AskMe Secret Santa Contest

 

AskMe Secret Santa Contest:
Contest Duration: 9th Dec – 15th Dec’11

This Christmas gift someone you Love with AskMe Secret Santa.

Participate in AskMe Secret Santa, fill the details of the person you want send gift this Christmas. Askme will select 105 entries by a lucky draw & send gifts to those entries on your behalf.

Out of 105 Entries selected, askme Santa will personally visit 5 Lucky entries with a surprise gift on your behalf.

AskMe will send (via courier) surprise gift to 100 remaining entries on your behalf.

Participant need not pay anything for the gift or to participate in AskMe Secret Santa Contest

Terms & Conditions of AskMe Secret Santa contest

1.      Contest Duration: 9th Dec – 15th Dec’11

2.      Fill the details of the person you want to send the gift in “AskMe Santa’s Gift to” section of the Secret Santa Form

3.      Fill your personal details in the “From” section of the Secret Santa form

4.      AskMe will send gifts to 105 entries selected through a Lucky draw

5.      Five Lucky Entries – AskMe santa will personally visit with surprise gift to the person as per the details given in “AskMe Santa’s Gift to” section of the form

6.      100 Lucky Entries – AskMe will send surprise gifts to the person you want to gift  “AskMe Santa’s Gift to” section of the form

7.      Secret Santa gifts will be delivered in Mumbai only.
For eg:  If you are in Delhi or any part other part of india & want to gift someone in Mumbai (applicable)

8.      Multiple entries from one sender are allowed, sender of the gift has to be resident of India

9.      Participation in the AskMe Secret Santa is free; participant need not pay for the gifts

10.     Participant cannot demand for any specific gift, AskMe reserves the right to decide price/value of surprise gift to be sent to the winners

11.     The Sender & the Receiver cannot be the same person, if so the entry will be invalid

12.     Participants are required to be a fan of the AskMe page throughout the contest period.

13.     By participating in the AskMe Secret Santa contest you agree to the terms & conditions

14.     AskMe reserves the right to amend these terms and conditions at any time without any notice and the participants participating in the contest acknowledges that AskMe may amend the terms and conditions as per its sole discretion without any liability.

15.     AskMe reserves the right to ask for proof of identity from the participants of the Secret Santa Contest

16.     All decisions taken by the management of AskMe with respect to the contest shall be final and binding and management is authorized to retract the activity any time after the commencement of the contest

17.     AskMe shall not be responsible for any loss or damage if it has to discontinue or  cancel this Contest in  compliance with any law, ruling, order, regulation, requirement or instruction of any Central/State Government or for any  other  unavoidable reason beyond its control. The participants shall be informed of such discontinuance/cancellation as soon as possible.

18.     AskMe has the right to remove fan content from the pages if it considers the content unfit for the fan page.

19.     All content posted by the fans on AskMe fan-page will be the sole property of AskMe and the content may be re-used for AskMe marketing & promotional purposes on websites, emails, print ads and other promotional materials. Participants consent to AskMe using personal information provided in connection with this activity.

20.     Under no circumstances shall AskMe or its management be held liable to any misuse

21.     Any disputes arising from or in relation to Contest shall be subject exclusively to Mumbai jurisdiction.

22.     This contest is NOT associated, sponsored, administered or endorsed by Facebook in anyway.

 

About AskMe:
AskMe is a 24 hour Voice Based Local Search Service. If its in Mumbai, its on AskMe!

AskMe is Infomedia18′s latest foray into the field of providing information to cater to immediate, impulsive and urgent requirement of customers for companies, products, and services. AskMe’s service is available on both Voice as well as Online. The online search service has an extensive directory of information from across India that is both accurate as well as varied.

Online Search Service askme.com – All over India

Voice Based Search Service 3555 5555 – Currently Active in Mumbai, Coming soon to your state

Phone -                022-35555555

Website – http://www.askme.com/

Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/AskMe.Infomedia18

Twitter - http://twitter.com/askme_35555555

Youtube - http://www.youtube.com/askme35555555

Facebook Statistics, Funding & more [Infographic]

Did you know that over 400 million users login to Facebook everyday out of total subscriber base of over 800 million? Here is another fact – In 6 years, Facebook has received 2.34 billion dollars of funding (in 11 rounds). Sometimes, the kind of growth Facebook has witnessed seem out-worldly and untrue… but those are the facts!

