In the interest of trying to become more transparent as a blogger, here’s a look back measuring my own blog’s audience during 2011:

Source: http://jetpack.me/annual-report/6790360/2011/

• A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 4,900 times in 2011. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 4 trips to carry that many people.
• In 2011 there were 15 new posts on the blog, growing the total archive on this blog to 61 posts so far.
• Twitter and Facebook were my main sources of referral traffic, but increasingly Google+ brought new readers to my site.
• I’ve had far fewer comments in 2011 than in previous years, and average less than a comment per post.
• My most read posts in 2011 were actually from previous years, bringing in visitors searching for “Twitter internships” and how to become “Social Media Marketers“, showing the long-term value of SEO built through blog writing.

While this analysis looks at stats from this website using WordPress’ built-in tools, these insights into my blog’s audience can be gathered on any kind of website.  Here are some of the website measurement tools you can use to learn more about visitors to your own site:

• Google Analytics is a great tool that offers stats about your site’s visitors, the content they visit, and how they find your site.  There are many advanced featured for businesses to use, including goal tracking and conversions, which come in an easy to use interface.  Most importantly, it’s a free tool that’s easy to set up on any website.
• PostRank measures engagement on your site (integrating Google Analytics data) and elsewhere online, and offers publishers perspective on who shares links to your site through social media.
• Lijit is a search tool you can install on your site, which also offers insight into what users are searching for when they visit your website.
• SEOmoz is paid tool for online marketing professionals that helps you optimize your content for search engines. In addition to helping you research the rank of your site for various keywords and find backlinks from around the web, SEOmoz helps you research competing sites and offers suggestions to improve your own content.
• WordPress Stats is a built-in feature for bloggers using the platform, and offers real-time stats about popular content and referral links (as seen in this post).

Extra credit: Since 2012 marks my 8th year as a blogger, I’ve also added new pages to this site which offer a timeline of my blogging career as well as some of my favorite copywriting as professional blog writer. Hopefully sharing some of my experiences as blogger will help you better understand your own blogging efforts, but if you think of any questions feel free to leave a comment on this post which all of my readers can learn from.

After the jump, check out my favorite memes from 2011!

Did I miss any memes which would be on your own list? Feel free to leave a comment and share your favorites from 2011. Until then, here’s looking forward to more memes and creative media shared online in 2012!

Every year I create a Very Indie Xmas mixtape of holiday songs that are a bit more unique than what is played on commercial radio and in shopping malls. This year I’m sharing these holiday mixes from the past few years, and this year’s mix is available as a playlist on Spotify; you could consider this my gift to you this year.

And if you’re looking for a last-minute gift feel free to check out my Wish List page, filled with gift ideas for the geek in your life. Better yet you can learn more about my favorite charities during this season of giving.

Not only is Facebook increasingly synonymous with social media usage, but it’s ubiquity reaches more than 7 out of 10 web users every month, and a growing number of weekly and daily users like myself.  Here’s a few more ways to understand the impact of Facebook:

• Time spent on Facebook accounts for about 1 out of every 5 minutes time spent online every month, and the most total time of any website.
• Facebook’s app is the most downloaded for iPhones, with over 100 million iOS installations. Outside of Android’s stock apps, Facebook is the most downloaded and used app.
• Next to Google, Facebook is the second most visited site on the web.
• While 45% of my friends on Facebook are female, women represent the majority of Facebook users

My 550+ friends on Facebook represent only a fraction of Facebook’s 800+ million registered users, but it represents a historic shift in creating larger circles of friends. Thanks to Facebook’s ubiquitous popularity, I’m able to keep in touch with friends in high school and college who live hundreds (and thousands) of miles away, whereas only a few years earlier I would more easily fall out of contact with my friends. Since I grew up in the Facebook generation, I’m not alone in using the social network to keep loose-ties with old friends following my own graduation and relocation to New York City.  Here’s a few more stats about how I use Facebook to connect with friends:

Facebook Infographic via ShoutFlow.com

5 years ago I reluctantly joined the social network, admittedly at the behest of Lauren Reid who wanted to make our relationship “Facebook official”. I’m happy to say we’re still “in a relationship” (even though only 24% of my friends are single), and that I’ve been hooked on Facebook ever since.  Here’s how I used Facebook when I first started:

I’ve seen this social network grow from a core of friends and college classmates into an everyday network of family and friends used by some people I never thought I’d interact with online; most recently my Mom even signed up! You can connect with me through my Facebook profile or by becoming a fan of my Facebook page for this website.

