But I’m most excited about their official video. This is one of the best (it would be the best, but I have to give the top spot to our own video) This is a video done right. It is clean. It is clear. It is beautifully done. Take a look and tell us what you think about the video or service.

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You’re going to love it – so check it out and spread the word!

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2. Is Inbound Marketing the Dawn of a New Era?
3. Primer on Social Media Marketing (Part 2)

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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You might be thinking though, how can I compete with major retailers whose sites are all shiny and sleek? Trust us, even the shiniest, sleekest sites have their problems. And their oversights could be your gain.

So what exactly should you do to prepare your site for the holiday season.

In an article on MultichannelMerchant.com, James Gardner details a few important steps you should take now to help stay ahead of the curve a month from now.

1. Don’t Forget the Basics

A common mistake that most retailers make, says Gardner – and we agree – is that too many times they concentrate their energy on a particular promotion or holiday campaign. But what about the rest of the site? What happens when all those people who are impressed by the company’s Christmas creativity can’t access others parts of the site because of poor functionality? Well, they answer, all too often, is that leave. They don’t want to be bother with a slow site that isn’t working correctly.

So, before you go spending all your resources on your holiday push, go through your site – meticulously – to make sure that everything is in working order. Make sure there are no unnecessary obstacles that stand in the way of consumer and checkout. Make sure that they have no reason to leave your site because of broken links and videos or images that don’t load. You owe it to yourself and your customers.

2. Make Your Site a Holiday Destination

It’s not just the discounts that will drive sales. Smart marketing can help.

Gardner suggests taking the holiday shopping experience to the next level by capturing customers’ attention with something unusual and unexpected.

Like branded games or quizzes, for instance, that add a bit of fun to the shopping experience. Perhaps an interactive feature – like answering questions about the gift recipient – will add an interesting element for customers who are shopping for the hard-to-buy-for on their lists. Whatever it is, offer visitors something unique that gets them in the spirit and keeps them coming back for more.

3. Think Outside of the Site

Engage in social media to help build brand buzz by using video, customer recommendations, deal tweets, and whatever other novel ideas you can think of to get the word out about what you’re offering this holiday season.

Gardner says, “There is nothing more compelling to a customer than hearing a recommendation from another customer, which is why tools like Twitter, Facebook and other social communities can be so powerful in generating brand buzz. During the holiday season, these tools can serve as an invaluable advocate in quickly spreading your brand message and driving traffic to your site.”

It’s true. We post about how valuable social media marketing is during the off-season, so it stands to reason that it’s even more powerful during holiday time when the Web is jammed with increased traffic.

For more tips on how to fine-tune your site for the holidays, check out Gardner’s entire article here.

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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
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Of course, we don’t make that data up. No, we use sources such as eMarketer, MarketingProfs and other research entities that compile information that allow us to draw conclusions and provide our two cents on various topics on advertising and marketing across channels but especially online.

Unless you’re a subscriber to these services, however, you may not have access to all the information they hold. Information that can help you when planning your own marketing campaigns or campaigns for clients.

A great resource that we’ve found – which is available to everyone – is MarketingCharts, charts and data for marketers in Web and Excel formats.

The available info is as current as you can get, with some charts revealing the top 10 Web sites in various categories for September 2009, among many other interesting articles such as “Men More Likely to Ditch Traditional Media for Digital.”

More on that later. But for now, check out MarketingCharts and find a way to make it work for you.

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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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Our open-ended question to you then – despite the star-studded brouhaha over the brand – was if you thought Twitter would become a relevant and reliable tool for marketing businesses on the Internet.

It seems – and our apologies to the naysayers – that the answer is yes.

Several months have passed since Ashton Kutcher and CNN famously duked it out for the most Twitter followers (Ashton won) – and the celebrity endorsements have consistently subsided (and, in fact, some of those same celebrities who sang Twitter’s praises have threatened to turn on the microblogging service if it went through with a rumored Twitter-based TV program).

All that nonsense aside, in the past months Twitter’s users have proven themselves nothing if not dedicated (with or without Ashton) – and they’re showing big business that they now have the power.

Case in point: Renegade actor Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest guerilla comedy, Bruno, was the talk of every town before its release in early July. Speculation over racy, potentially homophobic content; unsuspecting participants threatening to sue; and Baron Cohen himself appearing in character everywhere you turned led the studio to believe it had a Boratian hit on its hands – if only due to the extreme level of piqued curiosity the marketing efforts managed to create.

“Bruno” opened to an impressive $14.4 million in the U.S. and Canada – and the very next day dropped an equally impressive 39% in ticket sales.

Why? According to this article from Reuters, “Bruno suffered from the ‘Twitter effect,’ meaning audiences reacted quickly online to raunchy scenes of sex and nudity, scaring people away.”