Mashable has put together a great infographic that gives you a nice perspective of how Facebook has grown over years and various other interesting Facebook tid-bits that will give you a peek at how large Facebook really is.

Facebook in Numbers

Amazing…ain’t it!

How to Create a Custom Facebook Page in 5 Minutes

This post originally appeared on digital inspiration.

My previous guide on creating custom Facebook Pages is no longer relevant since it made use of Static FBML (Facebook Markup Language) and Facebook recently dropped support for FBML tags in favor of IFRAME based tabs.

This is actually good news for businesses and individuals who maintain Facebook Pages because you can now customize the design of your Pages without writing any code. You can create custom apps (or ‘tabs’) for your Facebook Page in any WYSIWYG editor and thus, anything that can be embedded in a HTML page can be easily added to your Facebook Pages.

Building Custom Tabs (Apps) for Facebook Pages

Before we get into the actual process of creating custom tabs for Facebook Pages, we need to decide a place where we’ll host the HTML, CSS and other associated files. If you already have a web host, you can use that to host your Facebook Pages but an even better, and simpler, option is Google Sites.

[*] The Digital Inspiration page on Facebook also uses Google Sites.

There are several reasons why you may want to use Google Sites. Google Sites are easy to maintain, offer WYSIWGY editing tools and can be integrated with Google Analytics so you more easily track visitors to your Facebook pages.

The other big reason is that Google Sites support both secure (https) and regular (http) connections. This is extremely essential because some users may have turned on “secure browsing” in their Facebook security settings. If you service your Page content from a regular (http) connection, all they’ll see is a “turn off secure browsing” warning messages.

You can easily avoid this issue with the help of Google Sites.

How to Create a Facebook App for your Page

Enough of theory, let’s now get our hands dirty and build a custom tab app for our Facebook Page.

Step 1: Open Google Sites and create a new site. Choose “Blank Slate” for the theme and set the width as 500px (the Facebook Pages canvas can be 520px wide). [#]

Step 2: Create a new page in Google Sites and add some content to this page using either the built-in WYSIWYG editor or switch to the HTML view for any custom code. You may insert images, maps, videos, and everything else just like a regular HTML page. [#]

Step 3: Switch to Facebook and search for the “Developer” app. Add this to your Facebook Profile and then click on the button that says “Create a new App”. Give your app a name and also add an icon since it will show up in your Facebook page. [#]

Step 4: Under Facebook –> Canvas Settings, set the URLs for Canvas and Tab the same as your Google Site’s URL. The regular Canvas /Tab URL should point to the http version of the Google Sites while the Secure Canvas /Tab URL should use the https version. [#]

Step 5: We are almost done. On the “Canvas Settings” page itself, click “View App Profile Page” followed by “Add to My Page” to add that app to any of your Facebook Pages as a new “tab.” If you wish to create more tabs for your custom Facebook Page, you just have to create new apps using the same steps.

Video Tutorial: Creating Custom Facebook Pages

Got stuck? Watch the following step-by-step video tutorial to learn how to create custom tabs for your Facebook pages using Google Sites.

Free Tools for Brand Monitoring

Brand monitoring is an essential task for any company. By tracking what people are saying about your brand, and how often they’re saying it, you can ensure the right message is getting out there.

Here is a list of free tools for monitoring your brand. The list includes (a) search tools to help you find what is being said about your brand, (b) alert tools to let you know when people are talking about your brand, (c) aggregators to help you manage conversations about your brand. And they’re all free.

1. TweetDeck. A personal real-time browser, TweetDeck connects you with your contacts across Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Google Buzz and more, putting them all on one screen.

   

                                                                                  TweetDeck.

2. HootSuite. Use suite tools to schedule and publish messages to multiple social networks, monitor results, and manage conversations.
3. Seesmic. Seesmic is a social network aggregator that lets you keep all of your social services in one place. List your accounts on one screen in a multi-column format. Run and save searches.
4. Google Alerts. Receive the latest relevant Google results based on your choice of query or topic. Choose the source, such as news or discussion boards, select the search frequency and volume, then pick email delivery or create a feed.
5. Yahoo! Pipes. With this tool, you can aggregate, manipulate, and mash up content from around the web. Combine many feeds into one, then sort, filter and translate it. Geocode your favorite feeds, and browse the items on an interactive map.
6. Twilert. This application lets you receive email updates of Twitter tweets containing your brand, product, service, as well as specified keywords.

