Blogs are proving to be far more durable as a communications channel than many might have thought. Far from being eclipsed by the new social media whiz-kids like Facebook and Twitter, blogs have gained renewed vitality to become the content backbone of the social networks. For one thing all that 'posting' and 'sharing' needs solid fixed targets to point at with links; and blogs are simply the easiest way to publish an article and gain such a fixed target. In blog lingo, we call the link to a particular post within a blog a "permalink"; permalinks are now a key component of the social sphere. Blog articles are also the natural "long form" source material to support complimentary "sort form" and "micro" posts on Facebook and Twitter. A good blog post can easily spawn dozens of social media spin off posts, all of which can link back to the original, and provide inbound traffic to the blog, and the website. For today's marketers blogging is more useful and important than ever.

Here's a great blog post from BlogSpot with a glossary of terms that can help you navigate the jargon of the "blogosphere":

Ever hear people throw around terms like RSS or .XML and you wrinkle your forehead in confusion but nod your head because you don't want to admit that you haven't a clue? This blog post will lift some of that mystery by covering the ABCs of blogging's most important terms.

See the whole glossary at BlogSpot

Blogs are proving to be far more durable as a communications channel than many might have thought. Far from being eclipsed by the new social media whiz-kids like Facebook and Twitter, blogs have gained renewed vitality to become the content backbone of the social networks. For one thing all that 'posting' and 'sharing' needs solid fixed targets to point at with links; and blogs are simply the easiest way to publish an article and gain such a fixed target. In blog lingo, we call the link to a particular post within a blog a "permalink"; permalinks are now a key component of the social sphere. Blog articles are also the natural "long form" source material to support complimentary "sort form" and "micro" posts on Facebook and Twitter. A good blog post can easily spawn dozens of social media spin off posts, all of which can link back to the original, and provide inbound traffic to the blog, and the website. For today's marketers blogging is more useful and important than ever.

Here's a great blog post from BlogSpot with a glossary of terms that can help you navigate the jargon of the "blogosphere":

Ever hear people throw around terms like RSS or .XML and you wrinkle your forehead in confusion but nod your head because you don't want to admit that you haven't a clue? This blog post will lift some of that mystery by covering the ABCs of blogging's most important terms.

See the whole glossary at BlogSpot

Blogs are proving to be far more durable as a communications channel than many might have thought. Far from being eclipsed by the new social media whiz-kids like Facebook and Twitter, blogs have gained renewed vitality to become the content backbone of the social networks. For one thing all that 'posting' and 'sharing' needs solid fixed targets to point at with links; and blogs are simply the easiest way to publish an article and gain such a fixed target. In blog lingo, we call the link to a particular post within a blog a "permalink"; permalinks are now a key component of the social sphere. Blog articles are also the natural "long form" source material to support complimentary "sort form" and "micro" posts on Facebook and Twitter. A good blog post can easily spawn dozens of social media spin off posts, all of which can link back to the original, and provide inbound traffic to the blog, and the website. For today's marketers blogging is more useful and important than ever.

Here's a great blog post from BlogSpot with a glossary of terms that can help you navigate the jargon of the "blogosphere":

Ever hear people throw around terms like RSS or .XML and you wrinkle your forehead in confusion but nod your head because you don't want to admit that you haven't a clue? This blog post will lift some of that mystery by covering the ABCs of blogging's most important terms.

See the whole glossary at BlogSpot

Many companies use their email marketing program to update their list subscribers on the latest company news, to reveal a new product or service, and of course, to announce a sale. While these are all legimate reasons to contact your list, there's a shift occurring throughout the marketing world.

Gone are the days of "batch 'n blast" (ie: sending the same message to everyone). In today's social media climate, you need to build relationships with your recipients. Learn what they're pain points are, what their day-to-day challenges are, and then customize messages with that information.

With email marketing, thoughtlessly pushing the same message at your entire customer base is no longer enough. It doesn't take care of them. It doesn't show that you recognize and respect them.

Continually blasting everyone with a "me, me, me" attitude isn't going to garner positive results. When you start learning more about your recipients, perhaps through surveys or engaging them on their social media networks, and then adjust your messages accordingly, you'll start building a community of dedicated followers. Readers who look forward to your messages and will help spread your message.

According to media marketing expert Chris Brogan:

Old marketing would be: find buyers for my product. Hunt them down and relentlessly hit them with messages until they buy. The bigger the number of prospects, the better the yield.

New marketing is more like: find people who make more sense. Start relationships with them before selling to them. Learn more about them. Make the offer - if it makes sense.

Read the blog entry from AWeber Communications

Many companies use their email marketing program to update their list subscribers on the latest company news, to reveal a new product or service, and of course, to announce a sale. While these are all legimate reasons to contact your list, there's a shift occurring throughout the marketing world.

Gone are the days of "batch 'n blast" (ie: sending the same message to everyone). In today's social media climate, you need to build relationships with your recipients. Learn what they're pain points are, what their day-to-day challenges are, and then customize messages with that information.