• More than 4 in 5 American who are active online visited Social Media websites within the last month
• About a quarter of all time spent online is using Social Networks & Blog sites, more than twice as much as the next nearest category of websites.
• Facebook is by far the most popular social networking website globally, and in the U.S. Tumblr is among the fastest growing
• Growth in social media users comes from people of all ages and increasingly among those aged 55+, making social media more representative of the online population overall

As a member of Nielsen’s global communications team (full disclosure), I helped research and write this report, working together with our thoughts leaders/experts and designers to create compelling data visualizations that help convey Nielsen’s insights into consumer behavior.  The response to the report has been overwhelmingly positive, with coverage by key news media and thousands of links shared across social networks. Of course all ideas/opinions expressed on this site and in social media are my own (and are not necessarily shared by my employer), so hopefully you find the analysis and insight in this report as helpful as I do.

Visit the Nielsen’s website to read the Social Media Report and download a copy of your own.

I’ve wrote before that Twitter has inspired a fixation by online marketers like myself because of how it can be measured. Since my previous post, Twitter has continued to grow its influence among newsmedia, brands, and consumers around the world.  Even among experienced Twitter users like myself, Twitter use has changed significantly over the last year as the social network broke records and even breaking news.  As of writing this blog post, marking my first 4 years using Twitter, here’s how I’ve used Twitter:

• I joined Twitter 1462 days ago on September 15, 2007
• I’ve posted over 16,100 tweets in four years, almost double my total since April 2010, and average 11.3 tweets per day and 328 tweets per month
• I’ve gained 1677 followers, about 2/3rds more since March 2010, and I’m following about twice as many Twitter users (1347) as I was during my prior blog post measuring Twitter

In celebration of my 5th year using Twitter, I wanted to update my status about how I use the social network, so I created this infographic using Visual.ly to help illustrate my use on Twitter as of September 2011:

Click here for a version of Matt Hurst’s Twitter infographic which is automatically updated based on my most current usage on the social network.

Extra credit: Follow @MattHurst on Twitter and see how I use Twitter and hear what I have to say.

As social media becomes increasingly intertwined with daily lives, it seems inevitable that romantic relationships make greater use of social media. It wasn’t long after online networks were created that web users found the Internet to be a ideal medium not just for academics communicating over long distances but for developing friendships and romantic relationships as well. Perhaps the first social networks formed around dating sites during the web’s early years, and once these social networks began to take part in our online routines, the relationship status became a key part of profiles. Today many consider updating your relationship status from single to “in a relationship” a legitimate means to acknowledge their entry into a committed relationship, and sharing the news of an engagement is only a mouse click away for Facebook users.

Couples use social media to tell their story and about preparations for the wedding, and to exchange photos and share memories with wedding guests (and maybe those who couldn’t make it) after the big day. One popular trend for newly engaged couples is to make a wedding website on which couples can share the story behind their relationship and to share wedding day plans in advance with guests, not to mention making it a breeze to link to their wedding gift registry. Some even use social media to propose to their spouse, creating a unique proposal but also making it easy to share their special story. Here’s a few of the unique ways couples are using social media to share their proposals and weddings:

• A Google Maps engineer created a scavenger hunt for their would-be fiancé, navigating around NYC using the Maps app on their smartphone
• Dozens have proposed by updating their status on Twitter
• During the Royal Wedding between Prince William and Kate Middleton the couple broadcast their wedding via a live stream on YouTube. News and chat about their wedding set a new record for tweets per second.
• A single issue Groupon good for one marriage contract
• One creative partner set up a series of proposal-themed web links for their would-be spouse to click-thru using StumbleUpon
• An enterprising couple checked-in to the altar using Foursquare to pop-the-question
• At least one couple proposed (and accepted) via LOLCats

