Today, online marketing means not only being where your customers are, but also knowing the right ‘amount.’ Being on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube are all great, but for consumers, it can sometimes be overwhelming. Remember that the goal of online marketing and social media isn’t to bombard customers and fans with your products and promotions. Just how no one likes pop-up advertisements and rarely go back to sites that have them, customers and fans will lose interest and more importantly trust in your brand if you are overpowering them with your message.

Successful social media and online marketing campaign should always do two things: Listen and Learn.

Why You Need To Listen

In school, the importance of listening skills are repeated over and over. Whether it’s lecture or a business meeting, listening to what others have to say is extremely important. With that said, listening to what your customers or fans are saying is extremely important. Ignoring what your market is saying about you is essentially turning your back on those that made you who you are.

For companies, the success of marketing campaigns are based on dollars and cents. With the evolution of online marketing though, this may all change. Because of the open communication lines online, consumer sentiment has a huge part in the success of products, campaigns, and brands. A great example of this is the impact that users on Twitter had on the highly controversial movie, ‘Bruno.’ In an industry that thrives off word of mouth advertising, Twitter users who voiced their negative opinions about the movie in turn dissuaded others from watching it. During that weekend, negative reviews of Bruno were rampant on Twitter and Facebook. Although the opening weekend was a huge success, the subsequent days following it were nothing short of disappointing. Could this have been avoided? Absolutely. Not only were critics uneasy about the content of the movie, but in the months leading up the movie, Facebook and Twitter users voiced their feelings about leaked content of the movie.

Learn

Aside from listening to what your online community is saying, learning from them is also a key component to online marketing. Studying trends and how audiences react to content is extremely important. Through empirical evidence, organization should always be aware of how markets, fans, and customers are affected by trends and changes. A great example of this is when Facebook decided to change their site design early last year. Although there appeared to be huge animosity toward it, statistics showed that there was actually a drastic jump in site traffic and registration that remained constant after the new site design. Remember that you should never take what’s on the surface and to always dig deep. Online marketing is not just about having great content and pushing it out there for the online world. It involves constant change and the ability to re-invent your campaign at any moment and still remain relevant.

As more and more companies continue to leave store-front businesses in exchange for e-commerce sites, one important question that these businesses must ask themselves is if they really understand their customers. While it is easy to say you made a hundred sales in one month, the more important question is why your customers chose to buy your products and how you can replicate the same results.

With user information becoming increasingly valuable, being able to understand your customers behaviors, trends as well as likes and dislikes can be the key to whether or not you have a successful business.

The Importance of Data

As a business, each and every user that visits your website forms a relationship with you. Some may be long-lasting, while others may be one time ‘flings.’ Whether it’s long-lasting or not, understanding the reasons behind this is important. By capturing visitor data, businesses can learn how to better improve both their marketing and product development.

On the marketing side, by analyzing data to find correlations between purchases, you can determine how you should proceed as far as allocating funds for online advertisements, adwords, and how items are presented to visitors. Additionally, product development can benefit from knowing specifics such as what accessories are most often purchased with certain purchases as well as how often users come back to buy a particular type of item.

Lower Bounce Rate, Increase Relevance

Aside from being able to better tailor your website to your customers individual preferences, knowing how customers interact with your website will allow you to best optimize your site for when a customer lands on your site for the first time. For example, if you know that 90% of users scroll down and click on the About Us tab, by moving the About Us to the top of your website you are increasing the chance that they will stay on your site since they don’t have to search around for it. Too often are website content with leaving things the way they are out of their own convenience which means they are missing out on potential sales.

When a consumer first arrives at your website, you typically only have between 1-3 minutes to ’show’ them something relevant to what they are looking for. If you don’t, the chances of them coming back your website are drastically lower.

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While it may seem difficult, there are many tools out there that enable you to understand your customers and allow you to optimize your site in real-time. Being able to tell others how much money you made is great, but being able to tell them how and why is even better.

