That means that of the retailers surveyed in a survey by the e-tailing Group and PowerReviews in August and September of this year, Facebook will have almost 100% brand penetration, as reported by eMarketer.

Other interesting insights  from the survey:

• More than 1/2 of retailers surveyed use 5 of 10 of the Social Marketing tools they included in the survey
• Top tools used by retailers includes: Facebook, Twitter, Reviews, Blogs & Viral Videos – all of which are over 50% usage amongst those surveyed

The sentiment measured in the survey indicated what we encounter almost weekly with potential clients – marketers are still scared of Social Media. Scared to give up control of their brand, scared about how the conversations can take a mind or path of their own, and worried that they lack the skills internally to fully understand how Social Media best works within their brand framework.

Pushing those fears aside, the resounding sentiment that they note rings true: Using social media might be scary, but avoiding it is becoming less (and less and less and less) of an option.

Ways to move beyond those fears?

• Conduct a Social Media "Audit" - hire an agency like Affinitive (naturally!) who specializes in the space to look at who/what/where is currently talking about your brand – listening and identifying where to enter the conversation is the first step
• Step away from your interns – Managing a Facebook page is no longer the work of an intern (if it ever was, gasp!), time to put some real strategy behind it
• They’re gonna talk no matter what - remember that just like the gossiping girls in your high school, no matter what you do, people are going to talk about you. Best to be there to join the conversation, curb any inaccuracies, and develop a relationship with them that is full of trust, transparency, and ultimately – value
• If the platform fails, so what? - There’s a possibility Twitter, Facebook & YouTube could be obsolete in a couple of years. Not looking likely, but always possible (Friendster, what?) but so what… if your presence in that platform becomes no longer necessary, the same applies to everyone else. Crafting an exit strategy is easy. Better to exit when it’s time to than to sit on the sidelines and watch your competitors take home a pile of innovation awards and the loyalty of your target audience.

As we’ve mentioned, it’s a land grab. The time to act is now.

Less than 10 months ago, I remember creating massive PowerPoint presentations explaining exactly who, what, and WHY platforms like Twitter were going to become key social platforms for brands to engage with consumers – especially when loyalty and retention are part of the brand’s goals and objectives. Now we are getting requests for Twitter and Facebook strategic proposals on a daily basis. The tide has definitely turned.

According to a recent study by Burson-Marsteller, Twitter is the top Social Media platform for Fortune 100 companies. Not a huge shocker if you work (live! breathe! all of the above!) the space, but nice to hear tools that you believe, as a marketer, to be viable if properly adopted to begin to emerge as frequent parts of  brands’ strategies.

What is even more interesting is when you drill the reported Fortune 100 numbers down:

• 54 percent of the Fortune 100 have a Twitter presence (Anyone have that list? Mashable? Couldn’t find it on their Mega Lists)
• 32 percent have a blog
• 29 percent have an active Facebook Page.
• only 17 percent use all three (blog, Facebook, Twitter)
• 94% of companies who use Twitter use it for news/announcements, 67% for consumer service and 57 per cent for deals and promotions
• average Twitter account has 5,234 followers,  median is 674 followers.

At companies using only one of these tools, 76 percent of them use Twitter as the tool of choice. Whew. In some ways this makes me want to dance around in circles and sing “I told you so” like a 4th grader…but mostly this just makes me want to work harder to ensure that all of our current, future, past, potential clients step into the space with purpose AND best practices.

As the best practices for the space continue to get defined and redefined by the people who actively engage in them (as users,  brand leaders, marketers…), the ownership over social marketing as a strategy and the social mediums that fall underneath it’s umbrella enters into a huge gray area.

As the popularity has ensued, the land grab for control over social marketing has hit full swing.

In what can perhaps best be analogized as a social marketing gold rush,  marketers and agencies across the board are racing to own that space within their existing (and future) brand relationships. Simultaneously brands are racing to get started in social marketing (for the most part) and aren’t sure which direction to go.

Who best owns Social Marketing? PR? Digital? A boutique agency? Internal brand managers and team members?

While there is clearly no universal answer – despite what we’d all love to think – there are a few key items on the list that seem to be basic rules of thumb that most brands simply can’t ignore.

