Two great articles were written recently about How Social networking may be replacing email.  Here  is the link to the first one, and a brief discription from it.  I will go ahead an update the second one in a few minutes, they are both excellent:  http://searchenginewatch.com/3632099

The “killer app” of the first part of the Internet boom was e-mail. Then came e-commerce, e-care, search, music, video, and now social media. E-mail has held on through the years as arguably the king of the Internet, used by the old and the young alike. However, the new inbox is shifting toward social media.

“I have a 16-year cousin and she listed off her favorite Web sites and applications and failed to mention e-mail so I asked her about it,” said Mike Peters, 37, of Detroit, Michigan. “I was shocked by the incredulous look on her face and even more shocked at her response that she didn’t use e-mail that much since it was too formal, she would rather use instant messenger on her phone or post comments based on people’s activities in social networks.” It turns out that Generation Z finds e-mail antiquated and passé, so they simply ignore it.

While this is shocking to some generations, it fits within the scheme of Socialnomics. E-mail isn’t entirely going away, it just may not be the first means of digital communication in a Socialnomic world. Foremost, the messaging is much easier to manage within social media versus e-mail because it acts like a real conversation among friends.

“As a sales person I see social networks like LinkedIn and Facebook as an invaluable tool,” said Allison Bahm of ResponseMine Interactive Agency. “It doesn’t necessarily shorten the sales cycle, but what it does is keep the information flow more open and also allows for a much deeper relationship than e-mail. I’ve started relationships and signed contracts exclusively within social networks. It is revolutionary for sales, it’s much easier than telephone calls and e-mails.”

Whereas e-mail functions in a non-fluid manner, open conversations within social media have an easier flow to them and replicate a normal conversation. Also, the conversational content is broken down into bit-sized chunks and are associated into more easily recognized compartments rather than just a long and daunting slew of 45 e-mails that you need to wade through systematically.

“Kids today prefer one to many communication; e-mail to them is antiquated,” said Bill Tancer, Hitwise general manager, global research.

Those comments are from Paulo Coelho, the famous author of “The Alchemist”.  He loves both of the social networks, wow!  He also has an amazing blog, and the story below is from the blog.  He also links to free versions of his book, wow, we need to do that soon, coming to Christmas near you.  I promise, here is the incredible Christmas story!

Please visit Marketing Charts to see full article, since we are a blogging site, I am super excited to place the full article.  At the same time, we believe blogging and Social Networking are tied at the hip.  click Here: Enjoy!

Blogs Influence Consumer Purchases More than Social Networks

The number of those who read blogs at least once a month has grown 300% in the past four years, and what they read strongly influences their purchase decisions, playing a key role in ushering them to the point of actual purchase, according to a BuzzLogic-sponsored study, reports Retailer Daily.

“Harnessing the Power of Blogs,” a research study of more than 2,000 online consumers in the US, was conducted by JupiterResearch, a Forrester research company.

The study aimed to uncover changing behavior around blog discovery and consumption, how blogs factor into consumer purchase decisions, and the nature of blog influence on buying behavior.

For example, frequent blog readers (those who read blogs more than once per month) – constituting 20% of blog readers – say they trust relevant blog content for purchase decisions more than content from social networking sites, the study found.

Below are additional findings released by BuzzLogic.

Buying Behavior: The Nature of Blog Influence

• Blogs influence purchases: One half (50%) of blog readers say they find blogs useful for purchase information.
• Blogs go beyond tech: Outside of technology-related purchases, for which 31% of readers say blogs are useful, other key categories include media and entertainment (15%); games/toys and/or sporting goods (14%); travel (12%); automotive (11%); and health (10%).

• Niche focus ups influence factor: For those who have found blog content useful for product decisions, more than half (56%) say blogs with a niche focus and topical expertise were key sources.

Blogs’ Place in the Purchase Cycle

Blogs factor in to critical stages of the purchase process, weighing most heavily at the actual moment of a purchase decision, according to the study: Among respondents who say they have trusted blog content for purchase decisions in the past, over half (52%) say blogs played a role in the critical moment they decided to move forward with a purchase.

Blog readers’ responses regarding blogs’ influence as it relates to the following steps of the purchase process:

• Decide on a product or service: 21%
• Refine choices: 19%
• Get support and answers: 19%
• Discover products and services: 17%
• Assure: 14%
• Inspire a purchase: 13%
• Execute a purchase: 7%

Blog Ads and Reader Trust

For frequent blog readers, ads on blogs are on par with sponsored search results, one of the most prevalent and successful forms of advertising on the web – and trust of blog advertising exceeds that around social networking site advertising.

Fully 25% of frequent readers say they trust ads on a blog they read; paid search links also account for 25% of their responses; and 19% say they trust ads on social networking sites.

The study also suggests ads on blogs spur various activities:

• 40% of blog readers have taken action as a result of viewing an ad on a blog; 50% of frequent blog readers say so.
• Top activities include the following: read product reviews online (17%); sought out more info on a product or service (16%); visited a manufacturer or retailer website (16%).