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Joseph Yi is the Director of Marketing at Viralogy.com and works in social media and sports consulting. Find more about him on his website.

You’re starting a company that sells lederhosen online. They are top quality lederhosen and you offer them at a reasonable price. What is it that is going to set you apart from the other websites that sell lederhosen? What is special about your offering? What is unique? These are things you should consider from day one: Before you build your website. Before you so much as have a business card made or choose the name of your company.

Every detail, major and minor, plays a part in defining the answer to the question of what it is that sets you apart: your brand. When people think of you they will create a collective image in their minds made up of reactions they have had on both conscious and subconscious levels to everything from the name of your company to the colors and fonts you choose to use on your website.

If you don’t take your companies brand into consideration right away, it can be detrimental. It’s a lot easier to create an image where there is none than it is to change one once it has already been made. I’m sure you’ve heard the saying, “You can’t unring a bell.”.

Here are five questions that will help you start to piece together your companies brand:

1. If you had to define your brand with three keywords, what would they be? Think of it in terms of #hashtags on Twitter or tags in a blog post.
   
2. What is the demographic you are focused on reaching? Who is your audience? Consider their age, their income, their pop culture references, their political and social views, etc.
3. Who is your biggest competitor? What can you learn from their branding strategy? What was effective for them? What was damaging?
4. If your brand was a pictorial centerfold, what would it look like? Thinking about this will force you to consider visual imagery which will help when you are creating your logo and website.
5. Where do you see your company in 5 years? 10 years? Your brands message should be able to stand the test of time, and the choices you make now will act as a foundation to build the future of your company upon.

Even if you have already launched your venture, it is never too late to reconsider your brand. Altering the public perception can be challenging, but it is never too late. Don’t just accept the brand you have, dictate the brand you want.

Before you know it, all the cool kids will be wearing your lederhosen.

Dear Tumblr,

It’s time that I just come out and say it. For all of the world to hear me shouting it from the pixelated rooftops. I love you! I love you and I will never leave you. Ever. When I first laid eyes on you back in January of 2008, I just knew we were meant to be together. Since, I’ve shared my life with you in so many ways. After all this time together, we still spend quality time nearly every day. You just make me want to give more, and more again.

I know you know that I… blog… in a lot of other places. Look, we never said this was exclusive and we both know I know about your millions of “users”. I just want you to know that what we have is special. It’s always you I turn to, not out of obligation, but out of love… to share the most authentic pieces of myself. Others might be more powerful, more complex… but with you it’s just: different.

You make me wish I were a developer so I could make you little trinkets of affection. When I’m with you, you ask so little effort from me. Even my friends like you. I encourage the ones who “don’t get blogging” to give you a roll in the sack because not only are you easy (sorry, but it’s true and everyone knows), but you introduce them to other “like minded individuals” to share their time with… A pretty cool bunch of people. It’s good when your friends can get along. Even some of my clients who are so hopeless that they couldn’t be expected to handle WordPress in even the most rudimentary context, can figure out how to make friends with your intuitive interface. Just another reason I am grateful that you are always so accommodating to my needs, allowing me to mold you to fit in with the rest of a design. (Admit it, CSS is the glue that holds us together…) Every time you update something, it’s new all over again. (I’m going to look past the whole “Tumblarity” thing and forgive and forget about the blogs you deleted… you made it right: and that took balls. I respect balls… and hey, no one and nothing is perfect. We’ve learned from our mistakes.)

I’ve made 3,449 posts (including this one), “liked” 707 posts, and made 1,296 new friends. With the passing of time you are like a fine wine, improving with age.

Happy Anniversary, love. To many more… la chaim!

True Love Forever & Always,

Affectionately Yours,

xoxo

Alana Joy

PS: You can buy the above logo on a t-shirt here for $15, and that’s not even a lot.

“Have you heard? John and Mary broke up.”

“How do you know?”

