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An example that I saw that worked recently was for a pasta company, and they literally sent out free pasta for every person that signed up.  You ended up having to like and follow their company to sign up as well, so they killed 3 birds with one stone. I found out about it from a "frugal blog" site. It was seriously popular, and it built a following that was specific to the brand and product.  Excellent idea, but probably not the cheapest thing ever done.

I think this Q&A about contracts should help get you started. There's some links to really great blog posts about legal stuff in there. You may also consider asking a private Q&A, and requesting Sarah Bird's assistance if possible. Does this help?

You can just remove your location in search settings -> preferences.

No worries... as a quick tip, Google some stuff, look at where the reviews originate in their places listing and then you'll know which sites to get reviews at

I'm not convinced social media is on a path of convergence. Each platform offers something different for its user base. But if you want to overcome the duplicity of multiple platforms, I found that Hootsuite.com has really helped me put a leash around social media management. Simply put, this platform combines all your social networks (Facebook, Facebooke pages, Flickr, Ping.fm, WorPress, etc.) and can post to all at once, or you can select which networks to post to at any given time. You can also schedule posts to be delivered on a schedule, which I find very convenient. Reports are pretty good in letting you know which post on each platform gives you the best response. I've also tried Hubspot but found it a bit under-featured and overpriced.

I don't think you can really separate the two.  As Rand pointed out a few months ago, likes and tweets play an important part in ranking now.  So I would consider it a necessity for an SEO to be able to maximize social media exposure.

When you have something of value to say. If you are not that creative, as I am not, then have guest bloggers add valued content. I think what is more important than frequency is quality. This also depends on expectations from visitors, which depends on what type of site you are running. Having too many may be too much for visitors to feel as though they are keeping up with the site. Small sites 2-3 per month Large sites (non news) 2-3 per day. (unless your site is broken into categories, then 1-2 per day per category)

crickets

EGOL is right. I think its only a matter of time before thinks built on/thru social media begin to have a greater effect on SEO, but for now it's a terrific way to share content and gain natural links. Google sees all.

Great content can get some good attention through social bookmarking. As you probably know, most of the popular bookmarking services are no-follow until a link attains a certain level of "popularity".

Thanks. I am tasked with updating and refining our current process for my boss. We do use most of the common best practices...but we certainly want to continually enhance our process.