Changing Reader Patterns: The Power of Links

Frequent blog readers use blogs as the top online navigation tool to discover other blog content, ranking higher than general web search or blog search, the study also found:

• 38% of frequent readers said blog links were the top tool for discovering new blog content.
• 34% cited web search, and 11% said blog search engines were the top tool for discovering new blog content.
• For frequent readers, blog links appear to have similar impact as a trusted recommendation from a person (a response from 39% of survey participants).

One in five general blog readers (defined as consumers who have read a blog in the past 12 months) use blog links to discover new blogs.

Blog search engines received the lowest ranking from respondents: 6% of general readers say they use these tools to discover new blogs.

Blogs are not consumed in isolation, but experienced as part of a connected conversation: Nearly half (49%) of blog readers and 71% of frequent readers read more than one blog per session.

“For a portion of web users, blogs rival search as a navigation tool, which has really interesting implications for advertisers,” said Rob Crumpler, CEO of BuzzLogic. “Blogs are becoming trusted guides, steering users who are seeking very specific information to places of interest online. Being able to identify where this is taking place across the blogosphere gives us a window into user intent and a means to better target advertising to a qualified audience. This is great news for advertisers looking to maximize value in today’s environment.”

About the study: In August 2008, JupiterResearch designed and fielded a survey to online consumers selected randomly from the NPD Group US online consumer panel. A total of 2,210 persons responded to the survey. Respondents were asked approximately 40 closed-ended questions about their behaviors, attitudes, and preferences as they relate to media and entertainment, including 10 questions relating to blogs. The samples were balanced by a series of demographic and behavioral characteristics to ensure that they were representative of the online population. Demographic weighting variables included age, gender, household income, household education, household type, region, market size, race, Hispanic ethnicity, online tenure, connection speed, and student status.

Related topics: Most Popular Recent Charts/Stories, Online

We have written a lot about blogging being at the heart of Social Networking, and social networking is important aspect of promoting your blog.  We actually cover more than a chapter on the subject in our marketing book.  Look in to our Social Media Networks category of this blog to read some of our older posts.  faceBook and social networking sites are fast becoming an important part of any SEO strategy.  Here is an interesting article discussing within faceBook tools, it’s from MarketingVox.com, enjoy:  The Title of the Post is Branding on faceBook: Groups or Fan Pages?

MarketingVOX on Facebook Search Engine Journal produced a comparison between two free Facebook branding tools: Facebook Groups, which enable users to cluster around a shared interest; and Facebook Fan Pages, which are like a personal profile page for companies. Two major distinctions were made: Fan Pages are visible to unregistered users and are indexed by the search engines. Starting one may benefit marketers from a search engine optimization perspective, and also help manage its perceived brand value in the social networking space. Groups enable members to send “bulk invites” to other users, whether or not they are members. This makes Groups good for viral or events-oriented marketing. Other key differences: Read the rest of the article by going to their site, good job MarketingVox!

Facebook Publishes “Insider’s Guide To Viral Marketing”

Here is an article from TechCrunch, obviously the folks at Facebook know a thing or two about Viral marketing.  You are not seeing a lot of SEO tips and blogs from us, as I Vipin Singh have been working on our own marketing book called “Marketing is a contact sport”.  Yes we dedicate a whole chapter to Social networking, as it is one of the most important aspects of Internet Marketing.  Content is still king as far as over all promotion, but it has to focused to the proper keywords and written well.  Especially blogging content, which is what we focus on with all of the special attention to SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

This link below will take you to the recent news, and proves that Social networking  is great for engagement marketing, and is all the craze that SEO was a few years ago, and yesterday.  We think business social networking is also a category that is under served.

InternetNews Realtime IT News – AOL Buying Social Networking Site

Even without the big funding that major sites have, we have been focusing and growing our Social Networking site for bloggers and a blogging community as we call it. Last week, I started to hint that we are in the process of a launching a new exciting venture for the b2b, SEO, Search marketers, and B2b Marketing professionals. I never did say what it is that we are doing, but we had planned to let you know. And, here it is, we want to position our small but fast growing business social network, and position it for SEO professionals and B2B Marketing. We think it will be easy for us to position our business social networking site, just for the marketing, sales, SEO consultants, etc. This is not rocket science, and we did launch it last November.

The WordPress blogging platform did not meet our business social networking needs, hence we launched with an open source platform, and have customized it greatly. You can visit this b2b, b2b marketing, SEO Consultants, and marketers of all sorts there. What’s nice about our platform is that it’s very democratic, the most recent people who are on our business social networking site show up on the front section. So the more people use it, the more exposure they get. We don’t mind certain people hanging out on the site all day. It’s just that they should have good content, or we will block them. It’s nice to have good spam control on our servers. So good job to AOL for making this strategic business social networking move. Here is a previous article our Blogging coach had written about social networks. We think Business social networks were just around the corner, as the space of LinkedIn, Plaxo, and Ryze were moving towards it, with the popularity of Facebook. These glorified contact management systems, did not want to be left behind.

