Each day I wake up I apply new strategies for my clients and make sure that they are well informed of what’s emerging, who’s playing the game and what we are doing about it. This concept extends to other areas as well, for example – search engine optimization, search engine marketing, pay per click advertising, email marketing and more. If you don’t follow the social marketing trends your brand could easily be eclipsed by a lesser known one with the right internet marketing consulting and management. Do you want that to happen to you? Of course you don’t!

The Rise of Social Media (from Google Insights Search Tool over last year)
- See the burst starting in January 2009 to present? Pay Attention to this!
- Ask yourself – was Barack Obama more successful by leveraging social media?

I have some great supporting data so here goes:

Top 10 Search terms related to social media  Worldwide, Last 12 months
1.     social media marketing  (top term)
2.     social marketing     (top term)
3.     edad media
4.     social networking
5.     social media networking
6.     new social media
7.     new media
8.     la edad media
9.     social media sites
10.     social media blog

Rising searches
1.     Obama social media +950% (people are impressed by Obama and his social media campaign)
2.     social media breakfast     +250% (people want to meet and tweet up)
3.     social media monitoring     +190% (watching social media)
4.     social media icons     +190% (who are rising stars)
5.     social media analytics     +130% (how can we measure it?)
6.     social media strategy     +90%
7.     social media companies     +70%
8.     social media campaigns     +60%
9.     social media campaign     +60%
10.    social marketing     +50%

The MarketingSherpa report is a summary of 1800 marketing and public relations professionals who participated in the study. The overwhelming trend is that companies are continuing to spend on social media marketing as a method of communicating with customers and to reach new markets. Are you using Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, etc. to reach new markets, find new clients, new opportunities? I know we use so many services that it can be a dizzying array of social media applications. For example, I recently met an e-commerce store owner who said he had tried everything that’s possible to build his business and that it had hit it’s maturity. So, I pulled out my iphone and isolated conversations talking about the particular niche product in seconds and was able to locate new opportunities with a few clicks.

Another important trend is that are no shortage of tradeshows, self-help ebooks, consultants, gurus and experts. Personally, when I see expert I tend to think that is a bold statement in such a new industry. Reminds me of the SEO experts who would guarantee you a top 10 position with a wave of the magic wand.

My advice is that if you aren’t working with a social media professional start as soon as possible or call me and I can help your business.

- ShopJinny.com – Women’s contemporary designer fashion boutique

- BeautyBridge.com - Skin Care, Makeup, Bath & Body, Hair & Nail Care Products, Fragrances

- BlackForestDecor.com - Cabin Decor, Rustic Bedding, Cabin Accessories and Rustic Lighting
BlackForestDecor is also a Top 500 Internet Retailer.

Please let us know if we can help your business achieve new heights with a Yahoo Store Upgrade or enhancement service.

Tony Pantano of Imwave.com – working with search affiliates
To understand this concept you really need to think about the whole picture (ppc, seo, affiliates) and how they cam all co-exist. I use IMwave to balance this concept and is really the ultimate way to promote a merchant. By integrating your internal ppc efforts with external ppc search affiliates you can reduce costs and increase conversions.
- allow a search affiliate to use direct linking and show landing page destination as the merchant url
- work with search affiliates to understand the terms and conditions of what is off limit (for example brand name +  coupon, brand name + cheap or discount)
- the goal is to work in tandem with them as a true partner and allow the search affiliate to augment your ppc efforts.
- a large benefit to this is that they can create a long tail keyword approach and utilize your datafeed to extend and fill potential leaks in your ppc strategy.
- another benefit is that if something happens to your Google adwords account (credit card expires, budget reached) your ads will still show.

Angel Djambazov, Outsourced Affiliate Program Manager for Jones Soda
Angel covered examples of merchants and affiliates working together to maximize trends as they emerge. Some of these included working up viral labels that went onto Jones soda and distributed through Target and Panera bread. Overall impressive presentation.
- ask affiliates to spot trends for you
- create a viral concept so both parties can benefit
- be transparent to affiliates and work with them individually

Below are some photos from the event

Jon Fisher of Wicked Fire

Rebecca Madigan of MadAgainMedia.com– instrumental in the foundation of the Performance Marketing Alliance

