The rise of the web has led to a fundamental change in the way we research, share information and shop. Search engine optimisation, blogging and social media have combined to create a new form of marketing around attracting potential customers rather than interrupting them. It’s called inbound marketing.

This excellent infographic from Voltier Digital – Inbound Marketing Rising, the dawn of marketing you won’t hate – demonstrates the differences between Inbound Marketing and the traditional Outbound Marketing. In light of recent studies revealing that Australasian marketers are lagging in tech and social media expertise these are some statistics that need to be shared:

1. 200 million Americans have registered their phone numbers on the FTC’s “Do Not Call” list. Tweet this stat

2. 91% of email users have unsubscribed from a company email they previously opted into. Tweet this stat

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Google Plus is two weeks old now and early indications are that the Google team finally have a social media winner. In fact, I’m prepared to bet that Plus will be huge and I wasn’t remotely interested in their previous social efforts.

(By the way, feel free to chat with me on Google Plus)

Currently everyone is trying to work out the best ways to use Google Plus, or asking what the “rules” are? The thing is…its new, its evolving and there is not right or wrong. In the end its the community who tend to set the rules of engagement. I doubt the guys at Twitter had no idea that it would look like it does now, or be used the way it is now when they launched a dicky little SMS based service back in 2006.

So far the early adopters are the usual suspects from the IT and social media industries and community. Early stats from the first million users show that 73% are male, over 70% work in IT / computing fields with “engineer” being the number one career, 49% live in the USA, the leading city is San Francisco and there are 16,500 men “looking for love”.

Yes Google Plus is almost entirely inhabited by geeks.

But that will change, and fast. Its is estimated to hit 10 million users this week and be the fastest social network to 100 million users.

I intend to look at the benefits of Google Plus soon, but in the meantime the most obvious one is the use of “Circles” to sort or categorise the  people you are following.

The Circles are a great way to both filter and share information. My original circles were like “Family”, “Sticky” (Ie my office), “Friends”, “Acquaintances”, “Following” etc. In other words, degrees of separation from my own world.

Since then I have added geographic circles radiating out from my own world again: Newcastle, Australia, North America, Europe etc.

And finally I have created some subject or industry circles: Media, Tech Media, Industry Leaders, Advertising etc.

Most people I follow end up in a few circles. Ie. Friends + Newcastle + Australia, or  Acquaintances + Industry Leaders + USA.

The reasoning is that some information or discussions are only relevant to some groups. So, if I am discussing the New Lunaticks events or Newcastle innovation I can keep it in local Circles. Switching to “Australia” instantly broadens my Circle. If I wish to chat with or follow conversation by Industry Leaders I can filter out the other noise.

Jason Berek-Lewis tells me his circles are all based on themes but he’s not sure if that will be sustainable. Time will tell.

Like I said, its only been two weeks and there’s no right or wrong because we’re all trying to work it out. What I do know is that Google Plus is going to be big and how we use it will be important.

How are you using the Circles on Google Plus? Any good suggestions?

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The Internet is changing fast and impacting our lives in more ways than we ever imagined. Yet many industries are ignoring the need for change and suffering as their sector experiences massive interruption.

Imagine if you could gaze into a  crystal ball and see a few year into the future to understand what the Internet will look like. Perhaps you can.

This presentation “Digital Life: Today and Tomorrow” was created by NeoLabels, with a script by Inés Leopoldo of Mitsue Venture. Its really worth a look.

Digital Life: Today & Tomorrow from Neo Labels on Vimeo.

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Google has announced an initiative in partnership with business software firm MYOB to provide free websites for small and medium sized Australian companies. It’s called Getting Aussie Business Online and follows a similar initiative in the UK.

This will probably cause a panic amongst web designers and digital agencies, but in a way it had to come to this and overall may actually be good for the industry.

Already there are plenty of cowboys in the market who seem happy to design and sell websites for ridiculously low prices. In many cases these operators do untold damage to the industry as their sites are poor and the results for the client are unimpressive or negligible. It creates massive scepticism and mistrust amongst customers and perpetuates a belief that the web doesn’t help small business.

The truth is, bad websites don’t help anyone, so the sooner the cut-price cowboys are starved out of the industry the better. Perhaps the Google / MYOB offering will expedite this.