So without further ado, let me present my list of Social Marketing tidbits for thought, the growing/morphing changing stream of practices, ideas, and 411s that go into most of my brainstorms:

1. People are talking about you on Twitter… and likely on Facebook, and definitely out there in the big, bad blogosphere. And will talk about you. They are asking for you to join the conversation.
2. The person (or persons) communicating on behalf of your brand have to really know your brand.
3. But they also have to really know the medium…and the medium’s user base.
4. There are rules to engagement in all platforms – you cannot go into this blindly as a brand. You have a lot more at stake than Joe Schmo’s anonymous testing of the waters.
5. There is a true strategy to using social mediums properly. Frequency of content, types of content, ways to advertise (if you should advertise?), metrics and measurements for success, best type of communication, even the lingo is often strategic.
6. The worst thing you can do is feed all your blog posts into your Twitter, all your Twitter posts into your Facebook, and all your Facebook status updates back into your Twitter.  Sure you want to cross-link and have an integrated strategy, but each audience deserves to be communicated with directly.
7. Transparency. (Always, always, always).
8. There is a major debate with regards to the ethics of paying bloggers, tweeters, etc. Be sure to know where/how your social marketing team approaches this (and know the backstory).
9. Just because [insert cool brand name here] and Oprah are on Twitter doesn’t necessarily mean that you should be. Enter all mediums with a plan and with purpose.
10. Chances are your legal department is going to need a full-fledged tutorial on whichever platforms you choose.
11. Don’t give up if you’re facing some legal challenges. You can work through them. We have navigated through (and prevailed!)  highly regulated industries and it is worth it.
12. The number of “fans” and “followers” and “friends” your brand has only matters if you are actively engaging them with content that makes sense, that they want to consume, in ways that they want to consume it, and in ways it best fits in with your overall marketing mix.
13. Debating social strategy internally? Starting with Forrester’s P.O.S.T. analysis really is a good way to get the ball rolling.
14. The blessing (and curse!) of online is how fluid and flexible it is. Make sure you are, too.
15. If the people doing your strategy aren’t active personal users of the platforms – mega red flag. Find their accounts, verify they actually are practicing the buzz worthy mantra they are preaching.

I’m sure I’m missing many on the list. So, marketers, tweeters, bloggers, strategists, tumblrers, Facebookers, social media enthusiasts, what do YOU think?

I definitely don’t underestimate the older demographics. I’m getting used to commenting on my cousin’s status on Facebook, then seeing my uncle’s comment under mine a few hours later. I’m getting used to seeing my best friend and her mom’s conversation on my homepage. I’m getting to the shrug-off point.

I know and I certainly see the older demographics not only adopting and adjusting, but integrating all this technology and weaving it into their daily lives… so what does surprise me is a recently released study conducted by The Barna Group that explored how technology is shaping different experiences and expectations among generations. Although the study does point out that “many of the bloggers, music downloaders and users of social networking websites are from the Boomer and Buster cohorts” because “Boomers and Busters represent about two-thirds of the adult population”, the study seems to undermine their technical savvy. AdAge.com also recently pointed out this generation’s dominance on the big two, “As of January, more than 50% of Facebook users and 44% of MySpace users in the U.S. were over 35 years old, according to ComScore estimates.”

The study breaks users down into four generations – Mosaics (18 – 24), Busters (25 – 43), Boomers (44 – 62) and Elders (63+) then categorizes each generation’s use of technology into Mainstream (technologies used by at least one out of every two computers users (50%+)), Emerging (Those used by at least one out of five but less than hald computer users (20%-49%)) and Limited (Technologies used by fewer than one-fifth of computer users (19% or less)).
So, what sticks out from this chart that doesn’t fit right with my personal observations as well as other recently released research surveys? These are the points that I question:

• Busters, Boomers and Elders fall into the “Limited” category for both having “posted a comment on another blog” and “maintain personal blog”.
• Busters are only in the “Emerging” category for “watched a video online”.

