One of my favorite features revealed at the conference is Twitter being built in as the default social networking program on the iOS 5. Users will be able to sign on to their Twitter accounts one time, and then tweet with a single tap from Apple applications such as YouTube, Safari and Photos. Tweeting made extra simple.

I love tools like this that can make my job just a little easier. I thoroughly enjoy watching how simple changes like these help modify how business is done. Processes gradually become more streamlined and effective. I hope you can see and reap the benefits of these developments in your own world.

According to a recent tweet, AP Stylebook will now include such terms as end user, geolocation, geotagging, link shortener, stream and unfollow.

Luckily, with today’s technology, it’s easy (and even fun) to keep up via apps, Twitter feeds and the like. No more lugging that 1-pound, 1.6 ounce paperback around with no search functionality but your weary, opposable thumbs (don’t tell the printers that we suggested it).

If you didn’t join the conversation with @APStylebook on Twitter today, familiarize your inner journalist with the bible of the newspaper industry by searching hashtag #APStyleChat for tips and refreshers to improve your writing.

1. Like a swarm of killer bees, this South African instrument – previously unknown to many – dominated the news, our ears and was a popular Twitter hashtag. Articles even popped up on how to remove the Vuvuzela sound from your audio by muting certain frequencies on your equalizer – http://bit.ly/bviXut – and Twitter’s fail whale was a semi-constant.

2. Meanwhile, Mr. Jobs’ latest creation is estimated to have sold 1.5 million on its first day, according to Oppenheimer’s Yair Reiner. http://bit.ly/crMoFi

3. However, complaints are already starting to pop up – especially regarding yellow distortions on screen and poor reception. From a PR perspective, it seems that Steve Jobs may need a bit of media training after responding to a customer’s email regarding reception issues by saying “Just don’t hold it that way.” Should he have responded the way he did? Apple is seen as a worldwide innovator and yet their solution to the problem is somewhat pathetic…http://bit.ly/91jI22

4. Lastly, (in non-World Cup and iPhone news) a recent marketing research study reveals a few things about online advertisements that might not come as a huge surprise. Content being “targeted” in any intelligent manner gets a much higher response rate. Likewise, obtrusive ads that do crazy things such as make noise, play music, or roll over the page on a  mouse-over are also extremely effective. However, when an ad was both targeted and obtrusive… people get a bit creeped out and the ads effectiveness falls pretty dramatically. Why? Apparently it begins to call too much attention to the fact that big brother is watching. How do you feel about these types of ads? http://bit.ly/czKpsC

A recent survey by Alterian shows some interesting numbers about how companies are engaging in this new paradigm shift in digital marketing.  Here are some key findings and excerpts from that survey.

1. How many different providers of marketing services do you leverage for digital marketing, database marketing, data hygiene, brand strategy, web analytics, email marketing and statistical analysis?

It is very revealing that almost 70% of respondents work with 3 or more suppliers, and almost a quarter (23%) work with a staggering 7 or more suppliers. Ensuring the consistency of messaging and brand across so many suppliers can be a challenge, made all the more difficult by marketing teams working in silos with disparate applications and information.

Suppliers will have to change how they operate if they want to provide clients with strategies for customer engagement across multiple channels.

2. How difficult is it to coordinate resources across your digital and direct marketing agencies?

Almost 40% of respondents reported that they found this ‘somewhat’ or ‘very’ difficult. Marketers do not need just a direct marketing agency that claims to be digital experts, or a digital agency turning to print. What is needed is a truly integrated agency that solves the problems marketers are having with coordinating multiple resources.

3. In the next 12 months how much of your marketing budget will be shifting from traditional direct marketing (direct mail/telemarketing) to digital/interactive/social channels?

Marketing budgets are shifting away from traditional direct marketing towards digital, interactive and social channels. 40% of respondents anticipate a shift of over a fifth of their budget towards digital channels, with 21% predicting more than a third of their budget shifting.

4. Which of the new marketing techniques are you currently investing in or planning to invest in?

The most popular new marketing technique was Social Media Marketing.  Two-thirds of respondents (66%) were planning to engage in marketing through social media channels.

36% of respondents reported their intention to invest in Social Media Monitoring tools. This is a very high percentage, particularly considering the relative immaturity of the channel.

Coming this Friday I will post “Part 2 – Digital Marketing: Are You Ready.” I will explore additional research results for integrated multi-channel engagement and staff readiness.

Source:  Alterian (LSE: ALN).

Then we’ll take it to the next level where we like you and you like us. That’s when we’ll pop the question:

How active are you in social media?