With email marketing, thoughtlessly pushing the same message at your entire customer base is no longer enough. It doesn't take care of them. It doesn't show that you recognize and respect them.

Continually blasting everyone with a "me, me, me" attitude isn't going to garner positive results. When you start learning more about your recipients, perhaps through surveys or engaging them on their social media networks, and then adjust your messages accordingly, you'll start building a community of dedicated followers. Readers who look forward to your messages and will help spread your message.

According to media marketing expert Chris Brogan:

Old marketing would be: find buyers for my product. Hunt them down and relentlessly hit them with messages until they buy. The bigger the number of prospects, the better the yield.

New marketing is more like: find people who make more sense. Start relationships with them before selling to them. Learn more about them. Make the offer - if it makes sense.

Read the blog entry from AWeber Communications

While we are still in the early stages of the Social Media Revolution the roadmap to the future is becoming clearer every day. The social web is rapidly becoming the functional base for most people's daily interaction with web content. That content is now qualified and validated by being shared and channeled across relationships of trust between friends and acquaintances. Product decisions will increasingly be mediated by the authentic testimony of friends on the social network, regardless of whether the brands in question want to participate in the conversation. Smart brands will learn to get involved in these conversations and contribute to a growing consumer awareness of the real issues involved in making informed decisions about products and services, or they will be marginalized. In ways that we have not seen since the advent of television and radio, social conversations have become more important than mass marketing claims.

Jeremiah Owyang at Forrester Research wrote a prescient blog piece about "The Future of the Social Web: In Five Eras" exactly a year ago this week. It bears reading again to plot our progress. It seems to me that we're right on track.

The Five Eras of the Social Web: 1) Era of Social Relationships: People connect to others and share 2) Era of Social Functionality: Social networks become like operating system 3) Era of Social Colonization: Every experience can now be social 4) Era of Social Context: Personalized and accurate content 5) Era of Social Commerce: Communities define future products and services

Read the rest of Jerimiah Owyang's blog here

While we are still in the early stages of the Social Media Revolution the roadmap to the future is becoming clearer every day. The social web is rapidly becoming the functional base for most people's daily interaction with web content. That content is now qualified and validated by being shared and channeled across relationships of trust between friends and acquaintances. Product decisions will increasingly be mediated by the authentic testimony of friends on the social network, regardless of whether the brands in question want to participate in the conversation. Smart brands will learn to get involved in these conversations and contribute to a growing consumer awareness of the real issues involved in making informed decisions about products and services, or they will be marginalized. In ways that we have not seen since the advent of television and radio, social conversations have become more important than mass marketing claims.

Jeremiah Owyang at Forrester Research wrote a prescient blog piece about "The Future of the Social Web: In Five Eras" exactly a year ago this week. It bears reading again to plot our progress. It seems to me that we're right on track.

The Five Eras of the Social Web: 1) Era of Social Relationships: People connect to others and share 2) Era of Social Functionality: Social networks become like operating system 3) Era of Social Colonization: Every experience can now be social 4) Era of Social Context: Personalized and accurate content 5) Era of Social Commerce: Communities define future products and services

Read the rest of Jerimiah Owyang's blog here

Lately I've been reading and listening to social media expert Brian Solis, and learning a tremendous amount about how our social media activity can influence search engine ranking. When it comes to Google search results, it comes down to 'inbound links', and the more links to our web content the better. We've known for a long time that Google will rank the importance, or relevance, of our page content much higher if other people think it is important enough to link to it from their web pages. In the last several weeks we have seen Google and the other search engines begin to rate the social media posts in Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and the others, as searchable content.

It follows that keywords that occur in social media posts with links to web content will now increasingly count as legitimate 'inbound links' to that content, and elevate our search rank. Our SEO work now has to encompass Social Media Optimization (SMO). In my opinion this is a positive thing. It is better that search visibility should relate to authentic conversations that occur in online communities of interest, than that it should depend on some kind of code manipulation arcana, or specious link swapping scams. Social media presence is frankly a very realistic indicator of relevance and as ethical marketers we should celebrate this development.

This may sound a bit familiar to you; after all, this is the purpose of search engine optimization (SEO) right? We know that people use search engines like Google and Yahoo to find relevant content and as such, we optimize our work so that it is discovered in search engine result pages (SERPs).

However, the technicalities involved with wiring SEO are not the same processes required to boost visibility in social networks like Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and Twitter. And it's in social networks like these where people are increasingly spending time communicating, finding relevant and interesting content, and sharing it with their connections. So now, in addition to SEO, we have to implement and manage a Social Media Optimization (SMO) program around our content to increase visibility in these new environments.

Read Brian Solis on SMO

Get Brian's book:
Engage: The Complete Guide for Brands and Businesses to Build, Cultivate, and Measure Success in the New Web

Lately I've been reading and listening to social media expert Brian Solis, and learning a tremendous amount about how our social media activity can influence search engine ranking. When it comes to Google search results, it comes down to 'inbound links', and the more links to our web content the better. We've known for a long time that Google will rank the importance, or relevance, of our page content much higher if other people think it is important enough to link to it from their web pages. In the last several weeks we have seen Google and the other search engines begin to rate the social media posts in Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and the others, as searchable content.