Adam & Tony of ImWave

Haiko de Poel of ABestWeb

Andrew Wee of Whoisandrewwee.com

Shareasale Party

Kris Jones of PepperJam, Michael Stark of PostYourProperty.com

Todd Taylor from Real Networks

Jeannine Crooks and husband

Megan Egan fron OneNetworkDirect.com and DigitalRiver.com (thanks for inviting me to the cocktail party at Lucky Strikes

Mike Allen of Shoppingbargains showing his bowling stance

Networking Tips
- If you have an iphone or smartphone you can pull up the MyAffilaiteSummit Page and review the thumbnails of friends to meet in persona at the show
- Use twitter and put #asw09 in your posts to associate with the show. You can follow me on Twitter @vastplanet Interested to see some photos of the party.
- Blog updates by Affiliate Summit - AFFILIATE MARKETING AND EVEL KNIEVEL + Day 1 of Affiliate Summit by Shawn Collins
- Affiliate Summit Agenda

Started the day with my Rio Hotel classic breakfast
(the cure for all medical issues)

View from the Room at the Rio Hotel

Next Up
- Affiliate Meet Market (12-6PM)
Face to face sessions with vendors, affiliates and networks. A great place to be!
- Classroom sessions
- OneNetworkDirect Party

Good News! United States flu activity: Low
New Jersey flu activity: Low

Google Flu Trends uses Google search data to estimate flu activity in your state up to two weeks faster than traditional flu systems. You can put in your zip code or choose your state and will give you a good estimation on what’s happening in your area. Each week, millions of users around the world search for online health information. There are more flu-related searches during flu season, more allergy-related searches during allergy season, and more sunburn-related searches during the summer. You can explore all of these phenomena using Google Trends.

But can search query trends provide an accurate, reliable model of real-world phenomena?
YES

Writer makes it easy to share your photos and videos on almost any blog service—Windows Live, Wordpress, Blogger, Live Journal, TypePad, and many more.

Concept:
You take a photo of a product with your iPhone and it automatically gets sent to Amazon for review. Within a few minutes they fire back an email to you with what they think you are looking at. I tried this in the car holding my SIRIUS Stiletto 2 Portable Satellite Radio (which I highly recommend) and within 3 minutes it gave me confirmation. Upon clicking the link it takes you directly to the product page where you can decide to research, buy or consider alternatives. The beauty of this approach is that it puts Amazon involved in your e-commerce purchases.

Don’t forget that Amazon partners benefit in this approach
Amazon has been integrating outside merchants into Amazon for a few years now and the list is up to 9,000 merchants and creating the one-stop solution. The Amazon system is extremely polished and with the 1-click integration of your Amazon account you have the ability to purchase anywhere!

Amazon Page explaining the Amazon Remembers iphone Application

My Email from Amazon
Includes link directly to product page
” Dear Amazon.com Customer, The Amazon Remembers service has found a product similar to the photo you recently submitted.
<- This was my photo I took

You may view the result from your iPhone here: Amazon Remembers B000WOT6O0

If you prefer, you may view the result from your web browser. The result has also been posted to your Amazon.com home page and Your Lists (link available at the top right of any page on the Amazon.com site).

Thank you for using Amazon Remembers.

Product Page
- I can buy the item in 1-click
- See what others purchased
- Review Recent history
- Buy from other vendors (that’s key)
- Add to Wish List / Shopping List / Registry
- Access Amazon Prime for regular purchasers
- Consider a used one
- Read reviews
- Join the Sirius Community Group and discuss

Frequently Bought Together
- increases upsell margins

Product Description
- outstanding details

Buy this Product and Related Accessories
- car kits, speakers, etc.

Related Items from external sites
- part of the 1-stop shop concept

Customer Reviews
- extremely important part of the process

Social Community
- apparently a Sirius community exists at Amazon to discuss the products.

Overall, a fascinating application that should change the way consumers shop. As smart phones, Internet speeds and applications evolve the consumer will have full ability to compare, price shop, research and share products with just a few clicks. My advice to merchants to get on board with Amazon as this will play a significant role in the future of mobile e-commerce.

Compete Graph - clearly July 2008 was a turning point for “Unique Visitors” for Barack Obama. Was that his trip to Europe and the Middle East? On a side note, Compete triangulates multiple data sources, including ISP, Panel & Toolbar to estimate U.S. traffic.

Average Stay - something happened here - people stayed on the site less, why? Seems like a mistake happened on content.