   

   Twilert.

7. Tweetalarm. Get an email alert anytime someone tweets about your product, company, name, or any keyword.
8. Twoolr. Get statistics on your Twitter account. The free version gives you statistics on usage, frequency, links shared, your followers’ networks, account growth and more.
9. BackType. A real-time search engine for news and opinions, BackType charts real-time mentions of a keyword, lets you see what people are saying about it, and helps you see its social impact.
10. social mention. Receive email alerts for any social media mention of your brand, company, competitor, or any keyword. Use a buzz widget to display buzz on your site or blog in real-time.
11. Topsy. Real-time search for the social web, Topsy aggregates all the content related to your keyword, from many social media platforms into a single stream. Helps you read the latest and spot trending sources.

    

    Topsy.

12. Kurrently. A real-time search engine for Facebook and Twitter. Run a search on your brand.
13. PostPost. This tool specializes in targeted search results from the people you want to follow on Twitter. Search for what influential parties are saying about your brand or your competitors’ brands.
14. Addict-o-matic. Instantly create a custom page with the latest buzz on your brand.
15. Cadmus. A real-time service that manages your stream — Twitter, FriendFeed and RSS — by displaying the most relevant content since the last time you checked in.
16. Twitter Grader. This tool allows you to compare your Twitter profile to millions of other users. Enter your brand’s Twitter name, and you’ll get an instant grade and report.

    

    Twitter Grader.

17. Tweet Button. Add a Tweet button to your company website. See how many people have shared your content in real-time.
18. TweetReach. TweetReach analyzes the tweets that match your search, and reports the reach and exposure data for those tweets.
19. Alerts Grader. Filter the influential Twitter followers and the important Google Alerts. The tool uses HubSpot’s Twitter Grader and Website Grader apps to provide a grade for the respective notifications. Customize when you want to be notified and by what grade.
20. Icerocket. A social media search engine for blogs and trends using your search terms. With Icerocket, you can build a RSS with the blogs relevant to your brand.
21. Summify. This tool creates a summary of the most relevant news stories from all of your social networks, and delivers it by email and on the web.

    

    Summify.

22. Mentionmapp. Use Mentionmapp to see Twitter conversations as a network and click on any user to explore. Find the relevant people who follow your brand.
23. Technorati. Technorati tracks blog reactions. Search for your brand on Technorati, then subscribe to RSS alerts. When someone blogs about your brand, you’ll know.
24. Commentful. Track your conversations in social media. Whenever there is an update, such as a new follow-up or comment, Commentful notifies you instantly.
25. BoardTracker. Search discussion boards for mention of your brand.
26. Boardreader. Search discussion boards, press releases, articles, sites and more for mention of your brand.

    

    Boardreader.

27. Big Boards. This tool tracks the most active message boards and forums on the web. Sort the boards, filter by origin software and language. Search for your brand within the most active online communities.
28. TweetBeep. Keep track of Twitter conversations that mention you, your products, your company, your website or blog, even if they use a shortened URL. Hourly updates by email.
29. Keotag. Enter your brand and click on one of the seventeen social media search engines you wish to search.
30. Klout. Get your brand’s Klout score, a measurement of your overall influence on Facebook and Twitter. From 1 to 100, higher scores represent a wider and stronger sphere of influence.
31. Crowdbooster. Measure your performance on Twitter and Facebook, and get insights on how to become more effective. With Crowdbooster’s interface graph, you can easily see your best tweets and areas for improvement.

                                                        Crowdbooster.

Best Facebook Marketing Strategies for eCommerce Site

There are thousands of Facebook apps, including a growing class designed for marketing use on company Facebook Pages. Here is a list of different marketing strategies — using apps — that can help your ecommerce business.

1. Facebook Send button

Facebook recently launched the “Send” button, which allows Fans to send your content to their friends. Think of this as you would a “forward to a friend” button in email.

