Yogi Land

Thousands of websites are created every day, yet sometimes the Internet feels a bit stale. How do you filter through all of the junk when you want to discover something new?

StumbleUpon is a site that randomly shuffles through websites, curating content and information specifically for you. Since its start, the site has surpassed 20 million users, and continues to be a dominant source of traffic for the world’s top social media sites.

According to StumbleUpon, the site delivers more than 1.2 billion recommendations per month, and users spend seven hours per month stumbling. Most surprisingly, according to this infographic, the average stumbling session lasts 69 minutes.

SEE ALSO: StumbleUpon’s Most Popular Searches and Links of 2011

Those numbers might seem a bit overwhelming, especially if you don’t have that kind of time to devote to the site. However, there are a few things you can do ahead of time, and while stumbling, that’ll provide you with the best sites specific to you. Here are 10 ways to get the best stumbles.

1. Plan Ahead

If you take the extra steps in the beginning to completely fill your profile, you'll have a better experience. The more customized you make it, the better results you will see when stumbling.

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More About: features, stumbleupon

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1. Tweepi

Tweepi's "Flush" option allows you to see the users you follow who are not following you back. Its "Reciprocate" option allows you to see the users following you who you're not following back. And the "Cleanup" option allows you to see everyone who you're following so you can unfollow as many users as you like.

You can also see who your friends are following, follow full lists and follow other users based on who they follow.

Tweepi displays the users in helpful columns by showing their names, bios, locations, number of tweets, number of followers, number of users they follow, dates of their last tweets, their Klout scores and more.

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Elijah Daniel is an up-and-coming writer and comedian. He aims to make people smile via his Twitter and YouTube accounts.

As a Twitter enthusiast, it’s always nice to find useful apps that help to manage my account. Check out five of the best apps I use regularly by clicking through the gallery above.

More About: apps, contributor, features, Social Media, trending, Twitter

Dallas Lawrence is the chief global digital strategist for Burson-Marsteller, one of the world’s leading public relations and communications firms. He is a Mashable contributor on emerging media trends, online reputation management and digital issue advocacy. You can connect with him on Twitter @dallaslawrence.

If the past year has taught us anything about reputation management in the social age, it’s that the past year has not taught us anything. Time and time again in 2011, the same missteps and misunderstandings lead to the same predictably painful reputational outcomes for individuals, brands and organizations.

Despite widely discussed and accepted social media best practices, many of the most significant crisis poster children of 2011 failed to deploy the basic digital tactics necessary to cauterize potential threats before they metastasized into full-blown reputational disasters.

Some may be tempted to fault the dizzying speed of digital change for the current sad state of crisis preparedness, but the reality is that the basic rules of effective communications have not changed for generations.

From Gutenburg to Zuckerberg, the principles of sincerity, transparency, accuracy and speed still largely determine success or failure in the court of public opinion. What has changed – and what will continue to evolve over time — are the platforms that we use to communicate these principles. No platform in 2011 had a more profound impact on crisis awareness and response than Twitter.

In 2012, as its audience continues to swell past 100 million active users, who send more than a quarter billion tweets daily, Twitter’s prominence – especially during times of crisis — will only continue to grow.

Here are six Twitter crisis tips every communications professional should review in the New Year.

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1. Start With The Basics

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The first step in 2012 may both be the easiest and possibly the most daunting: For those not yet on Twitter, the time has come to pull the trigger.

Even if your organization does have a Twitter account, you should assess if the current handle is appropriate for managing a crisis conversation. Establishing a separate and transparent Twitter presence for communicating corporate messaging and thought leadership – aside from branded, marketing-focused conversations — is critical if you are going to successfully manage a crisis or reputation in 140 characters or less. Furthermore, companies shouldn’t be polluting their happily massaged community with apologies, recall information or other critical commentary. Many companies now operate multiple accounts specifically to address the information needs of a diverse social marketplace.

For Twitter, one size definitely does not fit all and one Twitter account may not be sufficient for your communications needs.

