Over time, we’ve gathered the following list of resources that provide varying degrees of background information, how-to’s, trend analysis and other.  As we continue to review and analyze new resources becoming available, we’ll periodically add to the list, so check back often.  If you have evaluated a site or tool and believe that it should be added to the list, please contact us.

SlideShares

 
Case Study: Facebook as a Social Customer Service Platform at Colleges & Universities

Social Media & Hotels: The Untapped Opportunity

Social Media for Restaurants: Butts in Seats

General Resources

Social Media Revolution Video

A Collection of Social Media Infographics

An Article Discussing Social Media ROI

Addict-o-matic: a Tool that Produces a Mashup of Social Media Presence on any Topic

Twitter Grader: an Online Utility that Gauges a Twitter User’s Influence

Word Count Tool: an Online Utility that uses simple copy and paste to provide you with an instant word count

As noted in our Services, a comprehensive social media strategy should identify appropriate platforms in each of the twelve different “categories” that we’ve identified to make up the social media sphere.  We’re including some suggestions below for your review and experimentation.  Remember, not every business may need platforms in every category!  Depending on your target market, marketing objectives and many other factors, requirements will vary greatly from business to business.

Facebook - With over 450M+ users and growing, it’s difficult to justify NOT having a presence

Ning - Enables you to build your own custom social networking site with point-and-click User Interface

SocialGo – Similar to Ning, SocialGo enables you to build your own custom social networking site or you can engage a professional designer

Twitter - The leading micro-blogging platform and growing rapidly

Tumblr - Another micro-blogging platform with more of a personal website feel

WordPress – One of the leading blogging platforms with a simple User Interface and a phenomenal set of plugins with more being added daily  wordpress.com (shared-hosted) and wordpress.org (self-hosted)

Typepad – A good shared-hosted blogging platform option

Blogger – A simple-to-use shared-hosted blogging platform

Flickr - The top photo sharing site

Picasa - Another photo sharing site; owned by Google

Podcast - A platform for sharing audio & video podcasts

BlogTalkRadio – An audio blog option that can be used for radio style information sharing

YouTube – The current reigning King of Video Sharing!

UStream – A good option for ‘vlogs’

SecondLife - The leading virtual worlds platform with wide-ranging functionality and practical uses

Digg - One of the leading social bookmarking platforms

Reddit – A lesser used social bookmarking platform than Digg, but gives the user better opportunity to ‘reach the top’

Google – S.E.A.R.C.H…’nuff said

Bing – Microsoft’s answer to Google and quickly becoming popular

Yahoo! Another web and social search tool

Skype - An increasingly popular tool to place calls with or without video that is extremely cost effective

Get Satisfaction – A crowd sourcing tool

Google Wave – A multi-functional platform that can be used for almost anything like crowd sourcing, communication, audio, video, etc.

Jamboosa – A new-to-market crowd sourcing tool (we have not fully evaluated this yet)