AJWS-AVODAH Partnership book club

First, offline in New York, Gabriel will be facilitating a discussion about Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations at the AJWS-AVODAH Partnership’s monthly book club “People of the Book.”

We’ll discuss Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations by Clay Shirky. Amazon.com calls it: “A revelatory examination of how the wildfire-like spread of new forms of social interaction enabled by technology is changing the way humans form groups and exist within them, with profound long-term economic and social effects-for good and for ill.”

The discussion will be facilitated by Gabriel Blau, Internet Marketing Strategist and Co-Founder of VisibleU.

Tuesday, January 19 at 6:00 p.m. at the AJWS office. RSVP now to slipkin@ajws.org!

Marketing Tactics that Get Results Webinar

Second, online, Gabriel will be on a panel run by Verio, one of the world’s largest and most respected hosting providers.

Begin 2010 with a BANG! Marketing is a powerful tool for you to generate opportunities, nurture leads, strengthen customer relationships, and increase sales. Join this webinar to obtain new ideas on marketing tractics that get results. You’ll learn first hand from viaVerio Partners what marketing tactics they use to obtain new customers and increase revenue from existing customers. This panel discussion is all about Marketing Best Practices.

Verio Inc. has teamed up with three of their partners, VisibleU, thunder::tech, and Riser Media, to bring you this exciting webcast on “Marketing Tactics that Gets Results” which will take place on Thursday, January 28th at 2:00 pm EST.

Join us to learn what marketing initiatives are working:
- Online Marketing
- Relationship Marketing
- Passive Marketing
- SEO
- Social Media
- Email Marketing
- Content Marketing

Click here to register for the webinar: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/909047675

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• TED talk: How social media is making history by helping citizens report the real news (presentationzen.com)
• Room for Debate: To Tweet or Not to Tweet (roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com)

Related posts:

1. VisibleU Co-founder on WBAI 99.5fm This Friday
2. January Webinar: Planning Online Marketing for Success

So if you find yourself looking for way to grow your customer base on a tight budget, don’t despair – you’ve got options.

You may feel that the big turnkey marketing options aren’t on the table. You can’t afford to advertise, at least not in the places or amounts that will make a difference – avenues like PPC may bring you results if you can afford to invest significantly ( alot depends on your industry), and print and other media can have an intimidating price tag for a business trying to save money.

So where does that leave you? Well, these days, the name of the game for many people is Making Personal Connections. The idea is, you may not be able to get your message out to every person on the planet all at once, but if you can reach a small group, and make them really feel connected to you and your business, then they may help you spread your customer base for you. You may not bring in the massive numbers of a big-budget campaign, but the people you do reach may be much more likely to become your customers.

You first step, always, should be to make a plan. You need to look at your business  – figure out who your customers are (and who your best customers are), who your competitors are, and what your message is. Then you need to know what your marketing budget is. We’ve spoken to companies that feel like they just have no budget at all, but you always have something to invest in growth, whether it’s $50 a month or $5000. Know what it is, and plan around it.

One good area is through Social Media – focus on a few social media networks that seem to work for your business, and then spend some time each day making posts, commenting on other people’s posts, and growing your social network. It doesn’t cost anything more than an investment of time, and a commitment to sticking with it.

You can start a blog for your business – it’s a great way to connect with people on subjects connected to your business and show off your expertise. But make sure you have the time and the energy to stick with it – if you’re not updating at least once a week, you may be wasting your time. If you do update consistently, take advantage of your other social networks bring people to the articles you’ve written. And be sure not to make each post a sales pitch.  Focus on real content that would interest your market.

You can also take your marketing offline, and seek out meetup events and networking groups wherever you live. A face-to-face meeting can be far more powerful and memorable than any online connection, and you never know what may result from meeting someone. Even people who will never become your customers may have other ways of helping your business grow.

