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As the unemployment rate continues to rise (note: it's a lagging indicator and the perceived increase must be taken with a grain of salt), marketers are finding that their knowledge is best applied to making themselves stand out against the growing competition amongst creative professionals looking for work.  The tech-savvy have a significant advantage; Internet gurus who have been practicing interactive marketing know to use social media to position themselves as conversation starters and thought-leaders.  But even the likes of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn have become too mainstream to act as significant differentiators since they are practically a minimum requirement for a decent marketing effort.

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Twitter is quickly becoming our favorite recession-proof marketing tool - it's a free, easy-to-use medium whose limits are constantly being defied.

140 characters didn't seem like a lot at first, but before we knew it 140 characters could include a tiny URL, a picture, and 12 seconds of video, for starters.

It was only a matter of time before a savvy marketing start-up harnessed the power of Twitter to share audio.

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Yesterday we came across Crowd Science, a promising startup that provides audience demographics for ... FFRREEEEEE! And it's not some busch-league, low-budget version that leaves you frustrated at its lack of features, forcing you to reluctantly upgrade.

For you high rollers, there are also paid account levels that have some really amazing features!

Crowd Science profiles your audience by asking them to take short surverys while they are on your site. The surveys are clean, simple, and optional. Best of all, your visitors never leave your site. Here are some highlights from the Crowd Science website:

• We’re opinionated, and we care deeply about user experience, elegant engineering, and providing stellar customer service. We think we can build a great research platform by being polite and clever.

• No flashing, no punching monkeys, no free iPods, and a zero-pixel footprint. We know you care about your visitors, and so do we. Our main focus is to be as polite and non-intrusive as possible to your audience.

• Crowd Science Demographics' technology makes sure that only a small portion of visitors are invited to provide information. Being temporary and occasional is the key to keeping your audience focused and happy.

• Choose what you want to share and who you want to share it with using our customizable Media Kit hosting service

Crowd Science Basic ($0.00) actually offers a pretty sweet deal for people running a site that gets 500,000 or fewer hits a month:

The Crowd Science team has an impressive resume - they come from Apple, Cisco, comScore, and Kontiki - so you know you're in good hands.

Email marketing is still a relatively new avenue to lead generation, and many people are confused about the do's and dont's.  Anti-spam laws have evolved from the days of "FREE v1agra!!!", and it's important that companies reach out to their audience in a respectable, unobtrusive fashion.

Not only is sending unsolicited emails against federal law - punishible by up to 5 years in prison and heavy fines - but it also makes your organization untrustworthy and, frankly, cheesy.

One of the most important factors in online marketing is the ongoing, authentic "conversation" between a company and its clients.  From a business standpoint, your success rate on any given campaign will be higher if your audience is at-will. So don't annoy them.

No one wants to have conversations with sleazy spammers, however, even with good intentions it can be easy to slip into unethical email marketing territory.

Fortunately, the good people at MailChimp break down email marketing laws and ethical guideslines quite well.  MailChimp operates under the highest code of online marketing ethics, setting a fine example for others.  Their criteria for email lists approved for use on their own site provides an excellent guide for marketers grappling with the gray area.

In summary:

• Only email people who have opted-in/subscribed via a form on your website
• Purchased lists are unethical and should not be used
• Do not email contacts that are more than 6 months old without a "Remember Me?" email
• Every single email must contain an "unsubscribe" link
• If you're still using the term "Blast", you should punch yourself in the face because you are a rubbish marketer.  MailChimp asks you to go away.  We're with them.

Read MailChimp's easy guide, broken down into scenarios and advice.