Call me a product of a liberal arts education, but I firmly believe one’s worldview should be informed by as many sources and experiences as possible. Reading the latest book by an expert in your field is great. Consuming as many blog posts and news articles as you can about your industry is helpful. Attending conferences and sitting in on presentations to advance your career is advisable.

But it’s also important to look outside the usual orbit to help form your perspectives. There’s a great big world out there, and if you’re not taking advantage of it to the fullest you are missing out.

With that in mind, allow me to defer to the Kings of Rock, the progenitors of hip-hop, Run-DMC, and what they taught me about social media.

You Talk Too Much

Everywhere that you go, no matter where you at / I said you talk about this, and you talk about that … You talk when you’re awake, I heard you talk when you sleep / Has anyone ever told you, that talk is cheap?

The classic knock against Twitter has always been “I don’t care to read about what people had for lunch.” While it’s clear that there is more utility to Twitter and other social media channels than just detailing one’s culinary habits, it is possible to over-share.

There is plenty of research and the accompanying infographics providing evidence for the optimum number of social media shares per day. I’ll assume intelligence on your part and not expound further on that which is readily available.

Rather I recommend simple common sense in the matter. Nobody likes to be deluged-slash-spammed, even if they’re opted to subscribe to your posts. Quantity in no way trumps quality, especially if it means annoying your followers to the point of exodus.

It’s Tricky

It’s tricky to rock a rhyme, to rock a rhyme that’s right on time, it’s tricky.

One of the primary goals of social media engagement is amplification: convincing your fans and followers to be advocates of your brand and message by resharing your content. These followers are also following many other brands, celebrities, and their personal friends. How do you cut through all that other noise and inspire action?

One way is to optimize your posting times to help make your content stand out. There is no shortage of data that suggest certain days and times are better for posting content so it is more likely to be seen. It’s a good idea to take advantage of this data and do all you can to get your content out in front.

Hollis Crew (Crush Groove 2)

Got rhymes so def, rhymes, rhymes galore / Rhymes that you never even heard before / Now if you say you heard my rhymes, we’re gonna have to fight / Cause I just made the super-def rhymes last night.

As each update makes them smarter, search engines scour content more and more the way human beings do. This means they, like your readers, prefer original content. Content that is new and constantly fresh with your own (or your brand’s) unique perspective is crucial to gaining and maintaining a following.

It’s all to easy to cheat your way to fresh content by repurposing or republishing press releases or syndicating content. You have to make sure you’re publishing content that is interesting, relevant and valuable, and above all original. Otherwise you have no unique value proposition, and you’re not providing any new information or insights. That’s a quick way to a social media ghost town.

It is therefore with great anticipation that I await the yearly arrival of the Google Zeitgeist. Not just because I get to say it a lot, but also because it’s a fantastic yearly treat to look into the state of search from the past year.

For those unschooled in the ways of the GZ as I affectionately refer to it, it is not a member of the Wu-Tang Clan (that’s GZA a.k.a. The Genius). Rather the GZ is, according to Google, “the most popular and fastest rising queries from the year” with the loftily-stated but totally accurate goal of “(capturing) the joys, sorrows and curiosity that many of us felt.”

The Zeitgeist provides a unique look into what the world was searching for on the web. What piqued our collective interest? What was newsworthy? What celebrities went out of their gourds? Whose bosoms made a surprise public appearance?

You can even narrow it down to different parts of the globe to examine search trends around the world, or look at how topics trended over time. Rising and falling search trends can be examined in categories including Celebrities, Sports, Science & Technology, and more. My personal favorite category is Quirky, where I learned that the fastest rising Halloween costume request was Snooki. I then used Google to find out who Snooki was.

This example illustrates my favorite aspect of the GZ: voyeurism. I’m curious to the point of being a snoop, and getting an intimate look at what the world at large is searching for satisfies that urge. It gives me an opportunity to find out about the biggest-of-the-big popular culture references, most of which I would remain completely and blissfully unaware.

It’s all too easy to get wrapped up in the echo chamber of reading about the internet marketing and technology industries. As a marketer by trade, it’s important for me to maintain at least a working knowledge of broader cultural trends. Since I’m not going to suddenly become a “Jersey Shore” devotee just because I now know who Snooki is, the Google Zeitgeist provides the means to do just that.

The conference takes place on Tuesday, October 19 at the Forum Conference Center in Fishers, Indiana.