It follows that keywords that occur in social media posts with links to web content will now increasingly count as legitimate 'inbound links' to that content, and elevate our search rank. Our SEO work now has to encompass Social Media Optimization (SMO). In my opinion this is a positive thing. It is better that search visibility should relate to authentic conversations that occur in online communities of interest, than that it should depend on some kind of code manipulation arcana, or specious link swapping scams. Social media presence is frankly a very realistic indicator of relevance and as ethical marketers we should celebrate this development.

This may sound a bit familiar to you; after all, this is the purpose of search engine optimization (SEO) right? We know that people use search engines like Google and Yahoo to find relevant content and as such, we optimize our work so that it is discovered in search engine result pages (SERPs).

However, the technicalities involved with wiring SEO are not the same processes required to boost visibility in social networks like Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and Twitter. And it's in social networks like these where people are increasingly spending time communicating, finding relevant and interesting content, and sharing it with their connections. So now, in addition to SEO, we have to implement and manage a Social Media Optimization (SMO) program around our content to increase visibility in these new environments.

Read Brian Solis on SMO

Get Brian's book:
Engage: The Complete Guide for Brands and Businesses to Build, Cultivate, and Measure Success in the New Web

Social media users are voting with their pocketbooks. They have learned to trust the brands that they see on Facebook and Twitter, and they are spending their money on these products. This is tremendously important news for online marketers.

People who are Facebook fans and Twitter followers of a brand are more likely to buy the brand's product or recommend it to a friend, according to a new study by Chadwick Martin Bailey and iModerate Research Technologies. The study of 1,500 consumers found that 60 percent of Facebook fans and 79 percent of Twitter followers are more likely to recommend those brands since becoming a fan or follower. More than half (51%) of Facebook fans and 67 percent of Twitter followers are more likely to buy the brands they follow or are a fan of.

Read the rest of the story on WebProNews.com

We're down to just two significant search engines - Google and Bing. This article includes a useful review of the sequence of search engine mergers that we've endured in the last decade.

This week Microsoft (Nasdaq:MSFT) and Yahoo! (Nasdaq:YHOO) announced that they have received clearance for their search agreement, without restrictions, from both the U.S. Department of Justice and the European Commission.

This means that Yahoo! will close down its own search engine and start using Bing search results instead, probably as early as next week.

Read the whole story at Pandia.com

There are many aspects of human stimulus response that are involuntary. Artists build paintings around involuntary visual responses, writers craft literature around our response to particular words and combinations of words, music is no different. Good art makes us experience what artists want us to. Advertising professionals have historically experimented with these same techniques in the hope that they can compel consumers to buy when prompted. The evidence is that it works.

If you're like most people, you're way too smart for advertising. You flip right past newspaper ads, never click on ads online and leave the room during TV commercials.

That, at least, is what we tell ourselves. But what we tell ourselves is hooey. Advertising works, which is why, even in hard economic times, Madison Avenue is a $34 billion--a--year business. And if Martin Lindstrom--author of the best seller Buyology and a marketing consultant for FORTUNE 500 companies, including PepsiCo and Disney--is correct, trying to tune this stuff out is about to get a whole lot harder.

Read the whole story at MartinLindstrom.com

Pepsi is betting $20 million, multi-decade, and highly coveted position as the lead Superbowl advertiser to run an amazing social media program. The Pepsi Refresh Project is about getting the global community to nominate projects that need funding in local communities. A good cause, but this is a pretty big bet on a marketing channel that is still only in its fledgeling stage. Pepsi apparently thinks that that social media is a smarter investment than to continue to be a cheerleader for a highly popular but ultimately meaningless game. The apparently see the handwriting on the wall for conventional TV advertising.

Real all about it at Pepsi's "Refresh Everything" site.

As an advertising guy I am generally suspicious of "viral" media outbreaks. What's going on here? Is the "iPad" brand name the most brilliant and wickedly viral social marketing ploy ever conceived? Did Apple use the adolescent joke aspect of this brand name and the obvious association with feminine hygiene products to create a huge surprise, and kick off a weirdly controversial viral rollout of a new product name. Did Apple know from the start that the MADtv skit (from 2005) was out there just waiting to be "discovered", and instantly leveraged into a wildfire overnight viral outbreak. They had to know this clip was on iTube. It is inconceivable that they did not discover this in their first brand discovery efforts. Did they trade on this edgy and funny MADtv clip to instantly inject the brand name into millions of social media conversations around the net. Is this a hint of what's to come in branding for the social sphere? Was this a stupid mistake, or a brilliant stroke?

MADtv Apple iPad Parody 2005

2005 MADtv Apple iPad spoof predicting the iPad. The Apple iPad was announced on 1/27/10. It's brings the best of an iPod Touch, iPhone and Computer all together in an all touch interface. .

See the MADtv sketch on YouTube

This should be interesting. High profile corporate players are cutting back on their conventional media spending to place big bets on social media.

