Internet Marketing, Social Media, Business | StuckInTheFunnel

Social Networking on the Rise, Especially With Teens and Young Adults

Well, we all sensed this but nothing solidifies a theory like some hard data. Research conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project indicates that in 2009 73% of teens with internet used social networking sites compared to 47% of online adults.

Facebook Reigns Supreme With Adults

Adults hip to the social networking scene favor Facebook by a large margin. Older adults prefer it slightly more. According to the study 73% of all adults 18 and older who use social networking sites have a Facebook account.

In contrast, 48% of all adult social network site users have a MySpace account. The younger generation is much more apt to use MySpace, with 66% of social networking adults 18-29 having a MySpace account, but only 36% of the 30 and older bracket. Usage rates for the professional networking site LinkedIn are the reverse of MySpace. Fourteen percent of all adult social networking site users have a LinkedIn account, which breaks down to 7% of adults 18-29 and 19% of adults 30 and older.

Younger Tweeple are Tweeting

Microblogging and status updating sites are more popular among the younger crowd. Thirty-seven percent of online adults 18-29 use Twitter or another status-updating site, compared to 9% of 50- to 64-year-olds and only 4% of online adults 65 and older. The overall Twitter/status-updating site usage rate among all adults is 19%.

As Social Networking continues to grow in popularity in the older crowd, I am sure the amount of adults embracing Twitter will continue to increase. The concept of Tweeting most likely presents a learning curve for some, but after some experience on Facebook (already being embraced by adults) the concept of microblogging will become more understandable and justified after they have changed their status a few times on Facebook.

Don’t Buy a Toyota or You Might Drive Halfway Across the U.S. Without Stopping

Or, you could put the car in neutral if you sensed a problem.

I was car shopping in Oct-Dec of last year. All of my vehicle research/inventory browsing was done on the internet, which caused me to surrender my email address to many car dealership’s lead capture forms so I could receive more specifics on availabilty, cost and warranties for the vehicles I was interested in.

After about a month and half of research, I purchased my vehicle.

Since then, I have received an influx of emails from American car dealerships I previously inquired to (names will not be disclosed) explaining why I should buy an American vehicle while using Toyota’s recent accelerator recall folly as selling point. They told me how there was over 200 consumer complaints in the U.S. and Japan about the accelerators on their Toyota’s.

They tried to digitally persuade me with email.

Those kind of numbers are statistically irrelavant. If they told me there were 20,000, I would have listened a little harder.

Bottom line, car manufacturers always produce cars with some type of defect. However,  Toyota’s defect correlates with your acceleration which makes it a bit “scarier”. Look at the historical data for recalls and reliability of this company. They are in good standing.

Put the car in neutral, look at the recalls for all the cars you are considering purchasing and be a smart consumer.

Firefox 3.6 Ready for Download

As a long time advocate of the Firefox browser, I always eagerly anticipate their latest release.  The Firefox development community has given us a load of useful add-ons such as Firebug, Fireshot, S3 Fox and more. An update to the core browser engine will only enhance the browser’s performance and capabilities.

Here’s a look at what’s new in Firefox 3.6:

• Gecko 1.9.2 rendering engine which has boosted rendering speed by 20%
• Faster Javascript Execution
• Personas which let’s you customize your Firefox experience.
• Form autocomplete.
• Full HTML support.

You can read more about the new features here.

Why You Need a Web Based Dashboard

No. I am not talking about a car dashboard…

If you are an information junkie like me, you may find it hard to organize the streams of information that you find most important around the web.

Depending on your profession, you may spend a considerable amount of time online browsing information and topics of interest. This especially holds true for Bloggers and Social Media Marketers. According to Nielsen, Internet users spent 17hrs a week online.

So how do you uphold that new years resolution and start operating more efficiently in your day to day routine?

Simple – a web based dashboard. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term, a web based dashboard allows you to syndicate RSS feeds, widgets and other content to a centralized location. Without my dashboard, I would have to open up at least 20 seperate websites a day to get my daily fill of information.

What should I you have your dashboard display?

It really depends on what content is useful for you. If you work in finance, you will want to see stock quotes for the day. Social Media Marketers will want to have the latest news breaking from Mashable.

Personally, I seperate my Dashboard of choice (iGoogle) into 4 columns:

1. Task/Work Related (Calendar, Date/Time, New Email)
2. World and Local News (World, Technology, Business)
3. Social Media Feeds (Twitter, Facebook, Linked In)
4. Inspirational Widgets (Word of the day, Things to Ponder, Quote of The Day etc.)

Here are some popular dashboards:

1. iGoogle
2. 24 Eyes
3. Page Flakes
4. Net Vibes

Most of these tools have comparable features. However, it is not so much the software that makes the dashboard useful, it is the quality of the information you monitor.

A New Year With New Opportunities

[Tap, Tap, Tap] – is this thing on?

Excuse my overextended vacation from www.StuckInTheFunnel.com. I took some time at the end of last year to visit family, assess year-end accomplishments and start thinking about goals for this year. 2009 year was a tough year and I hope 2010 will be much more fruitful for my colleagues, family and friends.