And once you have a growing contact list, make sure you stay in touch! Don’t waste your efforts by dropping the ball. Make sure you stay in touch with your list with a good, regular email campaign, and take the time to respond more personally to people you’ve connected with. Keep your word-of-mouth marketing in mind, and encourage people on your list to reach out to people they know who might be interested in your business.

Above all, keep in mind that you will need to stick with your marketing plan for a while in order to get the results you want – you’re not going to see any quick fixes. It’s easy to get discouraged after only a few weeks and give up on your efforts, or try a different direction altogether. But if you stick with your strategy and mark your progress as you go, you should see a steadily growing base of followers.

Of course we think you may want to work with us on your internet marketing but you may also want to take a look at this recent newsletter from sitepoint, with some similar advice on the subject of “skinny” marketing.

Related posts:

1. Is Social Networking Separated by Social Class?
2. Social Network Marketing Spending to Increase in 2009
3. The Theory of Social Media Marketing Evolution

But it’s not just any year to which we’re saying so long. It’s the last year in a tumultuous decade that defined (and in some cases) redefined how we’ll do business into the foreseeable future.

eMarketer released a study recently, based on the results of McKinsey Quarterly’s “Global Survey,” on measuring the business effects of Web 2.0. What they found just about sums up the past 10 years of technological advances in business best practices, considering that much of what’s on this list didn’t exist when the ball dropped on the very last second of 1999 – several technologies were a boon for relationships among employees as well as with customers and external partners.

Take a look at the results after the jump.

With all the talk of social media marketing – particularly Facebook, Twitter (and MySpace, in its heyday) – it may come as a surprise that blogs appear as the most useful tool to build customer relationships, bringing in measurable results to 51% of the companies that responded worldwide. Video-sharing and social networking followed a close second, however, at 48% each, while RSS feeds helped 45% of companies reach out.

Less useful were wikis, podcasts, ratings and tags (another surprise – since so much emphasis was put on tags a couple years ago), but they weren’t a complete waste. One-quarter to one-third of responding companies said that they these tools were effective. (Personally, we feel like we belong in this category, too. At least one of our clients has benefited from the integration of downloadable podcasts into e-mail marketing, and we’ve seen just how well tags can work within our own blog.)

The survey goes on to detail how telecom and high-tech companies saw more Web 2.0 customer-related benefits (at 65%), compared to business/legal/professional firms, which reported a 60% effectiveness rate.

eMarketer is quick to point out, too, that among the companies that responded, 74% deemed it crucial to integrate Web 2.0 tools into other forms of customer interaction (adding social networking badges to e-mails and Web sites, among many others best practices), while 52% said that marketing the Web 2.0 initiatives themselves was a best practice.

We want to know what you think. Do you agree with the results of this survey? If so, among the Web 2.0 tools listed in the survey, which has helped your business the most? Let us know by leaving a comment.

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According to the site, founded by former Google employees, “When you want trusted information — product recommendations, travel suggestions, local tips, or career advice — a real conversation with a friend (or friend-of-friend) can be much more helpful than searching the web.

“Aardvark is easy: just send Aardvark a question in plain English, like you do when talking to a friend. Aardvark figures out who might be able to answer, and asks on your behalf — Aardvark is the hub.” But until recently, Aardvark was a below-the-radar search service that gave its beta users just one invitation per month. Ready to emerge from is secretive shroud, however, the service is now giving users an unlimited amount of invites.

This is great news for those of you out there who thrive on useless knowledge – and subsequently want to stake your claim as the knower of all things inane. In the past few months, Aardark has been covered extensively (even if you haven’t heard of it until now) by TechCrunch, The New York Times, Wired and The Associated Press.

If you’re a Facebook user (and, really, who isn’t by now?), you can sign up quickly and easily by connecting to Aardvark via a Facebook application on the Aardvark homepage. In doing so, it will extract important pedigree info and connect you to those of your friends who are already using the search service. Once signed up, you can ask and answer questions through your favorite IM-capable applications (AIM, G-Chat, MSN and Yahoo!), connect to Twitter, and link to your e-mail.

Check it out, and let us know either way if you love or loathe Aardvark after you’ve tried it.

