Apparently, a lot. Tweeting forced a major drug manufacturer to deep-six a new marketing campaign. Seems as though thousands of irate new mothers, upset at what they felt was an unfair depiction in an ad for Motin, turned to Twitter to voice their displeasure. The outcry was so loud and so forceful that McNeil Consumer Healthcare, maker of Motrin, decided to pull the ad.

Now, you can argue about how offensive the ad was — as a 53-year old man, I thought it was kind of clever — but you can’t argue that Twitter was a powerful vehicle for social change.

It seems like a new social networking site, micro-blog, or aggregator pops up every day. Who has time to keep up with all of them? How do you know which ones work and which are a monumental waste of time? Can a business really afford to be everywhere? The editors at Inside CRM have done a lot of the leg work for you with their list of 50 social sites every business needs a presence on.

Loyal readers know I’m partial to everything Google, especially its search engine capabilities. But some people, especially writers, may be looking for a different experience in scouring the Web for information. At LearningXL, Laura Milligan has put together a list of 100 fun and useful search engines for writers.

On a related note, the folks at Education Portal have put together a list of 12 insightful blogs that every writer should be reading. Wait a minute…PR Prowess isn’t on the list?

Everyone is looking for an edge when it comes to Internet marketing. Ensuring your website is performing at peak efficiency is a crucial part of that overall strategy. Brayn Eisenberg has 33 tools that can make your website better.

At Write-to-Done, Leo Babauta has put together a list of 10 mistakes that could be kiling your blog. He does not pull any punches. No. 1 on his list: less than useful posts.

Of course, the downside is my inbox is immediately flooded with a steady stream of emails asking me to subscribe, buy, join or otherwise spend money for some product or service. A few examples, without naming the guilty parties:

• After downloading a free report on October 20, I have received 14 emails from one company, including two on one day and three on another.
• After downloading a report on Nov. 1, I’ve received seven emails from another company, including two in one day.
• In a third instance, I’ve received 80 emails from a company I downloaded something from on June 26.
• By coincidence, a client I work with showed my an increasingly aggressive, almost annoyed series of emails he received from a company begging him to sign up for a several hundred dollar coaching course.

So, my question is this: when it comes to autoresponding systems, how much is too much? Once a day? Twice a week? Three times a month?

At what point does the recipient become numb and stop paying attention? Or worse yet, unsubscribes? Now you’ve turned off a potential customer who, at one point at least, thought you had something valuable to offer?

What is the best kind of testimonial to generate new sales, to produce extra profits for your business? Is it best to have the President of the United States endorse your product? Or is it better to have a no-name from down the street say the same nice things?

Steve Martin, co-author of “Yes: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive,” says new research shows that while a testimonial from the President might be great at drawing attention and attracting new people to your business, it will be people most like the new customers you are trying to attract who turn that attention into real business and profits for you.

“We tend to follow the lead of others like ourselves,” says Martin, who appeared on the Nov. 9 episode of “Your Business” on MSNBC. “The most effective testimonial comes from someone similar to the new customer you are trying to attract.”

Martin says that while an endorsement from the President might be impressive — say you did a great plumbing job in the White House — if you’re looking to sell your plumbing services to a local builder, he’s going to want to see testimonials from other builders like himself. He might be impressed with the President’s testimonial, says Martin, but he won’t be motivated to move in your direction until he sees evidence that other local builders feel the same way.

Not a good idea. VMT got wind of the post, sued Richard for $5 million in lost revenue and $15 million more in punitive damages. Lawyers have been working out a settlement after Richard agreed to take down the blog post.

The lesson here is that blogs do not enjoy special protection when it comes to libel or defamation. As attorney Marc Zwillinger says in the story that appeared in the November issue of Inc.com, anything posted on a CEO’s blog — including reader comments — can be construed as carrying the weight of a company’s endorsement. That can put an entire business in jeopardy, he says.

Added Seth Godin: “Blogging is a cheap and scalable way to talk to interested people. But understand that while you advocate for your company, you are also walking a tightrope from a legal and business point of view.”