January is a time where many of us think about who we really want to be professionally, spiritually, mentally and physically. The question always remains: how do I get myself there? Some think the answers lie in self-help books, therapy, meditation or the next fad diet. Others think planning every last detail of the week out works.

To me, it does not matter how you reach the goal, as long as you do. In order to do this, I firmly believe those goals should be measurable.

I “want to lose weight” is not a goal. Losing 15lbs is.

I “want to user Twitter to help grow my business” is not a goal. Having Twitter contribute 15% to your annual sales, is.

Now, that’s not to say a goal has to be quantifiable. Touching the lives of individuals through volunteer work cannot always be measured, but is certainly a good goal to have.

I have set my goals and I hope you have too. Here’s to a happy and prosperous 2010!

Cyber Monday Sets Single-Day Email Record for 2009

I’m usually the guy that avoids the door busters, afternoon and even the early evening crowds on that day of shopping mania we have all come to know as “Black Friday.” However, this year a new shopping day emerged that existed online known as “Cyber Monday”  (Nov 30, 2009). It turns out that this day was an active one for online retailers. That is, if you guage the day’s activity by observing their email marketing metrics.

Data analyzed by Chad White, a research director at Responsys and author of The Retail Emal Blog, shows a 3% spike in week-over-week email activity last week. According to White, retailers flooded their subscribers with an average of 3.7 emails on that day.

In addition to marking a 3% increase from the average of 3.5 emails top online retailers sent the week of November 27, 2009, last week also marked a 44% increase from 2.4 the week of November 6, 2009. On a year-over-year basis using a four-week moving average, retailers sent 12% more emails than the approximately 3.1 they sent during the equivalent four-week period in November-December 2008.

It will be interesting to see if this trend continues the day before and the day after Christmas this year.

Facebook to Ditch Regional Networks, Make Privacy Changes

Facebook has grown up a lot since it was first started in Marc Zuckerberg’s college dorm. A site that was once limited to students is now a worldwide phenomenon. In it’s early days, a  key seperator between Facebook and Myspace was how it controlled who you could access in a network. Facebook kept you fenced in to other users in your region, business or school.

The floodgates are opening:

Facebook will now remove regional networks in it’s entirety so people can connect around the world. I am sure this is also tied into their new online translation efforts. Facebook started removing regional networks a few months ago, but some new privacy settings will also be incorporated that should help you maintain the seclusion you are accustomed to. In fact, you will be able to limit what types of posted content is displayed on a friend by friend basis. What does that mean? No more incriminating pictures for your boss to see. Woohoo!

Here is the entire press release from Facebook’s Marc Zuckerberg:

“It has been a great year for making the world more open and connected. Thanks to your help, more than 350 million people around the world are using Facebook to share their lives online.

To make this possible, we have focused on giving you the tools you need to share and control your information. Starting with the very first version of Facebook five years ago, we’ve built tools that help you control what you share with which individuals and groups of people. Our work to improve privacy continues today.

Facebook’s current privacy model revolves around “networks” — communities for your school, your company or your region. This worked well when Facebook was mostly used by students, since it made sense that a student might want to share content with their fellow students.

Over time people also asked us to add networks for companies and regions as well. Today we even have networks for some entire countries, like India and China.

However, as Facebook has grown, some of these regional networks now have millions of members and we’ve concluded that this is no longer the best way for you to control your privacy. Almost 50 percent of all Facebook users are members of regional networks, so this is an important issue for us. If we can build a better system, then more than 100 million people will have even more control of their information.

The plan we’ve come up with is to remove regional networks completely and create a simpler model for privacy control where you can set content to be available to only your friends, friends of your friends, or everyone.

We’re adding something that many of you have asked for — the ability to control who sees each individual piece of content you create or upload. In addition, we’ll also be fulfilling a request made by many of you to make the privacy settings page simpler by combining some settings. If you want to read more about this, we began discussing this plan back in July.

Since this update will remove regional networks and create some new settings, in the next couple of weeks we’ll ask you to review and update your privacy settings. You’ll see a message that will explain the changes and take you to a page where you can update your settings. When you’re finished, we’ll show you a confirmation page so you can make sure you chose the right settings for you. As always, once you’re done you’ll still be able to change your settings whenever you want.

We’ve worked hard to build controls that we think will be better for you, but we also understand that everyone’s needs are different. We’ll suggest settings for you based on your current level of privacy, but the best way for you to find the right settings is to read through all your options and customize them for yourself. I encourage you to do this and consider who you’re sharing with online.

Thanks for being a part of making Facebook what it is today, and for helping to make the world more open and connected.”

Mark Zuckerberg

I embrace these changes, as I think it will make the world more transient while maintaing the privacy neccesary to create great online relationships.

The Futility of Banning Text Messaging While Driving

I’m back from my Thanksgiving hiatus and have been monitoring some local Twitter trends. Today, there was lots of talk about the new law in North Carolina that bans drivers from sending SMS or email messages on their cell phones. In all honesty, I don’t think this a bad idea. I have had a few close calls with drivers who were staring gazenly at their screens. However, I think the law won’t have much effect.

