Josh Peters is a social media and Internet marketing consultant and the co-author of Twittfaced. He blogs at Shuaism and can usually be found hanging out on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn.

There’s nothing like the basics to help bring things back into focus when you feel lost. In “Marketing 101,” the acronym AIDA stands for Awareness, Interest, Desire and Action. This is the most simple and rudimentary of sales and marketing funnels and is still incredibly relevant today when it comes to social media and Internet () marketing strategies.

Each section of AIDA represents a section of your sales and marketing process and can help you set your expectations, decide what to monitor, and visualize the relationships between each part. Understanding the flow of the tools and tactics will also help you get your measurements and analytics in line with your goals.

Here’s a closer look at the breakdown of this marketing funnel, some tips on how to apply it to your social media strategy, and a look at how the model is evolving in the social media age.

Twitter () is used by businesses of all shapes and sizes for customer service, lead generation, public relations, marketing, crowdsourcing, sales and sharing up-to-date information. Successes aren’t universal, though. Many businesses find it difficult to overcome the learning curve, learn the Twitter lingo, gain a following and sustain interesting conversation while providing value for followers.

For this installment of the Small Business Round Table Series, we brought three small biz insiders together to talk about the ins and outs of using Twitter for small business growth, in hopes of nailing down a few notes on best practices. Our knowledgeable round table attendees included:

This is a great article with viewpoints from different businesses.  It is a nice way to see how different companies have adopted Twitter and successfully applied it to their online presence.

Thoughts on Twitter Versus Facebook for Business By: Mikal Belicove | October 19, 2010 10:00 AM | I'm of the opinion there are two camps when it comes to online marketing and the use of social media to drive business messaging and customer action: Those who mostly use Facebook Those who mostly use Twitter Sure, many businesses display the blue-based badges for both Facebook and Twitter on their homepage, which suggests that they maintain an active profile on both platforms. But if you take the time to analyze their efforts, you'll find that in most cases, only one profile is kept current. And it's that profile that might stand a chance of producing positive measurable results. Oh, and while we're on the topic: Don't think for one moment that automatically sending your Facebook status updates or blog posts to Twitter -- or vice versa -- means you're keeping either of those social media platforms up to date. In fact, if that single action accounts for half or more of what you do on Facebook or Twitter, it's a sign of laziness -- not to mention being out of touch. So when someone asks me why Twitter doesn't produce the same type of results for their business as Facebook, or they want to know how they can use Twitter to lift sales and grow their business, I tell them they're asking the wrong question. The best way to determine which social networking platform is best for your business and then how to use it starts with having a clear understanding of who your customers are; where it is online that your customers choose to gather and why; and what exactly it is that motivates your customers to act.