Chris: Spike the world traveler was spotted again in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, soaking up the sun by the pool with a Margarita or two.

And after a long, rambunctious night at Cabo Wabo and El Squid Roe, here is Spike visiting some friends in a Mexican aviary jail. Thanks to his fierce negotiating with the Federales, all charges were eventually dropped.

Gary G.: Spike likes the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival. But not with howling gales that would ruffle any woodpecker’s feathers.

Rachel: Excited to show off Spike and the Noisemaker’s hard work- with the world premiere music video for “Make Noise, Get Noticed”

Natasha: Excited to celebrate Easter this weekend!

Gina: I thought this video was beautifully executed. So simple, yet powerful.

Lea: It’s not quite like owning a Damien Hirst, but ArtSpace.com allows you to collect artists who have shown at the Guggenheim, Brooklyn Museum, and MCA Chicago. These are some of the actual pieces that were shown that are being sold online at feasible prices. Art for all!

Andrew: Being a little sentimental this week. I just found out that my Mom, who left for S. Korea (the good side) about six years ago to start her business, is coming back home for good next Friday. Since she’s been gone, we would Skype at least once a week, and It will be a nice change from having a 2-D Mom. Yep, now the world knows that Andrew loves his mama.

John: Will someone ever break the 2 hour mark when running a marathon? According to this article- it is just a matter of when.

Jason: All the necessary materials for some solid sightseeing in Amsterdam. Time to check out Van Gogh.

Spike likes a good British Fortress once in a while. Now if he can only get ahold of the Crown Jewels.

Spike Likes flying through Germany, visiting the Neuschwanstein Castle.

Willem: Google’s Street View team have struck again, this time conquering classical French and Italian landmarks for their mothership’s immense pictorial collection.

Andrew: As many may know by know, Rebecca Black is an amateur YouTube musician who soared into the public eye for her music video “Friday.” The song gained significant online notoriety in March 2011 for its monotonous lyrics. For this edition of Spike Likes, and because it happens to be a Friday, here is Stephen Colbert’s rendition of this popular song, sung on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, on April 1st, 2011.

Gina: In a moving and madly viral video last year, composer Eric Whitacre led a virtual choir of singers from around the world. He talks through the creative challenges of making music powered by YouTube, and unveils the first 2 minutes of his new work, “Sleep,” with a video choir of 2,052.

Jason: Spike likes a good, cold beer in Berlin.

Sharan: It is really amazing to see how much animals care for each other- this video is sad, but also an incredible display of how animals take care of their own kind.

Rachel: Using a Groupon for my favorite restaurant tonight! Check to see if any of these Seattle daily deals are up your alley!

Charlie: For all you world travelers out there, it’s time to play guess that airline! Once you have made your guesses- check out how many you got right!

Natasha: Loved my first week interning at Hodgson/Meyers!

Lea: Fleet Foxes, sophomore album, Helplessness Blues, coming in May. Here’s their great ‘out take-ish’ video for their first single, Grown Ocean.

Jamie: Curious about how QR codes work? Check out this great article.

Spike likes meeting new friends while traveling in Scotland.

Mr. Wallace likes sampling international cuisine. (He noted that woodpeckers taste just like chicken.)

While Facebook and Twitter are the main social media outlets for both B2C and B2B companies, LinkedIn, the professional social network, is quickly moving forward as a popular social network among B2B audiences.  Recently, LinkedIn has made updates to their platform, including an opportunity for companies to build out a profile separate from individual profiles.  In doing this, companies can promote their business, advertise specials and make announcements from one place.

What do these new profiles offer?  The opportunity to get information about your company out to the public.  For B2B companies, a LinkedIn profile is as important to keep updated as your website.  From this platform, everything is in one place: products and services, social media, news, employee contact information and more.

One of the most important new features is the ability to promote your company’s products and services.  These new pages give you the opportunity (in 2,000 characters or less) to describe your product or services.  Additionally, there is an area for a bulleted list of your key services, as well as a link to the related page on your website, making LinkedIn a true portal for business contact.

Want to help direct people to the appropriate point of contact for one of your products or services?  LinkedIn now helps you do that as well.  Any employee who is linked to your company page can be featured as a representative for your company.

Once products and services pages are developed, your customers can leave recommendations about your offerings.  These recommendations are similar to the recommendations on individual user profiles, and allow anyone who considers your company’s services to hear directly from your customers.

Have you already added product and services tabs on your company’s LinkedIn profile?  We would love to see how your B2B company is using this new feature.  Need some ideas to get you started?  Take a look at Spike’s services page.

The Blue Angels buzzin’ around overhead and the sprinkle of boats waiting for the hydroplane races – we’re so ready to start the weekend. Here are the wonderful things Spikesters like this week.

Rachel Omiliak: Food52.  The best recipes come from home chefs- and all of those chefs posted them here.  Wondering what Spike liked best?

Willem Buys: The time suck of social media! Social networking now eats up twice as much of our online time as any other activity. According to new stats from Nielsen…

Erin McNiff: Leave the drama for the mama. I think Levi and Bristol just may be over, over.

Andrew Skirde: Shark Week!

Measuring the performance of a marketing campaign has always been critical.

Social media is no different.

While social interactions may not match up directly to sales (though this is possible with the right tools and diligent tracking), you can determine which social interactions led to different important actions. If you know the value of these actions, you can determine the ROI from your social interactions that lead to these actions.

Be sure to add web analytics tracking code from Google Analytics (or your preferred web analytics tool) so you can measure this down to the individual post level.

7 Ways to Measure Social Media ROI

1. Newsletter sign-up – especially if you have topic or product specific newsletters.
2. Contact form – pretty obvious
3. Phone call – can implement phone number tracking, or try adding unique 1-800 numbers to your social profiles.
4. Twitter Retweet – promotes you as a thought leader in your industry. It’s essentially a mini endorsement.
5. Twitter Follower or Facebook Fan – essentially a mailing list add, only with more legs since friends can see see these as well while only that individual will see your emails.
6. Liking or commenting on a Facebook Page post – Again, this is interaction with your company, a clear sign of their interest in you.
7. Endorsement or Thank You on any network – helps position you as a helpful thought leader in your industry, which has huge value.

Be sure to assign a dollar value to each of these conversion points. Is a phone call worth more to you than a newsletter sign-up? In which of these mediums does your sales team work best? What is the cost of your social media program (usually this is personnel time)?

Finally, there is no ROI if you don’t set Goals in advance. Know what you want to achieve with social media before you dive in.

Got more ways to measure? Chime in!

GroupM Search and comScore, Inc., a leader in digital marketing intelligence, recently released a study demonstrating the strong correlation between a brand’s social media exposure and users’ engagement with their paid search ads.

Essentially, the two key findings are:

1. Users exposed to both distributed social marketing content AND paid search are nearly three times more likely to search for that brand’s products compared to users who only saw paid search.

2. In organic search, consumers searching on brand product terms who were exposed to their social media marketing are 2.4 times more likely to click on organic links than the average user who only saw that brand’s paid search ad.
Read more…