You're on top of your tweets everyday.  Your Facebook timeline is set up.  You've got videos galore on Youtube.  You're networking daily on Linkedin. And your team is publishing regular content on your blog.  Just when you thought you had social media figured out, along comes another social network called Pinterest.  What's all the buzz about anyway?  What is Pinterest and how is it going to help my brand?

Here is a quick tip for today. Ever wanted to share a link on Facebook but it didn't quite look right when you pasted it in? Did you know you can restyle the title and description of that link? It's easy to do, here's how.

As I tell many of our clients, your tweets aren't just seen by your followers! Unless you've 'protected your tweets,' your posts also go into what's called the "public timeline." It contains all the tweets that are being pumped out through Twitter by people like you.

I like to think of the public timeline is like a giant bowl of M&M's. If you want to eat only the blue M&M's, you can easily pick them out of the bowl.

Twitter Search does just that.It allows you to filter the public timeline and find people that share the things your interested in. Perhaps you are on a "vegitarian diet."

In addition, there are some-thousands of Twitter applications that also integrate the public timeline and search/filter capabilities. You can see how valuable it is that your tweets be included in those public spaces.

In the name of spam protection, Twitter has sophisticated methods to identify a spaming twitter account. If you've been flagged you tweets will not be seen in the public timeline (oh no!).

To check, search twitter with your twitter handle (@yournamehere)

Check Now!

If you saw your tweets appear in the search results your okay. If you didn't see your tweets, check to see when you tweeted last, if it's been a while try a test tweet and see if they show up. If they still aren't showing up, then you need to fill out a support ticket with Twitter. Here is the form to do that
http://help.twitter.com/requests/new

Hope this helps!

Ning is a social networking platform similar to Facebook and Myspace. It's grown to hundreds of thousands of micro-networks where people with specific causes or interests can get together and share blog posts, discussions, photos and videos. Facebook, Linkedin, and Twitter get most the chatter in the social networking, so it's often overlooked as a place to engage, but on Ning networks you'll find more engagement and more relationship building since the networks are usually pretty specific communities.

Ning networks are like Facebook Pages, on steroids.

Ning uses what's called a Ning ID, once you create your Ning ID, you are then able to join multiple networks on the platform, using only one login and password. Within the Ning, you'll find networks that range in a variety of different industries and area of interests. Search Ning to find a network that is in your industry, or area of interest, and see why Ning is growing so fast. As a business owner or marketer, you may find opportunities to advertise or interact with your specific target audience, or you may decided to centralize your community in a Ning network.

Here are a few examples of popular Ning Networks:

ImSaturn - u r 2
We Love Etsy

Check out the Ning Network Spotlight for more.

Join us January 28, 2010 at LinkShare Symposium West being held at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. Changing consumer behavior, social networking, mobile e-commerce, and other trends are making the job of every marketing manager more exciting yet more challenging than ever. How can you keep up with these trends? Year after year, LinkShare Symposium has been at the forefront of e-commerce trends by presenting you with insights and practical guidance that can be used today in your marketing plans.

Earthsite's founder Joey Shepp will be leading the Keynote Session: The Open Brand: How Twitter is Pushing Radical Transparency in Brand Management.

Social Networking including Twitter is pushing radical transparency in brand management for all types of companies. In this dynamic session you will hear about recent corporate case studies in Twitter use, learn about key strategies and best practices in using Social Media and how the Affiliate Marketing channel can play a key role in open brand strategies. Presented recently at the Twitter 140 conference, Joey Shepp's presentation on Open Brands received the most votes for "Favorite Presentation". Mr. Shepp is also the founder of several successful web companies including Earthsite.net, a strategic marketing and technology firm, and GreenMaven.com, the world's most comprehensive green search engine. TIME.COM recognized Green Maven in the top ten best new website of 2006. Google has also recognized GreenMaven.com as an exemplary custom search engine, featuring the site in its "Google's Picks" section.

Flickr/ CC BY-SA 2.0

Have you visited Pepsi's new micro-site for their Pepsi Refresh Project? Back in late December, Pepsi announced they would not be advertising during the Super Bowl this year. Instead, they would take the $20 million, normally spent on advertising during the Super Bowl, and invest it towards social media in the form of their Refresh Project campaign.

The Refresh Project is a community investment campaign for people and organizations to submit ideas on how they would make a positive impact in their community. Each month up to 1,000 ideas are submitted into six categories (health, arts & culture, food and shelter, the planet, neighborhoods, and education). Up to 32 Pepsi Refresh Grants are awarded based on a public voting system, and grants can vary in size from $5k, $25k, $50k, and $250k.

Sound familiar?

You may remember Change.org hosting a similar campaign in 2008, during the presidential race. Now Change.org has evolved into a fantastic model for social voting and collaboration (see also: digg).

Bravo Pepsi, Bravo

The potential outcome for this campaign is enormous! On the surface, they are supporting on-the-ground social entrepreneurs, leading amazing projects around a variety of different issues, with unmeasurable ripple effects. Below the surface, they are leading the way large brands interact with civilization, beyond their products or services and are becoming something more.

I'd be amiss if I didn't recognize that Pepsi, a soda, is less then stellar for human health and contributes to vast amounts of pollution and waste throughout its life cycle. Pepsi, a subsidiary of Pepsico, at least recognizes this and makes it pretty clear what they are doing to mitigate the damage they are causing and address top line issues (learn more on PepsiCo).