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2. Traditional Media Uses Twitter

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A recent survey of approximately 500 journalists around the world found that approximately half of those polled use Twitter to source for stories. In times of crisis, reporters are turning to Twitter in greater numbers to see who is talking about the issue and to identify which sources would best complement their coverage.

In many cases, to be part of the story, you must already be part of the conversation on Twitter. And standard newspapers and magazines are not alone: Newswires like AP and Reuters also report important breaking news and international crises via Twitter. Know and engage your Reuters reporter and recognize that the moment his coverage goes live, your Twitter efforts will need to kick into high gear.

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3. Fight for the Headline

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Any PR person worth his mettle knows the value of a headline. In the digital space in 2012, fighting for the headline has taken on new meaning. With most news sites offering auto-generated suggested Twitter language for readers to post to their feeds via the retweet plug-in, many tweeters simply “read and retweet” articles using the suggested text.

Unfortunately, rather than invest the time to develop a 140-character synopsis reflective of the entire story, many people or businesses simply auto-populate the original headline, without concern for the false or misleading impression it can have when viewed out of context. An overwhelming number of Twitter users today simply snack on the 140-character content posted in their streams, which means a balanced and comprehensive headline has taken on even greater significance.

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4. Video Rules

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According to the most recent data from YouTube, more than 500 YouTube links are tweeted every minute. And this doesn’t account for the millions of additional video links embedded in blogs, news sites and other online platforms, which are then shared across Twitter.

Online video has already become one of the most powerful tools in the crisis manager’s arsenal, yet many fail to fully realize the real-time ability of video integrated with Twitter to break through a crowded online conversation. Having an immediately deployable video capability and identified spokesperson(s) ready to advance positive messaging, correct misinformation and engage consumers directly (with a real face, not a logo) can help to reshape perception and stall the advancement of a developing crisis situation in ways one-dimensional text simply cannot.

The question every crisis manger should be asking today is this: If you had a significant crisis occur on a Friday evening, how long would it take you to shoot, edit and tweet a video response?

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5. Beware of Squatters

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Twitter is still largely the Wild West of the social universe. As Rupert Murdoch’s wife discovered earlier this month, when it comes to transparency, not everyone is playing by the same rule book. Take the time now, before your moment in the spotlight, to audit your brand on Twitter (and throughout the digital space) and see who may be squatting on your trademark. You may be very surprised by what you find.

If there was one lesson learned from the BP oil spill disaster, it was that you need to own your story within Twitter before others hijack it from you. If you do find a squatter violating your Twitter space, Twitter has a well-established policy for reclaiming inappropriate accounts.

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6. Don’t be Afraid to Advertise

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With more than 250 million tweets flying across the Twittersphere every day, it is important to use every resource at your disposal to break through the incredibly crowded medium.

In times of crisis that require an immediate impact, Twitter’s suite of pay-for-play tools can help do just that. Twitter’s Sponsored Tweets can rapidly keep content at the top of search results, and can now place results at the top of user feeds. A particularly effective feature allows advertisers to target not only key search terms, but key users as well. By targeting based on likes and past conversation threads, Twitter’s timeline advertising allows advertisers to place Promoted Tweets in the timelines of followers and other Twitter users who share similar qualities.

The benefits of this deeper contextual targeting are immediately clear. For example, if you have a major crisis impacting parents, you can identify this subgroup and ensure your message consistently remains at the top of their streams. Messages that link to rich media, use hashtags, and feature a call to action (“RT PLEASE”) will usually garner the most attention. It is important to remember that Sponsored Tweets are just that – tweets you originally post to your account that you then “amplify” with advertising. If you are not active on Twitter and are not posting to your own account, you cannot participate or benefit from the pay-for-play arena.

How have you seen companies handle crises on Twitter? How should they be targeting you, the Twitter user?

More About: crisis, crisis management, features, PUBLIC RELATIONS, Twitter

Deleting your social media account may be the most difficult breakup you’ll ever have. Networks try various techniques to get you to stay, and they often leave you wondering if it’s you and not them. Let’s take a look at some of these clever little tricks that make it hard to delete your social profiles.

