There are blogs like Huffington Post, Techcrunch and Mashable that  have taken online digital publishing to another level whereas traditional media research shows numbers revealing that 24 of the top 25 newspapers in the US are declining in readership and revenue.

Blogs were initially very text based so common knowledge  deemed that if you can’t write you can’t blog but online personalities like Gary Vaynerchuk has shown that the video blog can be just as effective with his video blog driving his family wine business from $4 million annual revenue to $45 million is just 3 years.

So if you are wanting to optimize your blog and maybe even make some money here are some blog posts that may give you some inspiration to fuel your creativity and motivation.

1. 22 Secrets Of Power Bloggers

2. 50 Ways To Optimize Your Blog

3. 12 Blogging Mistakes To Avoid

4. Blogging For Dummies – An Opportunity For Personal Branding

5. 7 Success Secrets Of The World’s Largest Blog

6. 20 Reasons Why You Should Blog Before You Twitter

7. How Did A Blog Reach 2.6 Million Followers?

8. 10 Ways To Make Money From Your Blog Without Selling Your Soul?

9. 29 Reasons Why You Should be Blogging and Not Watching Television

10. Is Blogging The Future Of Publishing?

1. Social Media Networks and Blogs consume nearly 25% of peoples time online (one in every four and half  minutes online)
2. The world spends 110 billion minutes on social media networks and blog sites
3. The number of people who are visiting social media sites has increased by 24% over the last year
4. The average visitor spends 66% more time on these sites than they did a year ago (6 hours in April 2010 versus  3 hours 31 minutes last year)
5. Brazil is the top nation  when it comes to internet consumers with 86% visiting a social media network (74% of USA internet users visit a social media network)
6. Australian users average the most time on social networking sites a month at 7 hours and 19 minutes (USA internet users average 6 and a half hours)
7. Facebook’s reach is the  widest in Italy capturing two-thirds of the active unique audience in April (Which is higher than the English speaking countries USA, Australia and the UK at 60%)
8. Japan has the lowest reach of Facebook active users at 3%
9. Ameba the microblogging platform which is the Japanese equivalent of Twitter is visited by 38% of Japanese people online
10. Facebook is the worlds most visited social media brand with 54% of the worlds internet population visiting the brand

A recent Study announced by Mashable and conducted by Oxygen Media exposes the extent to which social media addiction has become for young women by revealing that 33% of women under the age of 34 check Facebook even before they go to the bathroom in the morning. The study also revealed the ongoing privacy concerns that people about Facebook and sharing on social media by mentioning that

“54% of 18-24 year old women do not trust Facebook with their private information, and 89% agree that “you should never put anything on Facebook that you don’t want your parents to see.” That seems contradictory to the 42% that think it’s fine to post pictures of themselves drunk“.

I recently mentioned  in a post about the worlds largest blog that one of the business drivers and reasons that Arianna Huffington started Huffington Post was  that she recognized the “obsessive compulsive nature of the web”.

Personally one of the the reasons that attracted me to social media was the observation that the web drove obsessive behaviour (where there is obsession there is power and opportunity) and  I had initially observed this in my teenage children as they dashed upstairs to check the computer straight after dinner and it wasn’t for the latest information or an email from a friend to help with their research for their assignments or homework.

I ran a recent poll more for fun than anything else titled  ’10 signs you are addicted to social media‘ where to date 70 people have voted and the  results so far reveal that nearly 50% of people that voted admitted that they had 5 or more symptoms of social media addiction. There was a comment on the post by  Ashley who said.

“Hello, my name is Ashley, and I am a social media addict. Before I do anything in the morning – even turn on the lights- I grab my laptop at the side of my bed (because I had to check my Facebook and Twitter before I could fall asleep) and I check to see what kind of activity happened while I was sleeping!”

Maybe Ashley has stated the most obvious and important sign that indicates that you have a social media addiction is the answer to the question…

“Do you keep your laptop at the side of your bed at night?”

Vote Now

View This Poll

The Google search engine results delivered no significant updates that I could discover since their last announcement at their Chirp conference on April 14. It appears that the periodic secrecy strategy by Twitter continues.