1. The world just witnessed one of the greatest sales job of all time. A relatively unknown, relatively inexperienced Senator from Chicago defeated a celebrated war hero with a 30-year track record public service and politics to become President of the United States. As if those odds weren’t long enough, Barack Obama also had to overcome the reluctance of a nation to elect an Africa American to the highest office. Yet, he accomplished both of those feats by a wide margin. At WebInkNow, Scott Merrmen offers 10 marketing lessons from the Barack Obama Presidential campaign, many of which can be easily transferred to your business.
2. Sometimes, writing a blog can feel like claping with one hand — difficult to make any noise. You come up with a great post idea, craft your words carefully, and sit back to wait for reaction and good conversation, only to be disappointed when your work is met with deafening silence. BlogKori suggests seven ways to get more comments on your blog post.
3. Speaking of blogging, getting visitors to leave comments is sort of of like icing on the cake. Getting them to even read your post is the first challenge. At SEOptimise, the oddly-titled “The Lazy Bloggers Guide to Quality Content & Social Media Success” offers 5 reasons why you should forget about writing the perfect piece of quality content.
4. As the previous Stumble showed, adding interesting photos to your blog post can increase interest. But where can you find photos? Google images is sometimes a good source, but often you are seeing copyrighted work that someone else is using. The folks at Digital Image Magazine have compiled a list of 25 free stock photo sites and a brief review of each one.
5. Keeping a journal seems so old-fashioned these days. I rmember my creative writing professor requiring us to keep a journal way back in the Stone Age (1974). It seemed like such a burden when I had much more important things to do. Writing at makeGenius.com, Ivan Rios makes a compelling argument for keeping a journal and offers several suggestions of the kinds of things your should keep in it. Come to think of it, I wish I had kept a journal all these years; it might help explain how I got to where I am.

There is a bit of good news: the survey shows the number of companies spending 10 percent or more of their total budget on marketing increased by 16 percent over last year. Nearly half of companies surveyed said they spend 10 percent or more of their budget on marketing and 81 percent said they spend 5 percent or more.

Other key results include:

• 51% of the respondents utilize both in-house resources and outsource to marketing firms, which is a 7% increase from last year;
• 41% of the respondents do not have formal marketing plans in place, down from 44 percent in 2007;
• companies are spending most of their marketing dollars on web development and web marketing.

The survey also includes data about how marketing budgets are spent, where sales leads come from, which tactics have the highest rate of return, and tools used by online marketers. Sagefrog Marketing Group conducted the survey online during the summer of 2008 and drew responses from 100 marketing professionals from health, technology and business service companies in the Greater Philadelphia and New Jersey region.

1. You spend a great amount of time thinking about how your website should function and you pay programmers of thousands of dollars to make it happen. You get plenty of traffic but not enough sales or subscribers. What’s the problem? Over at Conversion Rates Experts, there are 14 free tools that might help explain why people leave your website. Warning: these seem highly technical. Use at your own risk.
2. As loyal readers know, social media remains a fascination, if not an actual marketing tool, for me. I’ve seen various arguments for and against Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and sundry other sites. But the folks at Traffika offer a compelling argument on the overall importance of using social media marketing.
   
3. One of my all-time favorite authors is Kurt Vonnegut. I used to while away the boring hours working in a medical school mailroom back in the 70’s by reading his novels. I would have no idea what the hell he was talking about, yet I couldn’t stop reading. When I finally finished a book, I still wasn’t sure of the point, but I knew it was a damn good read. I never dreamed that 35 years later, I’d be sharing his tips about writing with style with the world via a blog.
4. I’m always looking for definitive answers to my writing questions. Spelling, grammar, meanings, quotes, historical references…there’s always something that comes up in the midst of a writing session. Internet-Resources.com has compiled an exhaustive library of resources for writers. Even if you’re not looking for a specific answer, this site can be a fun place to browse when you have a few minuters. I guarantee you’ll learn something you didn’t know.
5. If you listen to most “experts” there’s a fortune to be made by writing for online sources. I’m not sure it’s all that, and separating the legitimate sites from the scam artists can be a time-consuming, frustrating and expensive process. Sydney Hazlerton runs down nine legitimate writing sites that pay at Writinghood.
6. Bonus Stumble: for anyone who has trouble waking up in the morning.

