If there’s one thing I hear most often about social media, it’s that it can get overwhelming fast. (Here are a few tips if this is you.) Whether it’s a blog, Facebook, Twitter, or a Ning site, there are many, many ways to connect with friends, colleagues and prospects, and there are even more tools that try to help you get the most out of all of those sites. Through an ongoing series of posts, I want to go through some of these tools and highlight the ways I think you can use them specifically to help your business.

I’m going to cheat a bit on this first one, because I’ve selected an app that I had a small hand in creating, called TurnSocial. TurnSocial is a social layer that you can add to any website — in fact, you can see it in action at the bottom of this page.

To understand the tool, I think it’s important to know what problem we’re trying to solve. We saw that lots of people and businesses were creating profiles and connecting with people on multiple social networks. These sites make great ‘outposts’ where brands can connect with their audiences. But once you get a lot of these outposts going, it can be a major task just to let people know where and how they can connect with you. So we saw sites like Friendfeed, Chi.mp and a number of others, that helped us aggregate this content on their sites. One more site, one more profile to manage. Ugh, right?

But let’s say you’re doing a nice job of driving traffic to your website. Maybe it’s your blog, maybe it’s PPC ads, maybe it was that great deal in your last e-newsletter. How do you let people know about all that time you’ve spent making connections and building relationships across all of those social media sites? You could use an online profile widget like Retaggr, or you could add rows and rows of social media icons in the sidebar. How many times have you seen this before?

Except every one of those icons takes the visitor away from your site. It takes a lot to keep someone engaged on your website … you shouldn’t lose them just because they want to click on some icon they’ve never seen before! Twitter badges and a Facebook fan box provide more information, but each only pulls content from one site, and it’s not long before you have a sidebar full of widgets that may or may not be relevant to your audience.

THIS is why we created TurnSocial — it’s intended to keep your socially engaged visitors on your site. You’re already creating content on your website, on Facebook, on Twitter, on Flickr, on YouTube, in lots of places across the web. You don’t need another site to manage. You need a better way to show a more complete snapshot of your online presence to your reader. Provide context. Show some personality.

TurnSocial brings all that social content back to your site. And if you’re in real estate or if you’re interested in highlighting local content on your site, we threw in some bonus features for you. Add your location, and TurnSocial can pull local content from Yelp, WalkScore and RentWiki, as well as posts from local bloggers on Outside.in. There’s are a bunch of other cool features for brand marketers that we hope to announce soon, so stay tuned. In the meantime, play around with the bar on this page and let me know what you think.

You can sign up for your free TurnSocial bar here. Would you use this on your site? What other apps would you want to see included in the bar? What are some other ways you are featuring your social content on your website? What other social media tools would you like to learn more about?

Yesterday, I had a quick conversation on Twitter with Jonathan Saar from the Training Factor. He mentioned how happy he was that his site now appears on page one of Google search results for the term “multifamily training.” That’s pretty exciting, because that’s the exact business that the Training Factor is in. I’m sure it’s driving a fair number of leads for them.

Visibility matters. It’s critical that readers can find your site through search engines, but it’s just as important that you know which terms those readers are using to find you. So it’s good not only to keep an eye on the keywords that you think are important, but also other terms that are similar to the ones you think of first.

Google has a TON of great resources to help you learn more about keywords, including Google Trends, Google Insights, Google Analytics, related searches and Conversion University. One of my favorite new(er) tools is something Google calls the Wonder Wheel … it’s sort of like a mind map for related keywords.

Here’s how it works:
First, try your original search. In Jonathan’s case, here’s what his initial search would look like:

(Kudos to my #AptChat co-host Lisa Trosien for owning the #1 result! Also note that Training Factor’s YouTube videos show up in the top results, even above their own website — a great example why you should be using multimedia to increase your visibility online.)

Now, let’s see what Google thinks are some related terms. Just click “Show Options,” then click “Wonder Wheel” in the sidebar that appears on the left. Here’s what you get:

You can see that some related terms include “conservation programs,” “nwp services corporation,” “utility management” and “operational efficiencies.” If you’re writing about multifamily training, these might be a few good terms to include on your website or in blog posts (assuming that they’re relevant to your topic).

Don’t forget to try synonyms for your original search, too. Instead of “multifamily training,” Jonathan might want to try “apartment training.” A quick spin on the Wonder Wheel shows that related terms include “apartment leasing training,” “apartment maintenance training,” “apartment classes” and more. (Litter box training? Who knew?) Keep digging, and watch the Wonder Wheel expand quickly to discover new subjects. Here’s an example:

As you can see, you can use Wonder Wheel to easily find terms that are related to your original search. If you’re blogging or maintaining a website, this can be an excellent way to discover popular terms and brainstorm new topics for future blog posts. So take the Wonder Wheel for a spin. You might be surprised at what you find.

Have you tried Wonder Wheel? Has it helped you? What other tools are you using for keyword analysis?

