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If you’re looking for great content to retweet, and you want others to retweet your own content, check out this list of “100 Retweet Targets for Web Professionals,” courtesy of Website Magazine.

They did a little research and chose the top 10 Twitterers in 10 web-related categories, including PR.

“This list is in no way scientific and it is not all based on the account’s number of Twitter followers,” the magazine says. “In some cases, the account’s willingness to retweet has been weighed along with total followers. We cannot guarantee that each account is an expert in the industry or that they will follow you back–some will, but some will not. However, even if they don’t follow you, consider an occasional “@” tweet to get their attention. Just make sure it’s a quality update that is relevant to their interests.”

You don’t have to be a recruiter to find a treasure trove of Twitter tips in the free White Paper “Twitter for Recruiters: How to Minimize Your Time & Maximize Your ROI,” from Arbita.

Twitter newbies will learn the basics like how to optimize their profiles, what to tweet and not tweet, how to quickly build a large network of relevant followers, and the guideline that for every nine tweets that offer helpful advice and tips, you can write one tip that promotes.  (See “How to Use Twitter to Amass an Army of Followers, Customers & Valuable Contacts—and Promote.”)

You’ll learn about tools like Tweetake.com, which helps you back up your followers, tweets and direct messages, and Twubs.com, where you can see if a community has emerged around a specific hashtag.

From author Glenn Gutmacher’s viewpoint, Twitter is a giant database of job candidates, and the White Paper’s real strength is its step-by-step directions that show recruiters (or anyone else) the many ways to search Twitter to find exactly what they’re looking for.:

Tweepz.com lets you search the biographical data on more than eight million profiles.  You can combine a keyword (CPA) and locaton (Atlanta) to search like this: bio:CPA loc: Atlanta.  Tweepz even lets you refine the results by following/followers count, date joined and other criteria.

The White Paper is based on Gutmacher’s webinar that attracted more than 1,000 recruiters.

Thanks to book marketing guru John Kremer’s excellent ezine, “Book Marketing Tips of the Week.”

He provides a list of where to find journalists who Twitter, and it’s important because many journalists use these sites to find experts to interview.  “Follow those journalists that you want to begin creating relationships with,” John says.

JournalistTweets.com allows you to track what journalists are writing about you, your book, or your subject.  Includes email alerts.  Also allows you to locate journalists on Twitter by subject interest.

JustTweetIt.com features 156 reporters and editors.

MediaonTwitter.com features more than a thousand journalists by name, Twitter ID, title/beat, media outlet and country.

At a small networking breakfast I attended recently, I met five people who were either job-hunting or were there to talk about their businesses.

They brought their resumes, engaging personalities, impressive marketing materials and succinct elevator pitches and shared them with our table of 10.

But all five were missing a critical marketing tool that could have landed them a job or set them apart from their competitors.

Not one of them had a blog.  For more than an hour, the conversation centered on how each of them can reach their target audiences.

By the end of the breakfast, I lost it.

“Everyone at this table should be blogging!” I yelled.  With nine pairs of eyes riveted on me, I explained:

–A blog establishes your credibility and expertise.

–It’s like a giant magnet that pulls in traffic.

–It can impress visitors and turn them into buyers.

–Many of your competitors are blogging.

–Unlike Twitter, you can use your blog to discuss topics in-depth.

–You can engage visitors and carry on a conversation with them in the comments section.

–A blog can give you a huge online presence, even if you can’t afford a website.

Social media is more than just collecting Facebook fans, sending tweets and joining the conversation.  It’s also about making all that hard work pay off.

Here are five great social media marketing ideas, courtesy of DP Dialogue, a social media marketing agency in Australia.  All of them are free.  Pick and choose which ones are best for you:

–Start a Twitter account and give people incentives to follow you.  Read their blog post to see how Domino’s Pizza did this at http://budurl.com/8flq

–Use Google’s keyword tool at https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal to find whatever keywords related to your business are being searched for the most.  Blog about them and make videos about them.

–Become an expert and start blogging or podcasting.  (Read the excellent Expertise Imperative White Paper that explains how to become an expert at http://www.PublicityHound.com/expertise.pdf It was written specifically for professional speakers from a wide variety of backgrounds.  Use it as a starting point to grow your own expertise.)

–Start a Facebook group that people will want to join and subtly sponsor it.  If you sell candles, start a Facebook group for people who are afraid of the dark.  (See “11 Ways to Avoid Missed Opportunities on Facebook” at http://budurl.com/wcxb

–Figure out who the key influencers are for whatever it is you’re selling.

You can find some of the best tips by reading comments at blogs.

For example, if you’re curious about how to use Twitter to publicize local events, you’ll find a slew of tips in the comments at http://budurl.com/uymm

They include:

–Use Twitter Grader at http://twitter.grader.com/  After entering your Twitter username and getting your grade, click on your city, state or country.  A list of local tweeters will appear.  If you find them of like mind, you could choose to follow them.  Then tweet about your event so they’ll see it.

