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
   

YouTube and Vimeo are household terms today, just like Google and Facebook. YouTube is the second largest search engine on the Internet. If you and your business are not taking advantage, you should be.

How Do I Get Started?

When I hear the word YouTube two things come straight to mind: global connection and sneezing panda.

In the recent few months, Google has expressed its intent to further assist webmasters using the Google Webmasters tools. This provides for greater exposure to video presentations as well as the usual "insider" information on your web site's performance in Google's eyes. Yesterday, it was revealed on the Google Webmaster Central Blog that Google has created a YouTube channel with the intent:

The LevelTen Web site now has 720p HD video attachments for blogs and articles. This will be used for screencast tutorials and training.

This feature is reciped together using contemplate, embedded media field, lightbox2 and CCK modules.

The first commercial starring Bill Gates, Jerry Seinfeld and the $10 million endorsement from Microsoft came out yesterday.

Bloggers, mostly confused and troubled by Bill Gates and his butt shake, have already started bashing the commercial. I was lost when the onlookers asked, "Is that The Conquistador?" What? Also, why is everyone in the commercial eating a Churro? Is Microsoft moving to Mexico in order to offer discount prices on computers?

The New York Times blog, BITS broke the story last week that Google is now testing video ads in search results in order to offer even more diverse opportunities and media expansion for AdWords advertisers.

Can I just say that as the last person in a fully developed country that doesn't have cable OR high definition television, the internet is like a treasure trove for me? This morning I went on YouTube and caught the highlights of last nights South Carolina debates, checked out some blogs to get people's reactions and joined my candidate's support group on Facebook.

XSL, ASP, ISP, SQL, POP, PHP...... Don't they drive you crazy?! They do me. I constantly hear them thrown around the office in all kinds of situations. Here is another, API. What in the heck does this one mean? Well, API is one of the few I do know. API stands for Application Programming Interface. Wikipedia defines API as "a source code interface that an operating system or library provides to support requests for services to be made of it by computer programs." Wow! Isn't that a mouthful?

In November 2008, I will be casting my vote for President for the 5th time in my life. I have had some winners and some losers. I have even had one where my vote didn't even count. Some guy named Harry Browne or something like that. Now that I am older, I look back on those "hanging chads" and wonder if the vote I casted the right one. Of course, I can't answer that, because every time I poked a hole in the in the yellow piece paper, the "chad" I left hanging was an uninformed one. It was not because I didn't know anything about the candidates. It was because I only knew the propaganda.