Empire Avenue has always been an excellent tool for monitoring your social media and online activity, and networking with more people. While the gamification of social media and influence scores will continue to be discussed and debated, services like Empire Avenue or Klout, if used correctly, can be extremely valuable to businesses.

Of even greater value though is a powerful tool within Empire Avenue called Missions. Added last year, missions are activities that Empire Avenue users can set up where other users are asked to do something and receive in-game currency (eaves) as a reward. Using missions, you can jump-start your social media activity, and I'm going to tell you how.

Content Marketing for your business means creating great content and sharing it to your social networks. But it also means looking for additional, sometimes creative ways to get what you're writing in front of more people. What do you think are the best tools for getting more traffic to your blog?

The tools below generally offer creative ways to use social media, and other people, to share your latest work. They might include getting more retweets or +1's for a particular post, or having your new blog post automatically shared to other people's social networks, gaining exposure to their followers. Read more »

As you add more and more content to your website and blog, you will slowly begin to attract more interested readers. If you really want to rapidly increase your readership you need to use social networks.

However, there is nothing more discouraging than to spend a lot of time writing and perfecting your blog post, only to watch and wait for the Facebook Likes, Google +1's and Twitter Tweets that never come.

Why aren't people tripping over themselves to share your content? It might be your fault, but these five tips can help you quickly.

Many businesses are beginning to realize the benefit of having an account on Empire Avenue. If you don't know what EAve is, it's an online game where players invest in each other. Your share price and stock performance is partly tied to your social networks like Facebook and Twitter. So, unlike sites like Klout which simply measure your social networking activity, Empire Avenue is much more interactive and engaging. (For more information, please see What is Empire Avenue?)

Empire Avenue is an online game that has achieved enormous popularity lately. It is a form of stock market, where every player is a stock and you can buy or sell shares in each other. Your share price and dividends are based on not only your in-game activity, but your real life social network activity as well. Users connect their Facebook, Facebook Page, Twitter, Flickr, LinkedIn and YouTube accounts and Empire Avenue automatically records and scores your activity. Users are also able to connect one or more blogs and RSS feeds. 

We're often asked by our business clients which social network should they use. Certainly, most businesses should have a presence on almost all social media platforms in order to reach the broadest possible audience, but surely one is better than others for business, right? We'll review the top networks and how they can be used for business and perhaps we'll find an answer to that question.