Pepsi will take a massive gamble this year, they are pulling their multi-decade, multi-million dollar Superbowl opening ad position and trading it in for a $20 million social campaign at levels we are yet to experience... for a company that spends almost all it's money on TV ads - it's an incredible gamble.

Read the whole story at Digital Buzz Blog

There's no doubt about it, the times they are a-changin'. The last 10 years have brought about their own share of changes, (good and bad) and the new decade is sure to bring about its own set. Take a look at 10 projected marketing trends for 2010.

2010 is poised to be an exciting year for marketers; trends that have been taking shape over the course of the past decade are creating new opportunities for business owners. The first 10 years of the 21st century brought economic problems, corporate collapses and environmental disasters, but it was also a decade defined by a shift in communications from traditional media to a worldwide conversation that flows faster and farther than anyone could have imagined. Thanks to the tools of the social web, such as Twitter, Facebook, blogs, online video and so on, news and information travels instantaneously, and that means marketers have new and exciting opportunities to reach consumers.

Read the whole story at Entrepreneur.com

Is this the year that Social Marketing will advance from its brilliant "trial stage" to achieve a more mature form, and take its rightful place along side Email Marketing and Search Marketing as one of the "three pillars" that will make up the backbone of online marketing going forward? Brian Solis is one of the most accomplished writers and thinkers on the social media front lines.

In 2010, Social Media will rapidly escalate from novelty or perceived necessity to an integrated and strategic business communications, service, and information community and ecosystem. Our experiences and education will foster growth and propel us through each stage of the Social Media Marketing evolution.

As MarketingSherpa observes, "2010 is the year where social media marketers gain the experience required to advance from novice to competent practitioner capable of achieving social marketing objectives and proving ROI."

Read the whole story at BrianSolis.com

Things are chainging fast. Last week it was Ford now it's Coke - Coke has announced that it is abandoning plans for campaign web sites and investing in social media. They say that the their Facebook and social media presence is "a better homepage than Coke.com." Prinz Pinakatt, Coke's interactive marketing manager for Europe explains:

"We would like to place our activities and brands where people are, rather than dragging them to our platform."

Read more at Hubspot.com

Ford definitely get's it! They're firing on all social media cylinders. They've made a huge commitment to social media, and it looks like it is really paying off. Ford is seriously 'listening' to customers. As a result sales are going great, they're profitable, and they are the only American car company that did not require a government bail out. Is it any wonder that they are able to make cars that people actually want to buy? CEO Alan Mulally even has his own Twitter account!

Ford Motor Co. this year will spend 25% of its marketing dollars on digital media, more than twice the amount spent by the industry.

According to J.D. Power, about 9% of spending this year by automakers will be digital, but that will rise to about 12% by 2012 as more companies embrace social networking, online gaming and rich media ads in place of traditional TV and print.

Speaking at J.D. Power's Internet Marketing Roundtable in Las Vegas today, Ford's chief marketing executive James Farley says the company has made a bigger digital and social media bet than rivals because, "If you are trying to communicate, as we are, that you have been reinventing the company , you can't just say it. You have to get the people to say it to each other."

Ford is also adding tweets to its Sync in-car technology

Ford Motor Co. is adding Twitter messages andInternet radio to its in-car entertainment and communication service, known as Sync, and suggests that the voice-activated system is safer for drivers than trying to manipulate applications on their cell phones.

Ford definitely get's it! They're firing on all social media cylinders. They've made a huge commitment to social media, and it looks like it is really paying off. Ford is seriously 'listening' to customers. As a result sales are going great, they're profitable, and they are the only American car company that did not require a government bail out. Is it any wonder that they are able to make cars that people actually want to buy? CEO Alan Mulally even has his own Twitter account!

Ford Motor Co. this year will spend 25% of its marketing dollars on digital media, more than twice the amount spent by the industry.

According to J.D. Power, about 9% of spending this year by automakers will be digital, but that will rise to about 12% by 2012 as more companies embrace social networking, online gaming and rich media ads in place of traditional TV and print.

Speaking at J.D. Power's Internet Marketing Roundtable in Las Vegas today, Ford's chief marketing executive James Farley says the company has made a bigger digital and social media bet than rivals because, "If you are trying to communicate, as we are, that you have been reinventing the company , you can't just say it. You have to get the people to say it to each other."

Ford is also adding tweets to its Sync in-car technology

Ford Motor Co. is adding Twitter messages andInternet radio to its in-car entertainment and communication service, known as Sync, and suggests that the voice-activated system is safer for drivers than trying to manipulate applications on their cell phones.

You may not think that Twitter is for you, or that it is very important in the larger scheme...but...
Titter is becoming a very big deal. The numbers alone make this an important phenomenon, and companies that are using it are seeing a positive impact on sales. The more you know about Twitter the more sense it starts to make. If nothing else, think of Twitter as a mechanism for broadcasting bookmarks, and links to cool stuff on the web. What's not to like?