1. Twitter: "You don't know what you're missing."

If you choose to ignore your Twitter account, you'll receive an email within a few weeks saying, "We've missed you!" More than that, Twitter lists everything you're missing out on, from the latest news to plain happiness.

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More About: Facebook, features, linkedin, Social Media, social networking, trending, tumblr, Twitter, YouTube

Ronald Brown is a successful startup CEO with an extensive background in technology and consumer marketing. His new book, Anticipate. The Architecture of Small Team Innovation and Product Success is available via iTunes, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo.

The subject of finding customers is one of the most mysterious in business development. I’m often asked how the most successful companies do it, maybe in the hope that there’s a secret or shortcut to success. Sorry to say, no silver bullet exists.

Even with large budgets, customer discovery is more art than science. Below are the five basic steps. The most important aspect of this process is to be very methodical in your approach. Knowing where you’ve been is the only way to improve and repeat successes. Pay close attention to the details and record everything in a consistent format.

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1. Classification Structure

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The first step is to decide on a classification structure, better known as segmentation. You might have a product in mind, or a general concept, but sometimes, you might just be fishing — looking for a problem to solve in a market that seems attractive. That’s OK. Market segmenters are detectives.

What makes a market attractive? Maybe you see alignment with your idea or product. Or, maybe something about a segment strikes a chord and gets your creative juices flowing, knowing what you know about your company’s capabilities. Also, segment size is important: Why waste time if long-term financial gains aren’t possible?

The segment selection process can be intuitive, based on personal experience, or it can be driven by highly sophisticated segmentation tools that carve up the total market into standardized groups. (Lots of companies start with Standard Industrial Classification codes (SIC codes), a system for tracking the entire economy, managed by the U.S. Census Bureau.) Either way, at this point, you are simply making educated guesses about which ones might be a fit. You have no idea if the fit will materialize.

In emerging industries, segmentation can evolve quickly. When the iPad was first introduced, tablets were tablets. Then ereaders became a distinct category vs. general purpose. Then pricing tiers emerged. Now, industry analysts are breaking the market up into broad stroke vertical applications — education, health care, etc. — which will get subdivided further very soon.

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2. Hypothesis Testing

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With your evaluation structure in place, you now need to determine, one segment at a time, if there is really an opportunity you can address. You dig deeper from a research standpoint, paying particular attention to competitive offerings. Again, there’s a range of tools you can use. A consumer products company might do a formal, quantitative study, and a company selling to enterprises might set up personal meetings with senior executives. Major consulting firms, like McKinsey & Co. or the Boston Consulting Group, rely heavily on in-depth, one-on-one interviews in all of their projects. I’m working on a project in the tablet business right now, and you’d be amazed at how much you can learn from resellers.

What are you looking for? You’re identifying customer problems. They should be big ones — “pain points.” If a problem isn’t urgent and important, it’ll be difficult to create a meaningful competitive advantage. At the same time, you’re looking to see how your solution solves the problem. Is it dramatically better? Is it “demonstrable” (a very helpful ingredient when it comes to being socialized)?

If you’ve found a pain point in a large market you can address and there are no competitors (yes, it happens), you’ve stumbled upon an “unmet need,” one of the holy grails of new product development.

Segment by segment, you are testing a hypothesis related to fit or alignment: that you have something of value to offer a customer group. You are not just collecting information.

You’ll discover all kinds of things at this point, from a particular segment being a complete miss, to essential product features that must be added. Hypothesis testing never stops, even after you introduce your product. In fact, the best is yet to come. Once a product is in the market, learning based on actual usage will flow in. That’s why many in the new products field go to market with a “minimally viable product.”

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3. Nuance Testing

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Here’s the step that’s easy to overlook. All problems have context. In other words, when customers solve problems, they are affected by circumstances associated with timing and physical surroundings, and by the nature of the task itself. As a marketer, you won’t understand context by doing a survey, conducting a focus group, or talking to senior executives.

