Social media has changed the world dramatically. We are seeing more and more charitable actions carried out by social media channels. For example, Twestival is the largest global grassroots social media fundraising initiative to date, raising over $1.2 million within 14 months for 137 nonprofits. Under disastrous circumstances, like the BP oil spill, Tumblr promoted awareness and raised funds by offering a new background color. When earthquakes devastated Haiti and Chile, Google Earth launched special search engines to help families find their loved ones.

Valerie Jennings, the founder and CEO of Jennings Social Media Marketing started the company in 2003. Coinciding with the US social and economic conditions, Jennings has been through the unstable post-9/11 period, inflation, recession as well as natural disasters. As a small business, Jennings not only survived, but thrived during the past 7 years. All of these made us reconsider our values and beliefs. Why are we here, what do our families mean to us and what are our life purposes?

Jennings Social Media Marketing is a full service company that utilizes the art of online storytelling with the science of measuring quantifiable results. Jennings creates comprehensive social media marketing and web advertising strategies from website design and development to viral videos. The company represents publicly traded to medium-sized businesses across the U.S. and overseas including technology, sports, sustainability, entertainment, travel, financial, health care and real estate.

Follow Valerie Jennings on Twitter @ValerieJennings

Like Jennings Social Media Marketing on Facebook here

Smart phones are becoming more and more popular and advertisers have begun using them as a tool to reach large audience with the use of applications. Here is an article from mashable.com about how people are welcoming advertising with smart phone applications.

Consumers Embrace Mobile Advertising

Advertisements on mobile devices are both welcome and effective, a recent study from mobile audience media company JiWire revealed.

This is especially true of advertisements that appear in apps. Of the roughly 1,000 smartphone users surveyed, 52% claim they have acted on an advertisement in an app and 18% have made a purchase directly from an ad in an app in the last month.

In addition, 53% said they were willing to share their location to receive more relevant advertising and a full 76% said they would prefer to download a free, advertising-supported app instead of paying an upfront fee for the same app.

This is great news for social gaming apps like Foursquare and Gowalla, which enable users to unlock special deals from advertisers based on their locations. It’s also great news for Apple, whose mobile app advertising platform, iAds, will debut this summer with the iPhone 4.0 OS.

Here is a podcast from Valerie Jennings, entrepreneur and CEO of Jennings Social Media Marketing.

“Hi this is Valerie Jennings, CEO of Jennings Social Media Marketing. I want to offer a few tips about how you can use social media to protect your brand, build awareness on the Internet and drive traffic to websites like your blog or primary company website or even a landing page. Some of the things that we look at are competitor analysis reports, so that we can see how competitors are appearing on the Internet in comparison to some of our clients. Additionally, we try to make sure that we have all of the holes plugged as far as having a Twitter account, Facebook page and do they have their LinkedIn site set up properly. These are some simple things you can do as a business owner to make sure that you have all of your social networking sites reserved so that a competitor does not try to take the name or hijack your brand.”

Click below to listen to the rest of Jennings’ tips on how to use social media to protect your brand and drive website traffic.

With more than 70 million members in 200 different countries, LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network.

Not only is LinkedIn great for building a professional network, but it is also recommended by social media professionals to increase search engine optimization, also known as SEO.

Here are a few tips to search engine optimize your LinkedIn profile. First, complete your profile with search engine optimized keywords. Second, customize the URL to your LinkedIn profile with your name or your company’s name. Third, be sure to include the maximum amount of allowed hyperlinks in your profile.

LinkedIn is one of the best sites to take advantage of to improve your SEO. Sign up for LinkedIn today, complete your free professional profile and watch your search engine rankings increase. To join LinkedIn, visit linkedin.com

This video brought to you by Jennings Social Media Marketing, a global company located in Kansas City, Missouri.

Jennings Social Media Marketing is a full service company that utilizes the art of online storytelling with the science of measuring quantifiable results. Jennings creates comprehensive social media marketing and Web advertising strategies from website design and development to viral videos. The company represents publicly traded to medium-sized businesses across the U.S. and overseas including technology, sports, sustainability, entertainment, travel, financial, health care and real estate.

For years Facebook has been a growing trend for people of all ages. Most recently “FarmVille” has been the latest craze, allowing people to create their own online farm, animals and all. Google and partner Zynga, the creator of “FarmVille” and other popular social media games, may now be in the process of creating Google Me, a site that may lessen the popularity of Facebook. I would like to share an article from cnn.com by Doug Gross about the making of Google Me and its potential impact on social networking.

‘Google Me’ site may be in the works

(CNN) — If online reports are to be believed, Google could be cooking up a rival for Facebook — and bringing the maker of popular social games like “FarmVille” with them.

Google Games, built around some sort of partnership with casual-gaming company Zynga, is in the works and would be part of a larger social network called Google Me, according to technology blog Tech Crunch.
Statements from notable internet players, including Digg founder Kevin Rose and a former Facebook chief technical officer, have suggested in recent weeks that the search-engine giant is working on a social network geared toward rivaling Facebook.
TechCrunch this weekend reported that unnamed sources said Google has invested between $100 and $200 million in Zynga, the maker of successful online social games like “FarmVille” and “Mafia Wars.”
The investment part of the deal was confirmed last month and a “larger strategic project” is still in the works, according to that report.
A Zynga spokeswoman said Monday that the company has no comment on the reports. A Google spokesman referred questions to the company’s media-relations e-mail account, which did not respond to inquiries.

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Have you ever wondered what it would be like to explore Mars? Now, thanks to Microsoft and NASA, it is possible to experience Mars in a new way. I would like to share an article from mashable.com by Stan Schroeder about a new application that allows you to take a virtual tour of Mars.

NASA and Microsoft Let You Explore Mars Like Never Before

Microsoft Research and NASA have teamed up once again and brought the “most complete, highest-resolution coverage of Mars available” to WorldWide Telescope. Microsoft’s app lets you explore space either through a zoom-and-pan interface or guided tours.

This imagery is the handiwork of a group informally called the Mapmakers, led by NASA’s Michael Broxton. Their job is to take satellite images from Mars and elsewhere in our solar system, and turn them into maps.

Yes, it sounds like every geek’s dream job, and having a name that sounds like something from a William Gibson novel doesn’t hurt, either. Director of Microsoft Research’s Earth Dan Fay has worked with Broxton to turn these images and maps into an immersive new experience for the Worldwide Telescope.

“NASA had the images and they were open to new ways to share them. Through the WorldWide Telescope we were able to build a user interface at WWT|Mars that would allow people to take advantage of the great content they had,” Fay says.

As far as what kind of imagery you can expect here, one example is a new dataset from the University of Arizona’s High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE), which is a remote-sensing camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. These images are taken in an incredibly high resolution — each image is a gigapixel in size — and the team took all 13,000 HiRISE images and stitched them onto one map. This map, says NASA, is the “highest-resolution map of Mars’s surface ever constructed.”

WorldWide Telescope is available as a desktop application or a web client (which requires Microsoft Silverlight) over at www.worldwidetelescope.org.

Two popular Kraft Food brands are increasing their social media marketing efforts with campaigns on Twitter and Facebook. Here is an article from nytimes.com, by Stuart Elliott, about Oreo cookies and Wheat Thins revamping their brands on social networking sites.

Food Brands Get Sociable on Facebook and Twitter

The number of advertisers with presences in the social media like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are increasing faster than the lines at the supermarket when the values of the cents-off coupons are being tripled.

Now, two familiar brands of baked goods sold by Kraft Foods are stepping up their marketing efforts in social media.

One brand, Oreo cookies, is going to be giving its Facebook page a global look, effective on Monday. The other brand, Wheat Thins crackers, is starting a campaign to reward fans of the brand who discuss it on Twitter.

Oreo has been on Facebook since last August with a page that has been primarily American-oriented. But the many comments left on the page from other countries — reflecting that more than half the brand’s 5 million Facebook fans are from outside the United States — led to a rethinking of how Oreo is presented on the Web site.

“It was an ‘A-ha’ moment for us,” said Mark Clouse, senior vice president for global biscuits at Kraft Foods in Northfield, Ill., reflecting that the company understands Facebook “is now a global vehicle and a platform we can use to have a global dialog” with consumers.

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I would like to share an article from mashable.com, by Grace Smith, about 10 infographics that present social media tools in an appealing format.

10 Beautiful Social Media Infographics

This series is supported by Ben & Jerry’s Joe, Ben & Jerry’s new line-up of Fair Trade and frozen iced coffee drinks. Learn more about it here.

Infographics help communicate information in a digestible manner as they creatively present data in an understandable and engaging format. With social media growing at an ever increasing pace, there is now a wealth of data about how people interacting with one another on the web. Naturally, infographics have proven an excellent aid in expressing high volumes of social web information in a clear, visually appealing manner.

Here are 10 infographics that prove as beautiful as they are interesting.

1. Social Web Involvement

This is a global map of social web involvement which illustrates that hundreds of millions of web users are creating and sharing content every month. It provides a clear visualization of the ways in which social technologies are adopted differently across the world, showing the number of active bloggers, social networkers, video sharers, photo uploaders and microbloggers.

Interestingly, it reveals that despite the Twitter hype, microblogging is still not a mass social activity and is nowhere near the size and scale of blogging.

2. Social Marketing Compass

A compass is a device for orientating oneself and guiding physical direction. The social marketing compass points a brand in a physical and experimental direction, allowing them to connect with their customers, peers, and influencers, where those users already interact and seek guidance online.

Created to illustrate social marketing within the book Engage: The Complete Guide for Brands and Businesses to Build, Cultivate, and Measure Success in the New Web, this infographic was also available as a poster to celebrate the book’s pre-sale.

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Dr. Robert Patterson, Chiropractor & Internal Health Specialist of Overland Chiropractic recently reviewed social media marketing for the health care industry, which showed up on bussinessweek.com.

Read it here.

As the world becomes a more global place, businesses are increasingly building relationships with international clients, which can often be difficult. I would like to share an article from mashable.com about six ways to manage international relationships online.

6 Ways to Manage International Relationships Online

This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.

Sometimes the hardest part of having international clients is finding a way to connect with them. Small businesses often have to worry about different time zones, different languages, and even different customs and traditions.

While there’s no catch-all, golden resource that can solve every problem a small internationally-minded business could have, there are some easy ways to keep your business up-to-date and in the overseas loop.

Here, we’ll help you through the basic steps of interacting with overseas clients, from translating pleasantries to tracking shipments to making sure you don’t accidentally call them in the middle of the night.

1. Basic Information
Before you even get started, it’s important to know the basic information about your client’s country. Usually the most thorough and reliable way to bone up is through the country’s official webpage. England, for example, has a good site with lots of information. Unfortunately, most of these sites are geared towards tourism and less so the time-pressed businessperson.

Wikipedia can actually be a great, quick and comprehensive alternative. Wikipedia pages exist for most major countries and include a helpful info bar on the right side of the page (usually just below the country’s flag). This information includes official languages, government make up, population estimates, GDP, currency, time zone, and calling code.

Also check out The World Factbook, maintained by the CIA. It includes “information on the history, people, government, economy, geography, communications, transportation, military, and transnational issues for 266 world entities,” according to their website.

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