In a truely inspirational presentation, Jim shared several strategies business owners can use to thrive — not only survive — these tough financial times:

1. Ignore Reality. Try to imagine what your business would like like five years from now if everything was running perfectly. Make that your goal. it is pretty much accepted in psychology that we attract what we focus on or, to put it another way, our minds move in the direction of our thoughts. Taking that a step further, it becomes apparent that for our lives to change, we must be focusing on not what is, but rather what we want; hence, ignore reality. We must start telling a different story about how our life is. So many people cling to their “story” about how their life is and why and then wonder why it’s not changing. It can’t! As long as you’re constantly reinforcing conditions as they are, they cannot change. Only when you are willing to let go of your “story” and start telling yourself a new one, will things on the outside begin to change.
2. Change Your Focus. Beginning immediately, stop talking about anything that is not working. Stop defending and justifying why you’re not doing better. Stop blaming the economy or whatever else you deem to be the cause of your troubles. If something is not working, continuing to talk about it will cause you to start seeing more things going wrong and continue the downward spiral. Ask only, “What’s working?” and continue asking every day. Make a list of what is working and have your team do the same, individually and as a group. Change the tone of your meetings. If you understand that you get more of whatever you focus upon, it’s obvious why you’ll want to do this.
3. Fire some customers. The rule of thumb is that 20 percent of your customers account for 80 percent of your revenue. Take a hard look at the 80 percent that are producing only 20 percent of your revenue and get rid of the ones that drain your enthusiam. They’re not worth the energy they require; by getting rid of them you’ll have more time to devote to the customers who generate your revenue.
4. Be creative. Find new products that meet the needs of your existing customers. Understand their problems and figure out how you can solve them. It’s much easier to sell to existing customers than it is to cultivate new ones. You can also find new markets for existing products. Arm and Hammer’s sales of baking soda, for example, were flat until someone realized it was also a good way to absorb odors in a refrigerator. Sales skrocketed. Now the company is offering a whole line of products based on baking soda. The essential product didn’t change; it’s use did.
5. Take advantage of technology. So many options exist for marketing products and services online but most small businesses do not take advantage of them. Facebook, MySpace and Twitter are just as few examples. If you can’t master the technology yourself, find someone on staff who can. Or outsource your technology needs to an expert who can maximize their use.

Anyway, it just so happens that this week’s Stumbling was jam-packed with sites that feature — you guessed it — list headlines. Let’s get counting, from the most to the fewest:

1. Writing at The Future Buzz, Adam Singer offers “65 Bite-Sized Web Marketing Tips.” The sheer number might seem intimidating, but Adam stays true to his word and keeps his suggestions to single sentences (for the most part), and short ones at that. Lots of useful links.
2. The folks at The Bootstrapping Blog came up with “50 Guerrilla Marketing Tactics You Should Be Using.” Some are a little off the wall — Temporary Tattoos? Sponsor the Homeless? — but most are brilliant. Great suggestions for businesses where cash is at a premium.
3. We all want to know what our competitors are up to, right? But short of breaking in at night or hacking their network, what can you do to get the real goods? FutureNow’s Bryan Eisenberg says there are several strategies, all perfectly legal, to spy on your competition. If you’re comfortable with some esoteric web tools, these look like they could be a lot of fun to play with.
4. Anyone who has read this blog knows I’m a big fan of Google and the awesome tools its provides. Gil’s Method offers “11 Obscure Google Tricks You Didn’t Know Existed.” You can track a UPS package on Google? I didn’t know that!
5. I still admit it: I don’t get Twitter. I’ve looked at it from every direction and just fail to see its usefulness as a marketing tool. But that doesn’t mean other people aren’t taking advantage. Jeff Woelker has come up with “7 Habits of Successful Twitterers.” My mind remains open…