–Download and install Tweetdeck, a browser that will let you organize your tweets and see everything all at once.  Then set up search columns based on your local area.  You’ll then “see” people talking about that area.  Chances are that if they are talking about it, they either live there, or visit regularly, so follow them.  Chances are also good they’ll follow you, too.

–Follow the premiere local tweeters in your area, including bars, hotels, clubs and local businesses whose target customers are the people you want to attract.  Retweet events and posts they tweet.  This will tell them you’re interested in promoting what they’re doing and, in turn, they may follow you and promote your event.

–Two good tools for finding Twitterers in your area are http://TwitterHawk.com and http://Twellowhood.com

Facebook users are still howling about recent changes to the homepage.  If you’re one of them, there’s a quick fix to change it back to the way it used to be.

A few months ago, with no warning, Facebook eliminated with the Twitter-like feed of every real-time status update.  Now, instead of displaying everything from all your friends, Facebook uses a secret algorithm to display only the posts and status updates that are generating a lot of comments and responses.  So you never know what you’re missing.

If you hate the change, here’s a three-step process to revert back to the old feed:

–Log into Facebook.  On your homepage, on the top of the left column, you’ll see “News Feed.” Go to the bottom of that column and click on “More.”

–Find the “Status Updates.” Click and drag it to the very top of that column.

–Click “Status Updates” to load that view.  Now, Facebook will deliver your feeds just like it did before.

The News Feed option is still on the left.  If you click on it, you’ll see the new view.  And if you decide later that reading your Facebook feed is like drinking from a fire hose, you can always revert back to the smaller feed.

So says Gary Vaynerchuk, aka Gary V, one of the hottest stars in
the social media world.  The thirtysomething son of Russian
immigrants hosts weekday podcasts about wine at
TV.WineLibrary.com.

His brash style and unpretentious approach to wine appreciation
have attracted an average 40,000 viewers to each podcast, more
than 85,000 followers on Twitter, and more than $60 million a
year in sales at the Wine Library, the New Jersey wine store he
co-owns with his father.

Here are 5 of Gary V’s 5 commandments for social media, as listed
in the Wall Street Journal:

–Treat it like a cocktail party.  Don’t pitch as soon as you meet
someone.

–Don’t draw lines in the sand and call sites like Twitter
“stupid” just because you don’t know how to use them.

–Humanize yourself and your brand with personal information, but
only 2 percent of the time.

–Understand the authenticity and the incredible power of social
media sites and the voices of consumers to make or break
companies.

–Interacting with potential clients and becoming part of the
community is a real job.  Listen before you talk.

Read the entire interview with him at http://budurl.com/lmru

If you aren’t using trade associations in your publicity campaign, you’re missing a valuable tool that can save you time and help you flex your promotional muscle.

Here’s how:

- -If you belong to a particular trade association, let their PR department know that you welcome calls from reporters. Often, if the media need sources in a particular industry and they don’t know who to call, they call the trade association and ask for names of members.

–Write an article or a letter to the editor for your own trade association newsletter, or for a newsletter that goes to an industry you want to penetrate. Link to your blog. Let people know where they can find you on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, or a business site for a particular niche.

- -Sending a direct mail piece? You can often buy lists of names from trade associations.

- -If you’re a speaker, and you want to be hired to speak before audiences in a particular industry, contact the editor of that association’s newsletter or trade magazine and start submitting articles.  Months later, when you call the meeting planner, you can refer to the articles you’ve written–proof that you’re not a novice to the industry. I’ve written many articles for the Society for Marketing Professional Services magazine and PR Tactics, published by the Public Relations Society of America. Both have led to numerous speaking engagements.

- -Writing an opinion column and looking for ammunition to support your position? If so, find out which trade associations support your cause. Trade groups are among the most ardent lobbyists.

- -If you need statistics to incorporate into your story pitches, or for letters to the editor or articles you’re writing, you can find them by calling trade associations or visiting their websites or blogs.

Google, the granddaddy of search engines, is measuring your
influence.

Let’s say you sell dog toys and somebody types “dog toys” into
the Google search box. Google will rank your site on the left
side of the screen according to several factors. One of the
biggest is whether your site includes those keywords in the title
bar, description, meta tags and copy on your website.

Another factor is how many other influential websites link to
yours.

It gives high ranking to videos, too. When Google bought YouTube
for $1.65 billion in October 2006, that was the company’s way of
screaming “We think videos are important.”

Same with Twitter.

If Google buys Twitter, chances are good that one of the factors
it will use to measure your influence is your Twitter presence,
how often you tweet and how often you join the conversation.

If your competitors are on Twitter but you’re not, what kind of
message do you think that will send to Google?

At Stompernet’s Internet marketing seminar in Atlanta earlier
this year,several speakers predicted that the search engines will
place a greater emphasis on your influence in the social networking
world.

Already, you can measure your influence on Twitter with a variety
of tools and applications. One of them is Twitalyzer at
http://twitalyzer.com/twitalyzer/index.asp

Type in your Twitter name, and it will grade your impact and
success in social media according to several factors: relative
influence, signal-to-noise ratio, generosity, velocity and clout.

Compare your score to the scores of your competitors.