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

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?

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.

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.

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.

Websites

• 255 million – The number of websites as of December 2010.
• 21.4 million – Added websites in 2010.

Web Servers

• 39.1% – Growth in the number of Apache websites in 2010.
• 15.3% – Growth in the number of IIS websites in 2010.
• 4.1% – Growth in the number of nginx websites in 2010.
• 5.8% – Growth in the number of Google GWS websites in 2010.
• 55.7% – Growth in the number of Lighttpd websites in 2010.

Domain Names

• 88.8 million – .COM domain names at the end of 2010.
• 13.2 million – .NET domain names at the end of 2010.
• 8.6 million – .ORG domain names at the end of 2010.
• 79.2 million – The number of country code top-level domains (e.g. .CN, .UK, .DE, etc.).
• 202 million – The number of domain names across all top-level domains (October 2010).
• 7% – The increase in domain names since the year before.

Internet Users

• 1.97 billion – Internet users worldwide (June 2010).
• 14% – Increase in Internet users since the previous year.
• 825.1 million – Internet users in Asia.
• 475.1 million – Internet users in Europe.
• 266.2 million – Internet users in North America.
• 204.7 million – Internet users in Latin America / Caribbean.
• 110.9 million – Internet users in Africa.
• 63.2 million – Internet users in the Middle East.
• 21.3 million – Internet users in Oceania / Australia.

Social Media

• 152 million – The number of blogs on the Internet (as tracked by BlogPulse).
• 25 billion – Number of sent tweets on Twitter in 2010
• 100 million – New accounts added on Twitter in 2010
• 175 million – People on Twitter as of September 2010
• 7.7 million – People following @ladygaga (Lady Gaga, Twitter’s most followed user).
• 600 million – People on Facebook at the end of 2010.
• 250 million – New people on Facebook in 2010.
• 30 billion – Pieces of content (links, notes, photos, etc.) shared on Facebook per month.
• 70% – Share of Facebook’s user base located outside the United States.
• 20 million – The number of Facebook apps installed each day.

Video

• 2 billion – The number of videos watched per day on YouTube.
• 35 – Hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute.
• 186 – The number of online videos the average Internet user watches in a month (USA).
• 84% – Share of Internet users that view videos online (USA).
• 14% – Share of Internet users that have uploaded videos online (USA).
• 2+ billion – The number of videos watched per month on Facebook.
• 20 million – Videos uploaded to Facebook per month.

Images

• 5 billion – Photos hosted by Flickr (September 2010).
• 3000+ – Photos uploaded per minute to Flickr.
• 130 million – At the above rate, the number of photos uploaded per month to Flickr.
• 3+ billion – Photos uploaded per month to Facebook.
• 36 billion – At the current rate, the number of photos uploaded to Facebook per year.

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.

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.

Will Wikileaks, which apparently intends to go down fighting despite extraordinary international Government and corporate pressure, lead to a reinvention of  journalism? Or will it lead to massive censorship of the Internet with governments using Wikileaks as an example of it’s potential threat to national security?

Today during the Media Panel at LeWeb ’10 in Paris, France, Weblogs SL’s Julio Alonso said, “This is a turning point for the Internet — it’s not just about WikiLeaks anymore. What happens to WikiLeaks will get applied to others later on.”

“This is the first attempt at censorship of the Internet by all the governments of the planet,” Wikio’s Pierre Chappaz added. “Despite all the attacks, I’m optimistic that the information will survive,” he added.

“We have to speak about what’s happening,” Chappaz said. ”I’m amazed by the silence of the traditional media. This is a systematic attack. We have to explain to the traditional media. The stakes are about the free press,” he continued.

Techmeme’s Gabe Rivera added that the leakers aren’t going to lose this war. He cited mirror sites, Twitter accounts, Facebook messages, and all kinds of things that keep popping up to continue the data spread. “The leakers will win,” he said.

And if that’s the case it would seem that this style of journalism will become the new normal. As with the music industry, business models will change and new leaders will emerge.

Interesting times for sure.

Updates:

Gavin Heaton has posted two items you should read regarding Wikileaks, Wikileaks Payback Targets and A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace

Excellent post by Mark Pesce – WikiLeaks a blueprint for things to come

from SMH: GetUp gets behind Julian Assange

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.

Our project management is hosted on Basecamp.

Our contact management and sales funnel is hosted on Highrise.

Our internal discussions and communications are run primarily on Yammer.