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Everyone has their own way of using the site to his or her advantage, but Walker’s list of power tools is great for anyone using LinkedIn to cultivate new business, network or keep up with existing contacts – and the competition.

Take a look at this comprehensive rundown of what you may or may not be doing to make the most of your presence on the professional networking scene.

Once you’ve studied it – and thought of ways to integrate the techniques into your own marketing strategy – feel free to read some of the LinkedIn success stories Walker has uncovered.

Just think … with the proper attention to detail, someday soon a similar story could be yours!

LinkedIn Events
This feature is very simple. You can submit your event allowing you to promote it to other LinkedIn users both within and outside your network. You can also go here to find events you might be interested in attending. Both live and virtual events can be included.

• “Events Home” displays a list of the events related to your connections (created by, attending or interested in).
• “Find Events” allows you to search for events you may be interested in attending.
• “My Events” are events you have created that are upcoming or past.
• “Add an Event” is where you, well, add an event. Once you publish the event, your connections will automatically receive an update. You can also share it with up to 50 specific contacts at a time via LinkedIn mail, and you can pay to advertise the event to people outside your network.

Blog Link or WordPress
If you write a blog (a professional one of course), have the blog content automatically “sucked in” by one of these 3rd party applications so that your most recent posts are actually displayed and promoted in your profile.

SlideShare or Google Presentation
Have a smashing presentation you did in PowerPoint? You can use this 3rd party application to post your presentations publicly on LinkedIn to help you build credibility and clarify your areas of expertise.

LinkedIn Groups & Discussions
This is one of LinkedIn’s most useful features (and I would hazard a guess that it’s the most used too). Individual LinkedIn members start groups where other members have discussions, share news and post jobs. The wonderful thing about these groups is they are basically segmented mini-markets ready and waiting for you to tap into. As of this posting, there are more than 357,000 groups on LinkedIn ranging in size from 0 to more than 100,000 members. Approximately 5,000 new groups are created each week. Some groups have a spam problem but often there are worthwhile discussions to be had and news to read. Groups are also a great place build visibility among people who are interested in your area of business (we’ll dive into this more next week!). Be careful though – the line between “sharing information” in the form of links to your site or blog and spam can be very faint.

LinkedIn Searches (within your network and outside it)
Many people use LinkedIn as a simple contact management database. Having a lot of people in that database can provide you access to any company, person or network with whom you want to connect.

In fact especially if you don’t know who to reach out to for a particular question, need or opportunity, a quick keyword search on LinkedIn can tell you who you already know that meets your criteria, and can also find people you don’t know but should – and that’s where the magic begins!

Network Updates
These updates are useful obviously to keep up with what people are doing, but also as an excuse to reach out to someone and reconnect, and as a means of finding people you might want to know. You receive a list of updates both via email and at the bottom of your profile letting you know of the changes people have made to their profiles. Did they change their headline? Change their current job? Are they connected with 5 new people some of whom you might know?

LinkedIn Browser Toolbar
This application installs a thumbnail into your browser bar. The application simply opens different pages on LinkedIn to save you the time of typing them in. http://www.linkedin.com/static?key=browser_toolbar_download

LinkedIn Q&A
This is a tool that many LinkedIn users swear by. This tool can provide a great deal of exposure. When you answer a question, and your answer is rated “best answer” it will also appear in your profile which not only adds to the good will surrounding you but help you build credibility as an expert in your field. Beware however – this can be very time consuming.

Send Mass Emails
LinkedIn does limit your ability to do this outside of groups, typically you can email up to 50 people on your list at a time. But it can be a great way to get the word out. Note that when you post a “question” in Q & A, you can send the question to up to 200 of your connections in addition to making the question public.

Job Postings
For $195 for a 30-day posting, you can use LinkedIn to post jobs to a wider network of people or you can post jobs for free through groups that you’re a member of if the group owner has turned on the “Jobs” feature. Note that job descriptions are limited to about 3,900 characters.