Microblogging service Twitter topped the 5 billion tweet threshold earlier this week according to a counter posted on the GigaTweet website, which analyzes Twitter messages in real time. GigaTweet notes that Twitter is currently averaging about 23 million tweets per day, down from earlier in October, when users broke the 25 million per day benchmark. Mashable notes that the GigaTweet counter stood at 1.6 billion tweets as of April 2009, meaning Twitter users have posted about 3.4 billion tweets in just the last six months. Twitter currently boasts about 54 million users worldwide, and is valued at about $1 billion despite the absence of a discernible revenue model.

Read more at FierceMobile.com

Getting your corporate social media presence to actually work for your company is really pretty simple. You simply have to engage your audience and 'interact' with them. It is not enough to 'talk at them', or to just talk about your self and your company. You have to present a bigger picture. And you have to listen to your audience and respond to 'them'. If your internal corporate culture does not allow this kind of listening and responding, your social media efforts are not going to succeed.

Social media isn't complicated. When you boil it down it's about listening to your customers, being helpful by offering your knowledge and giving them interesting content to share and thereby advocate for you. "It's not rocket surgery."

Read the whole article at AmyMengel.com

We had a client who ran an AdWords campaign over the holiday shopping season without monitoring his campaign closely. He got a ton of business from the effort, and was thrilled, until he looked at the cost of ALL of the clicks he was paying for, and did the math with the orders he actually got. In the end it turned out he lost money on every sale. He got the traffic, and he got the sales, but the final accounting showed that he had a completely unsustainable method of getting his sales. To use AdWords successfully you have to pay close attention to the ROI. Here's a great article form the NYT that reviews the potential pitfalls of using AdWords:

"Real-Life Lessons in Using Google AdWords"

Social media is for real, it's here to stay, and it could be very helpful to you marketing efforts. But it takes time and effort, which always comes down to money and investment. If you want to make social media work for your business you will need to take it seriously, make it a priority, and apply some of your best resources to the task. This is not a trivial undertaking, but it could be a game changer for your business.

Many executives think that they don't need a professional to help them with their social media activities. They'll just take a student who has a few hours a week and get him to sit on the social networks and play with their company's branding. It's inconceivable to me how on one hand companies can be so cautious regarding beginning to use social media and on the other hand they'll give the work to a mere student who could ruin their branding in a few hours just to save a few bucks.

Read more at SocialMedia.biz

Most of us were raised on mass market advertising that intruded on our lives, and irritatingly badgered us with messages about products that we were generally not interested in. But in a world where 'everyone' watched prime time TV, classic mass marketing was actually effective and efficient. Today we simply won't stand for these kinds of approaches; it's all too easy for us to 'Tivo' out the TV commercials. And of course we switch channels like crazy; with hundreds of channels on TV, and even more video on the net, there are no 'captive' video audiences anymore. Advertising is way beyond 'simple TV' now; to reach consumers today we have to go 'broadband' and multi-media.

Integrated advertising strategies driven by a promotional idea that creates consumer engagement are increasingly being recognized as essential for success. The power of promotions to cut through clutter and capture interest and attention is also beginning to blur the line between advertising and promotional marketing strategies. Increasingly, these two separate budgets are being considered as part of one single integrated strategy, with digital technologies and media being used together with traditional media channels. This trend will become even more dominant as digital consumers -- brought up in the online world -- do not consider advertisements a mandatory part of their media experience.

Read the whole article at Team Digital

Marketers who think that they can implement a social media campaign using their old PR techniques are in for a disappointment. Vastly different rules apply in the social media space:

Social Media Is Different: Embracing social media and making it part of the overall marketing strategy rather than simply part of an experimental budget is all the rage these days. That is absolutely the right direction for agencies and advertisers to head, but they cannot lose sight of the fact that social media is vastly different from traditional online channels. Advertisers who don't accept the need to approach and measure social media in a different way are doomed to executing sub-par campaigns and being left behind by their competitors.

Read more at Adotas

In a desperate search for simple truth in a chaotic media environment characterized by information overload, and relentless spin, consumers are turning to 'reviews' as their best hope of finding the facts necessary to make decisions. In the end we trust our peers (though they may be strangers) more than we trust the companies that are selling the products and services we are seeking to buy.

There are many more research studies, findings, dissertations, and so on that confirm the same fact: reviewing is the new advertising. This shouldn't come as a surprise: just as with other trends, what's unfolding now is a 'forever need' among consumers, one that's now being satisfied in a superior and previously unattainable fashion. In this case, the need is for trusted advice and recommendations--for feeling in control, for knowing the facts, for avoiding mistakes and disappointments--in order to make that perfect purchase. Which has become even more pressing as choice-overload continues: never before was there so much to choose from, in mature consumer societies, and thus such a need for reviews.

Read the whole article at TrendWatching.com

Social media is rapidly becoming an important component of almost every enterprise's marketing efforts. As expected, businesses are now trying to measure the ROI of these efforts, but they are having to adjust to entirely new metrics:

"If you're using the available mainstream social media that you don't have to serve, host or secure, then you're talking about a number of different value drivers," ... "And when you look at the value of conversations with people, then you can ask whether you can spend less time in a 140-character tweet versus a 15-minute conversation on the phone. So we're beginning to measure that: Is it a less costly service channel than phone or e-mail, and is it preferred?"