In the meantime the recent Nielsen APAC webinar that I was invited to recently did reveal some other insights about Twitter.

• Twitter Growth in Japan is over 1,900% (year on year)
• Japans Twitter reach surpasses the USA at 16% of the active internet audience compared to the USA at 10% in April, 2010
• 57% of Twitter uses in India have only started using the site in the last year
• 32% of India’s social media users use microblogging sites such as Twitter at least once a day
• Celebrity Twitter accounts are regularly written about in mainstream media in India

Twitter is obviously still growing and there is no buzz online that I can detect regarding Twitter fading or going away anytime soon. So what do people like to read about Twitter online?

According to readers that visit my blog, here are the Top 5 Posts on Twitter as ranked by readers views.

1. How To Use Twitter For Business: 5 More Incredibly Interesting Case Studies (5,936 views)
2. Twitter: 5 Business Case Studies (5,303 views)
3. How To Manage, Measure And Monitor Twitter (3,766 views)
4. Twitter Reveals 11 New Facts on its Traffic and Usage (3,732 views)
5. 30 Predictions Of The Future For Twitter (3,631 views)

So how are you using Twitter and are you finding it effective in achieving your business and social networking goals?

Huffington Post is a blog that was started by Arianna Huffington as a left- leaning blog and  now has 20 vertical areas including religion to technology and it is about to add travel. It is interesting to note that they have just hired a technology industry veteran (not a traditional media publisher) Greg Coleman as their their president and and chief revenue officer who has previously worked for Yahoo and AOL.

Some of  the numbers for Huffington Post to provide some perspective from its entry 5 years ago to its current success.

• Over 50 million page hits and more than 12 million unique vistors in May according to Compete.com.
• Moderates 3 million comments a month using 30 moderators
• 50 Editors
• 21 Verticals

So what are some of the secrets behind the success of  Huffington Post?

1. Passion

Arianna Huffington revealed at the Web 2.0 Expo in New York that the secret to success is ‘Passion’ and the “obsessive compulsive nature of the web” is what first attracted to her to blogging and the ability for people to make a difference on the Internet by just pure persistentence and passion.

2. Social Media

They use social media and SEO (search engine optimization) tools to spread and share content virally fast and global. Each editor has SEO tools to optimize the content and social media tools right at their desks so they can connect their content to social media channels via Facebook connect or Twitter. The blog also allows readers to easily share the content with their followers and friends

3. Experiment Fast and Often

They can do this online and fast as they try different ways to grow the business from piloting different verticals and  experimenting with different ways to ways to share the content on social media. In other words fail fast, cheap and often.

4. Focus On Powerful  Niche’s

Huffington Post developed a focus on powerful emotive niche’s  that provided a large enough audience to attract traffic. As well as politics Arianna started with entertainment, media, living and style.

5. Create Content Cost Efficiently

It is believed that the Huffington Post provides a platform for for 2,000 bloggers both known and unknown that she doesn’t have to have them on the weekly payroll

6. Source Resources

A venture capital company (Softbank Capital) invested $5 million into the blog site in Agust 2006.

7. Develop Powerful Partnerships and Networks

The Huffington Post has forged powerful partnerships with other big names in content areas such as Rolling Stone, Variety and Yahoo and has had influential politicians and celebrities contribute to the blog such as Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Madonna

So what else has made Huffington Post one of the largest and most powerful blogs on the planet?

My expectations of the fashion show were not high as it was only a local event in a regional city and we were not talking about the catwalks of New York, London, Milan or Paris. I did not for a moment think that it would be an event that should be more than just a nice outing with a dose of fashion.. boy was I wrong!!

The show had canapes, champagne and celebrities. It was sponsored by the major media and one of the largest retailer chains in the country and then the real ‘show’ began!

The lights dimmed and the ‘glamourous’ master of ceremonies came out to start the show and with that the DJ kicked in the sound as the the fashion models who were all selected from the local fashion college strutted their stuff.

