We women, we already know that. Stephanie Holland, @sheconomy is not only brilliant, her blog should be must read for marketers. See below and you'll see what I mean.

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Male Marketers: When Women Talk, Other Women Listen. Posted on October 18, 2010 by sheconomy How important is word of mouth to your brand? If you are selling to women, it’s everything. According to Lauren Zalaznick, President of NBC Universal’s Women & Lifestyle Entertainment Networks, “Women talk about brands incessantly — about 92 times in the course of a week and research shows that 96% of women will recommend a product to a friend if she likes it.” But how does this translate to the bottom line? Studies conducted by The Keller Faye Group, word of mouth specialists, reveal that 62% of women felt what they heard from others was credible and believable, and 51% said they would purchase something based on a conversation. Guys, that is not just a whole lot of talk. To better understand the impact that this data has on brands when merged with online marketing efforts, Women at NBCU have recently unveiled a Brand Power Index. This comprehensive monthly report analyzes women’s word of mouth behavior for 500 companies based on three layers of information: 1)    online search data from ComScore 2)    social media buzz data from New Media Strategies 3)    person-to-person conversations tracked by the Keller Faye Group The first monthly report released in late September revealed the top 25 brands that are most important to women. A few of the interesting highlights reveal: Three of the seven product categories represented in the top 25 brands are traditionally thought of as male-dominated areas. • technology • automotive • finance Brands that leveraged social media for promotions were some of the biggest movers in their standings from July to August. For example, Gap, which moved from #44 to #17 Brands participating in “cause” initiatives were among the biggest gainers for the month of August. For example, Olive Garden with its “Pasta for Pennies” campaign moved from #145 to #92. Bottom line: When women talk, other women listen – and buy.       Top 25 Brands most important to Women in August 2010: 1. Wal-Mart 2. Target 3. Verizon 4. EBay 5. AT&T 6. Coca-Cola 7. Bank of America 8. Ford 9. Amazon.com 10. Pepsi 11. McDonalds 12. Sprint 13. Dell Computers 14. HP 15. Dish Network 16. Comcast 17. Gap 18. Toyota 19. Sears 20. Netflix 21. Kohl’s 22. iPhone 23. Microsoft 24. Wells Fargo 25. Home Depot Read more at she-conomy.com

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Sneak Peek: Social Media for Business Posted by Shelly Kramer on October 12, 2010 · View Comments  12Share I’m doing a webinar series with my smart and sassy friend, Erika Napoletano, Head Redhead at Redhead Writing. And yes, we are the geeky girls you might not have paid attention to in high school. But all that’s changed now. We’ve got the goods. And how. And we’re partnering with our friends at iThinkBigger and we aim to deliver to small business owners, Marketers and PR pros more tips, tools and information than they can shake a stick at. Never mind put to good use right away in their businesses or for their clients. If we could show you a way to get your brand to listen, hear, connect with your customers and build a group of people who will share your brand message for you – would you listen? There are no strings. No easy monthly payments of $29.99. No books to read or crap to wade through. No Ginsu knives and no spam in your inbox. Just relevant information, served up in an easy to understand format, with instantly implementable solutions for you and your business or clients. Just a single webinar that will let you know if you’re ready to work smarter instead of harder. Join us this Friday at 3pm EST/2pm CST/1pm MST/12 noon PST for a complimentary Sneak Peek Webinar on how your business can use social media effectively and with REAL results. In this no-fluff session, you’ll learn: * Resources you can use TODAY to improve your ROI on Twitter * How to identify influencers on Twitter and bring them into your circle * The importance of inbound marketing techniques to your business * Five simple, yet startling statistics that mean your current marketing techniques are most likely not working. In our world on Planet Geek, we call that a FAIL. It’s free – you have nothing to lose. We don’t waste anyone’s time by teaching sessions we wouldn’t attend ourselves. Register today. Interested in the entire Social Media for Business series? Click here to learn more about the sessions. Early bird pricing is in effect until 10/14, so get on it. Erika and I are pretty well known for being gals who don’t tolerate much BS and who tell it like it is. In this webinar series, we’ve done the work for you, and all you need to do is participate, get the information you need to fast track your social media efforts, and thank us when it works (and it will) by sending lots and lots of Red Velvet Cupcakes. Read more at www.v3im.com

This post was written by @brentnau - an SEO jedi who works with @berniepiekarski at SMT. They are awesome, and you should check them out at http://smtusa.com

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Survey Finds Social Media Impacts Search Engine Rankings Tuesday, September 28, 2010 A recent study, The Impact of Social Media on Search, by BtoB and Business.com took a look at how business-to-business (B2B) marketers are integrating social media with search engine marketing (SEM). The study polled 464 B2B marketers to see how they are using social media to improve their search engine rankings. Whether social media had an impact on their search engine performance? 44% stated it had a positive impact 28% stated neutral 27% stated they did not know 1% stated it had a negative impact One of the interesting things in the study is that 41% of the respondents were not currently measuring the impact from social media on their search engine rankings. Those that were, used such metrics as organic search engine rankings, number of inbound links, search volume for brand or keyword phrases, and search engine marketing conversion rates. The top metrics B2B marketers were using to measure the effectiveness of their social media campaign: Visits to their web site (54%) Number of Fans/Followers and “Likes” (48%) Number of company or product mentions (35%) Number of retweets (28%) It was also noted that 25% of B2B marketers were NOT measuring their social media campaigns. Establishing your metrics should always be included into your social media game plan before launching your campaign. To help set up your social media game plan, you should check out the informative infographic from B2Bento that provides a quickstart guide to social media for business. Read more at www.smtusa.com