I’ll be delivering a session called “Developing a Digital Content Strategy: The Five Ms.” If that weren’t reason enough to hop on over and sign up, other speakers include:

• Amy Baker, Director of Digital Solutions, Fusion Alliance
• James Burnes, Founder/CEO, Mobiltopia
• Chantelle Flannery, Co-Author, Corporate Blogging for Dummies
• Nick Holroyd, Mobile Product Manager, Kayak.com
• Dave Morse, eMarketing Manager, Delta Faucet Company
• Ryan Mull, Partner, Imavex
• Mark Roberge, VP Sales, Hubspot
• Attila Toth, Director of Inside Sales, Golden Rule Insurance Company

It’s an intensive one-day immersion into the world of online business from local and national experts who live it every single day. Definitely worth checking out, and it’s a heck of a bargain at $159 for individuals and $129 for groups.

Discount Code

Use the discount code “raidious” and get $25 off registration. Consider it my gift to you.

Age Distribution on Social Network Sites

This month I started teaching a college course in Web Marketing at the Art Institute of Indianapolis. Most of the 15 students in my class are nearing graduation in fashion design and retail marketing, and my course is required for them.

In fact, on the first night when the students came into the computer lab and sat down, they completely self-selected by major: my 10 fashion students on my right, my five web and graphic design students on my left. I was like a junior high school dance with the girls and boys planted against opposite walls, each side eyeing the other warily.

As I went over the syllabus and course introduction, social media played a big part. I figured the students would be all over it, most of them having come into the lab early to check email and Facebook. But I ended up being surprised.

About two-thirds of my class had never used or even looked at Twitter. Many of those didn’t even know what it was or what it was for. Only one of them blogged, and one other had their own website.

Jaw Hits Floor

Wait, you mean to tell me that the most wired, connected, always-on generation isn’t using basic social networking tools? Has the media been perpetuating myths and lies? Am I so ensconced in my own little world that I disregarded an entire segment of the population?

Seeing my surprise, one of my students replied, “Oh, I’ve seen that on Facebook: ‘posted via Twitter.’ I never knew that’s what it was.”

Okay, so I was playing up my shock for comedic effect. I am fully aware that adoption of various tools and channels differs by, among many other factors, age group. I know Twitter gains in popularity among older demographics. But I was surprised at how many of these early-twenty-somethings didn’t even know what Twitter was.

Let’s Do Some Math

This prompted me to go back and look at some recent research about social network site age distribution. In February 2010, using data from Google Ad Planner, Royal Pingdom showed that across the 19 most popular social networking sites, 18-24 year-olds accounted for just 9% of users. In the case of Twitter, this same group accounted for less than 10%, with 64% of Twitter users are aged 35 or older.

Overall, 35-44 and 45-54 year-olds dominate social networking sites, representing a combined 74% of users. Interestingly, those aged 0-17 (zero-year-olds user computers?) account for 21%, making them the second largest user group.

Let’s fast-forward one quarter to May 2010 and a study by Edison Research called “Twitter Usage In America: 2010.” According to their research, 18-24 year-olds made up 11% of monthly Twitter users. With a combined 52%, the 25-34 and 35-44 groups still dominate.

Now, there is one significant mathematical difference among the demographics represented here: 18-24 year-olds span seven years rather than the 10 of all the others. So there is some margin for tweaking the numbers based on this breakdown, but I’m fairly certain it all comes out in the wash.

Why Aren’t They On Board?

If I believe my own first lesson of the semester, the primary draw for web marketing is that your content must provide value to customers. According to my students, most of them don’t personally know anyone extensively using Twitter. Therefore the site and its service provide no value.

Secondly, everyone in the class was checking Facebook. Some reported seeing the “via Twitter” verbiage on status updates, indicating that some of their friends do indeed use Twitter. This proves the second piece of my lesson (and a huge component of the Raidious business model), which was that it’s not the platform that’s important, it’s the content. They didn’t care where the updates originated, they only knew that they could get them via the platform of their choice.

Finally, both the research data above and my anecdotal evidence point toward the larger notion that college students are just too busy doing other things to constantly check (or check into) a multitude of sites, networks and platforms. Many of them reported that they spent time doing coursework and working part-time jobs rather than fooling around on the internet.

So What Do We Do?

As online marketers we must understand and embrace these usage differences for varying age groups. We must take the content to the people we want to reach using the tools they actually use. This is accomplished by thorough research and planning for online initiatives, and by knowing what platforms to monitor, moderate and measure. Otherwise, we’re throwing time, effort and money into the wind and hoping the right customers catch on.