You understand context by experiencing customer problem solving yourself. To do that, you turn to customer immersion techniques. Did you know dairy farmers use tablets? To elegantly solve their problems, you better be willing to get up at 3 a.m. on a freezing morning. Some consumer goods companies even live with customers in their homes for a short period of time. Procter & Gamble, considered one of the best marketers in the world, uses such an immersion program called “Living It.”

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4. Customer Stories

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Hypothesis and nuance testing findings get captured as stories. They’re much more descriptive than use cases in that they focus heavily on problem/solution decision making.

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5. Solution Iteration

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Tight product alignment with a customer is a matter of iteration. You put something out there (an idea, a prototype, an actual product), and you get feedback, and you go away and improve and refine. Your customer stories get more refined as well.

It’s highly unlikely that you’ll identify a pain point and address it perfectly in one fell swoop. In fact, to even try is highly risky, especially if you’re building hardware.

Most of the time and money wasted in new product development is related to late-stage rework, but you can avoid it by developing in small steps, ever tightening the alignment. This is what agile development is all about, and why it’s gaining so much in popularity in and outside Silicon Valley.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, pixdeluxe

More About: Business, contributor, customers, features, Small Business

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Guy Nirpaz is the CEO and co-founder of Totango, which analyzes user actions on SaaS applications, providing sales teams invaluable information in qualifying prospects and prioritizing people to contact who are most likely to buy or renew.

How B2B products and services are purchased and sold is rapidly changing. Some call it the consumerization of IT, but perhaps it’s the consumerization of B2B in general.

Buyers are demanding cloud-based products that are user-friendly as well as social and mobile capabilities, with as little sales involvement as possible. A good example is purchasing from iTunes: web-based self-service with instant gratification.

Below are eight predictions for B2B sales in 2012.

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1. Social Selling Will Go Mainstream

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Ninety-two percent of prospects almost never book a meeting from a cold call or email, according to a study by UNC’s Kenan-Flagler School of Business. In 2012, rather than make cold calls, sales executives will first seek connections through social media networks, and then increase response rates with warm introductions.

Aside from personal networks, sales managers will also find ways to leverage the networks of colleagues, partners, customers, executives and former employees during the sales process. 



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2. Companies Will use Facebook as a Sales Channel

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Facebook was originally viewed as a network for personal communications in which direct selling was frowned upon. In 2012, more companies will experiment with the social platform as a sales channel, beginning with employees who sell or advocate to their friends.

Home Depot has already asked store associates to post helpful do-it-yourself tips on their personal pages. Farmers Insurance encourages local franchisees to build relationships with customers via Facebook; the company won a Guinness World Record doing so.



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3. Sales Executives Will Adopt Big Data

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In 2012, sales leaders will embrace big data to increase sales performance. Some will use it to identify the most profitable customers and find more leads with the same characteristics. Others will analyze customer usage patterns during trial and production to find the hottest prospects and to up-sell targets.

Combining analytics and sales automation, B2B companies will target prospects and customers with personalized offers triggered by specific behaviors.

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4. Customer Engagement Becomes a Top Priority

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Sales managers will no longer be able to drop off software and drive away. With the rise of subscription-based pricing models, unhappy customers who are not actively using a product or service will simply cancel their subscriptions.

This will align organizations behind their customers’ success, and encourage them to increasingly monitor engagement throughout the customer lifecycle. Some B2B companies, like Yammer, will even appoint a dedicated VP of customer engagement, also responsible for up-selling and renewals.

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5. Outside Sales Reps Will Use iPads

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The iPad is finding its way into the enterprise. Some are calling it the most important new sales tool since the invention of the cellphone. In 2012, most outside sales reps will start to use an iPad or other tablet for work. They will use it for shipping, product documentation, demonstrations, to capture leads at a trade shows or to quickly research a prospect before a meeting. 



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6. Most Sales Tools Will Move to the Cloud

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The average sales organization already uses more than 24 software tools in the sales process, based on a poll conducted by Gerhard Gschwandtner, publisher of Selling Power magazine, at the 2011 Sales Strategies in a Social & Mobile World conference. This number is growing every year. In 2012, the majority of these applications will move to the cloud.