Read more at ComputerWorld - What's Your Twitter ROI?

Online sales are expected to grow by a mere 11% in 2009. This is a decline from 13% growth in 2008. Given the horrendous declines in other areas of the economy this is not too bad. Growth, after all, is lots better than no growth, and dramatically better than negative growth.

According to Forrester Research's five-year e-commerce forecast, e-commerce in the United States will climb back to last year's levels by 2010. The reasons: the new president, the government's plan to stimulate the economy and the fact that recessions rarely last more than one year.

Read the rest of the story...

New York Times regular contributor David Pogue had mixed feelings about the utility of Twitter, until he tried a little experiment. In the middle of a live presentation he was giving at a conference on Web 2.0 in Las Vegas this week, he decided to test Twitter, on the big screen at the front of the ballroom, by asking for some help from his twittering followers. The results are hilarious and fascinating. Twitter is turning out to be a marvelous way to communicate, and not at all as silly and trivial as its name suggests.

Read the whole story at the New York Times

We trust each other more than we trust producers and advertisers. In the age of information overload, and overwhelming market choice, consumers are looking for 'authentic' reports from peers to help them make purchasing decisions. While we have long been warned to be careful when we get information from the web, that such information has not been vetted and proven to be true, blogs are nonetheless growing in stature as a trusted source of 'truth' in the marketplace.

While the rise of blog readership in recent years is no secret, the power of blogs to influence what people buy is less established. But as a recent study reveals, that power is significant -- so much that a majority of blog readers say blogs are useful when they make purchases.

The study, which polled 2,210 people and was released this fall, found that the increase in blog readership from 2004 to 2008 was 300 percent; 47 percent of online consumers now read blogs. Half of blog readers said blogs were useful when they were considering what purchases to make, and more than half of that group said they looked at a blog just when they were about to buy something.

Read more of this story

With young people everywhere eschewing fixed lines and going 100% cellular for their primary phone service, it's not much of a stretch to imagine that these same people will want to use the next generation of mobile data devices to surf the web while they are moving around. Mobility is the next "big thing".

Most consumers will be accessing the Web through their mobile phones by 2020, according to new research from the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

Pew conducted surveys with about 1,200 online experts, journalists and technologists, and the majority predicted that the affordability, easy accessibility, widespread use and portability of mobile phones will make them the "primary" Internet connection.

http://www.adotas.com/2008/12/report-most-will-access-net-via-phone-by-2020/

A survey of internet leaders, activists and analysts shows they expect major tech advances as the phone becomes a primary device for online access, voice-recognition improves, artificial and virtual reality become more embedded in everyday life, and the architecture of the internet itself improves.

They disagree about whether this will lead to more social tolerance, more forgiving human relations, or better home lives.

http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/270/report_display.asp

Thanksgiving this year will bring us a momentary break from the relentlessly bad economic news and a pause before we see what happens on Black Friday. By all accounts retail is going to take a beating this year, and friday, normally the busiest shopping day of the year, will present a grim preview of our holiday retail season. An interesting bright spot in all the gloom is the growing consensus that mobil technology in the form of smart phones will escape the grim economic picture and enjoy strong holiday sales. People may be cutting back on their land line subscriptions but there's no let up in the upward trend in cell subscriptions. Mobile data is fast becoming the place to be for advertisers.

Subscriptions including broadband Internet access, mobile phone plans, pay-TV and content subscriptions such as Netflix are the most insulated from the economic downturn. 63% of respondents expect their spending to be about the same next year as it was this past year, and 9% plan to spend even more. Only 28% plan to spend less on network subscriptions.

Read the whole article

Google is rolling out video and voice capabilities for the chat function that is embedded in the Gmail interface. It's a bare-bones voice and video-conferencing service, but it's simple to install and use and is a very good addition to Gmail.

It's no Skype, though. Gmail Video and Voice, as it's called, can't connect to the plain phone network, as Skype's paid service can. And there are plenty of other optional features missing, like a voice call recorder.

I found a demo of voice and video quality on the service excellent, although to be fair I was connected from CNET's corporate network to someone at the Google campus. I do expect Gmail Video quality to be a bit more consistent than Skype, since unlike the point-to-point architecture of Skype, Gmail Video traffic all runs through Google servers. I expect that Google has the bandwidth and server capacity needed.

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Does this mean that Google can search phone conversations that we make with their new gMail VOIP functionality?

Pushing ahead in the decades-long effort to get computers to understand human speech, Google researchers have added sophisticated voice recognition technology to the company's search software for the Apple iPhone.

Users of the free application, which Apple is expected to make available as soon as Friday through its iTunes store, can place the phone to their ear and ask virtually any question, like "Where's the nearest Starbucks?" or "How tall is Mount Everest?" The sound is converted to a digital file and sent to Google's servers, which try to determine the words spoken and pass them along to the Google search engine.

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Google Suggest is a feature that analyzes what you're typing into the search box and offers relevant suggested search terms in real time. You can choose one of the suggested queries by moving up or down the list with the arrow keys or mouse.