With so many services vying for our attention, and so many online outlets to control, the age of using one piece of software to achieve one specific goal is as dead as Dillinger. As marketers we’re expected to preside over Facebook ads, paid search, SEO, Twitter, blogs, comments, conversations … the list goes on.

We made it to the moon and back a number of times in spacecraft with less computing power than a pocket calculator. Now 40 years later there is no excuse for not being able to monitor, moderate and measure online content from myriad sources. Companies need to do more than participate: they need to know exactly how each online initiative contributes to the bottom line.

It’s not enough to just sell clients some pay per click ads and a steady stream of blog, Facebook and Twitter updates. We must gather data, measure influence and sentiment, and evaluate effectiveness.

Fortunately there are some great software as a service (SAAS) apps that are leveraging APIs to create dashboards–complete command and control centers–for online media. Some have limited capabilities, others get you everything and the kitchen sink. Some require no real technical expertise, others require serious experience with analytics. It’s all a matter of what you need, what your goals are, and what resources you have at your disposal to address the issue.

What they all have in common is that they present an at-a-glance view of your online goings-on, and allow you and your team to respond accordingly. Most of them track historical data similar to a web analytics package. More than just one-way post scheduling, they are complete tools for monitoring, engagement and analysis whether on your desktop, on the web, or on mobile devices.

A brief list of examples:

• Marin Software
• trackur
• Compete
• SEOmoz
• Quantcast
• Radian6
• SocialMention
• Alterian SM2
• Buzzlogic

Make no mistake: the biggest, most successful companies currently excelling at the interactive game are using these tools. As dashboard-style tools get better and add more services, interactive departments are looking more like NASA. But they’re also a great equalizer, offering the same insights to brands large and small, and allowing them to justify their interactive budgets by showing concrete numbers for what works.

Gallery Exhibit (via WikiMedia Commons)

I’ve been doing a lot of content curation lately; you know, the latest fashionable trend in digital content. At least, I hope it’s fashionable, because it’s a wonderful development that throws a wrench in the works of automated delivery.

Content curation sets up an editorial layer in the delivery of news and other information. Human editors pick the stories their users “need” to know, as an alternative to flooding them with algorithmically-chosen content their users might “want” to know.

In the case of one client, we choose ten stories per week to repost on their Twitter and Facebook pages. The stories aren’t necessarily directly related to the products the company sells, but are of interest or concern because they relate to the company’s overall field of business. To use a hackneyed phrase, it’s a “value-add:” selecting reliable external stories of interest to their customers builds trust and establishes them as a source of truth.

Cue Google News, who has stepped up and begun testing an “Editor’s Pick” section to their news results. Mashable has a great post about this development, but allow me to sum up: The company has partnered with publishers like Slate.com, Reuters and the Washington Post who are hand-selecting relevant stories to deliver alongside automatically generated news links in a move to further personalize content delivery.

Not only is this human curated content valuable from a news presentation standpoint, drawing attention to stories that may be critical to public awareness, but it can highlight stories that automated content farms may ignore. Moreover, there is value in recommendations, as born out by Facebook Likes, retweets on Twitter, and the like.

Content that’s recommended (curated) catches our attention because we know someone sat down and thought about the value of that story. Whether we know the recommending party directly (our Facebook friends and Twitter contacts) or not (Slate or Washington Post editors), we’re conscious of the fact that a human being thought a particular story important enough to warrant prominent placement. That’s a feeling of confidence and trust no computer algorithm can provide.

This confidence expands beyond just news delivery. Companies who aren’t in the publishing business can still curate content for their customers as a way of increasing awareness and driving sales. If people know Company A cares enough to select important, relevant news stories that relate to my interests and perhaps even offers suggestions for help, people will see that company in a positive light: as a trustworthy source of information interested in more than just selling widgets.

What do you think? Is content curation worthwhile? What effects does it have on customers? Comment away.

Um, what?

Google, leading search provider and the horsepower behind the popular Google Analytics web traffic analytics tool, is going to allow users to avoid being tracked by their own tool.

This brings up a number of questions and possible implications for webmasters and web marketers who use Google Analytics to track website traffic, primarily how usage of the plugin will affect collection of site traffic data. This begs another possibly more important question: why would Google do this when Google Analytics doesn?t collect personal data in the first place?