Many companies, for example, will adopt cloud-based versions of subscription and billing software. This is a boom for sales executives, who will now have more visibility into a customer’s billing cycle, which is helpful when growing or renewing an account. Also, the more applications to move to the cloud, the more streamlined the process.



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7. Sales and Marketing Will Converge

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The sales process is becoming more self-sufficient, and customers are driving the pace. Outside sales are becoming inside sales, partly because of online conferencing tools. Inside sales is being replaced with self-serving website resources. As this happens, the lines between marketing and sales continue to blur.

In 2012, more organizations will appoint chief revenue officers in recognition of this trend. Overall, there will have to be closer collaboration between the sales and marketing chiefs.



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8. More Companies Will Offer Free Trials

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More organizations will offer free trials or completely free versions of their products. Prospects and customers are increasingly demanding self-service, which provides instant access to a free trial of products, before deciding to talk to a sales rep. Companies that offer a free trial will get more buzz and word-of-mouth referrals, and their sales costs will lower when fewer live touch points are required.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, mbortolino

More About: b2b, cloud computing, contributor, features, ipad, sales, Social Media, Year End 2011

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Scott Gerber is the founder of the Young Entrepreneur Council, a nonprofit organization that promotes youth entrepreneurship as a solution to unemployment and underemployment. The YEC provides young entrepreneurs with access to tools, mentorship, and resources that support each stage of a business’s development and growth.

You want to deliver marketing content that packs a punch and drives sales, but you don’t have a lot of money to spread around. You might want to consider geo-targeting, aka location-based marketing.

Five years ago “checking in” was unheard of. Today people battle to be Duke or Mayor on sites like Yelp and Foursquare. Marketers, business owners and consumers agree, less area is more.

Still, location-based marketing isn’t about jumping on a bandwagon. After all, geo-targeting can be daunting, even for the web-savvy. Should I reward check-ins on Yelp, Foursquare or both? Where should I target my marketing efforts? How long before I can expect results?

Check out these 13 tips for leveraging geo-targeting from successful, young entrepreneurs that have already tackled these questions, and more.

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1. MarketMeSuite

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Utilizing this software, you can set up searches for the keywords and phrases most relevant to your business, and geo-target the results. This allows you to spend your marketing dollars wisely, targeting only customers looking specifically for your service/products that are in your area of business.

- Anthony Saladino, Kitchen Cabinet Kings.

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2. Get Someone on the Ground

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You’ll want data, and in many cases that best data you can have will come straight from a local (or locals). Find connections with the right demographic in the right area, and ask them questions, have them conduct research, and then enjoy the advantage you have over your online-data-only competitors!

- Colin Wright, Exile Lifestyle.

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3. Enhance your SEO with Geo-Targeting Tactics

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Drive cost-efficiencies and improve ROI for your next search engine marketing pay-per-click campaign by running targeted IP address beta tests with Google Adwords. Offer compelling localized deals and incentives to test your effectiveness.

- Erica Nicole, YFS Magazine: Young, Fabulous & Self Employed.

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4. Localize Your Website

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Buy the domain extensions for countries that you’re marketing to (.co.uk for the UK, .ca for Canada, .com.au for Australia) and set up localized sites that transact in local currencies. Prospective customers will feel much more comfortable purchasing in their local currency, from a website that they feel is specifically intended for them.

- Matt Mickiewicz, 99designs.

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5. Make People Feel at Home

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When you begin to market to geo-targeted customers, don’t send everyone to the same page on your website. Make people feel at home by creating a section of your site for each area you’re targeting. Small things like an image of a city skyline of the target area can go a long way and make people comfortable by seeing things they already relate to.

- Ilya Pozin, Ciplex.

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6. The Tweets Next Door

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NearbyTweets is a great website whereby you can see what people are talking about in any city. Just search for something relating to your business and begin engaging in some meaningful conversation. If you own a fro-yo business and someone is talking about yogurt or ice cream, try asking them what their fave flavor is, or invite them to try a new one you just introduced.

