How about this for a poster? edgy. cool. me likey.

And of course, the customer as well! This customer is holding a Better Living conference for the home and is using Fanminder as a Virtual Info Booth. So cool. Can’t wait to hear about the results.

Links on Twitter are already nofollowed and most are shortened anyway by a shortener. What use can Twiitter be for link building? Link building Eric Ward says the site is perfect for finding niche experts.

It’s not about huge amounts of followers or traffic spikes. You can get that kind of traffic from Digg. But the advantage of Twitter, says Ward, is that people specific to an industry are out there, findable on Twitter.

So if you specialize in little plastic doohickeys they put on shoestrings, irrelevant traffic is not what you’re after. At Search Engine Land, Ward explains how a message that begins as a tweet ends up as a link from a highly trusted website:

A few weeks ago I announced a new site via URLwire, and whenever I do this I set up several alerts/trackers to see where mentions/links show up.  I also set up a Twitter search for that new URL….the new site I announced has been tweeted or re-tweeted by seven people…I discovered all of them were health experts in one form or another.  Also, all of them had several hundred followers (one had 780), and a quick check of a few dozen of those showed some overlap (expected) as well as frequent health URL tweets.  In other words, I’d found a loose community of several thousand collective Twitterer’s who had shared news about a new web site URL.One of those re-tweets came from a librarian at a med school web site, who did one more thing with that URL. She added a link to it from the med school web site she’s in charge of editing.  What started to her as a tweet ended as a permanent link from her high trust web page.

What’s even better about that is that earned link was a free, organic one, the best kind. No manipulation, no buying, no trading. And that one very trusted link is likely to outweigh many links (however they’re gotten) from not-so-trusted websites.

Click Here for Original Article Post.

Here are some ways to become a brand that people want to refer:

Be interesting: People, who are interested in you, as a person, are more inclined to connect with you, do business with you and refer you to their own personal network. Your personal brand is not only defined by your job or company, but also by the activities you participate outside of the office and your hobbies. It might be hard to connect with someone on a professional level, but you might be able to bridge the relationship by talking about your golf game or the last season of Lost.

Be valuable: There’s no question that experts are judged based on hard and soft results. It’s not just being valuable though, because all of your competitors can do that. You need to be unique and offer something your competitors don’t and compete on prestige and quality, rather than price. Online, if you’re seen as a valuable resource, the press will call on you, customers will be to work with you, and when all is said and done, and people will refer you to even their third degree network.

Be generous: It’s rare that people share others products and services before they receive a sample for free. “Free” builds trust, authority and generates attention. If you want to be referred by others, then you’re going to have to give before you receive. The more generous you are with your network, by providing them with resources, helpful links, reports and advice, the more you will get back in return.

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Just as marketers are getting a handle on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, a fresh group of social media networks are poised to make a splash in 2010. You should keep an eye on these five upstarts to see if their innovative services attract large audiences in the near future.

1. Foursquare. This location-based social network/gaming application is rapidly gaining users and mindshare.  Users “check in” at local businesses and earn rewards for frequently visiting participating establishments.

The site receives more than 1 million check-ins per week.  Business owners can get value out of Foursquare by offering incentives for users to check in, such as special offers for repeat visitors.

The site lists more than 800 establishments currently offering deals.  Those deals could include a free drink or appetizer for the Foursquare user who checks in the most (called the Mayor).

2. Google Buzz. Google’s latest entry into social networking has the potential to attract rapid adoption, due to its connection with the widely used Gmail and Google Maps applications.

Buzz allows users to post status updates and upload pictures and videos to a Google profile, not unlike Facebook and Twitter.  A user’s network is formed by contacts they interact with frequently on Gmail.

If a user makes an update public, the information also gets added to the “Buzz” layer now available on Google mobile maps.  Now, Google Maps users on iPhones and Android devices can view the things other Buzz users have said about businesses in the area.

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According to data from Compete, Facebook has surpassed Google as the top source of traffic for major portals like Yahoo, MSN, and AOL. In December, 15% of traffic to these sites came from Facebook and MySpace. 13% from just Facebook. They say it’s among the top traffic drivers for other types of sites as well.

In a recent WebProNews article, I asked if it is becoming increasingly less critical for businesses to have websites, when they can just have things like Facebook pages and Google Place pages. The discussion is more complex than just that (feel free top participate here), but the general point is that you can have a strong web presence without having an actual web site (although I still recommend having one in most cases).

By Facebook’s most recent stat counts, the site has over 400 million active users. Half of them log on each day. Over 35 million upate their status each day, with over 60 million status updates posted each day. Over 5 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) are shared each week, over 3.5 million events are created each month, and there are over 3 million active Pages on Facebook.

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