There are more than enough technologies to distract you while driving in North Carolina that are not banned by the government such as:

• Regular phone calls (adult drivers.)
• CD players
• DVD players and screens. (Some DVD Players even have screens that come out of the deck.)
• GPS units
• Luxury cars that have more in-dash controls than an airplane’s cockpit.
• Etc.

Social media and the web have changed how mobile phones are used:

I think this law will pretty difficult to enforce as it only bans “texting and email”. Think about the nomenclature. What does texting entail? I could be browsing the internet with my BlackBerry and get pulled over for texting. I could rebut with “Actually, I was browsing by using my jog dial, not the keyboard. Therefore, I was not texting.”  Or what if he caught me as I was dialing a phone number (adult drivers can still make phone calls in NC) and accused me of texting?In-car surveillance would be necessary for claims to hold water. Bottom line, this is mostly a scare tactic. A scare tactic with a hefty fine of $100.

In fact, NC senators even thought the bill would be difficult to enforce and Ron Wyatt, president of a local chapter of the North Carolina Fraternal Order of Police was quoted saying:

“It’s all about safety, and I think we have a lot of law-abiding citizens, If people know it’s illegal, we’d hope they’d abide by those rules.”

Hmmm…does not seem to stern.

As more and more gadgets fall into our hands, driver distractions will not be erased until cars start driving themselves.

Small Businesses to Increase Email, Social Media Spend in 2010

Small business respondents to a survey conducted by Vertical Response, Inc said that they would be increasing their Email and Social Media marketing ad spend in 2010, but will be reducing their budget for search engine marketing and online display advertising.

831 Businesses were surveyed and 74% said they plan on increasing their email marketing spend and 68% said they plan on increasing their social media budget.

Are small businesses still scared of SEM and Display Advertising?

It appears so. I have worked with many small businesses in the Raleigh area and whenever I bring up SEM or Display Ads, I am usually met with opposition and hear things like “Well, what we do works for us”.  I am still a huge advocate of SEM and Display (mostly due to it’s measurable nature) and think that this presents an opportunity for vendor education.  If Internet Marketers can better educate SMBs on the benefits of these channels, it will only help their clients.

Recap of Internet Summit 09

Last week I attended Internet Summit ‘09 (#isum09) with RTP Designs. The conference  united like-minded businesses and internet professionals right here in the Triangle.

This entry focuses on my impressions of the conference agenda, speakers and material presented.

Parts of this post are also available for viewing at RTP Designs.

Venue:

The conference was held at the Raleigh Convention Center. Parking was ample, but cost $7 each day…ouch. The reception on Wed was held in a business casual setting complete with fine appetizers and an open bar. (beer and wine). I was lucky enough to be approached by some of my Twitter followers later in the evening as the gathering transferred over to the Oxford – a quaint pub in downtown Raleigh.

Keynotes:

Aside from the 5 minute video plugging ESPN.com, Jim Kosner’s keynote was informative and entertaining. He educated the audience on ESPN’s strategy for content delivery on multiple mediums such as web, phone, TV, radio etc. Many companies make the mistake of concentrating on one or a few media pipelines to deliver their message. ESPN proved that thinking outside the pipe (so to speak) can bring excellent results.

Richard Jalichandra of Technorati provided some interesting metrics on how bloggers monetize:

• Display Ads:  40%
• Search Ads:  39%
• Affiliate: 36%
• Paid Postings: 8%

Other than that, there was some additional discussion on blogging trends for 2010 but overall I was not inspired by this discussion.

Search Marketing Panel:

I was particularly impressed with Jason Dowell of Triangle Direct Media . He exuded an in depth technical knowledge and explained the architecture necessary to stay one up on search engine algorithms. While most of this was not new to me, his ability to articulate the subject passionately added to the discussion. Ian Kelevich of eMarketer beefed things up with some stats and outlooks for the Search Marketing industry. He noted that overall advertising spend was down 15% in 09 and search marketing spend is projected to increase 6% next year.

Analytics Panel:

This panel focused on the ongoing maturity of the analytics industry and how the issue of data integrity is holding it back. Dan Forootan, an obvious data-head was passionate on the subject of data integrity. When asked what his recommendations were for improving data he replied: “Hire better programmers” which I found amusing. However, I think it takes more than clean code to make analytics worth your business’s time. KPI’s are different for every company and need to be defined correctly. Once businesses’ begin to do this effectively, the value of analytics will become more evident.

Online Advertising Strategies Panel:

This panel was a little general for me but moderator Gian Fulgoni (chairman Comscore) did an excellent job of creating debate on the subject of traditional V.S. online marketing. Fulgoni kept stressing that traditional branding offline was just as important as marketing online.  At first, I disagreed. However, Fulgoni raised the point that 80% of purchases are still made offline, which changed my perspective a bit. I am still however, partial to online marketing.

Email Marketing Panel:

Aside from the debate on whether or not social media would eliminate the need for email marketing, this panel was somewhat stale to me. Ultimately the panel agreed that social media and email marketing are intertwined, which is my take as well.

Conclusion:

Overall I was happy with this conference. It provided great networking opportunities and it was good to see both local and national businesses come together. However, I was hoping for more advanced material in the panels.