“She just updated her Facebook”

Believe it or not, this is how many people today find out about break ups and new relationships. With just a few clicks, you can make it ‘official.’

As Facebook continues to grow in both size and influence, more and more people are making their relationships public. While by no means is it a requirement to state who you are dating or if the relationship is ‘complicated,’ Facebook users feel the need to share it with others.

Facebook: Reality?

I remember once when someone told me that if it wasn’t on Facebook, it wasn’t official. While this may be just a saying, the truth is that Facebook has done such a good job of representing real-life relationships online, that for some, reality and online blur together.

While Facebook is far from close to replacing real-life relationships, perhaps this is the future of social networking sites. When you look at the success of online dating networks like eHarmony and Match.com, both of which have over 20 million registered users, the foundation of their success is rooted in their ability to leverage online connections and transform them into real ones.

A user on eHarmony doesn’t know what their potential ‘match’ looks like in person, but can develop an idea from pictures, video, and basic profile information. Similarly, on Facebook it is not uncommon for individuals to be friends with people they have never met before in person, yet converse and network with them as if they have.

While the comparison was made to dating networks, Facebook will never be a dating network. Facebook isn’t just about your love life, that is just a small portion of it.

[Name] Is No Longer Listed As Single

Another relationship starts, another one ends. That is the cycle. No one is alarmed anymore when someone becomes single it seems, but that is what happens when your community is built around sharing what used to be private information reserved only for those close to you. It’s not uncommon for you to run into someone at the market whom you haven’t seen in 5 years, yet seemingly know everything about them. Still, you wouldn’t dare say or ask about details you’ve read about them on Facebook for fear of being called a stalker, but would rather ask questions about things you already know the answers too.

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Facebook continues to change the way we interact and network with others. As more and more information becomes available to others, the question then becomes, when the time comes for you to update your Facebook Relationship status, what will you choose?

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Joseph Yi is the Director of Marketing at Viralogy.com and works in social media and sports consulting. Find more about him on his website.

Meet Craig Newmark. You may not recognize him if he walked past you, but you’ve probably heard of the website he started. Craigslist. With an estimated 48.7 million people visiting his site a month from the U.S. alone, Craigslist is in a league of its own.

While it continues to climb in traffic, one thing continues to stay consistent: the lack of change. Unlike sites like Apple, where the main page seems to change every other day, Craigslist has had the same bland user interface that everyone has now become accustomed to seeing. Aside from minor changes here and there, Craigslist has made little change to their website for the most part. With no future plans to change the site nor many of its policies, with online engagement and social media on the rise, the question now becomes: What Would Craigslist Do?

No Thanks

“No Thanks.” That is the answer that you would probably get if you asked Craigslist about making a change to the site. Starting at first as an email distribution list for friends in 1995, Craigslist has gone through hundreds and thousands of ’suggestions’ with few changes since then.

Although Craigslist generates revenue solely through paid job ads in select cities, it’s not that they can’t find other means, it’s that they won’t. To many, this is mind boggling, but to Craigslist, its just another day. By no means should anyone worry though, analysts suggest that Craigslist will bring in over $100 million this year from their paid job ads.

Why They Won’t Change

No one can pinpoint the exact reason why Craigslist doesn’t take advantage of the many opportunities they have, but many will agree is that if Craigslist did decide too, they would change the e-commerce landscape.

With just 30 employees, Craigslist gets more traffic than leading e-commerce sites eBay and Amazon.com, each of whom have more than 15,000 employees. Take that into account also the fact that their customer service has been called out for being unresponsive and unhelpful along with it being accused of facilitating prostitution, it is incredible how far they have come.

Door Is Closing

As of right now, Craigslist is in a league of their own. They dominate their market in helping individuals conduct face to face transactions and have yet to have had a serious contender. Still, the question becomes how long will they go without a challenge. When MySpace broke out on the scene, they were seemingly untouchable. Then came Facebook and later, Twitter. Although Craigslist has ruled their market for almost 10 years, everyday they don’t make a move, someone else is.