Many external discussions take place on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.

Most documents are stored and shared online. We use Google Docs.

We can access all these applications and tools remotely via personal computers and our phones. In fact, all of them have iPhone apps to make it quick and easy.

Redirect the landlines (which aren’t heavily used) and basically all our communications and operations would be covered. As far as clients are concerned, business as usual.

So, theoretically, we could continue operating fairly seamlessly in the event of some major interruption to the physical office (although we’d really mourn the coffee machine).

What would happen if it was your office?

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.

Social media signals a major disruption in marketing. Its now time for advertisers to take notice and adjust accordingly.

Longtime Madison Avenue executive Hank Wasiak has posted a great piece on Mashable titled How social media has radically altered advertising which I strongly encourage you to read in full. In it Hank presents his 5 suggestions for a much needed change in the advertising mindset required to embrace the social media world:

1. Lighten Up. Stop lamenting the end of advertising as we know it. Celebrate the emergence of advertising as the consumer wants it and as it was meant to be — the art of one-on-one persuasion.

2. Listen Up. Take Chris Brogan’s advice. Grow bigger ears and become an expert at listening to what people feel. Value response and engagement skills as much as creative abilities.

3. Loosen Up. Get comfortable with giving up control to gain confidence and traction with clients and consumers. Client relationships ought to be rooted in trust, transparency and creative programs that are built on a strong positioning and responsibly deliver what is promised.

4. Ladder It Up. Embrace “collabetition.” Resist the urge to say “we can do it all” and openly collaborate with like-minded competitors to add value to an idea or program.

5. Live It Up. Everyone at an agency has to immerse themselves in the “social circles” in which consumers live and move everyday. Observation and understanding have been trumped by participation and engagement.

Hank feels that now it’s time for the advertising industry to embrace these social marketing opportunities with the same enthusiasm it had for the disruptive change of television.

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.

Morgan Stanley estimates that the value of the mobile internet market will grow from $US48 billion last year to $US107 billion in 2013.

Smartphone users already appreciate the ease and convenience of apps. They provide a much more satisfactory online experience than the phone browser. For a simple example of the difference take the time to view this site on your phone then access it through our fairly basic iPhone app.

There are now more than 140,000 apps available at Apple’s App Store. The site recently passed 3 billion downloads. Google’s Android, Nokia’s Ovi and Research in Motion’s App World have all launched in order to move into this booming market, while Microsoft has announced plans for a Windows Phone.

Apps are increasingly becoming the online launching point for many people. What would you rather do:

• access your phone browser to search Google or just open the Google app?

• access your phone browser to search Wikipedia or just open the Wikipanion app?

• access your phone browser to access Twitter or just open the Tweetie app?

• access your phone browser to read your favourite blogs or just open their one-button apps?

The audience for apps is only expected to grow as more smartphones enter the market and devices such as the iPad launch. Many pundits predict the iPad will be a cross-over device that introduces previously non-tech oriented users online via a more user-friendly environment. And how will they access their favourite sites and online resources? Via apps.

In fact, apps are becoming the new web “bookmarks” for quickly accessing favourites and its not hard to argue that we may be seeing a transition from the web-browsing age to the app age.

Which of course means that marketers have another touchpoint to consider. Expecting the rapidly growing brigade of mobile users to access your clunky website on their smartphone is not good enough. If its not a user-friendly experience with proper mobile formatting you’ll lose them.

But if you can provide a useful, simple app then your brand has a strong advantage over competitors. Think about it. If somebody is willing to download your app they’re more likely to revisit it on a regular basis. If the app succeeds in engaging the users they it can become a valuable marketing tool, immersing users in your brand or returning regularly for your information. They are much less likely to do this via a mobile browser.

Whats-more, your app / brand is displayed on the users “desktop” every day.  Most marketers would kill for that sort of brand placement. In-your-face-every-day.

This isn’t the future, its happening now. Smart marketers are offering their visitors multiple touchpoints: Twitter, Facebook groups, RSS… and now apps. If your organisation has something valuable to say then you need to allow people to access that information – anywhere.

The problem is, most marketers are still coming to grips with creating a website that is computer-user-friendly, let alone mobile friendly. Most marketers are still not providing a regular flow of useful and engaging information. Those marketers are going to be left behind in the new mobile apps world.

I’m interested in your thoughts on this: Do you see apps becoming an important part of modern marketing? Lets discuss.