This is an important consideration for advertisers who thrive on less popular keywords. When Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) first introduced AdWords in the early 2000s, it was very cost effective to secure the most popular keywords and drive quality traffic to your site. As advertisers became more sophisticated, however, competition for those most popular keywords increased dramatically.

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Observing the CAN SPAM law and getting "delivered" are not the same thing. This article in Direct Magazine highlights some of the enormous difficulties that honest list mailers are having sending list mail to legitimate opt-in mailing lists. High performance senders need to do a lot more today to get their messages delivered, opened, read, and hopefully acted on.

A recent court ruling in Illinois has vast implications for direct marketers. And if there's one lesson DMers must take from the decision it's this: Rightly or wrongly, simply complying with Can Spam is not enough to get e-mail delivered. It doesn't matter if the sender's list is triple-verified-we-even-called-just-to-make-sure opt-in, if an Internet service provider decides a mailer's e-mail is spam and blocks it, the ISP has every legal right to do so.

Read the whole article in Direct Magazine

Gartner says smartphone sales to women doubled last year, and that these sales figures continue top grow at a faster rate than among men. We've known for some time that Japanese teenage girls were the most aggressive users of state of the art mobile communication devices in the world. We should not be surprised that western women would eventually discover the social and community enhancing powers of mobile technology. Mobile tech is simply not about geeks anymore, it's about community; having something to contribute, a need to participate, things to say, and to learn from each other. Clearly women have something powerful to bring to the table in this area.

In general, women may not be the earliest adopters of new gadgets or technology, this is true. However, as a New York Times article by Laura M. Holson tells us, that doesn't mean women haven't been scoping out the scene the whole time, waiting for their perfect moment to buy. They are experienced shoppers, and when they do go to make that purchase - they've already done all the research and will quickly become their new tech gadget's biggest fan!

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Sales of "smart" phones doubled in North America in the first quarter, outstripping the category's growth in the rest of the world, research firm Gartner, quoted by an Associated Press report, said.

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In the last year the number of American women using smartphones more than doubled to 10.4 million, growing at a faster pace than among men, according to Nielsen Mobile, which tracks wireless trends.

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Who are your site visitors likely to be, and what are they likely to be coming to your web site for? They're coming on a 'quest'; what is it? If you can figure this out, and create site content that fulfills your site visitor's quest, you have a chance of keeping them on the site long enough to realize what a great product you have. If you fail to figure this out you are probably wasting your time with your web site. It's all about 'relevance' these days. We're way beyond the idea that people "surf" the web looking for interesting and beautiful web sites. Today we know that most web traffic is mediated by 'search', and most search driven traffic is driven by an information 'quest'. Match the quest with the content of the site they land on after a Google search, and you have relevance... bingo!

As a part of a larger communications plan, an effective site has a specific job. (Notice here that I didn't say simple. Simple and specific are different things. Simple isn't always good for a site -- specific is.) The more specific the job, the more effective the site can be. On top of that, there's a bonus. The more specific the job for the site, the more creative your creatives can get with it. Specificity has always been a critical component of great traditional creative. Not only is that also true on the Web, it's magnified. Specific goals lead to better creative. Better creative leads to deeper engagement, which further boosts effectiveness.

Read more at Adotas.com

After years of hype the mobile advertising medium is starting to gain real momentum. Advertisers who are willing to invest in customizing their messages for this new medium are gaining real advantage in their markets, particularly with localization. The future belongs to mobil devices; if you doubt this just look at what your kids and their friends are doing with cell phones; the small size of the screen is no impediment to this group.

The differences between advertising on the mobile Internet and the PC-based Internet are due to the physical differences between the devices -- most notably the limited size of the interface, which creates new user habits and necessitates innovative approaches for those advertising on the mobile screen. This may seem obvious, but advertisers who recognize how to turn these differences to their advantage are far ahead of the game in mobile advertising.

Read the rest of the story at Adotas

If you have Flash on your web site you know how huge this development really is.

In a move that could add substantial volumes of Flash content to Internet search results, Adobe is working with Google and Yahoo to provide optimized Flash Player technology to enhance the searching of this content. The project, being announced Tuesday, will enable searches on Flash content to return text and links, which can then be indexed, said Justin Everett-Church, Adobe senior product manager for the Flash Player. Content from a Flash application or even a game or advertisement will be available to search engines. Pages containing a Flash .SWF file will be returned in a search.

Read the whole article in InfoWorld

Here's more evidence that we're going to be pushing more an more web content and web applications onto mobile devices; eventually everything will be delivered to small mobile devices that are decedents of your cell phone. The future belongs to the wirelessly connected "pocket computer", not the tethered desktop, or even the laptop computer.

