blogging yourself. In fact, having someone else take over the job for you every so often is one of the best ways to establish your position as among a group of thought leaders and expand your audience. This article focuses on reputation building through getting other bloggers in your field to guest post.

The PR Pro’s Guide To Blogging. This is a PR Pro’s guide to begin blogging. Most PR strategies these days even require a blog component, so if you’re not savvy where do you start and where do you go?

5 Techniques to Create Raving Loyal Fans. If social media is about community building, what better reward could you have than having a passionate, engaged community? These techniques are not for the conservative of mind–they urge you to step up, be overt and honest, to make the risk of offending people. This brand of blogging achieved a particular goal, so it will be up to you to decide if this is where you want to go with your blog campaign.

image courtesy www.rylanclayne.com