These days, it might seem like a luxury to get everyone in your company in the same room.

With a service called Yammer, getting all your departments, offices, telecommuters, and contractors on the same page just got a lot easier.

Yammer is part social network, part microblogging service, part Twitter – repackaged and re-imagined for the business class. At its core, Yammer is designed to help employees share status updates; naturally, the “what are you working on?” feature, the equivalent of a Facebook status or Twitter tweet, is a key ingredient. From your Yammer homepage, you can see what all the employees in your network are working on and follow conversations and updates on individual topics in your personal feed. You can ask co-workers questions, share links and files, or track the progress of a project. Yammer archives all your company activity and topic tagging makes conversations easily searchable – a handy tool if a new employee needs to get up to speed on an active project.

Creating a Yammer account is free and easy; the service identifies workers by their email address and routes them to a private corporate network (i.e. only @feedgrowth.com addresses can join my Yammer network). Administrative tools like member and content management, as well as custom appearances (colors and logos) are available for $1/month per admin member, with bulk pricing available for larger networks.

While we’ve all witnessed a web-based publishing revolution, one thing hasn’t changed. It’s still a pain to insert links and content in blogs, web-based emails, and web pages. Even if there are trillions of them.

That is, it used to be. Now there’s Lizzer. It’s a service that makes it easy for anyone to insert links, images, and YouTube videos wherever you need them. Here’s how it works: Just enter a term in the Lizzer search bar, identify the content that you want to link or embed, then click on the link or insert button to make it happen. You’ll be hard pressed to find anything that’s faster at putting in those links to Wikipedia for definitions or even just adding a simple link to a company or your friend’s blog.

You can play with the Lizzer demo site at Lizzer.com, but the really powerful application is the bookmarklet. Once you’ve dragged the bookmarklet link to your bookmarks bar, you can then use Lizzer wherever you are on the web. In other words, say you’re typing up a blog post in WordPress. All you have to do is click on the Lizzer bookmarklet and there you have your little instant linking and content embedding tool. Even better, you can just add your flickr account name or YouTube account and then be able to easily insert or link your own images or videos. If you’ve been looking for a way to add your images to your emails without having to jump back and forth, here is the tool for you.

While Lizzer works best with WordPress blogs, Gmail, Google Docs, or even new blog tools like Tumblr (On the rocks) or Posterous (Start me up), it’s still handy to use in “manual mode” (when the text editor doesn’t allow instant linking). If you want to add links to Facebook or MySpace, it’s handy to just be able to search across Flickr, YouTube, Google, and even Twitter at the same time. All you have to do is find what you want and then grab the code – still faster than having to leave your work to find a link, image, or video elsewhere.

So, how does Lizzer make money? Alpha users will see on the bookmarklet based application that there’s a small “drawer” at the bottom that carries an ad. Currently it’s carrying a simple display ad for feed growth! (some crazy site about digital marketing ideas). However, there’s more to come. Lizzer is targeting advertisers who would like to use the bookmarklet as a delivery vehicle for advertiser links or content. In other words, advertisers will be able to put their own, proprietary content into the bottom drawer, in the same way an advertiser might use product placement investments in TV and movies.

So, for example, the next time you want to promote something new and have it “placed” in blogs, emails, and websites, you can do so. As you’ll see in the example, you might want to give potential publishers access to special photos, videos, widgets, or even MP3’s.

Even better, Lizzer is able to provide you with aggregated  insertion information, so you know if your ad placements and ad insertions are actually working. You can just contact Lizzer to learn more.

Finally, it wouldn’t be just to leave out what may be the most important thing about Lizzer. Warts and all, it’s our baby. The team at feed growth! and digital scientists developed Lizzer in part to help with the linking and content embedding required for the maintenance of this site. We’re not solving some problem that we dreamed up – we’re solving one that we experience every day. Please be sure to check out Lizzer and sign up for the invitation-only alpha (we’re not snobs, we just want to make sure that everyone has a great experience- ergo, the invitation requirement). That way you can give the bookmarklet a test run and see how you might be able to use it to make your blogs, emails, and web pages even more compelling (and sell more!).

It’s common practice to cite a highly reputable source, such as a book or author, when building your brand’s credibility. We frequently call on expert and academic Don Norman when making the case for putting usability ahead of decoration. Problem is, this type of content requires your audience to link to another site.

