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The digital landscape is being reshaped by the news that Facebook is opening up its social graph. Twitter, too, has made waves by acquiring companies that make third-party services for Twitter.

On Twitter here are the questions everyone is asking? What are you doing? Where are you doing it? Who are you doing it with? What do you like? These used to be things we kept to ourselves or shared with our close friends and family. Now we're willing to broadcast them to whomever is willing to listen. It is highly valuable for people TO stay connected to far-flung family and friends, but taken to the the extreme Tweeting may be lulling some folks into a false sense of "I'm connected" at the expense of real-life connections. Coffee with your next-door neighbor could do more for your brain than a thousand Twitter updates.

Think of it paying continuous partial attention CONTINUOUSLY. It is motivated by a desire to find a LIVE node on the network. Another way of saying this is - that We want to Connect and be Connected. We want to effectively scan for opportunity and optimize for the best activities, and contacts, in any given moment. To be busy, to be connected, is to be alive, to be recognized, and to matter. ALL in an effort NOT TO MISS ANYTHING. It is an always-on, anywhere, anytime, any place behavior that involves an artificial sense of constant crisis. We are always in high alert when we pay continuous partial attention. But in the business world how do we do this and then get anything done!

Ironically, services like Twitter are simultaneously leaving some people with a feeling of not being connected, by feeding the fear of not being in the loop. By elevating the importance of being "constantly updated," it amplifies the feeling of missing something if you're not checking Twitter (or Twittering) with enough frequency.

Social media has led to "social sharing," the broadcasting of our thoughts and activities. It's not a fad. It's a social phenomenon, accelerating at light speed. The latest thing of social sharing is A platform called

Blippyit allows you to connect to your social system, share what you bought and how much you spent at retailers like Target, Netflix, Amazon, and Zappos, to name a few. Not only can you log-in to these services quickly from an existing social network, but you can share across multiple networks. Knowing what people are buying when, and how much they're willing to spend is creating a feeding frenzy among marketers looking for the ripple effect.

Not even the drumbeat of privacy concerns seems able to slow down the trend. It was recently reported that

Blippy members' credit card information was showing up in Google's search results. Even with that warning Blippy is still going strong. We are becoming ever more willing to share ever more information with the world. Here just a few implications to consider when it comes to the changing face of sharing in a social age.

Data Gathering - The more we know about an individual, the easier it is to sell something. Someone will amass socially shared data (this is where Facebook is placing bets) and businesses will tap it for profit. Google's integration of archived tweets reveals that even real time data can be sorted and mined. A business may not own the data from all of the sharing, but it's likely they will want it.

Knowledge Sharing & Collaboration - Internal and external social sharing could profoundly affect how we work. Newer internal platforms such as Chatterfrom Salesforce not only borrow from the Facebook, but they also integrate with external networks such as Twitter. The future of social sharing for the large organization could be making the two worlds come together.

Content Distribution - Social sharing becomes the ultimate form of distribution. Any business or individual who produces digital content in ANY form will be tweaking how easily the content can be shared, whether by adding a "like" button or designing the content itself to be sharable. Facebooks "Like" button is appearing on publisher sites all over the Internet. These buttons will populate a user's profile in Facebook linking back to the originating site while also providing Facebook with even more immensely valuable, realtime data about its consumers.�@

Social Currency - Sharing on the social web acts as a form of currency. Sharing useful information that might help someone within your network scores you points and builds equity. Finding a deal and sharing that with others can put you in someone's favor, and maybe then they will find you a deal. It's important to recognize that all this sharing isn't some useless impulse. There are reasons why people are willing to share so much. Creative expression is part of it but also, there's often a benefit and value, to the individual who shares.

Social sharing is a major behavioral shift, the most important so far of the 21st century. And the information we choose to share with friends, co-workers and even strangers, is re-efining the idea of what's private and public before our very eyes.

Social Media matters more than ever in this economic downturn as consumers across the country are losing faith in large institutions and experts and instead are turning to each other for advice.