First things last, it depends on what can be considered ?personal? data. Does your ISP information and geographic location count as personal? Google Analytics does not collect individual IP addresses, meaning that all information tracked is completely anonymous.

Does this put Google in the category of ?total hypocrites? since they can keep an indefinite record of users? search history? Perhaps. Search history allows Google to deliver those amazing personalized search results, and while they have made it easier to opt out of this feature with their Privacy Center, they don?t exactly go out of their way to advertise this possibility. It also bears mention that a privacy group has asked the Federal Trade Commission to open an investigation into Google Buzz, so Google may be stinging just a bit on the privacy front.

The uproar has been voluminous and high profile, but my first reaction was ?So?? How many people are even aware they have a Google Profile, let alone that they can edit this profile and adjust their privacy settings and ad preferences? I was not able to quickly locate any empirical data, but what is the total percentage of web users who use the AdBlock Plus plugin for Firefox? It?s probably not great enough to put it outside the standard deviation.

My basic point is that for webmasters and marketers, this move may sell more subscriptions to Omniture and WebTrends as those of us behind the curtain want access to as much data as possible. But that move may be a knee-jerk reaction to a problem that doesn?t yet–and may never–exist.

I?ll always remember my high school economics teacher, Mr. Dilk. Aside from his hilarious self-censorship when it was obvious he wanted to curse (?Well … BUGS!?) his repetitive use of cliches actually managed to drive certain bits of wisdom into my hormone-addled brain. Among his favorites:

If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.

Now, this is before the invention of those awful motivational posters with pictures of whale tails and people climbing mountains you see in every corporate office. The dispensation of sage advice was the territory of your parents, teachers, and PBS. Despite the hackneyed nature of such counsel, this one stuck with me.

Now in my professional life, planning takes up a significant portion of my time, and for good reason. When putting together a content and social media strategy, the single most important task is to establish which platforms and services are most useful for your needs and plan your approach accordingly.

Not only does taking a willy-nilly approach dilute your brand personality, it?s also financially wasteful. Without an accurate accounting of what?s been done where–and the time spent doing it–your online efforts are a complete waste of time and money.

Any digital shop worth their salt will pitch you their planning process. If they don?t, ask them about it. If they hem and haw or outright don?t have one, run away. You will find your online marketing budget shrinking and have nothing much to show for it besides canceled checks.

To that end, if your company is in a position to go it alone in the digital space, I highly recommend you look at CMO?s Guide to the Social Landscape. It?s basically a social media cheat sheet to the benefits and shortcomings of the top platforms and services. The analysis was performed by 97th Floor, and it?s a great one-sheet resource guide.

There are numerous social network services out there; no single one is the right one, just as trying to utilize all of them isn’t effective. There is no one answer, no single social media content approach that works for every client. By engaging in thoughtful, constructive planning, you make the best use of your time and money.

Anyone who?s worked in large business settings has undoubtedly complained countless times that the right hand doesn?t know what the left hand is doing. In today?s world of aligning online to traditional media, this phenomenon is even more apparent.

Attention to detail and a constant stream of communication are vital in any enterprise, large or small. A simple misstep resulting in a critical communication breakdown or the smallest typographical error can have far-reaching ramifications.

Case in point: Denny?s restaurants. Their new dinner menus printed and distributed last fall feature a CTA to ?Join the conversation? on Denny?s Facebook and Twitter pages, and their corporate website. One small problem: the wrong Twitter ID is listed.

According to a recent CNET News report, menus distributed to around 1,500 Denny?s locations nationwide list a Twitter ID belonging to a man in Taiwan. Denny?s is reportedly working with Twitter to assume the ID, which has been inactive for over six months.

This incident exemplifies the need for communication between the digital and traditional arms of marketing. Granted, most folks sitting down to dinner probably aren?t going to be looking up Denny?s on Twitter while sitting at the table. But this kind of snafu in any other context could be catastrophic.

It might have seemed safe to assume that Denny?s would have registered twitter.com/dennys, just as they have dennys.com. But they didn?t, and you know what they say about what happens when you assume.

What if the same error were made in a TV spot or print ad? Or on a direct mail or email postcard or newsletter? Marketing and Communications must be in direct, constant contact with Interactive in order to prevent this kind of mistake from undermining even the best interactive marketing efforts.

Printing new menus might not appear to call for the input of the Interactive team. But now even the most old-school business tools feature some element of digital, such as URLs. Both arms of communications–traditional and digital–must be involved in the planning process of any project to ensure a unified front.