Web Usability, Software User Experience, and Social Media: by Michel Ann Sharritt, VP of Situated Research

Topics include: Finding people on social networks that are discussing your industry; Building rapport with individuals on social networks; Growth strategies for managing an online group, helping your company become a social enterprise; Using online meetings, webinars, events, and local meetups to expand online group membership; How today's customers are talking about your business on sites like Facebook and Twitter, and reinventing sales and marketing in the process; Creating thought leadership with a business blog, and using it to share high-value content; Scientifically proven best practices for maintaining discussions and getting others to 'share' your content.

Topics include: Top 10 strategies to become a 'go-to' resource on social networks; How to pick significant resources to share; Top 5 links for credible sources, with detailed examples; Best practices for maintaining discussions and getting others to 'share' your content; Using marketing analytics to test your campaigns and get the best results.

Topics include: Defining a social media lead; How social networks can help to generate leads; How to create a steady stream of leads on social networks; Starting and maintaining discussions; Best practices of successful Facebook pages, including how to get more people to share your content; Incorporating a Facebook welcome page; Using Facebook 'Insights' and marketing analytics to test your campaigns and get the best results.

Topics include: How usability affects social media marketing effectiveness; How social media button placement affects their performance; How the quantity of social media buttons affect their usage; Strategies for an effective social media marketing plan, specific to your industry / company; Measurement of your company's website marketing effectiveness.

Topics include: Finding a balance between overwhelming and underwhelming designs; The relative importance of search and navigation – and how to improve both so people can find information on your site; How to describe products and services so that your customers understand them; Costs of a bad design; Usability guidelines and when to bend the rules; How to create a pleasant user experience and Internet presence that makes people want to do business with you; Where to spend your money to achieve maximum improvement in user experience metrics.

Topics include: Redirection, the ways to ensure your users and search engines don't get lost in the shuffle; Sitemaps, an easy tool you can create to help search engines crawl your site more effectively; Search Engine Accessibility, how you facilitate your users' interactions and communications online; Multimedia; Descriptions and Annotations; Site Security and Protection; and guarding your site against spammers.

Topics include: Redefine the "R" in social media ROI; Measure the tone of blog posts, video views, search results and comments; Analyze the impact of your efforts; Translate social media conversations to sales; Translate your social media efforts into numbers.

Topics include: SEO basics, Keyword research, On page SEO, Off page SEO, How to measure results.

Topics include: Designing landing pages that convert visitors to sales; Raise your search ranking on Google, for free; Generating inbound links to your website for increased traffic; Raising your 'organic' search ranking via social media campaigns and advertising using Google AdWords; Categories of SEO examined by Google to determine your page rank; how to improve your SEO.