This summer I had the honor to attend the wedding between two of my friends, Mark Welsh and Kristin Welsh. Before we arrived in Destin for their wedding, we used their wedding website to make our own plans for when to buy plane tickets, where to stay, what to do in Florida, and which gifts we could buy through their wedding registry. From the day of their engagement up to the ceremony on the beach, they celebrated news about the wedding with friends and family. And afterwards we used the same social networks to share photos and relive their special day.

Here is a timeline of my favorite memories from Mark and Kristin’s wedding, as told through social media clips by friends, family, myself, and the bride and groom themselves:

Social Media continues to have a profound effect on all our relationships, bringing romantic couples together and connecting us closer with family and friends when couples share their special day. Or at least it’s likely to shape how we share memories in the future, just as wedding photography and videography has in the past, by creating unique memories not only on the big day, but all the day leading up to and in the lives they choose to share together.

What is copyright and what constitutes fair use? Do I need to register a copyright for my creative work to be protected? How long is a work copyrighted, and when does it enter the public domain? Are there advantages to using creative commons licensing or copyright?

In a recent course I took at the Brooklyn Brainery, our class took these questions head on to discuss the need to protect creative work and limit the exploits of copyright trolls. Sometimes referred to as intellectual property, copyright is a kind of property right (and a Constitutional Right in the US) which protects the use of creative work. Of course creative work is unique compared to other kind of property, so copyright is created whenever it’s “fixed in a tangible form of expression” by its creators, whether it’s a written novel or a music recording. Copyright gives its owners the exclusive right to reproduce the work, derivative works, and public performances of it.

There’s a careful legal balance between protecting the intellectual property rights of their owners and promoting the free expression which is guaranteed as a constitutional right.  For example, in the music recording industry many musicians don’t profit from sales of their recordings after they cede to their labels/distributors ownership to copyright for their work, sometimes waiting years to regain the copyright to their own songs. Likewise the creators of mash-ups and remixes such as Girl Talk make a legal balancing act necessary to avoid infringing on copyrights while using elements of old recordings to create something new.

While media law is a continuously evolving field and largely a matter of interpretation for the judges, over time some precedence has emerged that provides some legal framework. As we learned in our class for general purposes, here’s the four requirements you need to meet for Fair Use of copyrighted works:

1. The Purpose and Character of the Use
   • Use should be transformative, meaning it adds new value or changed the original expression. For example, some music sampling or mashups/remixes meet these requirements
   • Is the purpose to make money? Is the work a parody or satire (or something else)?
2. Nature of the Copyrighted Work
   • There’s a need to protect works of fiction and promote authorship, but courts generally agree use of historic facts should be available for public use.
   • Does the work need protection? Until a work is published it’s less of a “fixed object” than those already created.
3. Amount and Substantiality of portion used
   • While you can’t copy the whole work or the “heart” of it that makes it most valuable, it’s generally acceptable to excerpt small parts of a copyrighted work
4. Effect on the Market
   • Will the use negatively impact the market for the original work? If people are likely to buy it instead of the original, it could cause damage against the copyright holder
   • Sometimes a parody can become more popular than the original, but it shouldn’t count against it’s use because it’s not meant to replace the work it’s based on

On the internet where anything can be copied, pasted, and published in a matter of minutes, copyright becomes confusing to many who’ve had little prior experience in publishing, not to mention difficult to enforce for copyright holders. On the other hand musicians and photographers should be able to decide how their work can be used, whether by individuals working on their own websites or by companies/organizations who want to use their work.

Best Practices:
So what can writers/photographers/designers/programers do to protect their work? Although creative work is automatically copyrighted through the very act of it’s creation, you should consider registering your creative work which will create a public record of who owns it and provides a legal reference that will provide some protection. The good news is our class instructor told us registration is cheap, as little as $35 to register 1000 photographs for instance. It’s a small price for a little piece of mind that will help identify you as its owner/creator, and best of all you maintain the option to share your work with whoever you’d like.

