Zynga’s newest release, Hidden Chronicles, graces the top of our chart this week, followed by tools that help brands create better pages on the social network.
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People worry that timeline will put their entire lives on display or require a seemingly infinite amount of time to customize. Neither of these has to be true!

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Here are three common mindsets among people who aren’t heading down the right path in social media.

1. My Son Or Daughter Does That For Me

If your son or daughter is a college graduate with a broad-based education that includes a degree in mass communications, I’d say you may be on the right track.

However, if your kid is 18 and sole or primary qualification is having Twitter and Facebook accounts, I’d say you need to reevaluate your choice of marketing personnel here. Just because they’re yours and can use Facebook and Twitter, doesn’t mean he or she has the skills necessary to market a business using social media.

2. I Hired a College Intern

While college students may be part of the social media generation, it doesn’t automatically qualify them to do social media for you. Unlike traditional media, which is a communication to a broad audience, social media is one-to-one marketing outreach.

You are communicating directly to individuals and anyone who has ever posted an opinion in an Internet forum knows the online audience is not to be trifled with. Understand that your reputation is on the line. With the variety of questions and comments you will receive, it is critical that they’re handled with care and professionalism to avoid any repercussions to your name and brand.

A social media marketing professional is an astute communicator who ensures each time the right tone, caring and message is delivered for maximum return and keeps your audience engaged. This dynamic is crucial for the success of the program.

3. I Got 11 New Fans This Week

Of course, amassing fans is important, but you’ll never make a social media campaign work with the onesy-twosy approach. For myself, my company and our social media clients, we have a monthly benchmark for building followers.

Now, this benchmark is not a gross number, but a net figure after we have weeded out spammers, chronic friend adders, and marriage proposals from men in foreign countries, and yes, I’ve gotten a few of those.

At the end of the day, social media is serious business. Done right, it can create a base of thousands of followers. Done wrong, it wastes time and energy and, most important, gives people the impression that social media marketing isn’t important. In fact, it has become one of the most critical and fundamental components for any marketing strategy, which every company needs to put in place.

Guest writer Marsha Friedman is the founder and chief executive officer of EMSI Public Relations, and author of

Static HTML maintains its steady lead on the weekly growth leaderboard, but the trend overall encounters slower seven-day totals.
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In today’s economy, businesses big and small are squeezing a dollar, but there is a way to market large while spending small.

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Facebook released a ranking of its most popular games for 2011,  and among other surprises, Playdom’s Gardens of Time topped the list.

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Calendars and greeting cards top the list of the fastest-growing applications on Facebook this week.
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Zynga shows no signs of slowing down, and the developer’s newest hit kicks off December on top of the countdown. The real story though, is the advancement of the social news applications that continue to gain steam after noteworthy finishes last Wednesday.
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Zynga continues to dominate Facebook games, claiming six of the top ten and four of the top five titles in the rankings produced by our peer site AppData.

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We’ve still got another month left of 2011 and already Facebook has supplied a list of the 40 articles shared the most on the site this year.

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