This week's top conversational marketing stories:

5 Ways to Use Social Media and Your Online Presence to Drive People Offline  by John Jantsch  on Ducttapemarketing

This post by John Jantsch with more than 230 reactions looks into five ways to use social media and online presence to drive small business results offline. In the digital world we live in today, before actually going to a store, auto shop, hair salon, or restaurant, people are going to go online to do some kind of search on the company or product they are looking to invest in. Jantsch puts online calls to action at the top of his list of ways to increase awareness, he writes “When people do find and visit your site make it easy for them to use your website to get a free pass, coupon or trial product. Enable tools like click to call or chat from Olark, so they can get in touch right now and get their burning questions asked. Put a tool like GenBook on your site they can find a time and schedule appointment without needing to call. Make sure that you have turn by turn directions and links to maps so they can find your business and even send the directions to their smart phone.” He also speaks about running local ad campaigns using Google Adwords, networked networking, local social groups, online and on the go. These tips will surely assist in creating a name for your small business and drive profit to your company. Have you seen any small business grow with successful online marketing campaigns? If so, which ones?

Beyond Tools, Marketers Must Focus on Content Altimeter Report   by Jeremiah Owyang  on Webstrategist   

In this post by with more than 200 reactions, Jeremiah Owyang discusses the importance of focusing on content, not just the tools used to send out and create it. The author points out six trends from an Altimeter Report that seem to be most popular among marketing agencies and vendors. The top trend highlighted is the notion that video and image content seem to reign supreme, drawing in the most viewers and interaction among users. Some other trends spotted include, mobile and location-based marketing are the second most-cited area into which marketers want to expand content initiatives. Marketers must manage flow and develop the ability to respond in real-time in social channels. Creating intriguing content for your customers or followers is the biggest hurdle to leap over in the marketing realm. It won’t matter what social media outlet you are using to send out a message, if the content is not interesting to the readers, you simply will not get your message across effectively. What are some of your favorite companies to follow on Facebook or Twitter?

Facebook Stats: Five Years of Worldwide Growth on Marketingprofs 

This post on Marketingprofs with more than 160 reactions highlights some interesting facts about the social media giant Facebook over the past five years. From the post, “Across all regions worldwide, Facebook's penetration climbed dramatically over the past five years. Though US and European markets leveled off somewhat in 2011, other regions such as Latin America and the Middle East and Africa continued to attract large numbers of new users during the year, suggesting that although Facebook already reaches one-half of the Internet users worldwide, its audiences are still growing.” Facebook is not only reaching extremely impressive amounts of internet users, it is the most engaging social site. “In addition to attracting huge numbers of people, Facebook is also the most engaging social network among world audiences, according to separate research from comScore.” How much time do you spend on Facebook? Is it your “go to” social site?

Let's keep the conversation moving forward! Have you noticed any successful small business internet marketing campaigns? Is the content you’re reading engaging your attention ?