Your laptop is likely to soon go the way of 5.25-in. floppy disks, made obsolete by smaller, more useful technology: the smart phone. Based on current trends for low-power chips used in devices like cell phones and iPods , we're likely to see eight times the CPU power in handheld devices by 2010 that we have today... The progress behind such advances isn't the overall boost in processing capabilities seen under Moore's Law (doubling the density of transistors on a chip every two years), Cockcroft said, but the increasing robustness of low-power chips and devices that use them. In other words: handhelds are advancing faster than laptops. For example, laptop memory capacity typically doubles every two years, while pocket devices are seeing such doubling annually.

Read the whole article at ComputerWorld.com

Imagine that you are traveling in an unfamiliar area and you need to know where to find a public rest room; or you need to locate a store that sells AA batteries. Or imagine that you would like to know if any of your friends are within a few blocks of you, so you can arrange a lunch get together. Or imagine that you are trying to figure out what that land mark building on your right is, as you drive from the airport into an unfamiliar city. By now we are all aware of in-car GPS devices that offer driving directions, but very soon, building on increasingly cheap and ubiquitous GPS technology, we will be immersed in a flood of amazing new 'location aware' services that will be deployed over GPS enabled smart phones. Not only will we always know where we are, but we'll always know where everyone else is as well.

With the imminent availability of the iPhone 3G, we're seeing the emergence of a new category of personal productivity applications that will prove as important as e-mail, word processing, and the spreadsheet: Location-aware applications, software that knows where you are and helps you take better advantage of what's around you.

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As mobile data becomes ubiquitous and wireless connection speeds climb higher and higher, the boundary between desktop and handheld is blurring more and more. Your cell phone is morphing into a mobile computer with an interface to the global network; an interface that is becoming as capable as your desktop connection. Combining this capability with social networking will usher in an explosion of localized personal social communication services that will reach deeply into all aspects of our lives.

Mobile social networks are quite popular with the Millennial generation, just as social networking is, reports In-Stat http://www.in-stat.com . Blogging, photo and video sharing, location-based socialization services, games, SMS, and IM will eventually be combined to afford the mobile user the entire social networking experience from a handset application, the high-tech market research firm says. The mobile handset will simply become an extension of the user in most aspects of life.

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Accessing the internet from smart phones and mobile devices is changing the game. While we have been watching for this development for some time, it appears that the necessary technical infrastructure is finally matching up with an audience in the marketplace. The mobil web is about to explode; is your web site 'mobile ready'?

The Nielsen Company today reported that mobile Internet extends the audience reach of many leading Internet sites by an average of 13 percent over home PC traffic alone. For some categories, such as weather and entertainment, the extended reach can be even greater. Nielsen's data show that for many Internet publishers, mobile Internet increases the overall size of their audience.

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As marketers scramble to figure out how to effectively spend suddenly smaller advertising budgets in an increasingly competitive marketplace, social media has become the hot platform for brand building, and "motivating consideration".

The looming economic downturn will inevitably lead to a decrease in ad spending, but marketers are likely to continue shifting money into social media, according to a new study. According to the Forrester Research report, marketer moves into areas like word of mouth, blogging and social networking will withstand tightened budgets. In contrast, marketers are likely to decrease spending in traditional media and even online vehicles geared to building brand awareness.

Those findings stand in contrast to the previous economic downturn, when spending on Internet advertising cratered as marketers turned to tried-and-true media.

Read the Article in AdWeek

In a down economy, it is important to integrate optimized landing pages with search marketing campaigns, and to use multivariate testing to increase conversions. Tools like Google Analytics greatly simplify this process, making it easier than ever know what visitors to your site are doing and — more importantly — why they are doing it. This article from Adotas does a good job outlining the benefits of this approach:

Go beyond traditional SEM tactics and turn your attention to the next critical step in optimizing your user experience -- the landing page, which is the page where search ads direct users for more information and, ideally, a conversion transaction. You don't have a fully optimized search campaign until you've optimized your landing pages and all other page elements your users encounter on their way to a conversion.

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A recent study commissioned by Google and conducted by Harris Interactive has found online media to be just as effective as traditional 30-second television spots for brand-building efforts.

Google tested the impact of running 30-second commercials from three major packaged goods categories - beverages, salty snacks, and skin care - on three different video platforms: conventional television, YouTube, and embedded in online content.

The study found that the commercials performed equally in all the major attributes on each of those platforms, but that embedded video ads might actually perform slightly better in terms of their ability to influence "purchase intent."

Read the Article at Media Post

The rise of Web 2.0 and user-generated content is having a profound effect on traditional marketing tactics. This article proposes that the 4 Ps - product, price, place and promotion - be replaced by the much more consumer-oriented 5 Ps: people, passion, processes, platform and partners.

When wholly, enthusiastically deployed, the new five Ps all work together - a passion for pleasing the person with whom you're doing business gives rise to new processes, the adoption of smarter platforms and value-adding partnerships that can make the promise of one-to-one marketing real.

The new FIVE Ps of Marketing

In 2008 marketers should avoid over-hyped opportunities and focus instead on measuring their campaigns' success, one satisfied customer at a time, according to Drew Neisser, CEO for US-based experiential marketing agency Renegade.
Neisser has published a "top ten" of marketing industry trends that will be worth considering during the coming year...

Drew Neisser on 2008 Trends