67% of the global online population visits social networking sites regularly. If it were a country Facebook would be the third largest country in the world. Social Networking continues to grow with no signs of slowing.

17% of all time spent online is spent on Social Networking Sites, nearly a triple the percentage of a year ago.

The number of Facebook users increased 97% in the past year and Twitter users increased 2,681%.

That's a lot of growth! If you think Social Networking is just for Kids Think Again! Two years ago the median age of a Facebook user was 26 , Today it's 33 and on LinkedIn it's 39. The last two years the number of Twitter users in the 25-34 age bracket jumped 155% with 1/3 of all people in this age bracket using Twitter. Who are these people and what are they doing?

There are 350 million users on Facebook Today, Half that log in every day, each day, over 700,000 new members join Facebook. That's a lot of people.

The average Facebook User has 130 Facebook friends, that sends 8 friend requests per month, comments 25 times each month. Thats a LOT of activity.

How can you leverage all this to increase your business performance and individual productivity and improve client retention? by using Relationship Marketing.

With Social Media - You need to think of the key message you want to communicate

- The marketing objective

- The specific response you want to generate and

- Who is your audience? customers or business

- How much time you have to davote to your social media campaign

- To be successful in Social Media you must devote at least one hour per day or visit your page once day every day. The content must always be fresh and new. Give Tips, advice, attach a link to revelent information, post videos. Brand yourself.

- But DO NOT be selfserving and have every post about what you are selling! It does not work !! and will lose you customers and friends.

 So let me tell you a couple of things that do work. Send out a survey, do a test market on a product or service, give recognition- people love to see their name in print. Be funny, informative, engaging, have interesting things to post, give them a reason to come back. It is about relationships it is not ADVERTISING, be honest keep it personal But a word of warning if you have a personal page make sure you do not have any photos on your page you don't want everyone from your pastor to the recuiter for your next job to see. Because it is a common business practice to look up someones Facebook Page to check out a person before they decide to do business with you. So if you have pictures of wild parties with your friends make sure your page is private and just for your friends only.

Blogs are a great way to attract more customers and drive your page ranking up in the google ratings. Your page rank on Google or Bing is very important. The more times you blog, the more times the search engines go through your content. but you need to have the right key words and the right denistiy. Make sure to have all your social media buttons on your blog and make sure the people coming to your blog can share the information with their friends. Then you are utilizing their friends to sell your products by their referals. Most people looking for a product or company do not go past the second page on the google search engines. Your posts must be creating a sense of authenticity with online content, especially with the content being delivered over social media. Your customers are very smart, they're surrounded by advertising and marketing messages, and they can spot insincerity miles away. Honesty drives credibility (you do need to be believable as well to be truly credible) and creates trust. One way to be honest is to focus on what makes you unique. Establishing an emotional connection with your product through a story is not enough. You need to find ways to prove value. It is true that people trust experts-- which is good news especially for businesses that hire experts in a specific domain and encourage them to speak at industry events, write articles and papers, and blog.

Establishing authority can be done by using certain key terms in association with your service and using search engine optimization to your advantage. Build on that desire to belong. What can you write about your company or product that will help the kind of people you want to appeal to want to associate with it? It goes back to the point on how important Branding is to your company.

Your copy needs to lead somewhere for people to take the desired action. What do you want people to do? You want to give customers a reason to buy right after they read your copy. You do that by creating a sense of urgency in your call to action.

How do you communicate a sense of urgency? You run a promotion for a limited time, or offer limited editions of something, for example but you need to make sure that you're honest with your statement and offers!. This technique is being used in social networks by companies to build their "like" pages on Facebook - by donating points to a cause, or sharing coupons and special offers on Twitter. Legitimate offers work. 

This is networking at its best not just face to face to the people you can reach but its the entire work wide web! Think of the possibilites!

How to Market in a Bad Economy & Appreciation Marketing it Works!  For more information e-mail me at kseventsfairs@yahoo.com and my staff will send you out the seminars details.

Patty McGovern-Pugh

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