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Craig Newmark may never be as recognizable as Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, but perhaps if he changed his name to Craigslist he would be. Nevermind, Craigslist doesn’t change for anyone. Even for Craig himself.

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Joseph Yi is the Director of Marketing at Viralogy.com and works in social media and sports consulting. Find more about him on his website.

While you’re busy working on those resolutions you made in attempts to be a better you, don’t forget to keep your websites at their best too! Staying on top of design trends is important because a dated looking website works against you and not for you. A website that incorporates the latest trends in design and function shows that your brand remains on the pulse of what’s new, and who doesn’t want that? Following are some trends that will keep your site fresh and modern in the new year!

Single Page Layouts:

We’ve all heard, “K.I.S.S.: Keep It Simple Stupid”… Single page layouts are all about simplicity. Your readers can click the links in your navigation and view the new information in the same page. No waiting for new pages to load! Excellent for personal pages, online “business cards”… with a bit of creativity (and umm, JQuery) anything is possible!

Oversided Headers:

Designers are taking advantage of the header to make the first impression splash pages used to make. Visitors to your site don’t want to sit through an intro or have to click something to access information from the landing page. Use it as a branding opportunity! Let it take up as much as the entire screen and don’t be afraid to get creative!

Enhanced Footers:

Footers used to be restricted to copyright and contact information, or secondary navigation. Moving forward you’ll see the footer becoming a more significant part of page design, featuring aspects that have usually been found in the sidebar: this is a great place to feature all your social networking streams, like from Twitter or Flickr.

Lightboxes:

Rather than the annoying popup windows that distract the visitor from whatever they were looking at, lightboxes open in the current window and are excellent for featuring information. I like using lightboxes to display media such as images or video, but using Javascript there are really few limitations to what can be displayed in a lightbox window (login or contact forms, maps… think outside the box!). When featuring images or video, you should darken the background so that the visitor is less distracted by what’s underneath making the viewing experience more pleasant.

Get Sketchy:

Add a bit of whimsy to your design using handwriting fonts and graphic elements that resemble doodles and sketches. By no means is this a brand new trend, but you will see page designs using this in more creative ways! Touches of these hand drawn aspects add authenticity to your aesthetic. On a corporate site, this can mean, for example, using a handwriting font on a post-it graphic somewhere to draw attention to something you would like to feature (such as “Don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter!”) or making it appear that “notes” have been jotted into the margins. On my lifestyle website, CoutureCult.com, I’ve used both hand drawn images in the header and a font that looks like it was doodled, along with a few other “sketched” details throughout the design of the site to pull it all together.

You’ll notice I added simple hand drawn decoration on either side of the ads that are in the header and footer of CoutureCult.com. This integrates the ads into the page design in a way that is more cohesive, making them feel that they are part of the design and not working against the design.

Typography:

Typography is an art in and of itself, and we are seeing web designers start to experiment with using fonts in different weights and sizes, as well as using more than one font together that compliment each other. A good designer will understand how to implement creative typography in a way that is both consistent and eye catching. The outcome can be either sleek and modern or fun and interesting: depending largely on the fonts chosen, the colors used, and how and where it is implemented in the overall design.

Social Media Icons and Sharing:

Moving into the new decade, there is no site that is complete without connecting your reader to the rest of your relevant social networking accounts and giving them the opportunity to share the information on your site in as many places as possible with ease. With social media icons you can, in the simplest of ways, provide a map to your range of destinations online without utilizing much of your treasured page real estate. Similarly, there are now countless ways to provide the opportunity for your reader to share your website, your blog post, your images… with one click! The reader can share a blog post, for example, on practically any social media platform: Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon, Digg… oh yes, and email. More of a requirement than a trend, but this post wouldn’t be complete without mentioning the importance of social media sharing.

