Happy Friday everyone. As the week comes to a close, we have some wonderful SEO  links for you all to contemplate over the weekend (and if you’re in Chicago like us, check out the fabulous entertainment guides from a nearby community of Chicago apartments - yes, one of our writers compiles those).

From Read  Write Web, the HowCast Iphone application has surpassed 500,000 downloads.

Nielsen Online recently issued a report that showed that two-thirds of the world’s internet population visited social networking or blogging sites, and that these sites accounted for 10% of total internet time.  In fact, social media has become more popular than email! More importantly, according to the data that Nielsen analyzed, the popularity of social media is only going to increase during the coming years.

Social media websites have become some of the most profitable and powerful locations on the Web. Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and others are keeping internet users linked by age, preferences, interests and many other qualifiers - and our SEO company has certainly benefited from using social media as part of our overall online marketing plan.  If your business is not tapping into that market by now, what are you waiting for?

You are probably already aware that social media marketing is a great way to reinvent your brand image or to simply spread the word about any changes or developments at your website or company, and strangely enough, pop icon Britney Spears is providing a great example for companies out there looking to delve into the social media experience. Naturally, our SEO company is keeping an eye on Britney and all of her branding endeavors.

To round out this week’s collection of posts on Twitter and how it affects your search engine optimization and online marketing campaigns, our SEO company is highlighting another post on Twitter - this one is from Jeremy Schoemaker, a.k.a. ShoeMoney, and it covers his thoughts after using Twitter for four months.

Since it seems to be Twitter week at our SEO company, posting about our favorite ways to optimize your Twitter experience is definitely appropriate. The first one of those would be TweetBeep, which is basically Google Alerts for Twitter.

We’ve posted before about the many ways joining Twitter can be beneficial to your online marketing campaign, however, we have never compiled the reasons in a list format.  Here are our SEO company’s top three reasons that search engine optimization and online marketing consultants should have a presence on Twitter. 

If you work in the online marketing, web design, and/or search engine optimization fields and you haven’t heard of Twitter by now, you’ve likely been living under a rock.  Twitter is possibly the most popular social media website/application at the moment, and it seems like SEO consultants either love it or deride it as useless.

People are talking about you and your company online. They might be discussing your products, reviewing your business, or sharing their experience with your brand(s). Regardless of what they are saying, you should be involved in the conversation - or at the very least, you should be monitoring it.

Hat tip to Top Rank Blog for their article on corporate blogging, especially their tips on what makes a successful corporate blogger.  Our SEO company definitely agrees with their points.  Here’s a choice quote: