If 2009 was the year many marketers puzzled over, poked at and pondered incorporating social media into their marketing mix, 2010 was the year of diving in. 500 companies now call social media “very&# or “somewhat&# important to their marketing or business strategy. Now that social media has advanced from the “should we do it?&# How does the traditional notion of a corporate website need to change to embrace social median norms and capabilities? How should you integrate social media with other marketing tactics like email? Social Media Tools. MORE >>

Recent surveys have shown that while businesses are embracing social media in droves, many are doing so without any real strategy in place. Without a strategy, there may be no clear ownership, or definition of success, or measurement, or integration with other marketing and PR efforts—all of which can lead eventually to wasted time and effort, abandoned blogs and Facebook pages, and even the erroneous conclusion that social media doesn’t work for us. Just as these questions are critical to solid journalism, so they can be invaluable to social media strategy development. MORE >>

Social Bookmarks 8. mix of social bookmarking and community, Blog Engage is similar to Digg and BizSugar with its voting system, but it focuses a lot on just bloggers and is a great starting point for ideas. Still viewed by many as the Blogger’s Bible, Technorati has more than 133 million blogs registered with them. Much like Alltop and Technorati, use the topic search to find your interests. Social Networks 19. LinkedIn Groups are perfect for finding blog content. Here they are. Blog Comments 1. Other Blogs 4. Blogrolls. MORE >>

Social Media: while social media adoption is rapidly increasing, these efforts aren’t always coordinated with SEO or appreciated in terms of search benefits. Links from social bookmarking sites can improve the rank of content-rich pages buried in your site’s navigational structure. The major search engines are increasing incorporating social signals into their search results. Share this on LinkedIn. Share this on Technorati. Most still focus on the same basic areas: • Keyword research. Links (external and internal). Digg this! MORE >>

Social media has fundamentally altered the practice of public relations. Of course, there’s more to (successful) blogger outreach than just pitching, and there’s more to the new practice of social PR than just blogger outreach. Read on to learn how social media is changing PR, how pitching bloggers is different from traditional media outreach, how to optimize press releases for search and online distribution, which tools should be in your social PR toolbox and more here in some of the best articles and blog posts on social PR of 2010 so far. MORE >>