The fashion that emerged was many including creative, beautiful, shocking and astounding. There was section for ‘recycled threads’  as well as swim wear, street wear and the red carpet. As I watched the show I thought “this is worth sharing” both from a personal view and as an event that is showcasing the fashion designers who want to get their name out there even if at this stage they are only amateurs. ( I did find out later that they had a Facebook presence)

The opportunity to market these up and coming fashion designers and provide them with more online exposure to take them to the next level was not optimized. So here are some ideas for creating and sharing content from an event for promoting your brand online.

1. Videos

Hand out video cameras to your employees to capture the buzz and the happenings as well as utilizing a video recording crew to record event. These can be posted on YouTube or submitted to an online social media Video distributor such as TubeMogul.com which provides a free service that provides a single point for deploying videos to the top video and social networking sites.

2. Pictures & Images

Create a Flickr account to allow attendees to submit photos to share. This provides crowd sourcing content that is free and remember that most phones now have high quality multi-mega pixel cameras. It does’t cost you a cent and provides your brand with more presence online.

3. Slideshare

Slideshare is a social media platform that turns your Powerpoint presentations, Word, PDF’s, documents and professional videos into slides for viewing online anywhere anytime. They can’t be copied but allows you to share the major points from an event.

4. Twitter

You can create a Hashtag for the event eg #fashionshow that allows you to see peoples reactions to the event in real time and to also create buzz about the event and your brand.

5. Blogs

Engage bloggers to blog about the event and you can aggregate their posts using a blog widget

6. Facebook

Create a Facebook page or group for the event to share updates before and after as well as being able to publish links ,images, videos and any other multi-media rich content

7. MySpace

Even though Myspace has been overwhelmed by Facebook in the mainstream sense a MySpace presence should be included if it a music or video centric event aimed at a younger demographic.

8. Website

Also don’t forget to publish content both before and after the event on your website. (It helps if you have a website developed using a CMS  (Content Management System) that allows easy uploading of content without hving to know programming or HTML.

9. Digital Media Aggregator

Digital Media aggregation allows you the opportunity to provide a portal where all or most of your content from the event can be viewed

For more information and resources on how you can leverage your digital and and social media events see a case study by Alan Belniak on how he did it for his company PTC a global software company.

So how have you created and shared your event on social media?

The reality is that the CEO has to be behind any project for it to be provided the resources and commitment for it to ultimately succeed.

For your social media marketing to be successful the first and most important step is the support and backing by the CEO.

Last week I had the pleasure to catch up for a coffee with Greg Savage the CEO of ‘Aquent” (a global recruitment company with nearly 70 offices worldwide) who I had met through his marketing executive, Carolyn Hyams via the social media network. Greg is a CEO who ‘gets social media‘ and is using social media successfully, both personally and for his company.

Greg is on Twitter and has a blog titled ‘The Savage Truth‘ and these two social media channels are just part of his activities on social media and he uses them to enhance his personal brand and extend and optimize his influence both offline in the real world as well as digitally online.

In a future post I will be publishing an online video interview with Greg on how he and his company are using social media.

In the meantime here are some posts that look at the CEO and social media.

1. 28 Reasons Why The CEO Is Afraid Of Social Media
2. 9 Ways To Convince The CEO To Use Social Media and Enter The 21st Century
3. How CEO’s and Executives Socialize Their Brands
4. 40 Reasons Why The CEO Still Uses The Yellow Pages And Not Social Media
5. 10 Simple Questions To Assess Your CEO’s Marketing IQ
6. 12 Key Findings On Social Media’s Impact on Business and Decision Making By CEO’s and Managers
7. New Harvard Study: 30 Key Findings on How The CEO Engages With Social Media
8. 6 Questions To Ask The CEO When He Says Social Media Won’t Work For His Company
9. 7 Ways To Get The CEO Crazy For Social Media Marketing
10. 14 Ways A CEO Can Benefit From Social Media: A True Story

Does your CEO ‘get’ social media or he still in digital deficit?

Most chief marketing officers know that e-mail marketing is still a very effective marketing tool and in fact last year a survey revealed that CMO’s still consider it as a top priority in their marketing plans for 2010.

Omniture and The CMO Club conducted a Digital Marketing Survey in May of 2009, asking 102 CMOs to rate the relative effectiveness of digital-marketing media. Most respondents, 78%, found email marketing most effective, while 33% had success with online communities and blogs.

