The venerable Estee Lauder cosmetics brand has found a seemingly natural way to connect with social media: offering free makeovers and photo shoots at its department-store cosmetics counters coast-to-coast to produce shots women can use for their online profiles.

Because of my new book, Facebook Marketing for Dummies (Wiley), which is launching next week - I have been getting a lot of emails and questions from my readers that are very focused on launching their Facebook and Twitter presence.

Meeting people conversing via social media starts conversations but what happens when you leave. Do they still talk about you?

For the past couple of days, I would have been pulling out my hair (if I had any) as I was trying to figure out how to link to my Facebook Page from my actual Facebook Profile.

There are tons of ways to link to your Facebook Page from a blog, website or any other location on the web, but I was having a heck of a time simply finding a way to link from my actual Facebook Profile.

Chances are you’re not a big brand and their scale of social media will never be attained by your small business, non-profit, or ministry… This study still applies. The key findings in this study apply to anyone and everyone using social media.

It’s clear that the public relations landscape is changing. No longer does emailing a journalist a press release always result in coverage on major news channels (there are exceptions, naturally, but the average business doesn’t get on Oprah). These days, journalists (and yes, bloggers too) are inundated with press releases. It’s easy to hit delete and move on.

How do you get your pitch heard above the din? Conversation. Engagement. Interaction.

According to BtoB and the Association of National Advertisers, 66% of marketers have started using social media. But, many marketers don’t leverage it fully. What many don’t realize is that social media and outbound marketing are not silos.

Web currency? Social media marketing is measured in time and reward of awareness and not necessarily in dollars.

With more and more marketers jumping onto the social media bandwagon, a lot of questions come up. Is it possible to track metrics and ROI?

If you have to convince the boss or the establishment that your organization would benefit from social media, you might want a plan. Here’s a very simple one you can copy...