So its a year since the big crash of 2008. For many businesses its been a year of pain, staff cut-backs, revised budgets and knife-edge survival.

Last year, as it became apparent that the economy was about to go down the toilet, I opined that we were experiencing a turning point in media and marketing history. Old media models were under threat, new media was on the rise. Media consumption habits were changing rapidly and savvy marketers were aware of this. I suggested that the looming economic crisis would only hasten these changes.

Now, as the world lurches out of the worst of the downturn it appears significant change has taken place and the ones who are struggling to cope are those sticking to their old methods.

Many businesses have already charted a new course in the new economy, but for those just beginning to think about their marketing plans here are 7 new marketing rules for the recovery economy:

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I don’t know how I missed this.

This morning I was searching through the comments and backlinks on our company sites when I noticed some backlinks from something called Topsy. I copied the address into my browser and low-and-behold I discovered one of the most exciting sites to hit the web in, well….a while.

Topsy is a search engine for tweets. It recognises what savvy social networkers have known for a while now – that ReTweets are the new currency of the web.

Type a term into Topsy’s simple interface and you’ll see the most popular tweets on that subject. Here’s how Michael Arrington of Techcrunch described Topsy back in late May:

The 30 million or so Twitter users are an army of little content-finding machines. Topsy says those users are sending tens of thousands of unique links per day to interesting things around the Internet.

Some of those users have more influence than others. And some links are sent by lots of Twitter users, others just sent once. Those links, combined with the information in the Twitter message itself, is what Topsy uses as the basis of its search engine.

And the results are…amazing.

I agree.

Topsy is all about context. You can find what is hot online in seconds. The fact that Topsy also rates users by Influence helps verify results. Its a very impressive approach.

Topsy can be very handy for marketers and businesses trying to get their information into the social mediasphere. It allows you to see who has been ReTweeting you, who is talking about you and the amount of influence they have. It can help for both promotion and reputation management.

As someone who spends a LOT of time on Twitter, I suggest that Topsy is a breakthrough site.

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Whenever you meet social media sceptics you can use some of these stats and the following video to help explain whats going on here:

Facebook currently has over 250 million users. 120 million users log onto Facebook at least once each day. 30 million users currently access Facebook through their mobile devices. In fact, people that use Facebook via their mobile devices are almost 50% more active on the social network than non-mobile users.

Social Networks are for Kids?

45 – 54 year olds are the top demographic on Twitter (according to the April 2009 comScore). 25 – 34 year olds follow closely behind at second.

There are over 200,000,000 blogs. 54% of bloggers post new content or tweet daily.

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Respected blogger and author Rohit Bhargava has written a great piece summing up the success of the Best Job in the World campaign run by Queensland Tourism.

The campaign cleaned up at Cannes Advertising Festival, taking home an unprecedented 3 categories. Rohit says, “a big part of the reason for the amazing success of this campaign was not what they were marketing, but how they used social media to do it.”

Here are the six lessons Rohit identified from the Best Job in the World Campaign:

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Guest Report: by Renai LeMay of ZDNet.com.au news

This commentary is the modified text of a speech given to the Insight Exchange’s Twitter’s Impact on Media & Journalism event in June 2009.

In my daily professional life, I often feel as though I am a medieval knight who has been called into action to defend with sword and shield the honour of a great lady of noble birth.

That lady’s name, of course, is Journalism.

Now, there is no doubt that she is currently beset on all sides.

Her bountiful wealth of gold and silver is speedily disappearing as digital mediums demolish her traditional revenue models. Her social media rivals for our attention grow ever more beautiful as time goes on. And of course her virtue is beset by public relations professionals, whose numbers are legion.

And yet, I take solace from the fact that she has chosen the right champion.

I am not one of the traditional defenders of journalism.

I am not a 60-something newspaper editor who cannot understand the internet. I am not the chief executive of a television studio who is suing YouTube for re-publishing his TV news clips. And I am not a media magnate with a sprawling publishing empire that needs to keep his share price up by talking up his print assets.
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Source: socialmediaportal.com

The web has been a buzz this week about reported evidence from search engine Google launching a microblogging search engine that will index content from popular services such as Twitter.

Micro-blogging has seen phenomenal growth over the last twelve months, with Twitter in particular growing in size by some 1700 per cent.  Since the launch of Twitter’s own search functionality, there has been much speculation that the micro-blogging service was soon to rival Google.  Read more

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Source: briansolis.com

This past weekend the Twitterverse spoke-out in exasperation and opposition against traditional media networks (CNN specifically) and the absence of instantaneous coverage of the Iranian election and the resulting fallout. “We the people” wanted real-time information regarding the violent protests that erupted on the streets of Iran and the stories probing potential foul play in the results. We took to Twitter to express discontent and to also uncover the real story as it was unfolding live through citizen journalism. Read more

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The human race has always had an innate desire to connect. The communication revolution taught us how to speak to each other individually or en masse using various mediums. Now, connection technology has made it easier, more effective and more efficient to connect.

Connection Generation, a new book by Australian marketer and author Iggy Pintado, explores how we have evolved through our six degrees of separation to embrace connection technology.

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GetSticky - Internet Marketing System

The team and I at Sticky Advertising have spent the last few years immersing ourselves in online marketing, social media and search engine optimisation and web design. We have been deliberately steering the agency in a new direction as we experimented with online technologies and developed sites and strategies for our clients that have been enormously successful.

The result of our efforts, trials and tribulations is an entire Internet Marketing System designed for small businesses and marketers called GetSticky.

GetSticky systemises and explains the whole Inbound Marketing approach in an easy-to-follow manner, whilst providing businesses with the site and tools to revolutionise their marketing. Its not just hot air, its a system that has been working extremely well for one customer after another.

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The Power 150, a ranking of the world’s best English-language marketing industry blogs, has had a revamp. Originally created by Todd Andrick, The Power 150 has now grown to rate almost 1000 blogsites. The new measurement criteria has stirred up the results with some significant changes occurring. These will now be updated on a daily basis.

Australia has 34 sites ranked on the Power 150:

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