“When affiliate marketing becomes something like that, it becomes an enhancement to content and not so much an advertisement,” said Waite.

The company also has a WordPress plugin that brings all its tools and functionality to one place to make it easier for bloggers and publishers.

For 5 years, WebProNews has partnered with BlogWorld and New Media Expo, the world’s first and largest new media conference, in an effort to broadcast how new media can grow your business, brand, and audience. Stay tuned to WebProNews for much more exclusive coverage.

As she explained to WebProNews, both mommy and daddy bloggers need to put the goo-goo and gaa-gaa attitude away and be serious about what they’re doing. She tells us that parent bloggers need to define their own roles and utilize free tools that are available to improve the looks of their site.

According to Carr, parent bloggers are real people that can make a significant difference on society. They are not parents that have just decided to start blogging, but they are lawyers, doctors, and other professionals that want a balance between a career and life. For this reason, Carr believes they should be taken seriously.

For 5 years, WebProNews has partnered with BlogWorld and New Media Expo, the world’s first and largest new media conference, in an effort to broadcast how new media can grow your business, brand, and audience. Stay tuned to WebProNews for much more exclusive coverage.

WebProNews spoke with Justin Kistner, the Director of Social Products at Webtrends, which is a company that was included in the Alpha testing of Facebook’s new product. He told us that the new Facebook Insights tool focuses more on measuring engagement and not just fan growth.

Incidentally, Webtrends also introduced a tool called Hoverstats that allows page owners to evaluate the effectiveness of their posts. He said the idea behind both tools is to help brands determine whether or not they are reaching and engaging with their fans.

As Kevin McCarthy, Likester’s President and founder, explained to us, the service is geared toward both consumers and professionals. He said it was created largely as a result of the success of Likester Idol. With Lists, however, users can create and track “Like” data about anything on Facebook ranging from movies to politics.

IBM also partnered with Actiance in this effort to focus specifically on compliance issues. As social media grows and becomes more valuable, businesses understand the necessity in utilizing it. However, there are valid concerns when it comes to security and compliance.

Schimmer told us that IBM Connections hopes to provide a solution to businesses facing this particular challenge.

Leigh Fatzinger, the company CEO, spoke to WebProNews and said that Prosodic takes all the content that brands publish and gives them a “transparent” way to help them publish content in the future. Prosodic is also an analytics tool, which he believes makes the product a business intelligence platform.

The startup is designed, specifically, for enterprises that need to manage and analyze content in social media. Learn more about Prosodic here.

According to John Verdi of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), the new options are an improvement to Facebook’s previous security measures.

“Facebook has rolled out these tools in an effort to make the website a little bit more friendly to folks who may have previously had a bad experience,” he said.

However, he did express disappointment in the fact that Facebook did not make these new measures the default option for its users.

For these reasons, SlideShare, the presentation-sharing site, recently announced Zipcast, which is its own version of web conferencing. The service is free and enables users to connect with just one click. As Rashmi Sinha, the CEO and co-founder of SlideShare, explained to WebProNews, web conferencing was a natural extension of SlideShare’s services.

“It was kind of an obvious idea when you think about SlideShare because it’s just presentations shared instantly – that’s what meetings are a lot of the time,” she said.

Although there are other players in the space such as GoToMeeting and WebEx, Sinha said that Zipcast is entirely different than the other offerings. For starters, Zipcast doesn’t require a download. Users can simply go to a url in their browser and avoid technical errors.

The Web conferencing service was built using HTML5, which allows for the fast and seamless user experience. Zipcast is also very social and is integrated with both Facebook and Twitter. In addition, it includes video as an essential feature.

At this point, SlideShare offers a free version of Zipcast, just as it does with its presentation service. It also has a premium model for $19 per month that includes additional perks.

“We think that there is a space here for the simple, social online meeting system that we’ve introduced and that the market is more than ready for it,” said Sinha.

In the meantime, Wajam is a startup that hopes to fill the social search void for users. As Martin-Luc Archambault explained to WebProNews, Wajam is a browser extension that allows users to receive social results from Facebook, Twitter, Delicious, and more, while they are searching in Google, Bing, Yahoo, and even other places.

