Cool Tools for Internet Marketers Resource Center 

When you want a rich and varied real-time search service, turn to Topsy to find out what Tweeters are saying, how many Tweeters are saying the same thing and who the most influential Tweeters are.

Topsy slices the Twitter stream many different ways, giving you viewing options to satisfy your curiosity or build your keyword search.

One slice shows trending topics, while the other lists Web sites with fresh content that relate to your keywords. Topsy then lays out a timeline across whichever iteration of data you choose, showing you how many Tweets the topic or site generated (by the hour, day, week, month or "all") and ranks Tweets by how "influential" the Tweeter is (based on retweet frequency).

We use Topsy for vanity searches on "Web Digest For Marketers" and find, for example, which issues generated the most tweets and by whom, and who are the most influential retweeters of our material. Yes, we use a Twitter analytics program for greater detail, but Topsy gives us the quick-and-easy look.

If you're monitoring Twitter to gauge the Zeitgeist either in general or on a specific topic, it can be impossible to get meaning out of the ever-changing Twitter stream.

Enter Tweet Cloud, a search service which uses either Twitter's full stream or your own search keywords to create a keyword cloud (a visualization device that uses type size to rank keyword popularity and shows the relative popularity of one keyword to others).

It enriches the user experience too by showing you the specific Tweets that make up your Tweet Cloud, connecting to those Tweeters' accounts so you can follow them if you want and letting you share your Tweet Cloud with your social networks to build your own authenticity and influence.

This application from blog resource Technorati mashes up the Twitterverse and the blogosphere, making it easy to find and follow tweets from bloggers with Technorati's highest authority rankings.

Twittorati organizes all the tweets it pulls together for maximum visibility with minimum effort. Here's what you'll find at a glance on the home page:

• Technorati's Top 100 Blogs list with a link to each blog
• Those bloggers' most recent tweets
• Twittorati trending topics according to Technorati tags or Twitter hashtags
• Thumbnail profiles of five featured bloggers
• Most popular links according to tweets and blog posts

No Twitter account? No problem. You can still view all the content but not use the handy "reply" and "retweet" functions built into each tweet.

Video is a key element for your digital marketing program because consumers respond to it and search engines love it. Putting it on your Website and getting it noticed take time. When you need a fast start, upload your video to TwitVid, send it out via Twitter, and start the ball rolling.

No, the production value isn't high, but you can get your video out there on the Internet quickly and cheaply. It's "good enough for now" video.

After sharing it on Twitter, you can also upload it simultaneously to Facebook, MySpace and YouTube. Viewers can comment on your video and retweet it, both of which will help you gauge audience reaction immediately.

This collection raises the bar for online calculators because it presents a broad range of scenarios and focuses on optimizing conversion rates.

Designed by the people who publish the respected WiderFunnel Conversion Optimization blog, the calculators cover these key topics:

• Lead generation
• Ecommerce
• Ecommerce margins
• "Freemium" sales models
• Growing a subscriber database

The link accompanying this review takes you to a download page where you can sign up to download any or all of the calculators along with other resources provided gratis by WiderFunnel.

As an Internet Marketing professional, you know clients, vendors, publishers, advertisers or agencies are going to send critical documents in formats your computer won't recognize.

Zamzar, a Web-based service provided by a UK company of the same name, will convert those unreadable documents into formats you can open. Occasional users will find the complimentary service level adequate, but you can also buy service plans ($7 to $49 monthly at time of writing) for more and bigger file conversions, online storage and other perks.

To test Zamzar, we converted an Adobe Publisher doc into MS Word and received the conversion in email just a couple of minutes later. Among the many conversions it supports, Zamzar has also just added PDF-to-Excel capability. Check the blog for creative conversion tips.