According to the final edition of ExactTarget’s “Subscribers, Fans and Followers” report, the differences between email, Facebook and Twitter also include their influence on customer loyalty.  Daily Twitter users who followed a brand were more than twice as likely as daily Facebook users who “liked” a brand to say they were more likely to purchase from the brand after becoming a social media follower. What’s more, Facebook fans were the most likely group to actively disagree with the question. Subscribers to opt-in marketing emails fell in the middle.

"One emerging and very recent trend is that traditional search is losing out to what people are doing on social networks. Brands are getting more from social media. I believe in the long run, social media will be ten times more influential than search. 

This will change companies' attitude over time, and they will hire more people with experience of social, as social creates a kind of polling mechanism.  The companies that have been used to controlling their environment will have to adapt to this. There has been a shift from this control to a situation where trust and engagement is more important for customers. The difference here is that trust and engagement are ‘soft factors’; ones that brands can have an influence on, but ultimately cannot control. 

Brands need a two-way model, and conversation is a big part of this mix. This in turn means that marketing changes; old style advertising is becoming useless, it’s no longer about simply pushing something at people; this is not what consumers want on the web."

The opportunity would have been to put this back to a public vote which could have bought lots of new people to their site with the shortlisted entrants sharing their entries on social networks. The winner was a twelve year old boy from Leicester called Tom Spring , his product idea which is currently being developed by Firebox Labs is Putty Monsters.

It was heartening as ever to see so much thinking summed in as simple way as possible which is of course the art of being an internationally famous marketing guru. However it also gave me a warm glow as we shared some thinking on the way web sites needed to work with Seth back in 2005. We arrogantly called it 3G web site theory as in third generation web sites (this was before the phrase web 2.0 was coined, we were always ahead of our time ;o) it was based on the idea that a web site had layers like onion rings which denoted how much access a user had a web site data and how that access could be controlled by user behaviour. As users downloaded assets, signed up for things, engaged in conversations so their access level increased until they'd reached the level of Superfan.

What goes around really does come around!

It's a rare product today that doesn't come with a barcode. Stickybits lets anyone scan any product barcode and append their own music, text, photos or video content.

Stickybits lets consumers add digital content to any barcode out there. Users need only download the free Stickybits app—it's available for both Android and iPhone—scan a barcode, and attach content. When the geo-tagged barcode is scanned again by someone else, they'll see whatever was attached to it along with who else has scanned it along the way. Users can even be notified when a barcode is scanned, gets new attachments or changes location. Also available from Stickybits, meanwhile, are barcode stickers that can be attached to anything, as well as downloadable, printable barcodes that can be glued, ironed, printed, tattooed or otherwise stuck onto anything in the real world. Stickers are priced starting at USD 9.95 for a pack of 20. Thanks to a partnership with Zazzle, Stickybits also offers birthday cards, business cards, mugs and shirts with unique, content-enabled barcodes printed on them.

Surprisingly all parties have really woken up to Web 2.0 for this election and there's been some good examples of usage in all areas. Voter apathy is the biggest enemy of any democracy and parties have to use every means possible to get people engaged in the election process however they might vote. To keep it in context though the numbers are still quite small with facebook fans for the main politicians only in the thousands while 12 million people watched the first leaders debate on ITV.

Within those parameters, however, there are many opportunities to use social media to distribute keyword rich content and attract links that can boost your natural search rankings. Here are seven tactics Marketing Sherpa recommend:

I now read that it's down to 5 seconds! No surprise that this number has gone down over the years but it's interesting to think that average internet speeds have probably quadrupled in that time, so actually browser's attention span has probably gone up in reality. There are many factors which influence this as well as speed of access, such as relevance, improved search results, optimised graphics, cleaner code and the increased experience of the browsing public.

On that basis check out this interesting new service:  fivesecondtest.com . 

On fivesecondtest.com, you can post a screen shot of your landing page. Visitors who go to that testing site get five seconds to perform a test. Currently, fivesecondtest.com offers two kinds of tests:

You get a limited number of free responses. If you pay a small amount of money ($5 to $15), you get more responses and greater ability to customize your test. The downside is that the people who respond will not necessarily be in your target demographic, so if your business is a very, very specialized one, this tool may not help you. On the other hand, it costs no money and almost no time. It is a wonderful way to start getting feedback on your site.

Available both online and as a mobile application, “vooks” are book-video hybrids that feature short video clips—produced exclusively for each title—interspersed throughout the digital text. The videos are designed to enhance the story, advance the plot in fiction titles and add depth to practical information offered by non-fiction publications, offering visual how-to’s such as cooking demonstrations. The online Vook Reader allows readers to interact with each other via inbuilt social media functions.

Vook launched in October with four debut titles, published in partnership with Simon and Schuster. They have since formed additional publishing relationships with Hachette Filipacchi Media and HarperCollins, and now offer twenty-five Vooks.

And guess who's in there at the start, yep, our old friend  Seth Godin !

I tested some simple ads which have been proven to work on Google previously with the added bonus of being able to add an image too, the image is again one which has proven successful in small banner ad positions previously. The ads were pointing to an established landing page so I had a pretty good foundation for the test.

Just to make sure you're not subjected to David's automated tweets from Nike+ and are really bored by his training run information for the Liverpool Half Marathon...

Here at the cleverologists' website (and blog) you'll find clever ideas - but we won't use lots of long words to boost our egos and make you feel like you don't know anything.

We're here to help you look and feel good - not to make us look good!