“Wajam gives you access to your friends’ knowledge everywhere that you search,” he said.

Archambault went on to say that Wajam extends the social search experience beyond even traditional search engines. For instance, the extension is also compatible with search engines such as Amazon. Wajam told us that it hopes to integrate with other nontraditional search engines as well.

Google currently has a partnership with Twitter to include Twitter information in its search results. Bing, on the other hand, has a partnership with Facebook, which was recently expanded, that incorporates Facebook results into its SERPs. If a user wants Facebook results in his search experience and is a Google user, Archambault believes that he shouldn’t have to switch to Bing in order to get the Facebook integration. He believes this same principle applies to Bing as well.

“I think really to nail social search, or to give users a good experience, you really have to tell the users, ‘Don’t change the way you do things…’ we let the user keep on doing what they’re doing and share the way they’re doing and search the way they like to search,” he said.

One of the biggest challenges for Wajam is the ability to process all the data and show it in a relevant way. However, Archambault said that the company tries to view challenges as opportunities to improve their service.

Wajam is also pursuing mobile efforts and hopes to have both iPhone and Android apps soon. Archambault did point out that Wajam works on Firefox 4 for Android and is just as seamless as it would be on a browser on a desktop.

Although Wajam is currently oversubscribed, Archambault said if users request an invitation by liking them on Facebook or by following them on Twitter, they would likely get in.

For this shift, Raven has built a tool called Link Manager that helps users manage these relationships. It has a multi-user interface that tracks who was contacted, the status of the relationship, how many links are being built, and if the links are staying.

Another helpful tool from Raven is its CustomRank tool. This tool allows users to customize their own points of value on a site. For example, one company might place a lot of value on a site’s Alexa ranking, while another company might place their value on a more technical factor. Users can choose which factors they want to monitor and then let the reporting engine do its job.

Henshaw pointed out that this tool puts the power into their customer’s hands, which allows them to better communicate with their clients.

“It’s not about us telling somebody how to do their job; it’s about us giving them the tools to be more efficient and do it the way they think is right,” he said.

He went on to say that Raven was working on several other useful tools that would be released in 2011. To learn more about their tools and the plans they provide, visit their site.

The tool provides a quick and efficient way to learn about what is going on with a website. As Kronis explains, it allows users to type their url and as many competitors’ urls that they want, in order to compare data. Results include backlink information, Page Rank details, and even clickable items such as robots.txt files.

These results can then be exported as a PDF. Although the tool is similar to other SEO tools, Kronis said it is very “non-intrusive.”

The tool is free and always will be, according to Kronis. He also said that it would be available with the newest version of Chrome. To test SEOAudit, visit their site.

On the topic of social media, Kronis brought up an interesting point about how the original focus of it has gone away.

“People need to stop thinking about all the techniques and start being real again,” he said.

He goes on to say that social media involves both giving and taking and shouldn’t be merely about pushing promotions.

One way that Twitter has attempted to do this is by allowing people and companies to sponsor a trend. When companies take part in this initiative, they are associating themselves with the most popular and most frequented topics on the site.

In another attempt to make money, Twitter has also given companies the opportunity to pay to become a suggested user. In addition, Winfield believes Twitter will eventually release a “TwitterSense,” which would be its own version of Google AdSense.

Although companies should try to keep up with these new components, there is a danger of taking on more than they can handle.

“One of the ways that we see people fail the most is when they are trying to do too much at once,” said Winfield.

He further pointed out that, instead of always following the “shiny, new object,” companies need to embrace the tools and platforms that tie back to their overall goals.

Winfield also explained BlueGlass and how it was formed to WebProNews. The company is actually a conglomerate of 4 companies that came together for a common cause. These companies included 10e20, Search & Social, Brent Csutoras Inc., and Second Step Search. BlueGlass also acquired recognized SEO company 3 Dog Media, which made Greg Boser its Director of Product Development.