Now you can add professional book previews to your website or blog with Google Preview Wizard. This tool lets you put brand-supporting materials within plain view and build your own user experience around a book. Google Preview Wizard is part of the Google Book Search API, which gives any average Joe with a rudimentary knowledge of HTML the ability to link to, utilize, and preview publications listed in Google Book Search. The app is JavaScript-based (i.e. no download required), giving users the functionality to zoom in and out, advance pages, and highlight search terms all within the preview window.

Google Preview Wizard is free, and it takes seconds to generate the necessary HTML code (we know because we timed it). To get started, locate the International Standard Book Number (ISBN) associated with the publication – this is a 10 or 13 digit number found above the barcode on the book, itself. Plug the ISBN into Google Preview Wizard, specify whether you want your preview window embedded in your site, as a pop-up, or a link to another page. Google spits out the code; all you have to do is copy and paste in your webpage’s HTML, and you are done. Check out the preview we created below:

If you’re looking for an easy way to highlight specific book content on your site, Google Preview Wizard is just the ticket. Besides, who couldn’t use some “words of wisdom” to help bolster their product or service?

Do you rely on a Blackberry or iPhone throughout the day and communicate primarily by email? Even so, you can still blog like a rock star.

You can use a service like Posterous. No sign-up or account required- all you need is email access and “post@posterous.com” in your address book.

When you want to post something online, email Posterous and attach your file(s). Posterous accepts documents, images, movies, and MP3’s. You can attach multiple files, as many as your email service lets you, and Posterous will create an image gallery on your Posterous page . Images are automatically resized to web-friendly standards and music and videos are put in browser-compatible players. The service even recognizes urls, turning them into links; so if you want to post a YouTube video, they’ve got you covered.

Before anything is published, Posterous sends a confirmation back to your email address- keeping Posterous impostors at bay and making sure you didn’t email the service on a whim. Your Posterous page automatically appears at yourname.posterous.com, in a simple, easy to read blog format.

Posterous is a free service and provides a simple solution for sharing information online. Ready to start blogging? Here’s a little video overview to show you even more:

If you’re taking the time to create a blog, it pays to invest in making sure that people can actually find it . . . even if they’re only reachable on their phone.

If you want to reach the people that use Twitter (yes . . . the Twitterati), you should just tether your blog to Twitterfeed. It’s an easy way to automatically twitter your blog’s RSS feed, blasting your friends and followers with updates as they happen. You may recall Twitter from our article Stay close to mother hen. In a nutshell, it’s a real-time messaging service that lets you broadcast “tweets”, or short messages. Unlike Myspace of Facebook, Twitter is meant to be a quick communication (or micro-blogging) platform. Tweets alert the world (well, your Twitter network) of your feelings, thoughts, or intentions.

Here’s how you get started: Sign up for a Twitter account or give Twitterfeed your existing Twitter login and password. Then, login with your OpenID account. OpenID is a service that lets you sign in to multiply websites with a single username, and like Twitter, it’s completely free. Once you are in, give Twitterfeed your blog’s RSS feed address and specify how often it should post your content (once daily is enough for a smaller blog).

Now all you have to do is post a blog article and watch as Twitterfeed alerts all your contacts of the update and gives them a link back to the article.

Few companies can afford to keep a professional copywriter on staff, despite constant need for quality content.

Consider using an on-demand copy marketplace like Helium. Helium is similar to Odesk, the developers community we discussed in It’s a small world. Here’s how it works- publishers submit their article requirements (a brief description of the piece), choose a channel (a specific content category like Travel, Business, or Technology), then specify a deadline, word count, and cash prize amount. Helium uses a rating system to qualify writers, but any member of the community can take a stab at your piece. At the end of the competition, you choose among the submissions and award a winner.

Helium is an ideal solution for the company who can’t commit to in-house talent and doesn’t have the time or energy to sift through freelance portfolios. You choose content a la carte and there is no commitment to the writer who provides the material.

Often, a brand can be distilled down to a single visual cue, like the Nike swoosh or the Apple, um, apple. Every opportunity you have to include a visual identity cue should be seized, and one incredibly easy way to do this is with a favicon. Favicons, short for favorite icon, are the small images that appear in the url bar beside a website address and next to a page title in a browser tab.

You can use a tool like favicon.cc to create your little visual cue in just a matter of minutes. The fastest way to create your brand favicon is to upload your logo into their system. It will convert it to the correct size and format. You may need to do a bit of tweaking to get it just right. You can also animate your favicon by creating multiple designs and timing their evolution.

Don’t let this easy way to connect your URL to your brand identity pass you by.

Not everyone was born with the color selection gene. But that doesn’t have to be a barrier to developing something with great visual appeal.