Another option for those who want to share their work even more openly is using Creative Commons licensing, a framework made popular by Lawrence Lessig to help the Internet generation continue sharing remixes and mash-ups. Like with Fair Use, Creative Commons provides a framework for appropriate use of intellectual property, and has the added benefit of making the copyright more transparent and hence easier to share creative work. For instance I share my photographs on Flickr under a CC-license, so that bloggers and creative professionals who find my pictures useful can use them to illustrate their own stories and ideas. As a result my photos are featured on websites as diverse as Wired, the Consumerist, and even RocketBoom, not to mention this site. Ultimately it’s the responsibility of the copyright holder to ensure a work is protected, and where and when it can be used by others.

Extra credit: Explore my photos published on other websites using the Creative Commons licensing. But keep in mind I retain all rights to the blog posts I write on this website.

At least once in your career as a social media manager you may be tempted to cross-post your marketing message over multiple social networks.  While new tools make it easy to post updates across Facebook, Twitter, and more sites you should resist this inclination to broadcast your message through social media; cross-posting ignores the unique purpose of using social media to reach your audience.

The practice of cross-posting has become increasingly common as brands build their online marketing strategy around Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, and link baiting across social networks. Posting updates on each site requires sustainable commitments of time and resources, so there’s temptation to publish the same message across multiple sites with only a single update. However the acceptable rate of updates varies widely between social networks, so while it’s effective to post messages multiple times a day on Twitter, this same frequency might be viewed as spammy on Facebook and other networks. The result is often that brands lose fans/followers as well as the trust of their audience, not to mention deteriorating their brand’s value in the eyes of consumers.

In addition to making your brand become perceived as a source of spam, cross-posting also appears tone deaf to the consumers who are interested in interacting with your organization. Social Media opens up new opportunities that can help promote brands, but all too often is viewed as the platform to broadcast their own advertisements. But even a soapbox speaker will read the reactions of the audience they’re addressing, and likewise your brand should listen and interact with your audience.

Best practices:

• Post updates individually to each social media site, varying the frequency for each platform; perhaps 1-2 updates a day on Facebook and 6-10 for Twitter.
• For every 5 updates on Twitter, only 1 or 2 should promote your company, and the rest should engage your audience by sharing their ideas and answering their questions for subjects which you have expertise about.
• Use measurement tools to note which posts resonate with each audience, and make adjustments accordingly to what they find most valuable.
• Take advantage of the unique features of each social media site, such as @replies on Twitter and the Events or Photo apps on Facebook, to spark discussions with your target audience.

Use these unique social media tools to listen carefully to your audience and then offer them solutions to their problems, not just to sell them your products.

Being strategic in your communications means using research to focus your goals on any media outlet, including social media. Of course many organizations may not be able to commit resources to support so many social sites, and instead they should focus on one or two which best meet their goals. In many cases a poorly executed communication plan may be worse than no having no social media presence at all, so be don’t be afraid to be selective.  After all an abandoned social media profile is like a ghost for your brand, and when you’ve got the tools and the talent “I ain’t afraid of no ghost”.

Outside of Instagram, here’s a few more ways to measure the impact of mobile on photo sharing:

• The iPhone is the most popular camera on Flickr overall, and I’ve uploaded more than 5% of my 8194 photos on Flickr from pictures taken using my iPhone camera.
• Photos are the most used app on Facebook, and they’re rumored to be working on a mobile photo app
• At least 2 million photos are posted to Twitter each day on average, and doubtlessly more buzz comes from image driven Tumblr posts and photoblogs

Most recently with the announcement of Twitter’s new photo sharing functions, as well as their deeper integration with Apple products, photography continues its push into mobile platforms and remains a key driving force behind social media into the foreseeable future.

Extra credit: check for updated stats about how I’m using Instagram, and see a gallery of my favorite photos in my Photography portfolio. And of course you can look for my photos by following “MattHurst” on Instagram…