Great article from Information Week on the latest reports from a Neilson study on Americans usage of the Internet. You can read the whole article here from Alison Diana.

It is rapidly apparent that Americans are utilizing Social media portals/sites far more then they are using their email. Not only are they forwarding their thoughts and deeds and accomplishments to their friends. They are also using it to forward the best deals that they find along with what they have recently bought and from whom the purchased it from. What is interesting is that we are still seeing a larger growth curve in the baby-boomer population

In fact, U.S. Internet users spent 22.7% of their time on social networking sites — up 43% from the 15.8% they spent in 2009, the research firm found. By comparison, Americans are dedicating fewer hours to the once-ubiquitous e-mail: In this year’s report, users spent 8.3% of their online time reading and sending missives, down almost 28% from last year’s 11.5%, Nielsen said in its Aug. 1 report, “What Americans Do Online.”

Users of all ages are adopting social networking, the research firm found, with double the number of Americans ages 50 and above visiting these sites than the under-18 age group. The report tracked 200,000 users in June 2010.

So the under 18 population is rapidly transitioning to a mobile interface and Neilson found this information to be accurate here:

 The picture changed when Americans described their online usage via smartphones instead of computers. Americans spent 42% of their online time using e-mail when they accessed the Internet with their phone, Nielsen found. Last year, they spent 37% of their phone-accessed Internet time on e-mail, the study said. Portals were the second most used category, according to the report.

So we are seeing that any business today needs to have a presence not only on Social media sites ( Facebook, Youtube,myspace, etc) but regionalized sites as well ( craigslist, oodle, olx, etc.) and now a presence on mobile devices ( www.appinkling.com) .

Your Size Works in Your Favor

As a small business, your size is your friend in social media channels. Use your small size as an advantage and respond to each and every person that mentions you. Since you’re working with a smaller customer base, you can also build customer Twitter Lists to separate different categories of customers into groups, which should help you offer more personalized customer service — something the big businesses don’t have the time or resources to support.

Here’s an easy example: Who are your most frequent customers? Make a Twitter List called “Regulars,” and add your regulars on Twitter to it.

In doing so, you’re associating patronage with prestige. Your efforts could even inspire semi-regular customers to frequent your business more often just so they too can get added to the list. This tactic might also serve as a catalyst for one regular to connect with another, though you could also facilitate customer-to-customer connections with introductory tweets. So if a customer tweets for a recommendation, you could respond with something simple as, “@customer1 good question, I like the cheesecake but @customer2 really loves the custard.”

These types of personal exchanges highlight the advantages afforded to small businesses using social media

Now a side note here. Some of us would have suggested going after smaller sponsors a lot earlier then 15 months but that is another point for a later time.

However it’s been almost 12 hours and we are almost to our goal of $500,000 . All because the work got out not only on Radio ( traditional media) but through the social media tools that the radio station uses ( facebook, RSS feeds, Email notices, twitter, live streaming) effectively. Non profits take notice of this. If you have a cause take notice of this. Traditional media combined with the FORCE multiplier of social media is highly..highly effective.

You can view all of this and the great donors at www.mynw.com

$20 Facebook Campaign

Metric	Amount
Impressions	43,689
CPC	0.117%
Clicks	51
RSVPS	8
RSVP Maybes	17
Pending responses	55
Ave CPC	$0.39
Time period	2 days

Money spent $20.00

Now this was also a targeted campaign in that the viewers of this simple add were to be within 50 miles of the Portland Oregon area. But take a look at the hits/clicks, and RSVPs . The average person on Facebook has around 180 friends. So each of the 8 Rasp’s just reached out to 1440 people ( 8 x180) and the RSVPs maybe reached out to 3060 people ( 17 x 180) . Now we don’t know each one’s privacy settings so we would need to assume that they are open to let their friends now of what they have done and in doing so point out the vendor/company to all their friends.

Very simple, easy and cost effective. It also took all of 20 minutes or so to do.

So if you have not tried Facebook ads to work with your Facebook fan-site I strongly suggest you do. It beats reading an expensive magazine with expensive coffee. Those never get you any sales.

We here at Smmee have spoke in the past of the future of the Internet going from saturation to localization. Myspace preceded by Second Life has experienced this last year and is trying to re invent itself. Virtual worlds like Habbo.com and social media platforms like Ning.com have entrenched themselves in their niches and have been successful. Disney is embracing social media and virtual worlds to the point where it is re modeling their theme parks to incorporate it. But where does the future lay?

I believe it will lay in localization. Where users will play online in smaller fields of social media that revolve around who they are in the real world. They will spend far more time in forums that arouse their interests, loves and beliefs. We still see Facebook being the giant whitepages in the sky but it can only grow so far. So taking that in mind take a look at this great article  from I wanna Express with User generated content stats and forecasts and see where you can best put your companies brand online.

But they don’t go out of their way to advertise it.

DeLorean as you can see does go out of their way to show you where online you can find them and the coolest car of the 80s. YouTube and Facebook are boldly shown and they have done some interesting low cost fan contests. They also effectively utilize their Facebook fansite with these contests. If you hurry you can get into their latest contest, a paper DeLorean, by Dec, 31st.

So take a look at these two brands and your own company and see how best you can utilize social media or not utilize it. Do you have a strong enough fan base to let them go ahead and worship your product or do you need to motivate and support you fans? Just remember to make 2010 a strong marketing year for our rebounding economy and from all of us at Smmee have a great New Year!

But this gives me several ideas. Wedding photographers or studios could sell pics of the bride and groom with tweets from their friends and relatives. Same with baby books. Dating sites could do the same by having you upload all of your romantic tweets that you have twittered to your twitterpated love. I wonder if twitterpated should be hyphenated? I digress but as you can see there are quite a few possibilities here so take a look at your business and see if you can use this tool as well.