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AT&T Announced today that over 12 Million AT&T and Starbucks customers will get free Wifi at over 7000 locations across the USA.

Beginning this spring, Starbucks Card holders can enjoy up to two hours of free Wi-Fi service per day at Starbucks locations offering Wi-Fi access, while more than 12 million qualifying AT&T broadband and AT&T U-verse^SM Internet customers will have unlimited free access to the Wi-Fi service. In addition, more than 5 million of AT&T’s remote access services business customers will be able to access Wi-Fi service at Starbucks locations. AT&T will soon extend the benefits of Wi-Fi at Starbucks to its wireless customers.

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… my column from Business Lexington this month…

With increased Internet use and widespread broadband connectivity, the shift from old to new media is influencing the way people participate in elections, according to a recent report by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. Not since John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon debated in front of 70 million new television watchers in 1960 have we seen such a change in political media. A wave of changes brought on by Web sites, blogs and social media is being led by the 18- to 30-year-old demographic and is spreading to reach Americans of all ages and backgrounds.

The number of Americans who received political information using the Internet in 2004 was around 13 percent. In the 2008 survey, that number had doubled. In the same period, younger voters using the TV as a major source dropped from 75 percent to 60 percent, while the percent using the Web soared from 21 percent to 46 percent. Daily newspapers have held steady for most of the population, but those under 30 use them half as much as they did in 2004.

And people are getting more active. The system got a taste of this during Congressman Ron Paul’s 2007 campaign, where the Internet’s power to mobilize grass roots efforts (if not votes) was convincingly demonstrated. A powerful, virally energized operation emerged that may form the template for an entirely new way of campaigning. Competitors scrambled to take note of Congressman Paul’s campaign tactics as he broke single-day fundraising records and went from silence to viable effort in the shortest time ever seen.

As impressive as it was, few think Web-based participatory media such as bloggers will move voters to the polls on their own. But the effect on regional, grassroots campaigning is beginning to show its strength. This “final mile” blogger-to-activist effect uses the Internet for efficiency but eventually depends on old-fashioned campaigning like rallies, petitions and meet-ups to actually affect primaries and elections. As was demonstrated, decentralized and passionate young voters, savvy in use of social networks like MySpace and Facebook, began to reach individuals in their community who pick up signs and knock on doors for the first time in their lives.

The “Big 3″ phenomenon lives on today’s Internet, but with a big twist. The largest election news sites include MSNBC, CNN and Yahoo News, together earning 54 percent of all traffic. Unlike television, however, the remaining 46 percent exist in a “long tail” with hundreds of others, from the Drudge Report to Youtube to individual blogs.

One of the most impressive Web sites to emerge is Political Base a brain-child of CNET co-founder Shelby Bonnie and recently joined by Kentucky political veteran and former BluegrassReport.com blogger Mark Nickolas. “We’re trying to capitalize on an electorate that appears energized to change the system by giving them a place where they can learn the issues, explore multiple viewpoints, engage in debate, and mobilize others around their ideas,” explained Nickolas.

On many sites, participation changes conversations from “one to many” into “many to many,” often keeping controversial issues “alive” long after mainstream media has moved on. Watchdogs spot and post candidate inconsistencies and gaffes before campaign managers have a chance to do anything (and long after they’d rather forget.) Last summer, Senator George Allen, a Virginia Republican, was caught calling a college student of Indian descent a “macaca.” The student, who was videotaping, subsequently placed the tape on Youtube, where it was viewed over 250,000 times and was partially blamed for Senator Allen’s defeat.

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When the going gets tough, do the tough go online?

Last year, according to the Interactive Avertising Bureau, Online advertising in the US grew 25% (17% not including search) during Q1-Q3 of last year over 2006. Currently the web accounts for less than 10% of all advertising spend but nearly a quarter of the time Americans spend consuming media (higher in some surveys.) Those numbers are full of potential growth for online, possibly accelerated by a softening economy. 26% of households are using DVRs, like TiVo, to skip television advertising, up from just 19% only a year ago. At the same time, 35% of households actively use portable media players, avoiding radio advertising, while 52% of households are using broadband internet at home during typical television viewing hours, according to Forrester.