As the owner of a digital agency, am I worried about the Google / MYOB deal? Not at all.

The free website initiative is clearly a way for Google to help grow the overall market, and of course their client base. And having more businesses online with decent websites can only be good for the industry.

I’m yet to see what these sites will be like and how effective they’ll be, but if they’re decent I would have no problem referring smaller businesses to them as a way of introducing them to the web.

The fact remains that for most sites to really succeed they need a steady flow of useful and relevant information. They need to be properly optimised for search. They need to have a clearly conceived traffic conversion strategy. They need to utilise the power of social networks. We call this inbound marketing.

The web these days is about content and connections, not the mere fact that you have a website. I would suggest that 90% of the businesses who launch a free website via Google / MYOB will not do so with a professional strategy but at least they won’t have wasted their money.

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State of the Internet 2010

Here’s a comprehensive set of numbers that illustrate the state of the internet at the end of 2010. Source: Pingdom

Email

• 107 trillion – The number of emails sent on the Internet in 2010.
• 294 billion – Average number of email messages per day.
• 1.88 billion – The number of email users worldwide.
• 480 million – New email users since the year before.
• 89.1% – The share of emails that were spam.
• 262 billion – The number of spam emails per day (assuming 89% are spam).
• 2.9 billion – The number of email accounts worldwide.
• 25% – Share of email accounts that are corporate.

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A friend of mine in the real estate industry just sent me a link to the following video from a Queensland firm, asking my opinion of it as a marketing device. Holy cow, talk about sexing up a staid industry!!!

Sure, the guys involved say it’s tongue in cheek but they clearly wanted to create some buzz.

What do you think, is it smart marketing, plain sleazy or a welcome innovation for a conservative industry? Post your comments and let the debate begin.

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I can’t help thinking that what is happening with Wikileaks and the strident opposition Julian Assange and his cohorts are enduring from governments around the world is a significant moment in history.

will the wikiLeak become a flood?

While the traditional press have been fretting about copyright and free distribution affecting their business models a much bigger threat has been bubbling up via the Wikileaks model.

It seems to me that Wikileaks is to journalism what Napster was to the music industry.

Sure, Napster was shutdown, but only after interrupting an entire industry and spawning many copycats, some of whom still exist today. The damage was done and the music industry will never be the same again. Out of the ashes rose legitimate business models for easily buying music online, such as iTunes.

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A few years ago we all arrived at the office to discover it had been ransacked. Windows smashed and half the computers stolen. Fortunately all our work had been backed up and insurance covered the theft, but it was a major disruption to the business all the same. We had to order new equipment, reinstall programs and get back up to speed on the projects that were in play at the time. All-in-all I reckon we lost at least a week’s productivity.

One thing business owners must constantly ask themselves is “what would happen if…?”

What would happen if a key person left?

What would happen if a key client left?

What would happen if the office was broken into / burnt down / flooded?

At least these days I feel we have the last questions solved. Office disruption would be greatly reduced at Sticky due to the fact that we predominantly use applications and systems in the cloud.

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In the past five years social media has snowballed to become a dominant force in media and marketing. Here in Australia we now spend more time online,  17.6 hours per week , than with any other media. Astoundingly, Australia leads the world in social media consumption averaging 6 hrs 52mins per person per month.

advertising must adapt to the new social media environment

So it is fair to say that social media is now having a significant impact on how people receive information and how they consume marketing.

Social media finally brings “people” into the marketing equation. Its possible to actually develop real relationships with consumers rather than just broadcast messages to them.

Bob MacDonald, CEO of Procter & Gamble, one of the world’s leading advertisers recently said,

What I would like to have is a one-on-one relationship with seven billion people in the world and be able to customize offerings for those seven billion people. Digital allows that relationship.

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Marketers must start thinking about apps

The mobile phone apps market is booming and is expected to go into overdrive when Apple’s new iPad device launches next month. For most corporate marketers apps are probably nothing more than a curiosity or a convenience if they have app-friendly devices.

But maybe businesses should start thinking about apps a little more strategically as part of their internet marketing strategy.

Research firm Gartner expects that cellphones will be the most common device used for browsing the web by 2013. They predict the number of browser-equipped phones to exceed 1.83 billion, compared to 1.78 billion old fashioned computers in use within 3 years.

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