• Social media use on the rise: More than 71% of businesses plan on increasing their use of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and blogs in 2010, according to the 2010 Social Media Marketing Industry Report.
• Mass consumer adoption of social media: With more than 400 million people on Facebook and more than 1.2 billion Twitter updates in January 2010 alone, these are numbers you just cannot ignore.
• Small businesses are dominant players: Small businesses are cashing in quickly on social media. Surprisingly, half of small businesses using social media say lead generation is its top benefit (Small Business Marketing Forecast 2010).
• Social media drives search engine optimization: The top three benefits of social media marketing are (1) generating more exposure for the business, (2) increasing traffic to websites and (3) improving search engine rankings, according to 2010 Social Media Marketing Industry Report.

In the Email Insider today Morgan Stewart talks about engagement in an enlighting way. He states…

“That is where the idea of building our own audiences comes in — and email marketers have a leg up on other marketers in this capacity. We know how to create programs that deliver the right message to the right person at the right time. We know that getting people to sign up with us means that we need to convey the value subscribers will receive in exchange for their personal information. Now we need to figure out how to transform this knowledge into creating audiences that are truly engaged. Not engaged meaning they are opening and clicking our email newsletters, but engaged meaning they are contributing to our platforms.”

In other words….now that we have you, let me show you some cool sh*t to do.  But how? He sites his client Scott’s Miracle-Gro. After a 10 year email marketing program they send “seasonally relevant content tailored to subscribers based on where they live, the type of grass they have, and their level of expertise.” Sweet. Makes total sense. Grass grows differently in FL than in does in WA. Hit me with what I need right…right. But how do we go deeper? I will let him explain:

“About a year ago, company strategists launched a community-focused Web site.  By providing a site dedicated to solving lawn care issues through blogs, online communities, forums, and photo galleries,  they created a logical next step for newsletter subscribers. Enthusiasts now have a place to show off their gardening skills.
Also interesting to note is that the company saw a few of its newsletter subscribers opt-out of the regular program, but this has not been a concern. After all, those former newsletter subscribers are now online community members. They are still interacting with the brand. The difference is that these consumers are now more engaged with the brand as they receive email updates related to the online community itself. Even in these instances, Scott’s isn’t necessarily sending less email, just different email.”

Love it Scott. Great job. When I hear that my minds says….”yes that’s what I mean when I say relevant and engaging”.  But I need another. The Scott example is good but this one is better.  I will let you experience it how I did….Organically. I was forwarded this video by “The General” otherwise known as Mary Schwichtenberg, MBA local eROI kick ass Account Manager.

Of course I clicked through to learn about it and I was shown this:

Wow BBC…rock rock till the break of rock.  User generated content 2.0. Here they say…take our creative, take our clips, take our IP. Rip it up. Cut it up and create. How respectable and on the money is this contest? I have a love for video in general as you can see from my posts so this was super relevant. Unfortunately I can’t enter…I shot this to fellow blogger Dean Hunt in the UK. Maybe he will enter. So to end this exercise….say evangelist 10 times and tell me it doesn’t sound Russian.

TAKE THE SURVEY >>>

I try to do sweet vids every once in a while and I can tell you that if you don’t have a Flip you need one so please help and take the survey.

We launched a new survey today in partnership with E-Marketing and Commerce – 2009 Trends in Online Marketing. We are setting out to get some data on how online marketers used their online marketing resources (budget and time) in 2009, how they value various online mediums and what they will continue to focus on in 2010.

The results of the survey will give us valuable insight into how various Online Marketing mediums were used in 2009 and uncover what marketers can do differently (or keep doing!) in 2010. Enter your email on the final question and you will be entered to win a Flip Ultra^TM camcorder or one of several retail gift cards.

