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.

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This week I have been at the Connect Now conference in Sydney. It has had a stellar line-up of speakers including Gavin Heaton @servantofchaos, Katie Chatfield @katiechatfield, Tara Hunt @missrogue, Brian Solis @briansolis, Laurel Papworth @silkcharm, Jim Stewart @jimboot, Darren Rowse @problogger, Gary Vaynerchuk @garyvee, Debs Schultz @debs, Stephen Johnson @huxley, Fi Bendall @fibendall, Simon Mainwaring @simonmainwaring, Natalie Hofsteede @givealittle, Simon and Marie Young @audaciousgloop and Chris Noble @worldnomads.

While much of the information and advice might not be new to those already operating in the social media space, it has been extremely beneficial for the vast majority of people who are beginning to use inbound marketing and social media in their businesses instead traditional marketing techniques.

But as someone who attends a lot of new media conferences in Australia and the USA, I was still struck by a few of the key messages at Connect Now.

The biggest take home for me was that authenticity is crucial. While businesses are flooding into social media to take advantage of its burgeoning popularity, very few are succeeding, and that is likely because they lack an authentic voice.

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