Web 2.0 and You: Social Media Explained

Chances are you’ve heard the terms “web 2.0″, user-generated content, and social media networks being thrown around before, and you probably have a decent idea of what they mean (if not, check out my dictionary of blog related terms). However, you may not be sure how to use the social media networks for your business – to blogcast your brand, because blogging is the center of it all.

Think of your brand/business as a solar system – your blog is the sun, and the rest of the social media sites and applications as planets orbiting around it. You may have profiles on the other networks, videos on YouTube and photos on Flickr, and use social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us and digg, but it all revolves around your blog (be sure to put links to your blog in all your profiles, but you already knew that, right?).

There are two main forms of social media that can be quite useful for bloggers – networking sites (Facebook, Myspace, Linked In) and bookmarking sites (Stumble Upon, Reddit, and my personal favorite, del.icio.us).

The networking sites are kind of self-explanatory; they are not that far removed from your actual network of friends, associates, and colleagues, except that they are virtual and you can see everyone else’s networks too. Besides the fact that it is simply convenient to have everyone’s profile info at your fingertips, these sites can also be useful when it comes to reconnecting with old colleagues and acquaintances, and for learning more about new friends. While you don’t need to maintain a presence on every social networking site on the web (you wouldn’t have time to do anything else!), it’s helpful to be involved in one or two that are popular in your business’s niche, e.g. fashion types with Iqons and anything music or entertainment related with Myspace.

Bookmarking sites are useful for bloggers in the both the promotional sense (having your content listed on the sites brings in readers) and in the personal sense – you can bookmark and tag your favorite sites and articles and access those bookmarks from anywhere, and if you work from multiple computers your bookmarks will be synched. I personally like to bookmark and tag any articles that would be good blog fodder, so bookmarking sites can help beat blogger’s block as well. Social bookmarking sites are also excellent tools because they enable you to check out what others in your niche are reading and what they thought of it. Popular forums can function in a similar fashion (be sure to put a link to your blog in your signature line!)

Last but not least, there is Technorati, the blog index that has become so much more. Technorati lets you see who has linked to your blog and how recently, what other sites they have linked to, who they have favorited, and so on. There’s also an authority ranking (how many sites have linked to a particular blog). It’s a good way to keep track of which bloggers are saying what, and how other bloggers are reacting to it.

The key idea to remember is that the social networks are a community – you have to participate, learn the mores, and in some cases, follow the rules (for example, many forums have certain codes of conduct and behavior, so check out the regulations before you jump in and post). Even if you’re a natural rebel, you have to learn the rules before you can break them. Like any other community, virtual or not, you have to learn to listen as well as speak.

Posted by: Blogging Coach

Many people have realized the value and potential benefits of blogging, but they struggle when it’s time to actually write their posts and create their content. After all, it’s tough to maintain a blog and post interesting things day in and day out. However, the web is full of ideas and ways to set your creative capabilities on fire.

One way to generate new ideas and give life to old ones is use the social bookmarking and tagging sites to find new perspectives in your niche.  Digg, del.icio.us, stumble upon, flickr, youtube, and other sites all have tons of user-submitted content, organized by tags.  This system is referred to as a “folksonomy” – the practice and method of collective collaboration using freely chosen keywords known as “tags”.  Users tag content with descriptive phrases and terms in order to share it more effectively with people who are interested in the same topics.

It’s important to see what others in your niche are talking about, and one way to find this out is to see what’s been tagged with your keywords on the various social media sites.  You may be wondering, however, does this translate into posts on your blog? Here are five things you can do with knowledge gleaned from the social media.

1.  Write a response to another blogger. Did you disagree with what they said?  Want to add to their thoughts and bring a new point of view into the conversation?  Use your blog to share your insights, and be sure to link to the inspiring post so the original blogger is aware of you (one caveat – keep your criticism constructive and respective – flame wars have no place on a business blog).

2.  Create a round-up of interesting links.  Did you discover all sorts of all cool sites and articles?  Chances are your readers might be interested in them too, so why not post them on your blog? Don’t forget to write a sentence or two about each link so they know what they are clicking on.

3.Compliment another blogger.  Come across another blogger or website that is simply amazing?  Write a post about why they are so incredible and if it applies, use them as an example of a blogging success.   Maybe even interview them and tell your readers their story.

4.Share what you’ve learned.  Find an informative article or how-to that you really learned something from?  Elaborate on that for your audience.  Bonus points if you can post pictures or your own experience of following the original article’s advice.

5.  Post a funny, creative, or intriguing video.  When you’re simply at a loss for blogging words, youtube, vimeo, and other video sites can be your saviors.   After all, if a picture’s worth a thousand words, a video has got to be worth at least a million.

What do you do when you suffer from blogger’s block?