According to Facebook, Fans have the option to send your URL in an inbox message to their Facebook friends, to the group Wall of their Facebook groups, and as an email. While the Like button allows users to share your content with all of their friends, the Send Button allows them to send a private message to just a few friends.

Facebook has added a new Send button to its list of social plug-ins.

2. FriendCard

FriendCard is a way to increase brand visibility by offering Fans the ability to send customizable branded greeting cards to their friends directly from your Facebook Page. Cards can be scheduled for delivery or sent immediately. Each time a card is sent, it gets posted to the recipient’s Wall.

Each card carries your logo, so each time one is sent recipients and their friends are introduced to your brand. FriendCard is currently free, though upgrades containing premium features are expected soon.

FriendCard allows Fans to send customized branded greeting cards to friends.

3. Branded YouTube Channel

Merchants increasingly utilize online video to showcase products. This can include creating a YouTube channel for those videos. A number of Facebook app providers incorporate the YouTube channel into Facebook Pages as a separate tab. Here are three options:

• Involver offers a YouTube channel app as part of a suite of free apps.
• NorthSocial also includes a YouTube channel app as part of its suite. This particular app offers a customized header. But it is not free. The price begins at about $20 per month.
• Best YouTube Channel for Pages is an app designed for use on both Facebook Profiles and Pages. The layout features one video, with clickable thumbnail images to others. It is free.

4. Blogs

Merchants who use blogs for marketing can now incorporate that content into Facebook using the following free apps.

• dlvr.it is a content syndication app that takes the RSS feed from a blog and routes it to Facebook as a Wall post. It includes a link back to the post on the merchant’s site.
• NetworkedBlogs takes posting content to Facebook a step further than dlvr.it. Users are required to register their blogs with NetworkedBlogs. Then, the app creates a tab for the blog that is added to the Page navigation menu. In essence, it creates a replica of the blog’s index page within Facebook. When a new blog entry is published, NetworkedBlogs posts it to the Wall, along with a link to the full entry. NetworkedBlogs can be used on both Pages and Profiles.

NetworkedBlogs brings your blog content into Facebook.

5. Twitter

Involver and North Social both provide a Twitter app that functions similarly to the YouTube apps, in that it creates a separate tab just for the Twitter feed.

6. Sweepstakes and Contests

Sweepstakes and contests offer useful ways to engage Fans and keep them returning to your Page. Run a sweepstakes — to give away prizes — based on a random drawing. Decide contests winners by public voting. Wildfire and Woobox are two companies that offer sweepstakes and contest apps. Wildfire is a premium service, while Woobox offers its app for free.

7. Coupons

Not every merchant wants to discount his or her products. But using Facebook-only coupons and special offers is one of the best ways to stimulate Fan page growth. Several companies offer such apps – Wildfire, NorthSocial, Offerpop and Woobox, to name a few. But, use of coupons does not necessarily require third-party apps. For example, you can create special promotional codes that are recognized by your shopping cart and post those to Facebook.

8. Polls and Trivia

Polls and trivia are tools that can be used to keep Fans engaged with your Page. Polls can also be used to conduct market research and get customer feedback on products and services.

Facebook now offers a poll function in the new Questions option, which Page owners can access via the Wall. It offers basic functionality, but should suffice in most cases. If other features are required, such as use of images, Facebook app developer Fanappz offers a more robust version for free.

9. Fangating

“Fangating” has become popular as a method to grow a Page’s Fan base.

It works as a two-stage process. A non-Fan visits the page where an offer is being pitched, such as a special discount, coupon or free download. Before the person can take advantage of the offer, he or she first has to “Like” the page. Once that action is taken, the visitor is taken to a previously hidden page where the offer is revealed.

I explain fangating in greater depth in “3 Tools to Create New Facebook iFrame Pages,” where I also list three app providers that make this process easier.

10. Customer Feedback

Customer feedback software provider Uservoice offers a Facebook app to enable Fans to submit, discuss, and vote on feedback. At $89.00 per month it may be outside the range of smaller ecommerce merchants, however.

One of the best ways I have found to get customer feedback is simply to ask by posting a question to the Wall. Alternatively, you can also use the Facebook Questions app. Both of those options are free.

