In a recent blog post by Drew McLellan 5 top tips were discussed that every social media marketer using Twitter should know.

1. Use Saved Searches. Create some saved searches in Twitter's web interface and check them every few days to stay current with what's most important to you.

2. Engage in Private/Group Conversations. Remember, Twitter is about conversation and a dialogue...not a monologue. Utilizing a tool like Group Tweet can help you manage your private messages.



3. Manage Your Followers. Follow only those twitter accounts that are most relevant to your area of focus, subject matter.

4. Pre-schedule Your Tweets. If you're like me, most of your research and twittering occurs after hours. Utilize a tool like HootSuite to schedule your tweets to go out between 9-5 Mon-Thursday.

5. Keep Track of Activity. What good is Twitter if you can't measure clicks and response. Consider using HootSuite's Owly links to keep track of clicks in your embedded links. Twitterfriends also allows you to see some very useful stats like how often you are being re-tweeted and or how many replies you are sending daily.

Google must have been listening to the marketer pleas at the FDA Social Media hearings about the need to have some level of control over Sidewiki (and let's face it, Google is no dummy...pharma marketing makes up a big chunk of their revenue).

Google recently released tools that provide site owners the ability to leave a "master entry" that appears in the top position in the Sidewiki for all pages on their website. Or you can create page-specific entries to engage your visitors. These special entries will appear with a green background at the top of the Sidewiki sidebar, above other entries.

Sanofi-aventis' Lovenox.com provides a perfect example of one company putting the new capability into practice.

Page owner - Nov 17, 2009

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• Almost two-­thirds (64%) of companies say they have experimented with social media but have not done much.
• Micro-­blogging (i.e. Twitter) is now the most widely adopted social media tactic, used by 78% of company respondents.
• Just under half of companies (46%) are not yet using reputation or buzz monitoring tools to understand what is being said about their brand.
• Nearly a third of respondents (31%) are not spending any of their budget on social media.
• There is a mixed view of the benefits of Twitter, with almost a third of respondents (31%) saying that there are tremendous opportunities available.
• The biggest barrier to better social media engagement for companies surveyed is the lack of resources (54%).