• Assign someone to be an event blogger, roaming the location and reporting back in real time via their laptop or smartphone to a Twitter feed or other microblog.
• Consider setting up a live webcam feed of select locations at the event. Don't ignore the unusual and unexpected.
• Have someone update a Flickr photostream throughout the event by giving them a digital camera that can easily and quickly upload photos automatically.

• 69.7% of U.S. adult bloggers are Caucasian. 20.0% are Hispanic, 12.2% are African American and 3.7% are of Asian decent.
• The average income of the typical U.S. adult blogger is $55,819.
• The average adult blogger has 14.3 years of education.

According to a Deloitte & Touche study, the younger the web user, the more likely they are to read or keep a blog on a weekly basis (71% of those age 13-24 are blog readers, compared to 56% of those aged 25-41, 40% of those aged 42-60 and 36% of those readers aged 61-75).

• Just say "no" sometimes
• Delete or save and file aggressively
• Your inbox is not a "to do" list
• Sweep "e-clutter" away
• Stay in control
• Don't reply in an instant

• Before you begin reading, think about what you'd like to change in your professional life. Then find ways within the book to help you make those changes. The book then helps you make changes you've already determined -- a smarter tactic than hoping to find those changes hidden within.
• Let your reading experience be a plan of action. Take notes, use stickies, highlight passages. Not so much as a way to come back later as a game plan you can act on now.
• Share what you've learned. Lend the book to others and discuss it. Sure, you might find a way to make change on your own, but it'll be much easier when others are on board too.

DC Interactive: "There is quite a lot of talk about social marketing strategies such as blogging, networking and attracting and encouraging consumer advocated. What advice would you have for healthcare institutions and networks and individual physicians and group practices?"

Jose Vargas, CEO of HealthCare.com: "Social marketing is great for engaging, building and maintaining a network of people with like interests and concerns, also it’s a great way and vehicle of self promotion and encourages the free flow of ideas and thoughts. Providers should embrace social networking as a way of brand building, by creating specialty communities, networks or a list maintaining a blog. We just launched our own blog section at healthcare.com and visits have gone from 0 to over 5,000 per day in just 3 weeks."

• Mobile Videoconferencing. Look for groups of friends chatting over video on their phone to hit the younger crown here in the U.S. later this year as the next generation of video smartphones highlights this feature popular in Asian markets. Smart marketers should be strategizing some real world uses now: multi-person meetings, quick sales conference calls, etc.
• Location-based mobile services. According to Morgan Stanley analyst, Mary Meeker, 20% of mobile phones currently include GPS systems -- a number expected to increase 50% within 5 years. Add to that technologies like Apple's WiFi and cellular-based location features in those 24 million iPhones expected by the end of 2009 and you've got consumer tuned into in-parking lot coupon delivery, specials being broadcasted as you enter stores and homebuilders and realtors informing casual weekend shoppers as they drive around.
• Interactive TV. An early champion of this is Apple's AppleTv which allows you to download movies on demand, access photo galleries and music playlists remotely and use your TV as a virtual media center.

Need some harder number? How are these, as of March 2008:

• Total users: 1 million
• Active users: 200,000 per week
• Total Twitter messages: 3 million per day

And those real world uses? Take a look:

• Media outlets now rely on Twitter users as man-on-the-spot journalists (many people used it to provide shorthand reports on the Olympic torch coverage in San Francisco; the May 12th Chinese earthquake was covered within minutes).
• Real estate giant, HRBlock is using Twitter to communicate remotely in real time with buyers who have questions, are walking through models or driving around looking at homes for sale. Think there's no one using Twitter for this? Check out the visual "stats" and "Following" indicators on the right side of HRBlocks Twitter page. Oh yeah, this is JUST Kansas City, Missouri!
• A frequent flyer on Southwest Airlines made a comment to the airline (via Twitter) that she liked how their kiosks saved her time checking in. The next time she flew, she shot Southwest a Tweet right before taking off saying "thanks for being on time." Southwest had, of course, responded before she landed back to her.

According to Bailey, "knowledge confers social status, and knowing about new, useful products or good deals is highly valued." One of the keys to reaching moms, Bailey continues, is authenticity. "If you try to reach out to mommy bloggers, just don't send them a press release."

Does your company or organization have any green initiatives? Does it show concern for the environmental impact of its actions (or inactions)? Do consumers think of you as environmentally-responsible? This perception is more important than you may think -- American adults claim they are up to 30% more likely to choose a "green" alternative if the price is relatively competitive to a non-green alternative.