With all these companies now working on the same team, it creates one company that offers services, tools, and platforms. One of the first products of this joint effort is a content solution called CopyPress. Winfield said users could expect WordPress and Drupal plugins for this solution in the near future.

In other words, while the tools are helpful, marketers should not rely on them alone. A successful PPC campaign actually requires a lot of work on top of the tools. For example, tools such as Kenshoo allow marketers to measure how much they are spending and whether or not they are making money based upon their bids.

According to Enge, the tools will return a figure very close to the ROI that you requested, but several other factors will be inaccurate. To avoid this, he suggests using human input. One way to do this is through negative keywords. He said that, although it seems obvious, a lot of people neglect to do it. Negative keywords allow for marketers to see which queries are generating clicks and much more. Enge recommends Epiar’s negative keyword tool for anyone needing the service.

Another area that marketers often leave out is ad optimization. It is extremely important for marketers to test before they push out an ad. He referenced a case study in which one company had a 473 percent gain on an ad campaign simply because it tested. They were able to come up with this aggregate number by taking the click-through-rate and multiplying it by the conversion rate.

With an enterprise PPC campaign, there is a lot of money to be made, if it is done right; but there is also a lot of money to be lost, if it is done wrong. Enge also advises marketers to utilize the adCenter from the joint efforts of Yahoo and Microsoft.

“If people weren’t playing in that territory before, they absolutely should be now,” he said.

She goes on to say that marketers also need to utilize the recently combined Yahoo and Microsoft adCenter. Operating as one, “Binghoo,” as Churchill calls it, has approximately 30 percent of the paid search market share. Although Google AdWords is established and has great tools, there is still value in “Binghoo.”

“Keep advertising on Google, but don’t give up on adCenter. I think that it will prove in the long-term to be a beneficial thing because it gives us another opportunity to get in front of potential customers,” she said.

For those marketers who still need to embrace adCenter, Churchill offers an easy tip. She suggests that marketers download their Google accounts into the AdWords Editor tool, which is free. Marketers can then export the information into an Excel spreadsheet. Although marketers will need to do some tweaking especially regarding negative keywords and geo-targeting, this step saves a lot of time when beginning an adCenter campaign.

In this interview with WebProNews, Churchill also discusses several basic, older tools that are still relevant today. For instance, Xenu’s Link Sleuth is still very effective for checking links.

In addition, she talks about recent changes to Google’s keyword tool. The search engine changed the data source from Google.com and its partner sites to just Google.com. Google is also looking at commercial words as opposed to informational words. Churchill personally believes this was a bad move on Google’s part since 80 percent of searches on the Web are informational.

“I think Google is doing a real disservice to users by doing that,” she adds.

What are your thoughts on adCenter and Google’s recent changes to its keyword tool?

As he explains information architecture to WebProNews, he said that many people tend to make it company-focused when it should actually be visitor-focused. Because it is such a passionate area, he also points out that companies should expect to fight about it.

“Information architecture is not new. It’s not new at all. It’s just that nobody’s ever bothered to do it right,” Ulle points out.

When it is done right, the keywords and content will start to flow and the overall website will become more effective.

Ulle also talks about HTML and, specifically, the advent of HTML5. He is very excited about it and believes that it will be very fast. HTML5 is also going to bring in many standards for coding. For instance, the World Wide Web Consortium, W3C, is going to issue a standard way to handle errors in code. Javascript and APIs will be standardized as well.

“The technology that allows you to connect with people in your marketplace should become invisible,” Ulle said.

He believes these standards will allow companies to better reach their audience.

Ulle goes on to talk about social media and how it actually dates back to the 1700′s. When newspapers were printed at that time, blank spaces and pages were inserted to allow people to write down their thoughts before they passed them on to someone else.

Although the techniques for social media are evolving, Ulle said the principle was and always will be the same. He also said that social media and SEO are directly related and that they both require engagement. In the future, it wouldn’t surprise him if the two were united and called something such as integrated media marketing (IMM).

Do you believe SEO and Social Media will eventually unify?