11. Group Deals

Ecommerce merchants are beginning to experiment with group coupon buying popularized by companies such as Groupon and LivingSocial. Wildfire, NorthSocial and Woobox all offer apps that enable Page owners to run their own group coupon deals inside the Fan page. Woobox goes so far as to use the fangating technique to require that visitors first Like the page before being able to access the deal.

Woobox and others offer a group coupon deals app for use in Facebook.

12. Mailing List

Email providers MailChimp and Constant Contact offer apps that enable Fans to sign-up for a merchant’s email list directly from the Fan page. Practical eCommerce uses a customized version of the MailChimp form on our Facebook Page.

Constant Contact and other email service providers offer Facebook apps.

If you do not use either of those two email service providers, you can still incorporate a contact form to gather emails. Appbistro, for example, offers a contact form.

13. eBay Items

Merchants who use eBay are in luck. There is an app called eBay Items that allows sellers to display eBay items on a Facebook Fan page.

eBay sellers now have an app of their own, eBay Items.

14. Amazon Items

There is also an Amazon version of the “eBay Items” app, called Amazon Items. This can help merchants who sell products on Amazon.

15. MyEtsy

Sellers who use Etsy can use MyEtsy. It pulls in the seller’s Etsy shop into a separate tab on the Fan page.

16. Real Gifts

Facebook has long offered virtual gifts that users could purchase and give to their friends. Real Gifts is an app that makes use of the Facebook gift shop to enable the purchase of physical products.

Real Gifts is a directory of hundreds of products from many online retailers. Merchants apply to become Real Gifts’ vendors and, once approved, transfer a list of products to the Real Gifts online catalog. Orders are processed via Real Gifts transaction tools.

Real Gifts uses Facebook’s gift shop to market products.

Popular Torrent Sites Of The Last Five Years

Despite many legal battles and pressure from anti-piracy outfits, the lists of the most visited torrent web sites through the years show very little alteration. As a matter of fact, in half a decade only five torrent web sites have taken a spotlight in the top three, and all of these websites were founded before TorrentFreak founded back in 2005.

This indicates that the ecosystem is more stable and conservative than most think it is. Up to a certain degree this is true, but it’s not entirely invincible. Four out of the five internet sites have been dragged to courtroom and two of them have got serious damage.

TorrentSpy was shut down by its owner in 2008 after it lost a court case where it was ordered to hand over details of US-based users to the MPAA. Last year, Mininova decided to erase over a million torrents and restrain new uploads to pre-approved publishers following a court decision where it was told to filter content. Two other internet sites, The Pirate Bay and isoHunt, are still combatting in courtroom but persist in to operate as of today.

Although only 5 internet sites have dominated the BitTorrent landscape in the last years, there is still room for new web sites to move up. Founded in 2009, the comparative newcomer KickassTorrents has already won a spot in the top 5. If it continues to grow at the same rate as it has in the last few months, it might end up in the top 3 at the end of this year.

Below are the listed the top three BitTorrent internet sites of each year. The rankings are based on the number of daily visitors each internet site had at the end of each year. The Pirate Bay is the only web site that appears in all rankings. The 2010 list is reported as of today, and might change before the year is over.

2005

1. TorrentSpy
2. The Pirate Bay
3. Mininova

2006

1. TorrentSpy
2. Mininova
3. The Pirate Bay

2007

1. Mininova
2. isoHunt
3. The Pirate Bay

2008

1. The Pirate Bay
2. Mininova
3. isoHunt

2009

1. The Pirate Bay
2. Torrentz.com
3. isoHunt

2010?

1. The Pirate Bay
2. Torrentz.com
3. isoHunt

Is google planning to acquire Like.com??

We all know that Google is the biggest and the most popular search engine today. Internet has been revolutionized thanks to this magic term. But then Google is not a mere term which functions robotically just like any application on the Internet, Google too has a creator/creators. These revolutionary minds ensure that the search engine continues to stay at its position constantly. This obviously requires constant work, keeping up with new trends and introducing innovative ideas and applications, thus creating a need amongst the netizens.

The latest of this being the quest to acquire Like.com which is supposed to be one of the finest startup ventures of its kind. Like.com was started by Munjal Shah along with Burak Gokturk in 2004. It is a visual search firm which permits the users to search for different products with the help of images. Visual search being the main tool here which Google is looking for, it is definitely an important deal for Google. And so, yet another e-commerce company would soon be under Google’s kitty.

