“The Cloud” has become somewhat of a household term over the course of just the past few years, and for good reason - it has changed everything. The way we store, share and access data today is remarkably different than it was years ago, thanks in large part to cloud computing, a term first coined by executives at Compaq in 1996. It wasn’t until 2006, however, when Google and Amazon began to use the term frequently and the technology became a huge part of how the Internet operates.

Individual marketers and businesses operating social marketing campaigns on sites like Facebook are constantly looking at ways to measure their success. While at first glance it might seem obvious, it’s actually often difficult to gauge exactly how well a campaign is doing. This is because most businesses have other forms of advertising out there, so they’re not always able to differentiate between a new customer coming from Facebook or from some other outlet.

Interns are great! Who doesn’t love free labor and the ability to influence a young professional’s path in the working world? The problem with interns, however, is that they’re not traditional employees and only around for a short period of time. Some businesses get so caught up in having extra hands on deck that they give them the wrong kind of responsibilities.

Like it or not, we each have a reputation. We are given a reputation by the people who know us best, those we have just met and even the strangers we pass by on the street. It is the way that others view us as individuals and despite the amount of truth it does or doesn’t contain, it matters. Perhaps your reputation may just be a person’s opinion of you, but you can bet that good, bad or ugly, it’s going to spread. It can make or break you. There is no denying that when it comes to small businesses, reputation is one of most important factors in its success, both on and offline. Internet marketing can help influence this reputation.

As a small business owner, your marketing goals should be to inform people about your message, promote your product or service and engage your customers and audience. Why is social media important to your internet marketing strategy? It is a channel to successfully to just that: inform, promote and engage your business through platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and Google+.

This is a guest post by: Craig Robinson, an online writer for Qwaya – a facebook ad management tool. Besides writing about social media topics, Craig covers other trends within social media for Qwaya and he has studied social context and media-communication science.