For years, advocates of social media marketing have been telling anyone who would listen that peer-to-peer networks are an incredibly most effective, efficient way of marketing a product, service, employment opportunity, anything because consumers simply trust their peers more than they trust marketers, news outlets, government officials, or industry analysts. However, Edelman just released its annual Trust Barometer and the percentage of people who view their peers as credible sources of information plummeted. In 2008, the percentage who trusted the opinions of their peers was 45 percent. Today, it is only 25 percent.

Increasing investment in social media, mobile marketing, email marketing and search will fuel a 17 percent surge in digital marketing spending this year, as marketers migrate budgets from television, print and radio. Featured in Marketing Budgets 2010: Effectiveness, Measurement and Allocation, new joint research conducted by Econsultancy and global digital marketing provider ExactTarget, the survey of more than 1,000 marketers found two out of three increasing their digital marketing budget in 2010, earning digital channels nearly a quarter of marketers' total budgets.

I believe that some employers for some positions such as information technology jobs feel that skills are more important while other employers for other positions such as sales jobs believe that behavioral traits are more important. For more details, watch the video below:

1. Communication Skills
   
2. Analytical Skills
   
3. Teamwork Skills
   
4. Technical Skills
   
5. Strong Work Ethic
   

According to The Conference Board Help Wanted OnLine™ (HWOL) Data Series, the number of on-line job postings increased 382,000 to 4,024,000 in January 2010. This is the third straight month of increases with December 2009 being up 255,000 and November 2009 being up 107,000 for a total increase of some 750,000 over the three-month period. Furthermore, the increases have been widespread across the nation so not confined to certain geographic areas and they're consistent with the recent strength in the gross domestic product (GDP) numbers for the 4th quarter.

As a lifelong entrepreneur born into a family full of entrepreneurs, the idea of starting CollegeRecruiter.com wasn't scary and I knew where to turn to for help with just about any issue. But the reality is that very few families are blessed with successful entrepreneurs and if your family is like that, then understanding how to start a business and how to run that business must seem overwhelming. Fortunately, SBI! Learning has the tools you need. They'll walk you through why e-businesses (businesses which are located on-line like a blog or other web site) are good ideas for many people, how to get the training and other help you'll need to get started, how to launch the business, and how to run it.

For those who want more information, watch the video below. It is slightly less than 10 minutes and does a great job of walking you through why an e-business is a great idea for those who are struggling to find work or just fed up with relying on employers or the government for their livelihood. Once you've watched the video, head over to the SBI! Learning site for more information or contact information so you can request information on-line, by email, or even through a toll free call with one of their career advisors.

SBI! eLearning is a 12-week online education course that takes you, step-by-step through the process of building your very own successful, thriving Web business with Site Build It! (SBI!).

Because of our cooperative / competitive relationship and because I just think that SimplyHired does a lot of things very well, I read their blog and keep an eye out for their innovations. And today there was a doozy. SimplyHired today laid out how it is now encouraging candidates to share the job postings running on its site with their friends and, more importantly, with those who may be in a position to help them get hired. Brilliant.

Will employees see their pay restored in 2010? At least 22 percent of organizations that froze pay in 2009 are planning to prolong the freeze into 2010, while 54 percent plan to resume normal pay activities this year. More than a third said they were in a recession when the survey was taken in October and were not in a position to unfreeze pay.

Twitter has followers but the nature of the service is that only those with very, very few followers can even hope to read everything that you've written. So it is much more akin to radio than it is a newspaper in that what you write is broadcast and essentially gone forever immediately. As a result, you want to write interest tweets often, include links to your site and others, and then wait for the magic to happen. The magic comes when your followers see your tweets, like them, and share them with their friends. That attracts more followers and more re-tweets. And the more re-tweets you get, the more clicks from Twitter and more SEO love you get.

Twitter has grown from virtually nothing as far as a source of traffic for us to one of our top sources of traffic. Two of my blog articles this week alone generated some 250 new links to our site and the Googles of the world love links. So forget about having a conversation. Those with the most followers don't even try because the understand that Twitter is a much better vehicle for speaking than listening. I trust that my 23,000+ followers agree.

One answer to this dilemma is to include links to your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, blogs, and other social media sites in every email that you send out so that the people with whom you're already working with will regularly be reminded where and how they can find your tweets, updates, blog articles, etc. But short of including some nasty, "read my blog" and then linking to your main page, how do you remind them in a way that will entice them to click to read your content yet also not steal the thunder from the body of your email? The solution that I use is WiseStamp.