These are surprising to me because Forrester Research just released a report that show more than 60% of those in the Baby Boomers generational group actively consume socially created content like blogs, videos, podcasts and forums. It’s true that they might not be heavily involved with content creation but as far as commenting and watching videos go, Baby Boomers are there and on the rise, “In 2007, the percentage of Boomers consuming social media was 46% for younger Boomers (ages 43 to 52) and 39% for older Boomers (ages 53 to 63). By 2008, those number increased to 67% and 62%, respectively.”
In short, there is no doubt that the 35+ demographics makes up for many of the profiles and accounts created on social media sites but credit must be also given to them on their ability and usage of the functionalities of the sites.

In thinking about ways in this new year that I could better contribute to Affinitive’s blog, I got inspired by the blog over at everyone’s favorite minimalistic housewares company, SimpleHuman.

Their blog has become a must-read for me, not because they dish out the inside scoop on their latest and greatest, which I enjoy, but because their employees share their favorite finds in projects, web 2.0, other blogs, stories and articles, gadgets, movies, etc.

In reading their blog I feel like I really get a grasp of what an awesome company culture they must have and it definitely increases my affinity for their sleek (and often pricey) trashcans.

Taking a tip from the Simple Human employees, I am hoping to share from time to time some applications, case studies, videos, sites, products, gadgets, articles, and other random finds that I love.

I fully believe that when you are working in a creative environment, inspiration can come from so many varying sources. I do a daily scavenger hunt around the internet and think I am much better at my job for taking those few minutes out of every day to read my favorite blogs, check in on social networks and sites that I love, and new inspirational finds.

Without further ado…

I have been a sporadic Vimeo user for the past year. I don’t shoot much video personally, so I don’t have much to contribute to the artistic and creative Vimeo community but I enjoy watching videos on Vimeo and appreciate the format and what it provides versus the much more popular YouTube.

To explain the difference between the two in very simple, non-technical terms (and from my own personal experience), YouTube is where I would go to watch my favorite music video or try to find an awesome scene from Big Love that I want to watch again. Vimeo is where I go to get inspired by original content, created by aspiring videographers, directors, and Kanye West.

I was happy to discover yesterday that the White House has setup a channel at Vimeo and will be sharing Obama’s weekly video casts via the site.

After watching the tech savviness of both Obama and McCain’s campaigns with their utilization of social media tools, it shouldn’t be surprising that the channel has found it’s home at Vimeo.

But it still feels very refreshing and validating that the very tools that we assist our clients in leveraging as they spread their brand message or empower consumers to share User-Generated Content are platforms that are also being used by our new President.

Our internal company servers nearly flat-lined as we all watched the Inauguration Address online, as did the clients that we spoke to during that monumental time. It is nice to watch it again, on Vimeo, shared to us directly by the most well known white home in America.

No matter what your political affiliations are, the mainstream usage of social media platforms and tools such as Vimeo is inspirational to me as a marketer, and in this case, also as an American.

Tapping into blogger “influencers” is a very sensitive initiative. They can’t be treated as paid employees sitting behind desks receiving mass amounts of PR blasts nor do they want to be treated this way. Because they have the liberty to write at their own free will, there is no hindrance to what they can and will write. Typos included. It is this raw thinking process in which marketers crave and should be paying attention to.

Cision Media Research recently conducted research on the mention of blogs in 20 major print media publications clearly indicating the growing influence of bloggers. Cision discovered that the top 20 national magazines and newspapers mentioned blogs and bloggers 13,066 times in the one-year period ending June 30, 2008. That compares to only 795 times in 2004 and 2,179 times in 2005.

“This stunning growth in blogger influence magnifies the importance of employing common sense when contacting bloggers,” said Peter Granat, Cision Executive Vice President. “Knowing the blogger and his/her focus is the critical element in a successful blog relations campaign. While many blogs are highly visible in their own right, the growing influence with the mainstream media elevates their importance.”

How can we as marketers connect with bloggers? You may not have the status of P&G to offer all-expense-paid trips but the simple gesture of being sincere and getting to know the blogger whom you are trying to form a relation with is just as good. Notice I said blogger and not bloggers because generic PR blasts to a list without any customization will not do. It takes time to get to know someone so make the effort to do so and your initiatives will more likely yield positive results.