According to a recent survey by Prospero Technologies, nearly 9 in 10 marketers already using social media said they plan to “increase” or “increase significantly” their spending.

Marketers were asked.

Prospero’s 2007 Social Media Survey found 30 percent of online marketers who use social media plan to “spend significantly more on social-media applications in 2008″, while an additional 58 percent also plan to “increase” spending, though not “significantly.”

Some 59 percent of respondents reported that social media performance in 2007 met or exceeded their marketing objectives. Survey participants included major brands from a variety of industries, including Media, Education, Financial Services and Health.

The Pareto Principle, also known as the 20/80 Rule, is an interesting phenonenum that has many implications for those practicing search and social media. The concept is losely defined as; for many events, 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. Its a truism so to speak, though its the rough concept that is important and not the absolute numbers. Some real life examples of this concept in action are:
a) in general, 80% of a hockey teams goals, will come from 20% of the players
b) often 80% of a company’s revenues will come from 20% of its clients
c) 80% of a country’s wealth will be held by 20% of the population
d) 80% of the postings on Spinn/Digg, etc. will be by 20% of the total number of posters
e) 80% of most tasks can be completed in 20% of the time

Whether it’s watching someones misfortune, individual rants, old music videos, my favorite teams past sporting glories, lost TV episodes or political debates, I just can’t seem to get enough of YouTube. It’s become a personal entertainment option and, from an SEO standpoint, as videos are beginning to rank, I enjoy the challenge of defining my clients video content strategies.

This week I’m exploring YouTube, by the numbers:

* YouTube was created in mid February 2005 by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim, three former PayPal employees.

* The domain name “YouTube.com” was activated on February 15, 2005

The best thing to come out of Google buying the social site Jaiku is that it has put Twitter on the attention map of many people again. Every second article, report or blog post about the Jaiku acquisition draws a comparison with the service offered by Twitter.

And that’s good. Because Twitter deserves a lot of attention: your attention.

What is Twitter?

Twitter is a place where you can post short (140 characters max., a limit directly related to the 140 max. limit of SMS text messages) status updates on what you’re doing, thinking, eating, reading, etc.

Establishing a strong Social Media Profile necessarily means establishing networks of (professional) friends/relationships online (aka online professional relationships … OPR) that can be called upon to help you when needed. In some cases, your goal will be to befriend individuals that are influencers in a given sphere; when needed you can count upon them to use their powerful sites and networks to drive traffic and/or business to your site. In yet other cases, your goal maybe to enlist your network to stumble or digg particlar articles. Your effectiveness at each of these efforts is a function of the strength of your OPRs … since many require different levels of trust given the potential risk to the OPR. And yes, risks do exist! Accordingly, the remainder of this post will discuss our SEP interpretation of the stages of online professional relationships, and what OPR efforts can be expected at different stages.

Of all the social media sites out there, StumbleUpon is by far my favorite.

From an SEO standpoint, I’ve used it to generate instant traffic and awareness of client websites and, from a personal standpoint, I’ve used it to discover hundreds more websites than I ever could through traditional search.

This week I’m taking a look StumbleUpon, by the numbers:

• StumbleUpon was created in 2001 by three friends who were still finishing off post-graduate studies in Calgary, Canada.

• Silicon Valley investor Brad O’Neill assisted with a move to San Francisco and the initial round of $1.2 million in fund-raising.

So here you stand, a virtual newby to the world of social media, and it appears that you have the monumental task before you of scaling this towering mountain called developing a professional network online … developing your social media profile. But where do you begin … “my god this mountain is high” you think to yourself. There are so many possible paths up the mountain.

Imagine finally answering the question; is our collective social consciousness a better predictor of the actual outcome of future events than our own personal guesstimates? Well, imagine no more. Enter ZiiTrend - the Social Prediction Community, a site that endeavors to answer that question for us, and provide us with the collective social probabilities of the occurrence of certain events. Hat tip to Profy.com for bringing it to my attention via their blog.

Social Media sites are all growing very rapidly. Facebook is leading the way by far, signing up over 150 000 new members daily.

In the coming weeks, I’ll explore each of the most popular sites ‘By the Numbers’. Here are some interesting facts about Facebook:

- Facebook was started in February 2004

– On August 23, 2005, Aboutface Corporation sold the domain name facebook.com to Facebook for $200,000

– Facebook has over 300 employees

– The website has over 40 Million active users

– Averages more than 150,000 new registrations per day.

SEO, SEM, Web 2.0 - Demystifying these terms is one of the first objectives I take up whenever I start talking about my job to friends or clients. There’s a lot that goes into Search Engine Optimization and Social Media Marketing, but there certainly isn’t any Voodoo, other than hard work that creates successful websites that garner a healthy amount of traffic and high visibility through search engines.

This video by CommonCraft does a great job at explaining what Social Bookmarking is, and how it is beneficial to you as an individual, and to the greater web community at large. Enjoy!