1. In the last year alone, time spent on social networking sites has surged 73%. That’s a huge jump.
2. The number of American users frequenting online video destinations has climbed 339 percent since 2003. Mark my words – online video is the future.
3. Time spent on video sites has shot up almost 2,000 percent over the same period.
4. In February, social network usage exceeded Web-based e-mail usage for the first time. Can you imagine the implication of this? Hello FB messages, good bye email! Well..not quite yet.
5. There are 87 percent more online social media users now than in 2003, with 883 percent more time devoted to those sites.

You can see the entire Nielsen report if you like (PDF).

Source: Shama Hyder

You need to register your brand and marks within the social media world. If you don’t grab your brand name on the various social media services out there, someone else will, and effectively Hijack your efforts. And the people who register your brand may (read: definitely will) say things that could damage your organization. Take some time out of your busy day and register your brands and trademarks on the various services. If you dont have the time, I can do it for you.

Don’t wait or you may find that someone else has already taken them.

Top Tier – Set up profiles, actively monitor for relevant content, drive traffic from your blog, etc.
Del.icio.us
Facebook
Flickr
FriendFeed
LinkedIn
SlideShare
StumbleUpon
Twitter
Technorati (“claim” your blog at minimum)
YouTube (along with other video distribution platforms: Vimeo, Viddler, Revver, Yahoo video, etc.)
DocStoc
Scribd

Second Tier – Set up branded profiles and use as warranted:
Digg
Windows Live spaces
Yahoo Groups
Google Groups

Third Tier — Claim your name and monitor:
Bebo
Brightkite (individual focus)
Friendster (international focus, Asia)
Gather
Identi.ca (alternative to Twitter)
Imeem
Ma.gnolia
Meetup
Multiply
MySpace (more for usage policy than an active corporate presence)
New York Times (TimesPeople)
Ning
Orkut (international focus, Brazil)
Picasa (alternative to Flickr, smaller community)
Plurk (alternative to Twitter, younger demographic)
Spoke
Tribe.net

There are literally hundreds of services that should be used for marketing purposes / branding, depending on the service or products you offer. I provide consulting and implementation in this area, contact me. Use my contact form or call 877-904-1419.

The Life Cycle of a Blog Post, From Servers to Spiders to Suits — to You

“This is actually my favorite,” is what Barack Obama said while revealing a handful of his current lucky charms to reporters. “It is like a little piece of luck.”

My friend Kaycee designed it and you can buy it (you wont believe how inexpensive it is!) at
Metal Morphosis
and btw, Kaycee told me “we did the Braille because we want people to feel the words, not just see them. Basically, talk the talk and walk the walk…”

Way to go, great work!

Lilongwe Wildlife Center

Series of posters for Lilongwe Wildlife Center, Malawi. View all

Today I stumbled across the story of the Mara Triangle thanks to Twitter’s blog (see even when they are down, they are still good for something!). Mara Triangle is a wildlife park in Kenya which under the management of the Mara Conservancy helps to protect the wildlife from poachers.  Poachers are one of the biggest threats to the wildlife in this area, and with the conservancy in place, they are able to employ rangers to help protect the animals from these poachers.Up until last year, none of these rangers had likely even touched a computer.  Up until last year, the park solely ran off of the entrance fees to the park.  Up until last year, Kenya as a country was pretty stable. That all changed until this year’s election when political unrest erupted and put the entire tourism industry in Kenya into complete and utter chaos.  With no one coming to visit Kenya or the Mara Triangle, funds started to run out, fast.

Enter William Deed, prior to helping the Mara Conservancy, he lead what he pretty much terms as a “bored with his lot” life and started his own blog about Waiting in Line. That caught the eye of famed Kenyan conservationist Richard Leakey andhis son-in-law, Emmanuel De Merode who run Wildlife Direct.  They tasked William with building blogs and getting the word out about the different wildlife projects under Wildlife Direct. In February Mara Triangle’s blog launched.  It was a slow build, but through word of mouth, news of this blog and what the rangers were doing started to spread.  The blog’s chief contributer is Josep hKimojino, a ranger in the park. He blogs just about every day, which is an amazing feat when you learn that he just click a mouse for the first time back in November. What makes this story even more compelling?  Joseph isn’t just blogging!  Joseph tweets on Twitter, he uploads photos just about everyday to Flickr, he loads videos to Vimeo and even helps to maintain the Facebook cause. Likely though what caught the eye of Wired magazineis the use of Twitter.  It’s also what caught my eye, and got me to click around and just be really amazed and excited.  There use of many different parts of social media just impressed me and made my jaw drop- photos like their’s usually tend to do that.  I felt compelled enough by the story they conveyed to give a monthly donation. Social media when used in the right way can convey compelling stories.

Whether its a blog, photos or even videos, social media allows emotions to be conveyed in ways no piece of paper or static website can.  Combining these powerful tools together can result intruly wonderful stories people just feel compelled to take up a causefor (or even buy a product or service). Are you telling your non-profit’s story in a compelling way?  Does your story touch your audience in a way like the Mara Triangle did me?

http://www.searchmarketinggurus.com/search_marketing_gurus/2008/05/index.html