- Benjamin Leis, Sweat EquiTees.

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7. Look Good on Mobile

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When it comes to geo-targeting, it is all about mobile. Research shows in two years mobile devices will account for over 50% of web traffic. When people are in a specific location, they will search for what they want. Make sure you can be found and your site is mobile friendly. Think about big buttons, easy navigation and simple forms.

- John Meyer, 9 Clouds.

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8. Get Good at Free Tools

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From a search standpoint: Facebook. Twitter. YouTube. All of these things come up page-one of Google search results if you use them correctly. Instead of spending a bajillion dollars on a paid text ad program, focus on doing really well on the free tools with a lot of Google juice. How many sponsored ads have you clicked on lately when you’re on Google? Exactly. Organic search results are king.

- Sydney Owen, 3Ring Media.

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9. Facebook Ads: A Favorite for Geo-Targeting

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Facebook advertising can be a very cost-effective and efficient way to geo-target and market to your customers. It is also a great tool for customer research. You don’t even have to launch a full campaign to make the most of the tools. Within the FB Ad setup mode, you can determine your actual reach based on demographics, interests and more.

- Shama Kabani, The Marketing Zen Group.

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10. Use Geo-Targeting for Low-Cost, Impulse Items

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Geo-targeting works particularly well for local businesses that sell low-cost, impulse items. You can now let prospects know about your offer when they’re in the vicinity, but no one is going to pop in for last-minute car or legal services. Think about what you can offer prospects on the spot — like a cup of coffee, an ice cream cone or a 15-minute sample massage.

- Laura Roeder, LKR.

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11. Geotoko

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Using geo-targeting gives you a deeper insight to your customer base and engages them in something a bit more personable than the traditional flyer or print ad. Coupling geo-trends with social media allows a personal conversation with customers that you wouldn’t be able to have with traditional media. With the recent acquisition of Geotoko by HootSuite, we bring together the best of both worlds.

- Ryan Holmes, HootSuite.

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12. Scoutmob & Dealmap

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In the bar and restaurant industry, we’ve been teaming up companies like Dealmap and Scoutmob to geo-target potential customers with instant offers for certain specials at the bar, in hopes of steering them into our doors on their way to a competitor.

- Michael Sinensky, Village Pourhouse.

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13. Tweak Your Offers

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When you create location-specific offers, you’ll likely get a better conversion rate. But why stop there when you can test different ways of presenting these local offers? Track the number of calls to your number, and see if changing the headline to include the city/state improves conversions.

- Nathalie Lussier, Nathalie Lussier Media.

Image courtesy of Flickr, Joshua Kaufman

More About: contributor, entrepreneurs, features, foursquare, geo-based, location-based, Marketing

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1. miFrame

The miFrame turns your iPad into an 8-inch by 10-inch photo frame. Available in black or silver, it's a slimline storage solution for your iPad, even lending it useful, aesthetic functionality while you're not using it.

Cost: $79

Click here to view this gallery.

So, Santa dropped an iPad 2 down your chimney? Lucky you. One of the great things about buying into the Apple craze is the rich and diverse range of accessories available for all iProducts.

The iPad is no exception. You can choose from a bewildering array of cases, stands, speakers, dock, and other peripherals available for the Apple tablet. If you’re looking to accessorize your shiny new iPad 2, we’re here to help. We’ve hand-picked a selection of 10 companion products we think stand out from the crowd.

SEE ALSO: 28 Cases For Your New iPad 2 [PICS]

Take a look through our image gallery of worthy great accessories. Let us know in the comments if any of these tempt you, and link us to anything else you’ve seen that has caught your eye.

More About: accessories, apple, features, gallery, ipad, ipad accessories

Ekaterina Walter is a social media strategist at Intel. She is a part of Intel’s Social Media Center of Excellence and is responsible for company-wide social media enablement and corporate social networking strategy. She was recently elected to serve on the board of directors of WOMMA.