Consider creating an online strategy that highlights your green initiatives. Make sure it covers these key issues:

• Give meaningful facts about conservation.
• Show how your efforts impact the environment.
• Provide a forum for open discussion.
• Example how your company or organization contributes.
• Raise awareness of conservation in general.
• Provide ways to let consumers get involved.
• List links so visitors can learn more and get even more involved.

But smart marketers should see these sites as tools for research. LinkedIn Answers, for instance, allows you to ask your community questions and track the responses. Facebook has polling, discussions and other applications that serve much the same purpose. The key is to keep your network interested -- show your participation as a moderator or you'll risk seeing your customers dropping their participation.

• Connect with passionate consumers. We no longer need to interrupt customers with our messages -- instead, use social marketing to engage interested prospects and give them good reasons to become your advocates.
• Build relationships with consumers. Social media allows customers to interact with your company or organization at their own pace and within their own timetable.
• Engage consumers at a higher level. Use social media to invite discussion, allow customers to share experiences and be involved with your adventures.

Wondering about practical applications? For homebuilders, think a few snapshots from that grand opening party or community picnic. Healthcare marketers can use a tumblelog to give quick reaction during a press conference. Higher education marketers can use it to give coverage to a visitation day for incoming students -- tumblr has a very high percentage of users within the 16+ age group.

The problem is, that content is stale and really just for reference. The issue is that you didn't update it. Often enough. With what consumers really want. Even allowing consumers to have some say or hand in creating content. According to noted web marketing blogger, Steven Phenix of ViaMetric, Web 2.0 is the second part of "read/write." Content in Web 2.0 is generated by your readers. If you have a blog, you may set the ground for a debate on an issue, but the real benefit to most readers is what they -- and others like them -- have to say in the conversation.

Web 2.0 means a lot of things, but it really boils down to few simple concepts: participation, feedback, engagement.

• An active and consistent participation. Successful communities actually start to moderate themselves.
• Benefits over size. The best online community favors benefits and results to its members over sheer volume.
• Sense of ownership. Good communities are self-governing and work best when current members actively engage new ones, offering to answer questions and provide help.

On the other hand, here's when to know when you're community has gone to the bad place:

• There's no sense of purpose, reason or goals.
• There are no guidelines for new members.
• There are no "community shephers" to see that participant's posts are continually ignored.
• Posts are written in dry, stuffy professional verbage. Here, the culture of the community has changed to impress colleagues, not collaborate.

A forum, on the other hand, is a place online (usually a bulletin board) that allows members to hold discussions. Forums, are much better at outlining the iterative processes that allow us to get answers to posted topics or questions. They tend to be much better than wikis at defining a process, especially when that process involves testing or other methods that can be tried in environment of the forum's individual readers. Forums also have another big advantage over wikis, and that's in the human interaction component. Wikis don't provide a means for direct communication between users.

It's not that wikis aren't a great tool -- it's just that we always have to keep in mind that they are impersonal, general and non-iterative. Forums however, lack the clear consensus-building capabilities of a wiki.

While Starbucks calls it a social network, it doesn't do a very good job of connecting the Starbucks crusader to those who abhor it. And this is certainly the missed opportunity -- think of how they could have created unique online communities around individual stores, add in Twitter-style feeds to let consumers comment on the newest roast or build upon the company's social initiatives by engaging readers at a higher level.

Well done Starbucks -- almost.

Currently, results of this experiment are stored "per user" and aren't applied to aggregate or general search results. One nice feature we've seen is the ability to tell them of a better web page that meets the search criteria. Don't expect to find this too often -- if at all -- Google is notorious for experimentation.

Think about the focus of your blog. If it is scattered and you blog about anything and everything, without direction nor cause, then you collect a scattering of readers rather than a concentration of focused readers and traffic. The more diverse your blog content, the more scattered your energies.

The study continues to note that 60% of blog-reading men and 50% of women reading blogs visit a variety of blogs rather than sticking with just a few sites. Half of all readers state that they read blogs to be entertained, with TV, newspapers and magazines being the media outlets that are most suffering from a lack of traffic.

43% of visitors who read blogs say they have noticed advertising within the blogs with 30% saying they've clicked on those same ads. Of readers in the youngest group polled, ages 18 to 24, 61% say they noticed ads within blogs.

Well, look to a future Genius Lounge article for the full forecast, but the good news is that performance-based interactive marketing is more critical than ever. Social communities and network-building strategies especially are cost-effective and have a measurable impact on prospects' decisions in the consideration stage.