While the Twitter community’s nearly anonymous thumbs-down of “Bruno” caused its early demise – good luck finding a theater near you still playing it less than 5 weeks after its debut – early indicators suggest that director Peter Jackson’s new science-fiction film District 9 may benefit from Twitter exposure.

In the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly, reporter Nicole Sperling writes, “On the first night of Comic-Con, Sony Pictures stacked an audience with movie bloggers and screened the low-budget, R-rated sci-fi flick District 9. By 11:39 that night, audience members’ Twitter raves had reached American Idol winner Jordin Sparks, who posted ‘Omg I Want to See District 9 asap’ to her 220,000-plus followers. A Web sensation was born.’

Still, while Twitter has the power to impact the entertainment selections of middle America – and force major movie studios to rethink their marketing (and movie-making) strategies – you’re probably wondering how it can help the little people. Like us.

Rest assured – the ‘Twitter effect’ doesn’t discriminate.

This video from CNN provides several examples of how small business owners are using Twitter to build a mobile customer base for their upscale meals on wheels.

But there’s still a looming question – as there always is with social media marketing: “Will this work for me?”

It’s hard to tell. The businesses who have benefited from Twitter – both large and small – possess a sort of mainstream sensibility. That is, their business is accessible to the general public (and in the case of the smaller businesses – the general public in their region), and they’re offering a product or service that entices people to talk (or tweet, as it were).

Think about it … what does your business have to offer your customers that would encourage them to follow your tweets? How can Twitter work for you?

Talk to us. We’d love to hear your success stories.

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Each morning I read the New York Times and other news sources (the ones that have apps that download the articles to my phone for offline viewing) on my iPhone on the way to work (on the subway – not while driving!).  I often read articles very relevant to Internet marketing; these are the articles that get me psyched for the day, excited about Internet marketing and the work we do for our clients. So, I thoght to myself, why not share? These aren’t necessarily the latest in news about online marketing, but NYTimes and other news media do a good job of discussing the tools, people, and phenomena of the Internet and Internet business. It’s a welcome change from the blog posts and tweets that focus on this issue or that feature.

As always, this post like the rest of our blog, is geared to people who use Internet marketing for their business but aren’t necessarily IM geeks – like us.

Below are my links for today.  Grab a cup of coffee, and happy reading! Don’t forget to let me know what you think!

-Gabriel

1. Spinning the Web: P.R. in Silicon Valley
By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER
Published: July 5, 2009
Public relations gurus are courting influential voices on services like Twitter to endorse new companies, Web sites or gadgets, perhaps forever altering their roles.
Source: NYTimes.com

2. Lead Us to Tweet, and Forgive the Trespassers
By PAUL VITELLO
Published: July 5, 2009
Many churches are trying to embrace social media networks, but it has been an uneasy alliance thus far.
Source: NYTimes.com

3. Stereo for One: A Brief Unaccompanied History
By DAN BARRY
Published: July 5, 2009
Decades before iPod, there was Walkman. And before that, car horns and bird song.
Source: NYTimes.com

4. Facebook’s Easy Virtue: ‘Click-Through Activism’ Broad but Fleeting
By Monica Hesse
Published: July 2, 2009
Facebook activism, the trendy process by which we do good by clicking often, was in its full glory last week after the death of Iranian student Neda Agha Soltan, killed by gunfire in the streets of Tehran.
Source: washingtonpost.com

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In an attempt to narrow the focus of an e-book he’s preparing, Redlich asked members of the professional networking site to answer the question “What Are Your Biggest Questions On Internet Marketing?” They had five categories from which to choose:

-Hypnotic Copywriting
-The All Mighty Salesletter
-Magnetic Marketing Strategies
-Organic SEO For Top Results
-I Want it ALL!

Not surprisingly, of the 182 people who participated in the poll (the number of respondents just before this post was published), 35% said they ‘Want it ALL,’ with another 25% preferring ‘Magnetic Marketing Strategies.’ The other half chose more specific interests as you’ll see on the graph after the jump.

Dig a little deeper than the overall results and you’ll find clear distinctions in priorities across demographics that were separated by job title, company size, job function, gender and age.

For instance, pros who hold C-Level, VP and management titles couldn’t care less about hypnotic copy – or so this study suggests.

Perhaps even more alarming, not one 18- to 24-year-olds who responded (they make up 8% of the total respondents) think they need info specifically related to marketing strategies OR sales-letter techniques. Yowsa!

The redeeming quality of this portion of the poll, however, is that 50% of 18- to 24-year-olds said they ‘Want it All.’ You can wipe the sweat off your brow now.

As for the rest of the poll and the various degrees of data it contains, go ahead and compare it for yourself. Heck, why not add your two-cents to it. We’re certain Carlos Redlich and his e-book will be better for it.

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2. Is Social Networking Separated by Social Class?
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