The team can evaluate your existing blog, create a custom design, help you migrate from Wordpress hosted services or just set up your blog and show you how to use it. There’s no excuse anymore….Get blogging!

Surveys show that people are suing social networks to make buying decisions like their next video camera, tv or even car. Perhaps more important to the small business owner users are deciding where to go for coffee, find the nearest bookstore or dry cleaner using social media on their cell phones.

OK, all that’s good, but you’ve got a business to run right? You don’t have time to spend all day on Facebook or Twitter or to learn how all this stuff works. Doesn’t it take hours per day? How do you even begin to learn all this? Well, you could just ignore it and hope it goes away, or you could decide to add social media to your marketing strategy and learn how to use social media through the Social Media Coaching Center.

The coaching center brings together some amazingly talented social media practitioners who teach how all this really works in small easy to digest pieces. The site helps you decide which social media sites will work for you and build a social media strategy for your own business that really works. Want to learn Twitter? Visit the quick start pages to get the basics down and then dive into the Twitter category for more advanced information. The same goes if you want to learn how to use Facebook, learn LinkedIn, how to use video in your social media strategy and much much more in the social media tutorials. New content is added often and the team is always on top of the latest tools.

As if that isn’t enough you can ask any social media questions you like on the ask us page and the team will research and find the answers for you. In many cases they even build a step by step social media tutorial to show you how to do it!

So? What are you waiting for? Take this opportunity to learn about social media for skilled practioners at the Social Media Coaching Center.

Janet Fouts hand-picked some amazing social media coaches, consultants and practitioners to help you understand what social media is and how to use it for business without getting bogged down in the details.

The site is your one-stop shop to really learn about social media and online marketing and the content is top-notch. No matter whayt your learning style, you’ll find something here of interest.

In addition to the content on the site Janet will be doing weekly call in shows with social media and on-line marketing experts where you can ask any questions you have about social media, social media networks or social media coaching and get answers. She’s even offering to build tutorials or videos to demonstrate her answers!

The site is in response to the many questions that came up while Janet was writing her book, Social Media Success! which just came out this week. The book gives you the strategy to make your social media efforts successful and the website gives you the tools and techniques to use to implement it. All and all a perfect couple! So, what are you waiting for? Check out the Social Media Coaching Center while it’s still free!

Follow The Dining Room on twitter.

Check both sites out and get your green on!

Quoting from Infra20.com, a blog dedicated to understanding Infrastructure 2.0, “dynamic infrastructure and virtualization “If networks cannot keep up with the dynamic changes enabled by initiatives like virtualization, application availability and the business case for IT automation-based initiatives will suffer. “.

We’ve been working closely with the Infoblox team on some exciting new projects. Visit their blog to learn more, and check out the upcoming event on Jan 15, 2009, “Unleashing the Power of Dynamic Infrastructure” and find out how you can transform your static network into a dynamic one ready to respond quickly to more dynamic systems and endpoints.

Instead of gifts from friends and family this year I’m asking them to donate a dollar or two to bring fresh, clean water to a village that desperately needs it. We tend to take the abundance of clean water for granted, but in many small towns around the world they don’t have clean safe water.
I’ve just posted this page where you can learn more about the cause and donate a small amount and make a huge difference in someone’s life.

Please take a look at the site here and help me spread the word about this wonderful organization by sharing the link with your friends and family too. 100% of your donation will directly build freshwater wells and fund basic sanitation projects for people who would not otherwise have safe drinking water.

1.1 billion people on our planet lack access to safe, clean drinking water. That’s one in six of us. 80% of all disease on the planet is attributable to the lack of water and basic sanitation. I hope you can take a moment to help me spread the word and make a difference.
Happy holidays!

What can you expect from the site going forward? We’ll be linking to new projects and using this site to point you towards our newest work, favorite projects and events we want you to learn more about. If you’ve known us from the beginning, are new to finding our work and want to learn more, get in touch with Janet. (She still runs the whole shebang) at 415.990.3991 or email her at fouts  @ tatudigital.com.

As my personal passion has taken off to get people connected through social media tools it’s become a huge part of Tatu Digital Media’s business. So much so that I’ve decided to launch my own personal site at JanetFouts.com to keep the focus and not detract from all the web-work we do with Tatu Digital Media.

Tatu Digital Media is still the place to go for website development and even Wordpress design and modification, but my personal site will have the goods on my social media coaching practice.

So, what does a social media coach do?

Social Media Strategy Development- Develop a strategy for getting your message out with the greatest potential for social media engagement. I do this by looking at your existing content, branding and marketing goals and developing a plan that is a part of your overall marketing and communications strategy.

Community Outreach- Reach out to the social media community to build awareness of your message through communities and  bloggers and create relationships with the influencers in related social networks.

Content optimization – Optimize existing web pages and content including video, press releases, inter-actives and web content to maximize re-distribution and discussion.

Campaign Management- Managing your on-line campaign from social media outreach to search engine optimization and marketing  campaigns.

Monitoring and Reporting- managing these campaigns takes diligent monitoring to maintain the quality of information and effectiveness of ad campaigns. I use state of the art monitoring systems to manage your campaign and “listen” to how the message is being received.

What are the advantages for you?

Increased Revenue- The more eyeballs that see your message and the more often they see it, the more opportunity there is for them to hear you and get engaged.

People are listening- Focused interest and increased user engagement returns in user loyalty and higher traffic as well as increased revenue.

Amp up the brand- With the cacophony of ads and media on-line, your message needs to be delivered clearly, in multiple venues and often to get your brand to stick in user’s heads. Entering into the conversation can help users develop a knowledge of you and your business that will get your brand heard.

Quality traffic- There are lots of ways to increase traffic, but what you need is quality traffic. If you sell buzz saws and you get a lot of traffic for people looking for Buzz Lightyear, what value is that? We drive traffic based on who you are.

Competitive data- Most likely you are not alone in your message. I can show you how you rate against your competition, and help you keep track of their social media presence too. Find out what they are talking about and market changes at the speed of the web.

Heard enough? Contact me. Together we can build a strategy for how you want to engage–within your budget. Oh, and visit the new site to learn about all kinds of cool new tools for your web tool-kit.