And you’ll give some great answer (we hope) and then within days, I’ll friend you and we’ll become OFFs (Official Facebook Friends) and we’ll follow your Tweets and blog, and maybe Link-it-in for an added treat. And it’s not like we’re doing this because we have loads of time to spare, but we need to know who you really are. Or to know you better (realistically that could take YEARS, true?).

So all those pictures and all those comments and all those words you used in various situations to various friends will all be there. (And that was okay for then, but now you’re looking for a job and I’m looking for someone to hire.) And we’ll see them and, fact is, we really don’t want to see them, but we have to know who we’re considering to add to our team.

And we WANT you to be great and to be solid and to show good judgment, but sometimes, in all those wild activities, weird things happen and get posted and tagged (so revealing), and what was private with friends then is public now. But our team has to view that to assess candidates before we shell out dollars.

So please be careful. Be careful now for that time then. Yeah, it’s social media, and yeah, you’re social and it is your media, too, but those things that could scare potential employers may be a deal killer, and nobody wants that, right?

But I also do not believe this is new territory for anyone. Reviewing AdAge’s recent “80 Years of Ideas,” it’s amazing how far we have come during this past century. Perhaps change is happening at a faster pace than it used to, but nonetheless, we should all be used to things constantly changing.

But there is still resistance. Perhaps part of the reason for this is because we are unsure how to keep up. How do we (all of us in this industry) embrace the constant change?

In the grand scheme of things, I am a newbie. I have been doing advertising a mere 10 years. But already, I can look back at the beginning of my career and am shocked about how different my role and the work I contribute to is today. If that much has changed in 10 years, what will happen in 20?

So, I’d like to share my opinions on how to keep up. These are merely a few ideas that I “try” to practice to be sure I am on the cutting-edge and not falling behind.

• You are never too old to learn new things (whatever your age). Do not sit back and hope something will fade away. You do not want to be one of those people who have lost sight of what is going on.
• If you hear of something new – investigate and dive in with both feet. If people are using a new social media website, don’t just peruse it. Sign up and use it. Having a Facebook or Twitter account, but not actively using it does not count. You cannot sell it or market on it, if you do not understand its idiosyncrasies.
• Set aside at least 30 minutes a day to read up on what is going on. Use Twitter, RSS Feeds, Mashable, Blogs or whatever you would like. Just keep up on the latest news and trends. This can be an enjoyable break from your regular responsibilities.
• Don’t forget to watch TV, listen to the radio and read magazines/newspapers. You need to see what’s popular and what other advertisers are doing.
• Take time to listen to the younger associate’s (or young people in general) at your company. They are likely into current trends and can contribute great ideas.
• Listen to your consumers. Don’t settle for the tactics you have always used to reach them. Speak their language and find where they are.
• If a project comes along that involves something new, volunteer to work on it. Take every advantage to work on projects that involve a new media, technology or process that you do not yet understand.
• Become a futurist. Think big and develop ideas someone hasn’t thought of yet. It’s the fun part of our job.
• Constantly look for ways to make things better. Look to make changes in the way you work. This will help you embrace other types of change that will inevitable come your way.
• Finally, don’t get frustrated. It’s hard to keep up. But keep at it and don’t lose traction.

Image courtesy of NYTimes.com

Since the 1800s, when Maria Taglioni was the first dancer to go en pointe, ballet dancers (both men and women) have worked to cultivate an aloofness, an ethereal air, showing that what they were doing was effortless. Believe me – it’s far from effortless.

Now, professional dancers at New York City Ballet, American Ballet Theatre and others are airing the dirt and showing the human side of dance, blisters, broken toes and all.

Ashley Bouder, a principal dancer at NYCB, is one of the dancers featured in the article and makes a great point as to why Twitter is helping attract new audiences to ballet. Ashley tweets about her injuries, during intermission, between Acts, and even criticizes aspects of her own performance (something those of us watching would likely never have even noticed). She says that “her tactic is not to make followers feel bad about what they can’t see, but to show them how to look more closely.”

Another great point she makes is: “We don’t have celebrity status like actors in magazines…that’s the main reason people get interested in something – you get all the dirt, you get to know someone and you become attached…”

The word “engagement” is so frequently used when discussing social media strategy with our clients.

• What are the best ways to engage with your target audience?
• What purpose will engagement really serve? Do you want to open yourself up for criticism?
• Can engagement go beyond more than a customer service tool?

If tweeting ballerinas tells us anything, it’s that engaging and humanizing yourself can attract a larger audience than you ever imagined. By allowing people glimpses into the inner workings of your brand and those running the company, you are allowing people to become attached and invested in you, with the end result being loyalty.

