For several years now the highly entertaining Marta Kagan has been packaging up and producing a slide show titled What the F**k is Social Media. Its an excellent insight into the latest figures around the phenomenal rise of social media and networks.

And in the spirit of social media, Marta has allowed us to embed her presentation for all to share and see. Enjoy.

Gavin Heaton has posted an excellent piece about the Three Ages of Content Management Systems which goes a long way to explaining how the web has evolved and how organisations and the systems they use may or may not have progressed. Its a great read and I urge you to take 5 minutes to see what Gavin has to say.

We now live in the sharing web age

The 3 ages Gavin talks about are:

• The Age of Waving

• The Age of Shouting

• The Age of Sharing

Clearly, given the ubiquity of social media now, we are in The Age of Sharing. Organisations who realise this and have moved to ensure their web presence reflects it are the ones who are benefiting. The content on their websites is being passed around, searched and now generates considerably more traffic than many of their contemporaries who still live in The Age of Shouting.

Unfortunately many people treat the web the same way as they treat their traditional advertising. They see it purely as a broadcasting media. They haven’t heard of the Age of Conversation and they haven’t heard of the 1000 True Fans theory. They are still yelling at an audience that isn’t necessarily listening.

At a more technical level, as Gavin points out, this is reflected in their Content Management Systems. The odds are that if a company has on old-fashioned, hard to use CMS then they are probably Shouting from their website. Its simply too hard to update information so they publish their content once and leave it. Or perhaps they spend a small fortune on Banner ads and Adwords to drive traffic to their static sites.

We constantly advise clients to take the Sharing route. Create innovative websites on easy-to-use CMS systems that are SEO and social media-friendly. It encourages a solid, long-term approach to marketing than generates much greater loyalty than shouting ever will. It results in increased traffic from multiple sources, like social networks and organic search, that is substantially more cost-effective than broadcast style advertising.

The question is, which web age do you live in?

Above anything, here at Sticky we believe in using inbound marketing, digital technology and great content to grow business, both for our clients and ourselves. We know that Inbound Marketing is extremely effective when done properly and can turn old business models on their heads.

That’s why we’re so excited to be involved in the Age of Conversation book series. We’ve learned more from some of the contributors to Age of Conversation than you could learn at a dozen marketing seminars. These guys know what they’re talking about and live and breathe modern marketing. There are 171 contributors from 15 countries covering 10 great topics.

Both Craig Wilson and Gordon Whitehead have written chapters for the latest edition, Age of Conversation: It’s time to get busy and Sticky were happy to help out with the new Age of Conversation website.

You can now buy the book at Amazon in hardcover, softcover and Kindle versions with all proceeds going to selected children’s charities.

So what are you waiting for? Its time to get busy and join the Age of Conversation.

The social networking service known as Twitter has exploded onto the Internet to become one of the hottest online applications less than 3 years after its humble beginnings. Twitter initially took off at South By South West Interactive Festival in Texas but recent traditional media coverage of the service suggest that it may be crossing over to the mainstream.

Just look at the amount of mainstream media Twitter stories recently and the explosion of users:

During the Australian Open Tennis tournament the Sydney Morning Herald ran a lead story online regarding the Twitter coverage of the heatwave conditions.

A few days later news.com.au ran a lead piece on Australia’s most interesting Twitter users.

Coverage of the New York plane crash into the Hudson River included many references to the Twitter reports and photos being loaded onto Twitter.

News.com.au also urged readers to follow the horrific Victorian bush fires on Twitter.

In fact news.com.au seems to have gone Twitter-mad with a plethora of stories recently including Twitter ‘influence’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘interesting’.

Not to be outdone, smh.com.au has been filing it’s own barrage of Twitter themed pieces including this on February 12, Join the Twitterati.

Hi profile Twitter users are also garnering attention and bringing Twitter closer to the mainstream. The Twitterverse can now follow the public utterances of:

Stephen Fry

Arnold Schwarzenegger

Kevin Rudd

Malcolm Turnbull

Ashton Kutcher

Demi Moore

Britney Spears

Lance Armstrong

John Cleese

Al Gore

….and many more

Certainly we are seeing an influx of MSM journalists on Twitter, looking for contacts and stories.

The explosion of Twitter coverage, both in Australia and overseas, is matched by the skyrocketing use of the service. Compete.com has released the latest numbers on US social media usage from January and Twitter has been the big mover jumping 19 places to be the third most used social media application behind Facebook and MySpace. Twitter had over 54 million “monthly visits” in January. This number is likely understated due to the number of third party applications that can be used to access Twitter.

The large amount of mainstream media coverage in recent times suggests that these numbers could climb even more rapidly.

The big questions now may be, will widespread acceptance be good for Twitter, or will it drive away many of the early adopters? Will Twitter be a shooting star, the big thing for a couple of years, before fading away?