If we enter an economic downturn, advertisers will want to look at measurable returns and strong ROI - and web marketing, seo (such as link building) and paid search advertising with testing can be tracked far better than most other types if done well. Even if the number of advertisers goes down or advertisers spend less, they are not going to reduce their online spends much… or possibly increase them as they shift money from TV and newspaper ads.

“In rich countries the internet is claiming a growing share of advertising—at the expense of traditional media, such as TV and print. There is still a gap between the time people spend online as a fraction of their media consumption (about a fifth) and the fraction of marketing budgets spent on the internet (about 7.5%). Many companies are trying to narrow the gap, which will sustain internet advertising during a downturn. Search advertising, the most effective kind of all, should be safest.” The chart to the right shows a terrific correlation between GDP and advertising.

Recently I did a survey of a client’s paid search campaigns and found that on a monthly basis, every 1% in improvement in conversion equaled $5000 in leads. The smart money for them would be on paying for continued development of high quality content, testing, and smart tactical adjustments and build those numbers as high as possible. But it’s scary - not knowing. I try to get analytics in place and teach the basics, but it’s hard to punk down $20 large on a campaign when you’re not sure what’s going to happen. Then again, you could guess. Or you could watch competitors take a bite. It may be smart to pull back but I find that unlikely.

Many times when working on articles, or doing research I’ll come upon posts, pages, or articles that look interesting, but after I click to them, I realize they are from 1999 or 2001. While well written, anything that happened that long ago is usually irrelevant to the search marketing and site design business. The Google Info View lets me limit the dates much like Google Blog Search. Nice.

Here today I checked out Google Alternative Views, which includes the ability to choose between several types of views - and significantly alters the search engine results pages based on your “mode.”

It looks as if there may be the need for a new meta-tag (e.g. like the currently valid ‘address’ tag) which helps pages identify dates, locations, etc, because most of the page results came back “No locations for this page” or “No dates for this page”.

The date sorting feature was slick in concept but I’ve not made it work very well. I wonder if new meta tags or sitemap tags will help to categorize pages into these buckets. The locations page was wonderful when you’re trying to get information relevant to the locale, but you’re not really searching for a local business. I searched for “Search Marketing Seminars” and chose Chicago as the “location” — the results were limited in a very clean way. It works like a filter - but I couldn’t quite pick out what it was trying to do. I had to do a lot of different searches before I found a good results page showing the feature well.

One usability issue… it’s easy to forget you’ve not entered a date yet. I think Google should either allow a default, or show “no” results until you’ve chosen a date, if you’re in that mode. The results that return when you’ve not entered a date are nonsensical. I’d like to see them pop a timeline on the left side like Google Blog search has - with a default.

It’s too early to say how this would affect SEO or how businesses might be able to make sure they rank for each of the data types - but it certainly adds some dimensions to the organic search space to consider down the road.

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I live two blocks from the Henry Clay estate and walk there when I take breaks. On the path, there is a plaque which indicates that Henry Clay loved the house and paths because they allowed “considered contemplation” of heavy issues facing him. Henry Clay would return to Lexington to think, and then travel back to Washington to serve as Speaker of the House and a wide spectrum of other roles. It’s cool to walk the same paths he did.

Working in a city like New York or San Francisco (yes, I have) imposes restrictions, but opens many opportunities. The creative class (yes, Henry Clay fits the bill) often look to find the best of both worlds by living “near” the city and telecommuting part-time. This is the ideal arrangement if you ask me. But it appears that, despite legislation introductions to prevent it, New York continues to this through a nasty double-taxing system through its state tax code and it has people up-in-arms.

From the New York Times article:

“New York’s “convenience of the employer” rule taxes nonresidents as if they came to the office every day, even if they worked at home part of the week, unless they can prove their employer required them to telecommute. Yet they must also pay income tax in their home states for work they did there.

New York is the only state that aggressively enforces its tax code this way; most states use a “physical presence” test that lets workers pay taxes in proportion to the amount of time spent working in each state.”

Senators Christopher J. Dodd and Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut were sponsors of the Telecommuter Tax Fairness Act, which would ban any state from double-taxing nonresident telecommuters. Now, apparently, the bill is stuck in committee and a vote does not appear to be forthcoming.

