Keeping your finger on the pulse of an industry is no easy task - especially when it comes to search marketing. You can easily spend more time sifting through data than gaining true insight.

One good way is to plug into a community of insiders, like Sphinn. It’s similar to Digg but geared to search and interactive marketers. It provides a space to share and discover news articles and blogs, and lets the community sphinn it! (vote) on the most relevant topics, which appear on the homepage. You can filter discussions by category as well. Let’s say you only want to focus on Google. Sphinn breaks down all Google content into individual service offerings. So whether it’s Google Adwords or general Google SEO, so you can hone in on content that matters to you.

Sphinn is an easy way to learn about search marketing and to see what one segment of the community is talking about.

Every market has its “lighthouse customers” - those that are going to be out ahead of all of the others (and ideally the ones that will show everyone else the way). The challenge - how do you find them?

One easy way is to submit your product to ThisNext. It’s a community of people who are such enthusiastic shoppers that they want to tell the world about their latest purchase - ranging from what’s a good baby gift to where should you buy tires. The site lets its users engage in shopcasting - a combination of shopping and broadcasting.

In any case, if you are looking to introduce your product to potential buyers, you can submit your product to the site and they will consider sharing it with their mavens (their most enthusiastic shoppers and reviewers).

This is an easy way to engage in some targeted sampling that may help give your new product a little more oomph in the marketplace.

Blogging is a lot like brushing your teeth - the benefits accrue from both repetition and consistency. We’ve all seen those lonely company or brand blogs out there - with the sad little post every few months.

Now the line from a creative spark to a new blog post just got shorter, with ScribeFire. Say you’ve just come across an interesting article somewhere and you want to add it, along with your comments, to your blog. All you need to do is choose an icon on the bottom of your Firefox browser (sorry IE users, now’s the time to think about Firefox) and up flips a nice text entry tool. Create your blog entry (pick your category, link to prior posts) and post right there on the spot.

No more months between blog posts, please.

Sometimes, all you need is a little space. Not a huge website or complicated design - just a space to post an idea, collaborate with coworkers, or just to get online in front of your customers.

Thanks to Google Sites, you can create a simple website or project space with no knowledge of html or any technical inclination. Even better, its free. All you need is a Google account (this too is free) to get started. After a few basic questions and a single click, your website is up and running. You can customize the look and feel of the page, add text and images, and of course start using it to sell to your customers.

No matter what size your business may be, you can and should have a presence on the web. Here’s a very easy way to make that happen.

Even though we all know about webinars, it seems that we’re forever in the position of asking people to react to creative or marketing output. And, one thing everyone agrees on - sending email attachments is definitely not the best way.

Now there’s a very fast and free option called Backboard. It’s the story that we all know - sign up and then either point to or upload an image to review. Then send a note to people so you can get their feedback - essentially comments that sit at the bottom of the page. Feel the need to see an example up close and personal, here’s a Backboard we created for the digital scientists site. Feel free to add your thoughts.

This is a great, fast, free way to get more feedback on your marketing creative. Before you serve up something to your superiors for review, why not use this tool to gather a bit more perspective?

Twitter (see Stay close to Mother Hen) is a micro-blogging site that’s easy to use from just about anywhere - by phone or computer. It has been embraced by a segment of the tech savvy population. What you may not know is that it’s also a potential source of information about your brand, depending on your target.

TweetBeep is a simple tool that will let you monitor the conversation among the digerati. Are they talking about you or your competitor? Is there something important happening in your marketplace that you need to know about? All you need to do is sign up, choose your targeted key words, and then you’ll be notified if they’re among the “tweets” of the day.

It’s a simple, free investment that could keep you ahead of the crowd.

Most customers have a simple question or two before they are ready to buy. If they don’t want to hunt for the answer on your web site, download a digital brochure, or call the 800 number, you are in trouble.