Color selection can be made much easier with kuler, a web-based tool for creating harmonious color palettes from Adobe Labs. Users can experiment with a rainbow of colors, perfect the combinations, and share them with the kuler community for feedback. And you don’t have to be a digital Picasso to use this application.

To create a theme, access the main marker on the color wheel and rotate like clock hands to set the base of your color scheme. The application will adjust the secondary arms to to harmonize with your color selection based on the governing palette rules (you can set to monochromatic, complementary, shades, etc). To customize your palette, move the secondary arms to a desired location on the wheel or manipulate the actual color values (RGB, CMYK), the hue saturation (HSV), or html code value (HEX). You can import images using the Flickr feature and grab values directly from the picture.

Once your palette is complete, title and tag it, so that palette is searchable, and save. If you choose, kuler will publish your palette; community members can browse the library, rank individual palettes, or draw inspiration from each other’s offerings. To use your palette (or any other public palette) in a design application, open it in an Adobe CS3 software or just the grab the HEX codes.

With minimal effort (and expertise) you can design a one-of-kind color theme. Inspiration is endless and the application is free, so give it a whirl.

While there’s a great deal of data to be gathered from any website, there’s often a distinct shortage of real insight. In other words, sure you can see that people are leaving the site, but you usually have to just guess at the reason why. That’s why it can be important to give you customers different opportunities to provide their opinion or interact on your site.

One way to create just such an opportunity for interaction is to install a plug-in like Firef.ly. It’s a simple chat program that operates on the surface of your website. Visitors can communicate with each other through tiny chat bubbles that can be placed at points of interest. As an administrator, you can be an active participant in the conversation or a fly on the wall, just there to observe.

The firef.ly plugin is easy to install and appears as a simple toolbar at the bottom of your page. From here, chatters can access the site’s chat log or customize their chat persona with an avatar. Chatting is completely opt in and users don’t have to download anything to start talking. You never know what you might learn.

While blogging is no art form, it has evolved into something that can be a bit formal, requiring a title or sometimes both a title and a description. Sometimes, you don’t want to make everything feel like an article. You just want a little corner of the web over which your consciousness can stream.

That’s where “tumblelogs” come into play, like Tumblr. The icon-based interface makes posting text, photos, audio files, and videos a breeze. And unlike traditional blogs, Tumblr features community elements like the ability to follow other Tumblrs (similar to friending on a social network) and receive their updates from your dashboard or via RSS feed.

Tumblr is a free platform, providing audio and video hosting at no additional cost. Users are given a unique name.tumblr.com url upon signup and access to advanced features like custom themes, custom CSS, and custom domains (i.e. you can have a Tumblr log on your own domain). If you’re just looking to hang the answer out there, or just express yourself, this is a great option.

Customers like to stay abreast of the latest developments, whether it’s a new product, feature updates, or general shop talk. Keeping pace can be difficult; updating your website and email blasts don’t offer the real-time connection your customers may be looking for.

Consider using Plurk as a customer communication tool. Similar to Twitter, a service we discussed in Stay close to mother hen, Plurk is a text messaging service that lets you chronicle and share whatever you are thinking or feeling with your network of friends. The daily time line of activity acts as your homepage, pinpointing all your “plurks” and plurks you have received from friends. By creating “cliques”, you can organize and group your friends into networks. So, if your looking to plurk to different customer sets or offer promotions to only a select clientèle, this is a handy feature.

Plurk is a free service and easily integrates with most instant messengers (AIM or MSN), providing more than just a mobile outlet. So, if you’re looking for an easy way to stay connected with your customer base, go ahead and give plurking a try.

Need to boost site traffic? The idea of handing over hundreds, often thousands, of dollars for premium ad space or trading (begging for) links may be keeping you up at night.

Here’s an option. Adgridwork is an open (free) advertising network that lets bloggers and publishers barter their own real estate for advertising space on any of the thousands of sites in the Adgridwork network. You can choose what types of sites your ads appear on, and even monitor campaign progress, like impressions and conversions, through Adgridwork’s free metrics and tracking tools.

To get started, register your website or blog with the network, defining your site by category and any relevant keywords. This helps Adgridwork target advertisements to specific audiences. Once approved, your site is added to the mix and open for serving ads. In exchange, you ads will start running on other sites in the network. Adgridwork uses a simple merit system to reward its supporters- the more ad click-through’s your site generates, the more sites your ads appears on.

If you’re looking for a simple way to generate traffic or just tired of paying for ad services, consider using Adgridwork to promote your site.