Attention - Measures all the time we collectively spend online and then determines what percentage of that time was spent on a given site. As you can tell from the graph the Internet attention on Barack Obama has dropped off significantly in share of total internet attention.

Velocity - Velocity reports the relative change in daily Attention. Velocity is used to determine the relative growth of a domain over a particular timeframe or compared to other sites. See the significant drop.

Google Trends Analysis - last 365 days with August showing the popularity rising for “barack obama” search in Google

Wow! 59 Subdomains for Barack Obama - other sources of traffic for him

Top 5 Subdomains - sending traffic to www.barackobama.com

my.barackobama.com (2017) www.barackobama.com (620) store.barackobama.com (89) donate.barackobama.com (27) factcheck.barackobama.com (19)

Full List of 59 Subdomains

Top Keywords Driving Traffic: (note the misspelling of #5)

1. barack obama
2. obama
3. barack obama website
4. barackobama.com
5. barak obama

Top 15 Domain sending traffic to the Barack Obama web site

www.democratnationalcommittee.com
www.democrathq.com
www.unitedheadlines.com
www.liveobama.com
www.billpressshow.com
www.democraticstuff.com
www.liberalstore.com
www.bumperstickermagnet.com
www.21stcenturydems.org
www.democracymatters.net
www.politifact.com
www.aerialartistry.com
www.chicagotribune.com
www.current.com
www.themiddleclass.org

Search Results on Barack Obama - note Myspace on #10 and not Facebook.

Hope you enjoyed the research, what are your thoughts?

How big is the Chinese E-commerce Market?
Chinese Online Consumer Sales will increase to 126 Billion Yuan this year from 16 Billion Yuan in 2005 (WOW)

How any Chinese are Online?
253 Million Users have shopped online in China (roughly 1/3 of the population)

Did you Know Ebay doesn’t charge auction fees in China?
Yes, that’s true due to Taoboa not charging them and Chinese Ebay users jumped ship.

Who controls search in China?
Baidu has 65.8% of the China Search Market, that’s a challenge for existing companies as we have seen how Google has changed the landscape in the US.

Taobao.com - Main Site

Taoboa.com (blue line) vs. Baidu Statistics (red line)

Taobao Mall - Sub Store example

Taobao - Product Page
Very similar layout to an American e-commerce site in design and layout. In this case they are selling a Pomegranate whitening milky lotion

Taobao - Shopping Cart

Taobao - Customer Registration Screens

Alibaba.com
Alibaba.com connects millions of buyers and suppliers from around the world every day through three marketplaces: an English-language marketplace (alibaba.com) for global importers and exporters, a Chinese-language marketplace (alibaba.com.cn) for domestic trade in China, and a Japanese-language marketplace (alibaba.co.jp) facilitating trade to and from Japan. Together, its marketplaces form a community of more than 32 million registered users from over 240 countries and regions. Alibaba.com has offices in over 30 cities across mainland China as well as offices in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Europe and the US. The company had around 6,000 full-time employees as of June 2008.

Baidu.com - main Baidu site

Baidu.com - even U.S. viewers is way up

Baidu Services (looks just like Google right?)

Baidu - Search Results (extremely similar to Google Search display)

Overall, a dynamic landscape for both auctions, search and e-commerce in China. As the #1 market in the world emerges how will you profit from it?

• Scholarship to USC, Earned the Heisman Trophy in 1968
• NFL Player of the Year in 1973, and played in six Pro Bowls.
• Simpson was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1985
• Film career in television series Roots, The Cassandra Crossing, Capricorn One, The Klansman, The Towering Inferno, Back to the Beach and The Naked Gun trilogy.
• Hertz Rental Car, Pioneer Chicken, Calistoga Water, Honeybaked Hams and Napa Natural drinks spokesman
• TV appearances, Sports Announcer

What went wrong?

• Domestic Violence Issues
• A long Criminal trial for murder murder of Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman in 1995 with questionable outcomes.
• Civil Trial for wrongful death
• All brands dropped OJ quickly
• Canceled TV and Book Deals
• IRS Tax Lien in 1999 for $1,435,484.17 in past due taxes (ouch)
• Las Vegas Robbery at Palace Station Hotel Room over sports memorabilia

OJ, clearly took a wrong turn on his personal brand. At this point I wonder what brands would want OJ to be a representative. A definition of brand destruction!