Online presentation website SlideShare is an important business network that ranks in the top 300 websites, with 30 million monthly viewers, and 80 million pageviews. Users upload presentations, Word and PDF files, tag them, and share them on other social media sites, or embed them in their blogs and company websites.

But SlideShare isn’t just a one-way process: The social functions in the site are giving companies the potential to connect with customers and clients in new ways, generating new business and enhancing their online image.

Here’s how businesses achieve social success using SlideShare.

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1. Tell Your Story

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For organizations of all sizes, presentations can communicate a company’s ethos far beyond the more traditional LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook routes alone. Presentations make a company more three-dimensional and add personality.

In May 2011 NASA launched its NASA Universe channel on SlideShare, which integrated presentations, documents and videos from NASA headquarters and field centers. In the announcement on the SlideShare blog, NASA social media manager Stephanie Schierholz said, “SlideShare provides us another great way to share our content in new ways and new places with the goal of inspiring and interesting people in the universe.”

Because presentations are generally about very specific topics, companies use SlideShare for inbound marketing, to generate traffic through clients’ and customers’ searches. By sharing SlideShare links, it’s possible to optimize searches by tagging presentations and using the SlideShare profile to link back to the company website.

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2. Highlight Your Experts

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IBM Expert Network is a set of channels that leverages the thought leadership of employees across the company to gain social media engagement. It showcases the latest thinking, research, inspiration videos and more.

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3 and 4. Demand Generation and Social Cross-Pollination

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We’ve all heard it: What gets measured gets funded. But tracking awareness metrics is one thing; measuring lead capture is something else entirely. Eloqua has an active and creative SlideShare channel – so creative, in fact, that SlideShare features Eloqua’s channel as an example of an effective Platinum page. Through Eloqua’s SlideShare Cloud Connector, the company automatically populates its demand generation database with profile information from anyone who completes a form on its SlideShare channel. It’s one of the ways companies are bringing together social media with demand generation.

Another thing that jumps out about the channel is its social network cross-pollination. The company highlights links to its Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube communities right under the channel description.

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5. Share In-Depth Information

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An increasing number of companies are using SlideShare to present financial, technical or other in-depth information that can be difficult to represent on their websites using more traditional tools, such as graphs and text. This enables businesses to connect with potential clients in a whole new way.

Pfizer uses SlideShare to post its financial reporting and other presentations, which allow interested parties to access information in a user-friendly format.

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6. Spark Conversations

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Brand management company 1000 Heads specializes in managing what others say about brands. The company uses SlideShare’s social tools and community section to spark conversations with users who comment on, embed or share presentations from their clients, which helps them to reach and engage whole new audiences.

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7. Upscale exposure

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If a webinar or conference presentation reached only a few thousand people in its original format, posting online through SlideShare can create a multiplier effect. Distilled‘s Tom Critchlow initially presented a webinar to a few thousand people, but after posting on SlideShare, received over 30,000 views.

Have you used SlideShare? Do you find it a visually pleasing and useful tool?

More About: Business, contributor, features, slideshare, Social Media

Kickstarter’s prominent crowdfunding platform has made it possible for just about anyone to raise money and awareness about his project. We’ve seen a multitude of success stories — whether it’s a cool wristwatch, a great story or an entire web service.

We’ve gathered some of this year’s craziest Kickstarter projects, from a quirky toilet paper design to a grilled cheese sandwich that features Jesus’s face. Still other entrepreneurs are innovating new ways to look at technology, such as a virtual portal or a set of gloves that pantomimes music.

SEE ALSO: A Guide to Kickstarter & Crowdfunding [Infographic]

Here are the top 10 most eccentric Kickstarter projects of 2011. Which is your favorite? Let us know in the comments.

1. Portals

Funded: $1,934

This project uses a box and an old monitor to simulate virtual reality. It is an incredibly cool project, but its Kickstarter backers shouldn't expect anything in return other than a "big happy thank you."

Click here to view this gallery.

More About: 2011, features, kickstarter, Small Business, Startups

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