Mohan | Digital Marketing Consultant

How much is a position 1 ranking on Google worth to your business? This is a question that should be asked by any website owner or manager - certainly by any website owner or manager that has in interest in SEO and the performance of his or her website. We could generically answer "a lot", but it is actually a question we can answer with much more certainty than that. You can in fact calculate the value (or a very good estimate) of the value to you of a position 1 ranking on Google. That is to say the value to your business of your website ranking at position 1 on the Google search results, for your relevant keywords. We can calculate this value because quite simply Google tells us how many people search using any phrase we nominate for our geographical area of interest (i.e. where our target market is). From there we know what proportion of people who view a Google search results page click on the position 1 result, we can know (or certainly estimate) the ability of our webs...

During last year's NBA Eastern Conference Finals between the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Orlando Magic, Turner Broadcasting managed to weave social-media feeds into its home page. Fans accessed the conversation by logging onto Twitter through TNT.com, and the tweets were also posted on Twitter with links back to TNT.com. Those forums mean more Web traffic--and thus more advertising revenue. "It's exciting to sell this to an advertiser," said Liza Hausman, vice president of marketing for Gigya Socialize, the brains behind the integration technology.

The rough economy has forced restaurants to get creative. Some have sprouted wheels. Food trucks tweet their location from iPhones to let customers know where they will be. Believe it or not, all that digital chatter forms a bond. "We try to foster a culture by interaction with the people around us," says Mike Prasad, social media director at Kogi, a fleet of Korean BBQ trucks in Los Angeles. "Now, Kogi isn't about getting a taco, it's about having an experience."

Bad things happen--it's how you condition customers to deal with it that counts. Jet Blue tweets flight delays. In April, when a Stanley Cup broadcast was interrupted, cable provider Comcast used Twitter to immediately inform its subscribers that the culprit was a lightning storm, and that transmission would soon be restored. Small companies--like United Linen, a linens and uniform company in Bartlesville, Okla.--can manage expectations this way, too. When a major snowstorm hit the area, Marketing Director Scott Townsend used Twitter to let customers know deliveries would be delayed. "It was a great way to send information to everyone," he says. "They understood we wouldn't be there, but they wanted to know what our status was, and updates as the situation changed."

"Twitter is not just a kid story," says Chris Brogan, president of New Marketing Labs. Brogan should know: He is one of several Twitter experts advising companies on how to spy on their competition and to swoop in with a better service or discount. Nathan Egan, founder of Freesource Agency, a social-networking consultancy, describes how to do it: Using a free application, such as TweetDeck, set up a permanent search for all permutations of your competitor's name, as well as words that convey dissatisfaction ("sucks" or "hate"). Public replies to those new prospects are dangerous, as your competition may see them, so the best bet is to follow them and get followed back, allowing you to send direct messages.

Online shoe-retailer Zappos doesn't market on Twitter--it talks. A small army of 436 Zappos employees use Twitter (Chief Exeuctive Tony Hsieh leads the way with a shade over 1 million followers). "You get to see Zappos people and culture before you decide to buy anything from them," says Shel Israel, author of Twitterville. That humanizing effect turns out to be a potent sales driver, especially for small companies, says Aaron Magness, director of business development and brand marketing for Zappos: "It's easier for them to embrace openness."

Congratulations for getting to the end of this sentence. "As an online culture, people are not reading; they're scanning," says Dell Computer's Stefanie Nelson, voice of @DellOutlet. "The shorter and more direct your message is, the more successful you're going to be." Dell tweets links to coupons at Dell Outlet's Facebook page, which shoppers use during checkout at Dell.com. This strategy works for small companies, too: The abbreviated offers are easy to produce--you don't need an ad agency to write 140 characters. California Tortilla, a chain of 39 causal Mexican restaurants based in Rockville, Md., spread coupon "passwords"--through its Twitter feed @caltort--that must be spoken at checkout to be redeemed.