That’s where Meebo rooms come in handy. Meebo is a free, multi-media chat application that you can embed directly in your website or blog. It lets you talk one-on-one with your customers, addressing any questions they may have and engaging them during the purchasing process. To get started, go to the Meebo site and click “create a room”. The service will prompt you to name your room, give it a description, and personalize it with basic colors and icons. Once your room is created, you can chat directly on the Meebo site or generate the embed code for your site. Surprisingly, Meebo doesn’t require a user account and will do most of the grunt work for you (hosting, managing, and moderating the rooms).

There’s no such thing as being “too available” for your customers. You can easily run a Meebo chat room in the background as you go about your normal business and address customer concerns as they crop up. The very real and very immediate connection you will have with your customers may well be worth it.

One of the biggest challenges of maintaining a blog (or newsletter) is keeping your content fresh. It requires meticulous monitoring of the Internet and other resources to find the one idea worth sharing. And the energy to repeat the process every day (week, month). No need to stress. With a little artificial intelligence, you can just delegate the work.

Favebot, which is short for “favorite robot” is a content aggregation tool and very easy to use. Sign-up for a free account and create a “Tracking List” by entering keywords in the topic field. Choose any and all types of content you are interested in. Favebot will track local events, new music/dvds/books, news articles, blog posts, and media (photos, podcasts, and videos). With daily searches and multiple updates on blog and news content, Favebot can be relied upon to deliver fresh content.

You can browse search results in your personal “Discoveries” tab or subscribe to updates via RSS feed or an RSS-to-email service. Its an easy way to stay up to date without an army of interns.

We know it better than anyone else. Creating and sending out an email newsletter is a huge pain.

Luckily, there’s now a free replacement that can turn your blog posts into emails. It’s Feedburner email. It’s so absurdly easy, there’s really very little to tell. Just “burn” your RSS feed using
reliable Feedburner. Once you’ve done this and indicated a desire to enable email delivery, every time your site visitors subscribe, they’re provided the option of subscribing with an RSS reader or by email. You don’t have to do any more work. Your blog posts will be sent as emails to your recipients.

Your can even set it up so your users see a standard looking email signup. They won’t even have to know that you’ve figured out how to deliver email newsletters for free using your RSS feed.

If you’re spending a fortune sending email newsletters, why don’t you just concentrate on creating blog posts and just let your feed handle all of the work for you.

There’s really no reason that you can’t stay up to date with who’s talking about your brand. You can be on your way in about 15 seconds.

Just create a series of brand related alerts using Google Alerts. Enter your terms (try your most important brands), select what you would like to search, and then choose the frequency of reporting. If you’re looking to stay on top of what bloggers are saying, just choose blogs or the comprehensive alert. For example, I have created an alert for this blog. I receive a notification about fifteen minutes after a new post has been released.

With an alert set for your brand (or just about anything), you can be certain that you’re getting the latest word from the blogosphere. It’s a great way to avoid surprises (and no doubt look smarter than everyone who’s not quite so alert).

We’re all used to reading text comments, but sometimes video can say a lot more. Up until now, adding video to blog comments has been almost impossible.

With Seesmic’s new WordPress blog plugin, now it’s easy. Click on the regular comments tab (found at the bottom of your blog post) and choose the video option from the drop down menu. Simply click the red recording button or the enter key to start/stop the recording. Then, save, title, and post, and ta-dah you have engaging reader content on your site, with no effort on your part or added expense. With up to 5 minutes of recording space, the floor is open.

And you never know, a customer might actually say something nice about your brand that you can reuse as a testimonial. You won’t know until you let them speak.

While everyone can understand the appeal of 31 flavors of ice cream, what can you do if you’re selling something that’s not so easy to change with some food coloring and mix-ins?

You could learn something from a search engine, namely iGoogle’s Artist Themes. They’ve collaborated with 70 artists to create themes that can be used to personalize your search engine home page. Artists range from visual artists to musicians, architects, athletes and fashion designers - including: Dolce & Gabbana, Michael Graves, Lance Armstrong, and Jeff Koons.

Do you sell a product that could use a little bit of personality? Even if you don’t bring Google level firepower to attract talent from around the globe, don’t worry. There’s always the local art school.