Do you have a self-hosted blog or website running on WordPress? If so, make sure it’s updated to the current version (2.8.4). (You should see the version that you’re currently running when you login to the Dashboard.)

There is an ongoing attack on sites running older versions of the software, so it’s important to upgrade to avoid the issue. (Blogs hosted on WordPress.com are not affected.)

The following warning comes from Lorelle on WordPress:

There are two clues that your WordPress site has been attacked.

• There are strange additions to the pretty permalinks, such as: example.com/category/post-title/%&(%7B$%7Beval(base64_decode($_SERVER%5BHTTP_REFERER%5D))… Look for keywords like “eval” and “base64_decode.”
• A “hidden” Administrator has been created (which you probably won’t be able to access). Check your site users for “Administrator (2)” or a name you do not recognize.

Any sites not running the current edition are STRONGLY encouraged to upgrade to the latest version WordPress. From what we’ve seen, this attack goes deep into your site and its associated database. WordPress remains an outstanding content management system that we use for many blogs and websites, and it has a strong community that is available to help. Lorelle’s post offers a number of resources to help you get the answers you need.

If you have questions about upgrading your site, please contact us … we’ll be happy to review your setup, no charge.

(All 30 Lines clients running WordPress should already be running 2.8.4. As always, please contact us anytime if you have any questions about your site.)

Doterati held its first event — the Social Media Breakfast — yesterday, and it was great to see everyone who came out.

Rob Williams from OrangeJack gave a great intro to all the various social media tools available, I said some things about the basics of blogging and the business case behind it, and Mark Krupinski from Rasmussen College cleaned up with an outstanding overview of online brand management tools and best practices. We wrapped up with a lively Q&A with the many incredibly smart people who attended the event.

Here’s everything about blogging that I could cram into 20 minutes:

For more from the event, check out Gregg Pollack’s video at GreggSoup.com. And if you’re in central Florida, or the next time you’re visiting, check out the good folks at Doterati… They’re building a first-class professional organization over there.

“Should we have a property blog?”

I get that question a lot. In a future post, I think I’ll have to go through some of the reasons why the answer is absolutely YES.

If you have a property blog, or if you’ve thought about writing one, but don’t think you have enough ideas to write about, here are 30 ideas to get you started:

1. How to get the most from our property management team.
2. Recommend an improvement to our community.
3. What kinds of community events would interest you most?
4. Exciting updates or changes coming in future months.
5. How to decorate a small space. (Reference products from IKEA or a post from Apartment Therapy.)
6. Upcoming events, coupons and offers for the next two weeks.
7. A little bit about us.
8. Best kept secrets in our neighborhood.
9. Best place to get a beer, find home accessories, watch the fireworks
10. Photos from this month’s community meetup.
11. Video: A day in the life of our service technicians. (You could also post this on your Careers page.)
12. Our residents rock!
13. We support these causes, and here’s why.
14. Tips to lower your utility bills. (You could interview someone from the local utility company.)
15. Have you seen our community garden, dog park, fitness room, whatever.
16. How we handle your disputes or complaints.
17. Anything that builds on a recent piece in your resident newsletter. (Use this both ways — promote recent blog posts in your newsletter.)
18. How to handle a difficult neighbor.
19. Can you recommend a better process for this?
20. We’re sorry, and here’s how we’ll handle things next time.
21. Report from our resident community review board.
22. We hate to see you go, but if you have to leave, here are some tips when preparing for move-out. (Too much?)
23. Friend us on Facebook (or Myspace, or Twitter, or Pandora, or… You get the point.)
24. Interview a local politician with a Flip Video, or let a community leader write a guest post.
25. Why we like something about a competitor’s community better, and how we’ll catch up.
26. Local business profile — Get to know the corner (insert business here).
27. Our favorite local websites or blogs.
28. Resident guest posts: How you think we could improve.
29. We asked for your favorite recipes. The responses were delicious!
30. A quick tour of the resident web portal. (No portal yet? Try one of these options.)

You tell me … Which ones would you write about? Which ones go too far? Can you see how customers might react to reading these? I wrote almost every one of these with the resident or prospective renter as the intended audience. Is there any other audience for which a property blog should be written? How would these ideas change if your intended reader belonged to a different group?

Do you have other topics that have worked well for you? Do you have an example of a great property blog? Show off by posting your blog’s address in the comments!

Then take two minutes to read through this presentation by Marta Kagan.

Read every slide. If you’ve already seen it, then read it again:

I think there’s more to the story for apartment companies (that’s why we’re here!), and I don’t agree with everything she says, but for the most part, I love it. I use a lot of the same data everyday in my work here at 30 Lines.

What are you doing to get your name out there and engage residents and potential customers? Wait, before you answer that question … go back and read those slides one more time. (And check out Marta’s blog — she writes lots of other good stuff, too.)

Now get started!