Tagging
I included tagging in the last article on How to Set up your LinkedIn Profile but it really belongs here in the list of tools. It is a great tool for organizing your contacts into groups that are personally meaningful. Right now the tool is in Beta so it may not be visible yet to everyone. But when it becomes available I would definitely suggest checking it out.

Here’s another post from Maisha Walker that details the success stories of LinkedIn users who are using the site to its full potential. Your homework after reading this is to think of ways that you can improve your own presence.

Which of the tools listed above are you using now – and which will you start using? Let us know.

Related posts:

1. The Theory of Social Media Marketing Evolution

The first time around we outlined a few of the advantages – greater exposure, how ad revenue sharing can make you money, and neat-o page customization – and a few of the disadvantages, such as the language and location restrictions and copyright ownership.

Before we get into the pro and cons of partnering with YouTube, however, it’s important that you understand what a partnership with YouTube is. In a nutshell, partnering with the video-sharing site allows you to share in revenue-generating opportunities. Some of the benefits include sharing revenue from relevant InVideo ads overlaid on your videos and banner ads running next to your videos to earn money, participating in co-marketing & branded entertainment opportunities with top brand advertiser, and utilizing your own sales to sell your own ads.

That all sounds well and good considering the enormous reach of YouTube, facts that the Google-owned operation happily points out:

• People are watching hundreds of millions of videos a day on YouTube, and uploading hundreds of thousands of videos daily.
• YouTube is the number one video site on the internet and the 4th largest Internet destination in the world. (Nielsen NetRatings, December 2008)
• YouTube attracted over 300 million unique video viewers across the world in December 2008. (Nielsen NetRatings, December 2008)
• YouTube is the #2 Search engine in the world, after Google and before Yahoo! (comScore, October 2008)

Of course, there are lots of good things to gain as a YouTube partner – based on those statistics alone. But there’s another side of the partnership that YouTube doesn’t talk about – and rightfully so.

Although, it’s not entirely YouTube’s fault. Each partner has different content, and each partner will have a different experience. While these advantages might help one partner get ahead, it’s the disadvantages that will leave others behind.

Of course, we would be remiss if we didn’t shine a light onto the underwhelming side of being a YouTube partner – the con, if you will (no pun intended).

You don’t have to take our word for it. Here’s a video from a YouTube Partner about his experience:

And there you have it.

The conclusion that we’ve come to after reviewing all of the evidence is that – like most things – a YouTube partnership may work well for some and it will likely not work very well for others. The good news is that there’s plenty of information available to help you make the right decision on becoming a partner.

If you have a different take on the situation – whether you’ve been a partner in the past or are currently a partner – let us know your experience. We understand that there’s two sides to every coin – advantages, disadvantages, pros and cons – and we like to hear from those of you out there who have firsthand knowledge one way or the other.

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The study says that there are class differences among users of social networks – particularly Facebook and MySpace. Wealthier people are 25% more likely to use the former, while the less affluent are 37% more likely to cling to the latter.

More specifically, the research found that “almost 23 percent of Facebook users earn more than $100,000 a year, compared to slightly more than 16% of MySpace users. On the other end of the spectrum, 37 percent of MySpace members earn less than $50,000 annually, compared with about 28% of Facebook users.”

MySpace users tend to be “in middle-class, blue-collar neighborhoods,” said Mike Mancini, vice president of data product management for Nielsen, which used an online panel of more than 200,000 social media users in the United States in August. “They’re on their way up, or perhaps not college educated.”

LinkedIn and Twitter were also part of the study – and the two skew even higher among affluent users.

Nearly 38% of LinkedIn users earn more than $100,000 a year, and there’s a strong overlap between Facebook and LinkedIn users.

There are lots of theories – scientific and otherwise – about the results of Nielsen Claritas study in this article on CNN.com.

But we want to know your take on this issue. Why do you think the less affluent are more apt than the affluent to use MySpace – and vice versa? What is it about these social networking sites that seemingly separates us by the amount of money we make?