The deal is estimated to be about $100 million. In 2005 itself, Google had attempted to take over its predecessor company which was known as Riya.com. But things seem to have materialized now for Google. After all, this technology is very important for Google which would be added asset in its bag of techies.

The core technology which is used by Like.com was brought about by Riya which mainly catered to facial recognition. More so, this company has some patents which can be considered as being quite important. And so, it is being anticipated that Google would benefit from this procurement both legally as well as economically.

Like.com has also projected its interest in further developing the visual search technology. Google also caters to a similar application on its search engine and had also launched an application pertaining to visual search for the mobile phones.

Prior to this, Google had also taken over the startup venture Plink which was UK based. Plink caters to mobile visual search applications. However, the deal amount has not been revealed. So, there is more to be seen and expected from Google which would continue reinventing applications in a novel format.

HCL Infosystems enters in the portable gaming zone

First Indian company to plunge into hand-held consoles, planning to compete with international makers like Sony and Nintendo.

Delhi-based HCL Infosystems became the first Indian company to get into the hand held gaming console market place earlier this month. The move is piece of the company’s plans to extend its hardware, services and ICT systems integration and distribution business sector.

These hand held gaming consoles launched under the ME brand name, will compete with market place leaders like Sony’s PlayStation Portable and Nintendo DS.

George Paul, executive vice-president, HCL Infosystems, insists that he is not competing with either Nintendo or Sony. He says the HCL ME devices are meant to trigger off logical thinking at an early age. “We believe that casual games still have a immense market in the pre-teens segment and HCL is gearing up various devices and games to aim this segment,” adds Paul.

Beginning with a range of affordable gaming consoles, HCL ME are custom made for children between the age bracket of four and 15 year olds.

Ficci-KPMG’s recent report on the Indian media and show business pegs a combined yearly growth rate (CAGR) of 19 % for the console gaming industry (handhelds, hi-end consoles and software), making it a Rs1 ,160 crore market by 2014 as against Rs490 crore in 2009.

According to various industry estimations, there are about 300,000 hand held consoles in India and the section is seeing a year-on-year growth of around 35%.

To earn a bigger pie of the section, HCL Infosystems will price its products competitively. HCL ME hand held gaming devices have been priced between Rs799 and Rs4 ,990. The Sony PSP and Nintendo DS base models cost Rs5 ,000.

HCL has also stepped up its technology ante with the launching of two new HCL ME-converged devices that contain multimedia options like imaging, voice recording and recording TV programs on the consoles.

The company has also presented a broad range of products that provides to different segments of the target group. E.g., the HCL ME F25 has a heart shaped designing to target girls, while HCL ME D75 and HCL ME K28 with its black-shade and strong built will attract to boys.

Average Indian Youths Spend 2 Hours Daily On SN Sites

Tech-savvy Indian youngsters in major cities are spending at least two hours a day to stay in touch with others through social networking websites like Facebook, Twitter and Orkut, a new study has discovered.

The “Social Media” survey by Indiabiz News & Research Services (INRS) also found that about 30 % of the youngsters access networking sites from their mobile phones rather than sitting before computers, an indication of how the generation next is taking advantage of the ever-converging technology and communication space.

Among the popular social networking sites, Facebook came forth as the most sought after website for the youngsters, while LinkedIn is the second most popular site, according to the survey carried out in major cities such as Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai and Bangalore.

When asked about their favourite networking site, many of them preferred Facebook while about 45.8 % voted in favour of LinkedIn, over 36 % voted for video-sharing website YouTube and 29.6 % said they liked Twitter.

The survey attributed the growing popularity of LinkedIn to business networking.

It discovered that about 37 % of the respondents fall in the age bracket of 26-30 and almost 35 % of them are professionals with mid-level jobs.

“Perhaps, that explains the importance of LinkedIn, a business networking platform that helps its users in building contacts and connections related to jobs and business opportunity.” the INRS study said.

However, the popularity of micro-blogging site Twitter seems to be restricted to celebrities — mostly from the film and entertainment industry.