The other day I received a Facebook friend request from someone I didn’t know. While I was surprised at the request, it wasn’t the first time. When I view their profile they had over 3,500+ ‘friends,’ zero of which I knew. While there are those that use Facebook to build quality connections and meet new people, there are those that ‘collect’ friends. Like baseball cards, there are some who boast about the number of friends that they have on Facebook.

Still, this is nothing new. Long before there was LinkedIn, there was business cards, and before that, a simple handshake. For as long as ‘networking’ has been linked with ‘opportunity’ and ‘possibility,’ it seems that the common sentiment is that the larger your network is, the more opportunities you will have. With social media though, ones’ ‘network’ is evolving into more than just ‘opportunities’ and ‘possibilities,’ but ‘relationships.’

Size Matters

“Yup, you better believe it.”

If there are two approaches to ones network when it comes to social media, the first concept is that the more people you have in your network, the better. A great example of this is on Twitter. If you browse through some of the users on Twitter, it won’t take you long to find users that are Following 15,000 people. While it would be amazing if they knew all 15,000, the truth is that they probably know at most between 500-1,000 of that group. For the rest of the 14,000 or so, they are just icing on the cake.

Pros: Large ‘network’ that you can share content with

Cons: Lack of relationships with a majority of your network, difficulty in filtering information from your network

It’s Not The Size Of Your Network, It’s How You Use It

The other approach that you will find social media users engaging in is the good old fashioned “quality over quantity” approach. This approach is the complete opposite of the “Size Matters” approach in that it focuses on building quality and meaningful relationships with a smaller, more manageable group. Although the ‘network’ may only reach out to 100-300 users at a time, the power of this network can be just as effective and in some cases even more influential than that of the individual who is ‘friends’ with 15,000.  The reason for this lies in the core network itself. Because the group is smaller, and thus easier to manage, this allows the user to spend more time creating and nurturing relationships with other individuals. In response, the network has stronger ties and in most cases willing to go further when helping each other.

Pros: More time available to build relationships with each, network connections more willing to help, ability to monitor relationships with ease

Cons: Smaller network, your content/news may reach only a couple hundred as opposed to thousands

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So which approach do you practice? Do you collect ‘friends’ like their rookie cards or do you worry less about size, and more about quality? It is too early to say which one is better or worse and until then, the question remains: “Does Size Matter?”

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Photo by Robert Scoble

Did you hear who is getting married? Or about who got accepted into medical school? If you haven’t go check your Facebook feed, it is bound to be there.

As Facebook continues its’ rise to social networking supremacy, it is re-inventing the way we get information. Before there was Facebook, the way we got information about our friends and colleagues was through word of mouth or email. While we still share information through this manner, Facebook makes email seem like ‘snail mail‘ in comparison. Through news feeds and live updates, you can tell people where you are and what you are doing. You can share what you think about the movie you just saw and who you are dating and in some cases, who you aren’t. In an extreme case, you can even update your friends that you are “lost” and “trapped.”

No Pictures Please

Not only is Facebook changing the way people share information, but it is also changing the rules on etiquette and professionalism. When I was in college, a popular line I would hear people say was “this better not end up on Facebook.” Privacy is no longer as simple as saying “no pictures please.” Instead, you have to be worried about your employers seeing that one trip to Vegas, and also what people are saying about you.

Just in the same way we developed email etiquette and best practices when it first was introduced, the same is being done with Facebook.

Your Mother Uses Facebook

Not only are your friends and co-workers on Facebook, but there’s a good chance that so is your mother, father, and that one cousin you rarely see. Some may think it’s ‘un-cool’ that your mother wants to know what you are up too, but then again, she is your friend right?

When Mark Zuckerberg first created Facebook, his plan was to build an online version of real life relationships. Not only does that mean building a platform that represents the relationships you have with your friends and co-workers, but also with your own family. With the median age of Facebook users steadily rising, parents and children will eventually start sending “Friend Requests” which will undoubtedly make for dinner table conversation when they tell you to change your profile photo.

