A modern day web presence is not just your website. To be successful you have to expand your digital footprint to include social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and YouTube. You need to enable your site visitors to Tweet, Like, +1 and share your content on the likes of StumbleUpon and Reddit.

To create a rich connected user experience, you need to do more than just link to social media. You need to integrate familiar social engagement directly into your website.

The web has gone crazy for social media widgets. What's not to love? Magic little boxes that connect our sites to the social power of the web in convenient little code snippets. They are all the rage with the hip, in-the-know online pundits.

It's been over a week since the 2011 Museums and the Web conference wrapped up and since then I've referred to Kristen Purcell's opening plenary several times. She presented research from several Pew Internet & American Life project reports on the societal impact of broadband, mobile, & social networking on Americans. Here are some interesting facts from her presentation:

• In 2000, only 46% of adults used the internet, by 2010, 74% use the Internet.

This week Gilbert Gottfried was fired by Aflac for a series of distasteful jokes that he posted to his Twitter account. Gilbert served as the voice for the famous Aflac duck for over ten years, an incredibly lucrative and high-profile gig in the world of voice-overs, and in the span of 48 hours, this social media blunder derailed his entire career.

If you're involved in the ever-changing world of SEO, content sharing, and engagement, you've probably read tips for better web copy a hundred times. I hope you've also compiled a list of your favorite techniques to use when writing copy for a website, especially if you're always writing for the same one. Consistency is a wonderful thing.

I have, below, my personal checklist for writing exceptional web copy. This list is what makes my writing so impeccable, so intriguing, so...brag-worthy. Well, maybe not all that, but these tips DO help me organize my copy into something worth reading.

One of the best ways to take advantage of social media is to use it for increasing your brand awareness. Companies have found many creative ways to use social media and increase their reputation through leveraging the following five tools:

1. Facebook
   

Recently, LinkedIn introduced their new share button. Like Facebook and Twitter, the LinkedIn button allows users to share relevant information with their online network. The share button utilizes just a few lines of code, and enables users to add this sharing functionality to their personal or corporate websites.

The developers here at LevelTen took that one step further for Drupal users and created the LinkedIn Share Button for Drupal sites.

Want to increase site traffic and page views? Try adding Social Sharing and Bookmarking Widgets to your website. These widgets let visitors share your content with their friends through email, recommend it on Facebook, tweet it with Twitter, bookmark it on Del.icio.us and much more. It's a fast and easy way to tap into the ever growing Social Media Network and use it to your advantage.

Why use Social Sharing and Bookmarking Widgets?

I mean hot mess in a bad way, just so you know. While Google Hotpot is a bit disheveled, it is not attractive.