Visitors coming directly to a web site had a conversion rate of 3.3% -- higher than any other visit type. The same direct visitors spent an average of 5.2 minutes on the site, viewing an average of six web pages during their visit. Referred traffic visitors converted 3.0% of the time and viewed just four web pages during an average stay of 4.1 minutes. Overall, search traffic had the lowest conversion rates -- 1.4% for paid search and 1.2% for organic searches. Organic searches did tend to yield a high number of pages viewed -- an average of five per visit.

While many readers may not be familiar with this technology, here's the 30 second run: Readers of your content (either posted at Digg.com and its brethren or through the implementation of Digg right on your web site) vote (or "digg") news, articles or other information they approve of. Often times, a "dugg" site enjoys extraordinairy web traffic to the "dugg" article or page, evoking what some call the DIgg Effect.

For more information and practical applications, watch for an upcoming Genius Lounge e-blast. Not on the recipient list? No problem, subscribe here.

A captcha ensures that an actual human is interacting with a web site, not a piece of software that a spammer has written to cause trouble with the site. Other types of captchas include specifying a color that is displayed, choosing a specific image from a number of choices, or, one of the best that we employ at for our clients, a combination of digitally-created letters and numbers using asterisks (*), which is considered a "second-generation" captcha and much harder to crack.

There are many tactics used in creating headlines, including the one/two punch (e.g. "Some banks have simple interest. We have simple everything.") and exposing your audience's pain (e.g. "Keeping an eye on that 401(k)?. Maybe this week, you'll be able to retire in your early 70s.").

• Know what YOU want your visitor to do. Most web site pages tend to tell the visitor what THEY want to know or find. An effective landing page is written from your perspective as a marketer and is intended to evoke an action of some kind.
• Landing pages are, effectively, direct marketing communications. Thus, it's all about the words, the message. The page's design only serves to support and showcase the text.
• Eliminate the navigation links. Admittedly, we don't tend to implement these on our own e-mail marketing landing pages (although we are planning an upcoming A/B test to measure the effectiveness of this tactic), although conventional wisdom would tell you that if there's only one thing to click on the page (e.g. Yes! Order Now! or You Betcha, I Want It!), then there's more likelihood of a visitor exhibiting the desired behavior.

This comes down to trust and there are many assumptions many marketers use to justify including potential readers and consumers on their recipient list (two very popular ones include the assumption that an existing customer wants to hear from the organization and that by someone entering their e-mail address on a form, they must be implicitly giving permission to be marketed to).

To avoid this permission issue, be sure that you:

• are making it absolutely clear to those voluntarily giving you their e-mail address that you desire to communicate with them via e-mail,
• clearly detail the advantages a consumer will get by volunteering that e-mail address, and
• make available your privacy policy in clear, straightoforward terms so there is no question of how you will safeguard any information given to you by consumers.

Keep an eye out for the mid-March edition of our Genius Lounge to read the entire article on common e-mail marketing faux pas. Not a subscriber? Well, sign-up here to receive weekly marketing and technology success stories, helpful articles and other useful info for smart marketers. These will be delivered to your e-mail Inbox each week and, of course, you can always read our Privacy Policy to learn exactly how we protect your information.

• First, have a novel or amazing idea. A video of your latest product busily whirring away, churning out colorful widget after widget? Yawn.
• Next, keep it relevant. So, you provide a unique service to discerning customers. What makes you think the skit your marketing team put on at the brainstorming retreat will have an effect on any customer -- prospective or current?
• Finally, don't worry about quality. It's great to have Martin Scorsese direct that spot, but some of the best viral videos look like outtakes from the Blair Witch Trials.

• Make sure your agency keeps the design simple and intuitive. Don't ask consumers to work too hard or they'll pass on by.
• You want a short, simple message. Again, if it can't be communicated in less than a second, consumers will never engage your advertising.
• Have your advertising work organically with your product or service. We've all seen the bash/punch/shoot/squash a monkey banner ads. They tend to be for things like loans, prescription drugs and dating secrets -- and that doesn't make sense. Shooting a hockey puck past a goalie makes sense -- more so if it's for a chance at free box seats to an upcoming game.
• Keep your ads subtle and attractive. Desparation, flashing and throbbing only serve to annoy and aggravate.

• Content
• Community
• Conversation
• Creative
• Campaigns
• Conversion
• Commerce

These important seven concepts overlap and intertwine, being used in various combinations as a way to reformulate the way modern marketers approach and engage their audiences. Whether its keyword searches, social media and online communities, blogging, podcasting and videocasting, virtual worlds, widgets or mobile marketing, there are new paradigms to consider.