As of December 09 online social activity of consumers around the world was at an 82% increase in time spent on social networking from the year prior. On average, users spent more than five and a half hours a day on networks such as Facebook and Twitter. So what does that mean for businesses today? What does it mean when customers continue to adopt social technologies at a blinding speed – yet organizations big and small aren’t able to keep up.
Since rapid adoption of social networking enables users to connect …

Source: Brian Solis
10 Steps for Optimizing Your Brand for Social Search
1. Modernize and socialize your site to complement the experience visitors expect in 2010
2. Optimize the site and all social objects for traditional, social, and real-time search
3. Create meaningful and personable social profiles where consumers are active today (pay attention to where they will be tomorrow as well)
4. Establish an editorial calendar to produce and distribute relevant content for every network with cadence
5. Add social connectivity to the home site to facilitate maximum engagement (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace, Google, …

 
 Guest Post by Ivana Taylor, Third Force
How do you feel about new software applications or new ways of doing business? Are you eager to try something new or do you prefer the tried and true? Sometimes I feel like I’m the only person in the world who hasn’t complained about Vista or the new user interface of Office 2007. I love to see how art and engineering come together to make computing fun and easy.
This is why I’ve decided to examine 5 up-and-coming applications – and how to turn them …

Guest post by: By Chris Garrett
Social media has many uses—from making contacts to performing customer service—but driving quality traffic to your site is Twitter’s secret weapon. The big question is this: How can we get more of that lovely attention we crave?
As my recent poll shows, generating incoming traffic is the number-one need that people have right now, and for good reason. Traffic translates into:
■Attention, engagement, conversation and recognition
■Spreading your message far and wide
■Prospects and subscriber opt-ins
■Customers, increased sales and leads
■Media and interviews, which lead to more attention
… and last …

Posted by Shannon Sweetser
So, what kind of leverage does Inbound Marketing get you in comparison with Outbound Marketing? Well, let’s go back to those simple machines we were learning about in Physics.
Let’s say you had to raise a heavy box 3 feet. To do this, you have two choices. You can lift the box straight up in the air 3 feet. Or you could push it up an inclined plane 5 feet.  Though it would seem that inclined plane makes you do more work because it increases distance, really it’s …

Guest post from Todd @SHIFT Communications
While the RFP process for PR agencies was relatively straightforward for the past 50 years, in the next 3 – 5 years agencies like will need to suss out their proper role on a client-by-client basis:
Some clients will want a traditional Media Relations firm … Some will want a Social Media specialty shop … Some will want Content Creation (video, microsites, iPhone and Facebook apps) … And smart clients will desire a hybrid model that incorporates all of the above – yet which could also …

“Advertising is shifting from being the foundation of a corporate marketing strategy to a catalyst that feeds owned media and creates earned media.” – Sean Corcoran, Forrester Research
 
Advertising now comes after the corporation has created an ecosystem for its owned media channels (e.g., a blog, a Twitter handle, a Facebook Fan Page).
Advertising now comes after the corporation has an established rapport with its fan base, bloggers, and traditional media contacts.
Advertising now comes after relationships.
 
Tellingly, the “Challenges” that Sean Corcoran points out regarding paid media — “clutter, declining response rates and poor …

 
Ask anybody why they use Facebook, and most people will respond with reasons like staying in touch with friends, or being able to share pictures. Rarely does one’s professional life ever get mentioned when describing the social network. When it comes to business networking, LinkedIn tends to take all the thunder, and Facebook is generally written off as a place just for fun. Yet, perhaps that’s a mistake.
Facebook, after all, has 250 million active users compared to about 44 million for LinkedIn, and even though the atmosphere is clearly not as …

  
Guest Post by the Society of New Communications Research
What Companies Need to Do:
- Don’t over-engineer brand stories –but companies must facilitate and manage
- Must position but the brand story will develop organically based on customer feedback
- New technologies facilitate these exchanges now in ways that are effective and viral
- Companies must re-integrate customer insights into an evolving brand story
How the Co-author Model Works – Leads to Co-Creation:
- More than simply putting customer stories or CGM on your website – baby step
- Means 360 communications and open exchange with your customers
- …

 
Guest Post by Brenna Ehrlich | Mashable
It’s a new year, which means it’s time to make resolutions, take on fresh challenges, learn new things and change our lives for the better. Perhaps you want to lose 10 pounds, travel more, or get the job you really want?
Mashable has been building a vast archive of how-to guides on everything from professional networking to planning a vacation online — what better time to release a combined list than at the beginning of a new decade?
If you’re looking to improve your life in 2010, …