Fundamentally, why do you think people (in general) have made the move to Facebook from MySpace. And why are the less affluent still pledging their proverbial allegiance to the fading portal?

Related posts:

1. The Theory of Social Media Marketing Evolution
2. Primer on Social Media Marketing (Part 1)
3. What Happens When Your Future Boss Finds You Online?

That’s the subject of a recent article on CNN.com, titled “How social media can hurt your career.”

In it, gory details of how job seekers ruin their chances of gainful employment by prematurely posting unflattering status updates and sending Tweets that have led to rescinded job offers, reprimanding at work and pink slips.

Not all of the examples are tragic, however. Some are quite funny. Depending whose side you’re on.

Like this Tweet, for instance, from a potential Cisco employee who wanted the world to know about a recent job offer:

“Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work,” read the Tweet.

Not missing a beat, Tim Levad, a “channel partner advocate” for the company, responded: “Who is the hiring manger, I’m sure they would love to know that you will hate the work. We here at Cisco are versed in the Web.”

Ouch!

And the pain without gain doesn’t stop there.

Paul Wilson, a freelance/corporate Web marketer and blogger, compiled this list of the “Top 10 Tweets to Get You Fired.”

1. “hate my job!! i want to tell my bosses how dumb they are and how meaningless this job is, then quit, and be happy!”

2. “So my job was to test all the food at the new resturant, can I just say, ughew. I’m going to taco bell then twistee treat.”

3. “Workin… This job sucks worse then the economy!”

4. “I’m going to work! Walmart! Must find better job! I hate it when chicks there have a deeper voice than me and refer to me as foo!”

5. “Also I’m really bummed that I’m working today, i asked off so i could study but my boss is a ******* **** ***** ***** who can’t read.”

6. “Coworker smuggled out a chair for me. Currently being paid to SIT around and listen to John Barrowman on my iPod. I don’t hate my job today!”

7. “having sex dreams of people you work with makes for an awkward day.”

8. “smoking weed at work is so [EDITED] great ”

9. “It’s bad when you overhear the n00b programmer say “I used to work at McDonalds with him” and you wonder if he is talking about the CEO…”

10. “Huh, with my boss on twitter, maaaybe I should take down that sexy picture of her… but her reaction will be priceless!”

Notwithstanding poor grammar and misspellings, we have to admit that these sad, probably unemployed saps are sort of hilarious. Their Tweets made us smile, at least.

There’s plenty more horror-humor where that came from, too. Check out the entire article to read about how Facebook got some people fired (like the guy in the pic above who attended a Halloween party instead of the “family emergency” that got him out of work), and three of the top social networking don’ts.

Of course, if you have a story to share with us about how you or someone you know got the ax (or a stern talking to) from “The Man” (or Woman) about your online habits, let us know.

We promise to keep your identity a secret. Until we update our status.

Related posts:

1. Is Social Networking Separated by Social Class?
2. Coffee Break: Online PR, Twitter, and the New York Times
3. The Good & Bad of the 'Twitter Effect'

There was a minor debate over the validity of the statistics, because the video was produced as a marketing piece by an author who’s selling a book on the same subject.

This video from The Economist, however – from its periodic series “Did you know?” – shouldn’t leave much room for argument. The Economist is nothing if not reputable – and this video contains up-to-the-minute info on where we’re headed in this digital revolution. Truly exciting stuff!

Watch the video after the jump.

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2. Is Social Networking Separated by Social Class?
3. Explaining Facebook

But for all of Facebook’s idiosyncrasies, none are more annoying than the people who use it.

In the video below (after the jump), CNN correspondent Josh Levs unveils the 12 most annoying types of Facebookers. Watch it and ask yourself if you fit into one of these categories. Chances are, you do. Even we’re guilty of committing a couple of these Facebook “crimes.”

Can’t win ‘em all…

Related posts:

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2. What Happens When Your Future Boss Finds You Online?
3. Orkut: Not as Popular as Myspace or Facebook, but Still Worth Your Time