TAKE THE SURVEY >>>

For instance, there is a special Sycamore tree in Africa that has an odd partner in a very tiny wasp. The tree provides the wasp with a nest and the wasp pollinates its flowers. We have all seen the iconic image of the Plover bird inside the Alligator’s mouth. The Alligator never snaps his jaw as the Plover cleans his teeth. We got the classic Clown Fish/Anemone of Nemo fame. And of course there are the thousands of orchid species that are so specialized that they only can be pollinated by a certain species of insect.  I know that the comparisons are convenient but I think there is something to be learned from this. In a sense the Twitters, the Flckrs, and the Facebooks of the world all have a symbiotic relationship with the tech industry. I mean in the current climate they need computers and smart phones as much as computers need them. So I racked my brain trying to think of other examples of Business Symbiosis.  There is the old tires and automobile symbiosis. There are a ton of food examples….Hot dog and Mustard. Cereal and Milk. But there seems to be something different with the tech examples.  I can’t quite put my finger on it.  There has to be more business relationships that are symbiotic. Please comment if you think of one.

Pretty dope right. A little long but still cool, especially if you are a fellow fan (This album changed everything for us in HS).  What was even more interesting to me than the video was when I took a look at the stats.  The views for the last three days read like this: 4, 1, 30, 13.9K. Today is only half over and it has 10.6K already. So what happened? That jump is crazy. What percentage growth in views is that? (first to tweet @masagatani or email chris@eroi.com the answer gets a beer on me).  The real question to ask is not what happened but how it happened.  The first thing I thought was to check digg…here are the results of my search there and the vimeo stats. I love the comment from the guy who made the vid:

So it got some love from digg. 40 or so comments so far. But that’s not enough right? Right…Around the same time as the diggs we start to see bloggers taking it and running. Here are links to a few of them we found:

solejunkie, 2dopeboyz, thedailyswarm, streetlevel, grandgood, buzzfeed

And there are plenty more that blogged it. All on our magic date July 23. So we can attribute a ton to that. And lets not forget the final peice of the puzzle…..the new link universe: twitter.  I searched Wu Tang Lego just as I did for Digg and the blogs and a ton of came up. Check it:

The original tweet from that search:

Thu 23 Jul 20:31 @outerpublishing:  wu tang clan still aint nuthin 2 f*ck wit through lego http://vimeo.com/5452385 http://vimeo.com/5439960 – all u 90s babies respect da gods

So there it is the perfect storm on the 23rd that created the traffic boast. A lightning storm of email, blogs, digg, and twitter.  Let’s call it Perfect Storm Viral. Of course I am leaving out a ton of other entry points but leave a comment….What am I missing? What else could have contributed to the spike? And for the real Wu fans, didn’t he do a great job capturing the feel of the real video?

The green movement is interesting because it is so hypocritical. We can preach "recycle" all day but all of us are using computers that have incredible amounts of hazardous materials contained. To me, as a web head, the green movement should embrace the computer next and figure that out. Enter Industrial Designer Brenden Macaluso. Here is his entry to the Greener Gadgets Competition. Rad rad rad.

What does data “look” like? That is so interesting. The very thing that makes the internet so powerful is impossible to visualize in its vastness.  How do you depict millions of ones and zeros moving at light speed in a way the average person can understand? The simplest answer…KEYWORDS.

This is a virtual map of NYC made up of KEYWORDS…I first heard of it from Graeme McMillian weekend editor and contributor to io9.com. This KEYWORD Matrix is called: Pastiche and is perhaps best explained by its creators, software designer Ivan Safrin and visual artist Christian Marc Schmidt:

Conceptually, Pastiche is a parallel experience of the city, a map that not only documents, but also suggests action. It is a public counterpart to the private physical architecture of the city. Its source an aggregate of individual blogs, Pastiche is a system that anyone has the ability to contribute to. It defines a new kind of public space, while both proposing an experience and inviting comparison-in the process of relating one’s own perspective to a larger collective subjectivity, one situates oneself in relation to an impromptu community, formed around the idea of New York.

Mac users can participate here.