According to a recent survey by audience traffic and demographics research firm Vizisense, Facebook has around eight million users in India, while professional networking site LinkedIn boasts a subscriber base of six million in India.

Another similar survey by research firm Nielsen had claimed that about 70 % of social media users in India identify.

Top 5 Social Media Hacks for Authentic Automation

“The original post was published in Open Forum on June 28th, 2010.  Author John Jantsch in a marketing consultant, award winning social media publisher and author of Duct Tape Marketing and The Referral Engine.”

One of the big dilemmas facing those increasingly using social technology as a business tool is the balance between authentic participation and automation for time saving sake.

On one end there are certainly tools and services that can actually take care of all of your social media participation and automate the process of posting your content to every known social network.

On the other end is the desire to create personal engagement and branding building community through one to one content creation and participation.

The first certainly lacks a human touch, and the latter can suck up too much time. In my mind, the perfect balance lies somewhere between the place where tools can be employed to facilitate intent and leverage time, while still adding personal attention.

Below are five social media hacks that allow personal engagement fused with the use of tools that make it easier to do more.

1. StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon is my secret content weapon. It’s essentially a social bookmarking site that allows people to bookmarkand find interesting stuff. There’s a very unique approach with StumbleUpon that makes it such a great tool though… once you create an account you can pick categories of content that interest you or that might interest your readers. Then you install the StumbleUpon browser tool bar and any time you want to find some potentially interesting content discoveries, just hit Stumble. The tool bar takes you to random sites identified by other users and is almost always a great way to come upon content that is unique and valuable from little know sources. This is a great way to share great finds in your blog posts and tweets while spending a few minutes doing the research.

2. The Round-Up

This isn’t a tool so much as a practice. People love digest content. One way to create and deliver that is to get in the habit of using a bookmarking tool like Delicious and simply tagging sites you come across (perhaps in the tip above)with various tags like ‘blog’ or ‘newsletter’ or by client industry segment, and then going back at the end of the week and writing a post or  creating a newsletter issue based solely on abstracts of the good stuff you found during the week. By installing the delicious browser toolbar, you can tag any page with the right click of a mouse. Filtering content and delivering just the best of what you read (perhaps in your RSS Reader) can make you a very valuable resource to people who just want the good stuff. By employing your own filtering tool you can easily create the content on the fly.

3. Reader to TwitterFeed

TwitterFeed is a tool that allows you to connect any RSS feed to your Twitter account and effectively auto tweet anything that is added to the feed. I don’t find this very useful and in some cases it’s seen as spam, so that’s not what we are going to do here.

Since you can attach any feed to it you can have total control over what goes to Twitter, so it’s really just a way to make it easy to tweet things you find. For example, the delicious tags you created above also have RSS feeds associated with them. So, you run that feed through TwitterFeed and have it tweet anything you hand select and tag as you surf.

Another great use is to connect it to your GoogleReader account, but only for the RSS feed associated with your “shared items.” That way, as you sit at the diner reading the blogs you subscribe to on your phone app over lunch, you can find a great post that you want to share and all you do is hit the share button at the bottom of the post and that one item gets pushed out to Twitter. Still, done by hand, but just skipping a few steps to save time.

4. RSS to HTML

There are any number of tools that will take the content from an RSS feed, one that you produce or one that you find and read, and turn it into dynamic HTML content that you can display on any web page you like.

Creating content specific pages and pushing the content you find as you surf to them can be an easy way to create content for your web pages.

Google has a free tool called Dynamic Feed Control Wizard, but check out the great list of RSS to HTML web publishing tools from Robin Good.

5. Blog to Fanpage

There are lots of plugins and apps that make it very easy to republish blog content to your Facebook personal wall, but many businesses these days are much more interested in publishing new blog posts to their Fan Pages.

There are, in fact, a number of free and paid apps that allow you to do this, but the simplest (and in my mind best) approach is to use the built-in Notes function. When you enable the notes tab on your Fan Page you can click on add a new note and you’ll see that one option is to add a blog feed. When you do this you get a new tab (the name of your blog) and the last five or so blog posts, depending upon your RSS fee settings.

The reason I like this approach is that there’s not a third party app involved – that’s where most tech issues arise – and, in addition to simply having a blog page, your new posts go right into the wall stream when you publish them.