Brendan has a good post on generating leads from social media.

Lots of opportunities in using Google sets for research and insight.

Forrester tells marketers to stay away from the likes of Foursquare and other location services for now. Sure there’s only a few million highly influential people using it. Am sure the wait and see applied to the web in the early days too. It’s what you make of the medium that matters, be it 10, 1000 or a billion people on it.

Meanwhile PlacePop takes the location idea and applies it to vouchers.

I like this idea. Test drive a new Mazda via a Facebook game/app.

If you’re into PR then follow the PR Page from Facebook. Lots of tools and ideas for PR professionals.

What three things should you do in social media? Well first is listening.

Ways of figuring out more about those who follow you on Twitter.

Official stats from Facebook themselves.

Facebook is the largest publisher of display ads in the U.S. beating Yahoo! 176 billion display ads, up from just 70 billion a year earlier.

Interesting idea. Using staff for your media instead of buying ads.

Games and Apps on Facebook will now be able to send email invites to play the game (and join Facebook)

Online campaigns influenced UK voters, it seems.

Ten guidelines for running an online competition.

Passing the 100+ (genuine) followers on Twitter threshold is good for business.

Is marketing on Twitter a waste of time? Seems not.

Old but fantastic all the same. Watch the real-time purchasing map from Zappos.

Lots and lots of cities and towns, here’s just some for Cork:

And the healthy stats as of publication:
1,575,720 people who live in Ireland
920,880 who live in Dublin, Cork, Limerick or Galway

699,800 people who live in Dublin
87,560 people who live in Cork
61,040 people who live in Limerick
70,320 people who live in Galway
90,980 people who live in Belfast

With this we can send targeted ads to people that use Facebook. Examples: Offer Leaving Cert grinds to kids in Cork. Offer last minute meal deals to people in Galway that like Italian food. Offer county themed T-Shirts to GAA fans in Donegal. Little bit of imagination and you can see how much fun it can be.

That’s ads. Expect to eventually do status updates targeted by Cities and location. Facebook interactions and marketing based on location details is around the corner too so stay tuned. Once you digest that and start to play with the ad system, remind yourself about Foursquare too.

Social media people in Ireland on Twitter. At least according to their bios.

Google allowing businesses to post context sensitive promotions on Google search results. Lovely idea.

Nike iPhone App takes colours from your photos and then designs a shoe with them.

Duarte’s blog posts are always insightful. When given an excel file full of numbers, how do you present it? Here they show you.

Using Facebook as a recruiter.

The Facebook Guide Book from Mashable.

Paid media to gain traction for earned media. In other words using the YouTube video promotion system to build up traffic for your video and at a certain momentum the viral nature takes over and you don’t have to pay to deliver the video in front of people.

Mobile Internet growth.

Mobile usage is ballooning across the continent and the African mobile phone market – at more than 400 million subscribers – is now larger than in North America. Some countries, such as South Africa, have ‘mobile penetration levels’ – the number of handsets compared with size of population – close to those of Western Europe.

For many people in Africa, mobile telephones are the only way that they will ever get access to the internet because of the poor quality, and often complete lack, of fixed-line networks. Fierce competition has pushed mobile prices down for consumers while many of the latest crop of handsets available in Africa allow easy access to the mobile internet. Web browsers can also be installed on older phones.

Finding the RSS/Atom feeds in Facebook.

1,175,180 registered their gender
Male: 539,960
Female: 645,760

Relationship status
639,700 people who live in Ireland who are single, in a relationship, engaged or married
220,320 single
207,380 in relationship
40,260 engaged
180,300 married

162,880 18 and under
1,114,780 18 and over
774,100 25 and older
514,220 30 and older
186,040 40 and older
70,600 50 and older

It’s very interesting to read how Obama’s decision to announce his VP selection via text message came about: They needed more subscribers to their mobile phone database. Simple really. A few 100k were on their list, announcing it via text message ensured that number would jump a magnitude. Getting people to contact you or opt in to updates from you from one of your channels (Email, text, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube etc.) should be a focus for your web work.

So on the front of your site, have contact details, credible ones (not just a mobile number), don’t have just a form on the Contact page. A real postal address and landline helps a lot for that contact page. See this business communications checklist. List your content channels if people look at the site, make a positive (but not buying) decision about trusting you and want to get updates from Twitter or Facebook. Tell them why they get rewarded for doing so. Bargains, discounts, first for new content etc.

And don’t forget to use language that appeals to the person. Conversational, not formal and removed.

And now the same idea with more expletives and a bit of insanity:

• Facebook Ad experts
• Facebook Page coders – Can you sex up a Facebook Page with HTML and FBML?
• Facebook App/API coders – What it says on the tin

900k in August.
400k in January.

Gender:
544,080 people who live in Ireland who are female – 53.8%
416,380 people who live in Ireland who are male – 46.2%
(960,460 filled in Gender details)

Age stats:
665,060 people who live in Ireland age 25 and older – 65.8%
440,120 people who live in Ireland age 30 and older – 43.5%
156,640 people who live in Ireland age 40 and older – 15.5%

Older generation versus younger generation:
59,580 people who live in Ireland age 50 and older
74,840 people who live in Ireland are under 18

Ranges:
309,980 people between the ages of 18 and 25 inclusive
450,060 people between the ages of 20 and 30 inclusive

In 5 year increments:
236,460 people between the ages of 20 and 25 inclusive
262,180 people between the ages of 25 and 30 inclusive
191,760 people between the ages of 30 and 35 inclusive
125,200 people between the ages of 35 and 40 inclusive
67,180 people between the ages of 40 and 45 inclusive
40,520 people between the ages of 45 and 50 inclusive
25,760 people between the ages of 50 and 55 inclusive
17,400 people between the ages of 55 and 60 inclusive
20,980 people who live in Ireland age 60 and older