Google has launched Buzz, a service wrapped into Gmail which allows for quick sharing of pictures, videos, status messages, etc. with your Google Friends. You can also autopost to Twitter, Picasa, Flickr and more. It includes privacy settings so you can share with the world or just your friends.

Flash your optics upon the official video:

Noticeably absent is the ability to share with Facebook. Hmmm.

I like how they’re taking a step toward consolidating your social activities into one place (Gmail) as opposed to launching a standalone service which quickly becomes yet one more place to login and check. Now if they’d just roll Reader and Wave functionality into Gmail, well that’d be the bee’s knees. Do it Google. Blow my mind.

In addition, there’s a pretty killer mobile version. It’s seems like a cross between Foursquare, Twitter, Yelp and Google Maps. Looks like it could be pretty impressive, actually. Check the video below:

To get Buzzed (ha!) just keep hitting refresh in Gmail for the next few days – it’ll be gradually rolled out to users throughout the week.

Twitter recently rolled out a new feature called Lists. It enables you to group those you follow into lists, similar to Brizzly and desktop applications such as TweetDeck and Seesmic.

How do lists work?
You can login to Twitter and click the “following” link under your username in the upper right column. This will show everyone you’re following. There’s a list icon to the right of teach person’s name that, when clicked, allows you to assign that person to a list.

For example, I have a list of local people I follow here in Salt Lake. So if I want to see just what those people are saying, I can go to that list and it filters out everyone else. This makes it easier to digest your Twitter stream because you can break it out and view it in bite-sized, relevant chunks.

Why you should care
There are a number of benefits to Twitter lists, in addition to neatly dividing up your Twitter stream to make it more manageable:

1. You can follow other people’s lists. If you wanted a quick way to follow a lot of people in Salt Lake, you could go to my list of SLC-ers and follow everyone on that list with one click.

2. Follower count is less important. Anybody can get a LOT of followers very quickly. Because of that, they’ve become less valuable as a measurement of importance/popularity/influence. Lists are harder to game (manipulate).

3. See your reputation. Want to know what people think of you, or what they see you as? You can see which lists people put you on and how many people follow those lists.

For example, Richter7 is currently on 16 lists including ones called Agencies, Grade A Biz Accounts, Leading Agencies and SLC Punks (which we take as a compliment). Conversely, before you follow someone you can see which lists they’re on to get a feel for the type of content they’re going to be tweeting about and if it would be of interest to you. Very useful.

But Lists also shows you how many people follow THOSE lists. So the fact that I’m on a list called Cool People is flattering until you realize there’s only one person following that list, which is the guy who created it.

Lists have the potential to dramatically change the way we find, follow and manage contacts in our Twitter stream. Have you started using Lists? Do you have any questions about them? Thoughts? Please let me know in the comments.

Here are some top social media/advertising/business stories that caught my attention over the last couple of weeks:

1. Google buys Gizmo5. Google bought Gizmo5, a VOIP company, to use with Google Voice to create a direct competitor to Skype and every telco in the world.
2. Murdoch threatens to block Google searches from indexing his news sites. Rupert Murdoch (owner of the Wall Street Journal and other sundry products) wants to stop giving Google and the rest of the world free access to his sites and start charging for access. (Please note that when I searched for this story, none of his sites were listed so I went to his competitor’s site instead.)
3. Remember a few weeks ago when we tried to blow up the moon? Turns out that the point wasn’t just to create an explosion so huge you could see it from space (or, in our case, Earth). Go figure: there’s water on the moon.
4. Twitter’s been busy. It has licensed its entire stream of Tweets to both Google and Microsoft to be available in their respective search results. It also added a built-in retweet feature as well as Lists. Lists are a pretty big deal on a number of levels (not the least of which convenience). It’s significant enough that I may write up something about this later. Stay tuned.
5. Brittney Spears’ Twitter account was hacked. Annnnnd…no one cares.
6. Google bought AdMob for $750M in stock. This is a pretty huge deal. As if Google wasn’t making a big enough play by putting their apps on the iPhone and freely distributing a mobile operating system (Android), they just bought the largest mobile advertising platform.
7. AT&T gets its undies in a twist over Verizon ads. Don’t know if you saw them, but Verizon has come out swinging with their advertising push behind the Droid, their new (and I must say, quite impressive) Android offering.

Thoughts on any of these stories? What did I leave out that you thought was important. Leave word (and links) in the comments.

Image courtesy of here.