The real benefit of social media is it’s ability to leverage your message and amplify your content as people take your message and spread it on their social networks. GetResponse conducted a survey and found that integrating social media and e-mail produced a greater than 30% improvement in click through rates.

So if you could integrate  your social media marketing with your email campaigns and email acquisition strategies you can synergize and increase your marketing effectiveness.

Here are 10 ways to integrate social media and e-mail marketing

1. Broadcast your blog entries via e-mail
2. Add social media channel subscribe buttons on your e-mail newsletter such as “follow us” on Twitter
3. Place a link to your e-mail newsletters on your social media pages such as Facebook
4. Send out e-mail newsletters that are excerpts to your blog with links to each post
5. Include social media share options in your e-mail newsletter
6. Provide e-mail sign up options in your company’s social media channels such as your Facebook page
7. When asking for an e-mail opt-in option at your company call centre  also offer a social media opt-in option
8. Use the sidebar on your e-mail-marketing newsletter to list and link to all your company’s social-networking profiles
9. Use your ‘purchase is successful’ confirmation e-mails to link to your social media help forums or YouTube video tutorials
10. Provide an option for customers to join your social media networks on your e-mail newsletter registration page

These are some options but it comes down to continually trying different ways to communicate to your customers to optimize your marketing programs and tactics.

Have you integrated your social media with your e-mail marketing or thinking about it?

I watch with incredulation the ‘Farmville’ players on Facebook that stream into my updates or see the amount of time spent by my son playing ‘Mafia Wars’. The thing is that… even though it is not for me and I don’t enjoy playing virtual games, the reality is that it is having a huge impact on how people buy, act and engage  online and offline and cannot be ignored by marketers.

The games people play on social media and on the Web and in the real world are creating opportunities and financial reward that have become  multi billion dollar industries.

Jessie Schell is the CEO of Schell Games and the ex Creative Director of the Disney Imagineering  Virtual Reality Studio has called Facebook three things as well as saying we need to look at the ‘Facebook Math‘ to get some perspective of where the gaming and social gaming is currently and where it is going.

1. Big:

500 million users with the Facebook game Farmville at 70 million players which is larger than Twitter, which is equivalent to one in four Americans. Kleiner Perkins, one of the original venture capitalists behind Google  has even said that his investment in Zygna (the creators of Farmville) is the fastest growing investment he has ever made.

2. Strange:

In that it makes people will apply for a credit cards to earn more and faster virtual points for a social media game or they will spend $20 of real money so they can beat their college friend or room mate and acquire more virtual money or points to win at Mafia wars. That a  50 plus year old male would be fascinated by playing Farmville on Facebook. The psychology that is being exhibited on Facebook is certainly strange.

3. Terrifying or Unexpected

Who would have thought that an inexpensive flash game for kids ‘Club Penguin‘ started in 2005 would be acquired by Disney for $350 million or that that Wii Fit would earn over $1 Billion on its own or the $70 plastic guitar and game ‘Guitar Hero’ would be such a hit. These are all ‘unexpected’.

To view more about where Jesse thinks the future direction of  social gaming is going and the implications for marketers click here or on the image to view his 28 minute presentation.

The implications for this explosive growth is something much bigger than just the gaming industry as the games mechanics and rewards are a strong indication of the purchase impulse. As Rueben Steiger the CEO of  the social media agency ‘Millions of  Us‘ says.

“Today, the research on buying behavior is beginning to be reframed in terms of gaming mechanics.“

An indication of how seriously gaming companies are taking this, he mentions that Farmville just launched a massive in-store campaign with 7-Eleven that includes broad in-store co-branding while rewarding cash purchases of hot dogs and Slurpees with Farmville currency. More important, however, is applying the lessons being successfully demonstrated by these games to promotional and branding efforts.

So even though I may poke fun at Farmville and say “No one cares about your stupid farm” there is a much more serious aspect of social gaming that we have only seen the start of and social gaming should be not discarded or discounted in social media marketing campaigns.

Is social gaming changing your behaviour and buying patterns?