Google Buzz is the latest hot topic in social media. Whether it will ultimately be a hit or a flop, many blogs are already incorporating the button into each post, just like Tweetmeme’s retweet button and Facebook’s sharecount button.

There are several plugins and methods you can use to add the Google Buzz button to your Wordpress blog, at least until Google comes out with an official button. Here are the best methods I’ve found for adding Google Buzz as a share count button, a sidebar widget, and a social share chicklet:

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For people who still haven’t joined Twitter, it can seem confusing, overwhelming, or downright ridiculous. I know many people who still haven’t joined only because they find the lingo confusing. What do all those symbols and weird words starting with “tw” mean?

There are online glossaries like Twictionary and Twittonary that track the terminology that has developed on Twitter, but nobody really speaks like that on Twitter. If they did, would you actually want to follow them? I certainly wouldn’t. This isn’t meant to be a megalist of “The Thousand Twitter Terms You Should Know.” These are the most common Twitter terms; the only terms you’ll need to know in order to make sense of Twitter, so it can be a fun experience instead of a confusing one.  Read the rest of this entry

Want to encourage your visitors to follow your company or blog on Twitter? Here by popular demand is a wide selection of “Follow Us” twitter badges for your website, based on the popular “Follow Me” twitter badges.

Just save the image of your choice, add it to your website or blog, and link it to your Twitter profile. If you have any suggestions, or requests for color or a different Twitter badge size, please comment below and I will add them as soon as I can.

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Have you noticed an increase in tweets and Facebook updates having to do with checking in, or becoming a mayor of something? Has this caused you to stare at their updates in utter confusion? If so, your friends have joined FourSquare, a location-based social network to help you connect with friends using GPS via your mobile device.

Although it’s not the first location-based service to exist, visits to the site have increased 50% between December ’09 and January ’10, and increased 200% since November. So what has made FourSquare so popular? Hopefully the following walkthrough will end your confusion:

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Social media is quite a hot topic right now. Companies are putting their marketing dollars into social media instead of traditional direct marketing tactics. The media and celebrities are on a tweeting frenzy. Everyone and their mother (literally) are on Facebook. “Social Media experts” have sprung up left and right, claiming to know how to get thousands of followers in just days (they’re called autofollow scripts, get over yourselves).

Although social media is changing the face of marketing, there are some of us that need to be reminded to stop taking things so seriously. So here are some of the funniest videos about social media, some ridiculing the “experts,” some mocking the social media addicts, and some just taking things to an extreme… on the altar. But it’s all in good fun.

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Here are some free Twitter backgrounds with an office theme! Feel free to use, share, and distribute these backgrounds. If you would like to add your own photo, links, and contact information, you can open these jpeg files in a photo editing software like Photoshop or Gimp, a free photo editing software.

If you don’t want to customize your background, no problem; you can simply upload to Twitter as is.

Want updates when new backgrounds are available? Follow me @dianafreedman.

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There are literally hundreds of URL Shorteners to choose from. TinyURL was the first URL shortener to gain popularity, and because of Twitter, demand for URL shorteners has grown exponentially. There’s bit.ly, snipurl.com, owl.ly, cli.gs, su.pr, is.gd, badurl.com, tr.im, short.to, 6url.com, just.as, tiny.cc, kl.am, adjix.com, notlong.com, xr.com, and that’s just to name a few.

Who has time to sort through all of these links? Stating the obvious, these sites all pretty much do the same thing: shorten links. But there are some features that make bit.ly a step above the rest (and if you want to follow along, I suggest registering for a bit.ly account first): Read the rest of this entry