If you’re an AdWords user, you could do a lot worse than to check out the WordStream blog and this article entitled AdWords Experts Share the Secrets of Their PPC Success–part 14! (Don’t worry: Links to the first 13 parts are conveniently provided.)

I love this part:

“In general, manual campaign management requires more hard work but in the long term rewards you with greater ROI in comparison with campaign management using automated tools in all levels.”

(Ad)Word.

Takeaway for marketers: Whether you’re implementing or overseeing AdWords campaigns, these articles are well worth your time. Read them.

It’s gotta suck sometimes being one of the top social media gurus on the planet.

I mean, sure, your Twitter feed gets a coupla hundred thousand followers. You get to do keynote speeches at big conferences. Your book gets ranked in the top 100 of Internet Marketing books on Amazon.

Ah, yes. The books.

I got an email the other day from Amazon telling me all about Chris’ new book: Google+ for Business: How Google’s Social Network Changes Everything. On the one hand, I respect anyone who manages to crank out a book and make a decent buck doing so. On the other hand, I really feel sorry for Chris on this one.

I can only imagine how it all went down. Step one: Google+ debuts. Step two: There’s all sorts of excitement about Google+. Step three: The book deal is made. Step four: The book is written. Step five: The book gets published.

Somewhere between steps four and five, though, something went askew. What, you ask? Well, check out these posts, for example:

Why Google+ Failed (miserably), How to Use Idiotic Facebook Addictions to Grow Your Business, & Did They Lie To You About Traffic!?

A Eulogy for Google Plus

Google+ Pages Officially a Failure (So Far)

Google Engineer Calls Google Plus a ‘Complete Failure’; 5 Reasons We Agree

Well, you get the idea.

So where does this leave Chris? I have no idea; my guess, though, is that it’s either hoping Google+ turns around so he’s proven correct (not likely), wishing he’d never written the book in the first place (maybe) or hoping the next big thing comes along and people forget about Google+ and his book (most likely).

(Of course, not having read the book, maybe it’s a screed about how the failure of Google+ changes everything. If so, ignore everything you’ve just read in this post.)

I do think it’s all a good example of a general tendency toward hyper-accelerated expertise these days. Anytime something slightly significant happens in the world of digital communications, it takes about 12 seconds for there to be dozens upon dozens of blog posts analyzing why that slightly significant something will be the complete game-changer everyone’s been waiting for. After 37 seconds or so, there are probably book deals being discussed.

My advice: Calm down. Let the slightly significant something be absorbed by both the marketplace and the marketplace of ideas. THen step back and take a look and see if it’s worth all that and a bag of chips.

Takeaway for marketers: Sometimes being the best is better than being the first.

Over on Social Media Today, Jay Osterholm posts, “Social Media: A Must-Have for Small Business Owners” that includes a pretty interesting infographic detailing some of the ways small businesses are using social media.

But let’s be clear: Social media for small business owners doesn’t mean setting up a Facebook page and waiting for the dollars to come rushing in. In fact, for some small businesses having a Facebook page may be entirely the wrong focus.

Osterholm has it exactly right when he says, “Social media marketing can do remarkable things for your small businesses, but only if it is properly implemented and maintained.”

Takeaway for marketers: Step one on the path to proper implementation is to find someone with significant social media experience whose first statement isn’t “I know just what your business needs,” it’s “I want to know how customers and potential customers interact with your business currently, and what the strongest and most successful offline dynamics are that fuel business growth.”

Okay, well, not November … September, actually, is when I begin see holiday items in the stores. Christmas creep is profoundly infuriating. But today, three days before Black Friday, I received two emails with the following subject lines:

Subject: Black Friday starts today! Reveal your exclusive Mystery eCoupon savings now!

Subject: Black Friday Starts Now – Shop Unique Gifts for Everyone

Bite me, marketers.

That Black Friday is a cancer on the American soul is bad enough, but you’re going to try and extend Black Friday into the rest of the week? Really?

Bite me twice.

Takeaway for marketers: Ask yourselves: Are you providing something of real value to customers, or are you just pissing them/us off?

ZeroChaos is, according to their website, “ a full-service provider of high-quality contingent workforce solutions.” I do some work for a client through them and was having some issues this week that required dealing with their customer service department, so I wound up spending some significant time on their site.

They’re doing one thing right on their home page (and throughout their site): They have links to their Facebook, Twitter and blog feeds.

They’re doing three things wrong on their home page (and throughout their site): They have links to their Facebook, Twitter and blog feeds.

Click on the Facebook link and get to a dead Facebook page with no content.

Click on the Twitter link and get to a list of ZeroChaos associates which isn’t really helpful if you’re looking for official news and information, and possibly a customer service channel, for ZeroChaos.

Click on their blog link and get a 404 error page.

That’s 0 for 3 … 0 as in zero … zero as in ZeroChaos having zero clue about social media.

(If you want to count online customer service chat as social media, then I could make an 0 for 4 argument, but I don’t want to be accused of piling on.)

Seriously, putting one’s social media icons front and center, but then offering absolutely nothing when the user clicks on them is about as shabby as it gets. Is no one at ZeroChaos checking their own site? Is no one there charged with maintaining their social media presence? At the very least, pull the icons and links off the site entirely so you don’t look like a completely clueless company.

Takeaway for marketers: You set up the blog and the Facebook and the Twitter 18 months ago … do you have any idea what’s happening with them today?