Anytime, Anyplace

If you look at the appeal that sites like Facebook and Twitter have, one of the biggest draws is its real-time updates and that you don’t even have to be sitting in front of a computer to do it. A great example of this was earlier this year when NBA player, and then Milwaukee Buck, Charlie Villanueva, tweeted during halftime.

Facebook’s current slogan is “Facebook is a social utility that connects you with the people around you.” In light of the way Facebook has been able to change many aspects,  a better one might be: “Facebook is a social utility that connects you with the people around you anytime. anyplace.”

Photo by pshab

I find myself acutely observant of the way various high profile Twitter personalities approach their use of the platform. Insight into their personal styles and why they have chosen to go about things the way they do allows me the opportunity to learn from those who have a proven track record in a way that no conference, camp, or meetup can. In many cases they honestly know a thing or two I don’t and no matter how knowledgeable or successful you are in your field, there is always something to be learned from those who are where you would like to be. Sometimes however, when you are the one in that place, there is something to be learned from those who are where you once were.

link link RTlink @reply @reply-inside-joke link @reply RTlink @reply…

So, we already know who you are because we’ve seen you or heard of you somewhere else. We follow you because we are expecting some kind of insight from you that we can’t get anywhere else. Yet when you interact it’s mainly with people you already know, and it’s only funny or interesting to the two of you. Hardly ever do you interact or publicly reply to those you don’t know. You tweet your own links, you tweet your friends links, you tweet your companies links. Seldom do you add something to the conversations going on in your stream, rarely do you interject things you have not already said elsewhere.

If you’re in the industry and so am I, odds are that I already follow Mashable, TechCrunch et al. and I don’t need a “best of” from 75% of the people I follow. Ask yourself what is unique about your stream and what nuggets you are sharing that make following you valuable to those who are actually using Twitter.. We all know just how much/little our follower count means: especially for those who know how to build that amount. It’s the ones who are interested, interacting, and responsive that are valuable to us: not the 185,853 Donald Trump MLM accounts, 54,848 porn accounts, and 12,437 abandoned accounts that make up your numbers.

If you are going to mostly post links at least go digging around for interesting and unique links that haven’t already passed through my stream countless times. Or add an interesting tidbit about your perspective on the link when you retweet it, if a heavily retweeted link is that relevant to your stream.

Though you might not be attending to your account with the same fervor as those of us in the trenches, there is definitely something to be said for those who show their followers that they are paying attention and taking in what is being said. Someone who is excellent at this is @GaryVee. He is responsive to those who attempt to interact with him, he reaches out to those who reference him: and it turns his followers into fans… into customers.

Promotion is a huge part of why we are all here, but if I’m sitting through your propaganda (as I ask those who follow me to sit through my own), show a bit of your personality as well. If you are a “personality” then I assume you must have one. Show it! Post an unrelated link once in a while. Tell a joke. Share your thoughts on a movie you recently saw or a book you read. What’s your favorite flavor of ice cream? Though too much of this can be tiring, a taste of it here and there makes those who follow you feel that they know you a little better. The more we relate to you the more we trust what you have to say.

Some people have streams that are consistently either always positive and optimistic or always negative and pessimistic. Quite possibly, that is part of your “personal brand” but real people are made up of varying shades of gray. Behind every personal brand is… ready for it? A PERSON. If all you do is gripe, complain, or rant… that grows tiring after a while. If every day you are a ray of sunshine it comes off as inauthentic. There is nothing wrong with admitting you are having a bad day or that something did not go right for you. Honestly, it makes you more relatable.

As more and more people clamor to understand Twitter, figure out the tricks of the trade, and ride your coattails into Web 3.o… what are you going to do to continue to set yourself apart? How are you moving us all forward? Are you in innovator… or will you evaporate as the playing field levels?