Cali Williams Yost recently posted on FastCompany’s expert blogs area “Work/Life: NYC Versus Kentucky—One Resists Flexibility, the Other Embraces It. Who Wins?” which compared the approaches between New York and Kentucky - places most would find more different than night and day. It would seem that New York would use telework as an opportunity to reduce congestion and boost their economy. According to the Partnership for New York City, excess congestion shaves up to $4 billion a year off the region’s economy, preventing 52,000 jobs from being created. But with office real estate sitting empty, there is significant pressure to bring people to the city and fill those leases.

Contrast New York’s active resistance with that of the State of Kentucky. Not only is Kentucky embracing flexibility and innovation but sees it as a key lever for future growth and development. Business and community leaders from across the state, and within cities such as Lexington, are working with the Institute for Workplace Innovation at the University of Kentucky and its director, Dr. Jennifer Swanberg, as well as the University’s President, Lee T. Todd, Jr. to achieve their collective vision.

According to President Todd, “I envision Kentucky as a state of choice, a place where employers want to locate and employees want to work…Becoming a leader in workplace innovation is imperative for the growth and development of our economy.” (To read more about Kentucky’s initiative and what Kentucky employers are already doing download the Institute for Workplace Innovation’s “Making Workplaces Work—Employer Best Practices in Kentucky, 2007” publication.)

I am not a scholar of Henry Clay or his work, but I have a strong feeling he’d have a word or two to say about double taxing those wanting to work in quiet places. It’s silly to fight the changes that are happening in the workplace, or to discourage work/life balance among top talent. I hope that Senator Dodd and Lieberman’s bill makes progress. And I hope that more people spend time looking at Kentucky’s environment for clear thinking and good work.

NYC photo by Jorge Gobbi

There is plenty of buzz out there about how the economy is slowing. Companies will begin pulling back on expenses and unfortunately cut on staff, too, if it gets worse. But smart companies know that there is no better time to surge forward and leave competition wondering what happened.

Social marketing, with authentic messages, is the most important recession-time marketing tool any company can have. But waiting until a real recession to try it is a huge mistake. Now’s the time to get involved. But involved in the right way.

The trouble is, many companies jump into blogging, digging, and you-tubing blind and clueless, hoping that the magic beans will carry them into the clouds. An old-marketing approach to spreading the word will not work in today’s social sphere, but you’ll still see it - blogs that read like press releases and TV commercials posted to youtube without tags of any type.

Successful Social Marketing can give protection against economic downturns. But it’s not easy - and it requires a change in the way you think about customers, communications, and the very core of your business model. With a constant application of authentic, easy-to-spread messages, you encourage distribution of the message.

You already know if you build it, they won’t come. So, how are you going to get people to join in your social media effort? What is the best way to identify key blogosphere influencers that might already have access to your market(s)? In which communities/listservs will you place ‘moles’? Once you identify them, how will you engage them to make your destination attractive to them? How will you increase the ’shareability’ of your blog/podcast? - Lena Wes

For one thing, authentic messages go further down the customer’s consideration cycle than average marketing messages. Especially if they have an anchor - such as a specific example close to home or a highly visual image that sticks. This makes it easier to re-tell the story to others, without worrying that you’re inadvertently feeding bullshit. If your customers join the conversation, they can spread the message for you - the most economical and effective marketing method available.

Those applying social marketing methods need to know about the people whose behavior to change as well as their relevant beliefs, behaviors and attitudes in context of social and cultural factors influencing behaviors. By knowing this first, the marketing message can be designed to spread naturally, and inexpensively, between marketing mavens.

People distrust old-school marketing messages - and they’re trusting them less all the time. So while you may feel as if you’re “putting the word out there” - people may not be buying it. If you can’t afford to put the word out there in an authentic way, you can’t afford to do business today. You’re wasting your marketing dollars pushing messages that do not work.

Lastly, those who take the time to integrate social media with market segmentation techniques can have a multiplier effect on the post-click element of this process the same way raising another mast of sails does to a ship.

photo: Pedro Simões