I have to tell you about a book I purchased last week and wish I had purchased it sooner, “The Social Media Bible” by Lon Safko and David K. Brake. I only paid $12 for it on Amazon and it is packed with 821 pages of everything you never knew about social media including Tactics, Tools and Strategies. It even has interviews with the most successful Web site entrepreneurs on the Net. If a subject on social media is not included, I don’t know what it would be. 

One success story that was particularly interesting in the book  (although all the stories are I am sure) was the story about Arnold Kim, a blog publisher. His Web site www.MacRumors.com is one of the most popular sites on the Web, with 4.4 million viewers a month. Now, that is huge! It is estimated that his site is worth about $25 million, but he isn’t selling, at least not now. Kim was a medical physician who left his practice (making six figures) to still making six figures from advertising sales, banner ads and sales commissions from products on his blog. This is every blogger’s dream!

So, one of these days although I love my job, I would like to retire from the rat race and sleep until 8 or 9 a.m. Now, I am thinking about how to make a blog profitable. I have a method. As a creative person, I find that I am most successful doing what I love. I love to write. That’s a start! Now to just find out what to write that people will read. Mmmmm! A little more difficult! But, I think I will do what I am always telling my grandchildren. Find your passion and do that! Success will come… Until we meet again! Look for me on the Net.

When the little girl who was lost in the Everglades in Florida mentioned Silly Bandz on Good Morning America, kids went crazy for the colorful thin silicone bands that were never advertised – but created the hottest viral buzz through the social media to date. For only $3 for a pack of 12, kids started buying them like hotcakes, texting their friends when they find them in a store, put it on their Facebook pages, and the viral buzz is spreading across the country. 

Of course, other brands started getting involved, Forever Collectibles are marketing Logo Bandz and licensing sports leagues and entertainment properties. A store can sell about 1,000 packs an hour and it is all word of mouth. The company is making them for the National Football League, the National Hockey League and the National Basketball Association plus about 200 colleges and universities. Disney, Marvel Comics, DC Comics and Warner Bros. are looking at the licensed bands. The CEO Michael Lewis said they are selling 500,000 licensed packs of bands daily. Pretty soon, they will be in all the major retailers, K-Mart, Wal-Mart, Target and CVS. 

Problems? Some schools have banned them because the kids get too distracted trading them in class. 

How long does a fad last? Years ago before the social media scene and the new way of marketing on the Internet, fads were introduced through traditional sources, newspapers, magazines, television and radio. According to the experts, fads go through cycles. They enter the market fast, consumers become obsessed, millions are sold in a short time and then sales decline fast. The first stage of the cycle is the product development stage, next the introduction, then growth, maturity and then the declining stage takes place.

So, if you come up with a crazy idea, like the pet rock or the Hula Hoop or Silly Bandz, don’t give up. It could be worth millions.

Why didn’t I think of that?

How interesting! So, I decided to try it on my Facebook page just to see how this thing works. First, I had to find out my Facebook URL which I do not happen to have memorized. I can barely remember the URL of my blog. Since I don’t go into Facebook that much, I always enter through my e-mail. Yep, my e-mail. There is always something from someone on Facebook in my e-mail so about once a week or so, I will go and check it out. You might say I’m a lazy Facebooker!

Well, it isn’t as easy at all that! First, it won’t tell you as an individual what your Facebook page is worth – it only analyzes the worth of a commercial Facebook page. Duh! I should have known that.

So, I decided to put in my university’s Web page to see what it is worth. We haven’t had it very long but it does have 2,629 fans. The evaluator is nearly six pages long and has a graph with the potential value also. It includes the post frequency, a page value chart and page value history. It even gives you an option to compare values of brand pages on Facebook with up to three other brands. Pretty nifty!

In collaboration with McDonald’s, Facebook users will be able to check-in at restaurants and share the menu with friends. It seems pretty simple at first, but the implications are huge! Now, for instance, a restaurant or store could conceivably offer a special promotion to consumers who come into the store and share their location with friends. There won’t be any need for traditional advertising. With 450 million users and 1 million added every day, Facebook extends itself into a new marketplace. McDonald’s will be the first to market with the new location-based system. 

Facebook is keeping quiet right now on this one but they did say they have been working on a location feature. Since Facebook announced its Open Graph feature that adds social connections to third-party sites so that users’ friends can see activities, some people have complained that it should have been and opt-in feature.

It may be a huge benefit for retail stores and restaurants but I am not so sure I want my location known to the world. As one social media agency CEO cautions, look at www.PleaseRobMe.com and think about it before posting your location.

After Facebook launched the Open Graph, New York Sen. Charles Schumer asked the FTC to create guidelines on how people’s information can be used on Facebook.

I haven’t really noticed yet how the Facebook Open Graph has affected me or if it has! Maybe it has but I haven’t noticed.

There won’t be any ads in the application and the app is a free download at the Apple iTunes store. After completing some of the levels, gamers can watch clips of the movie or check out photos from the film. 

Dallas-based Blockdot launched the iPhone game and Universal wanted a game that could stand on its own as a fun and engaging experience with branding as secondary. 

So, is it a game or an advergame? Does it really matter? There’s a app for that! 

If you think about it, most of the games on the Internet are sponsored by a company or designed for a company. Does that make them all advergames? 

According to a study by Pyramid Research, wireless subscribers are growing at a rate of 16.6 percent and by 2014, they predict that the mobile gaming market will reach $18 billion. A lot of the growth is in developing countries and some of the most promising markets are Brazil, China, India, Mexico, Nigeria, Poland, Russia and South Africa.

One reason for this is the fall in prices for handsets and not having PC’s and gaming consoles easily available in many countries. So, I hope that in the next couple of months the prices for the iPhone drop significantly because I will be in the market for one as soon as my contract is up with my old phone.

Of the 100 largest companies in the Fortune 500 list, 79 percent of them use Twitter, Facebook, YouTube or blogs to communicate with customers with 54 percent of those on Facebook.

It sure feels like we are worth a lot more than $3.60.

In April, Facebook announced a plan to spread its online social network to other Websites with “social plug-ins” and four senators said that Facebook needs to make it easier for subscribers to protect their privacy. The plug-ins will make it easier for Facebook users to share information on other Websites. And it all depends on the user’s privacy settings as to how much information might be seen by other people.

Bottom line: Information that you had not communicated could be broadcast to your friends and family on Facebook. Mmmm! Not so sure about that! If I share some information on one of the plug-in sites, then every one of my Facebook “friends” will also see the information. Even the Federal Trade Commission is checking in on this one! 

It is still up in the air but the first Websites to use the plug-in will be Pandora, Microsoft Corp.’s Docs.com and Yelp, the business review service.

Pretty soon, we will all have to acknowledge that whatever we do or say on the Web is transparent. Can you imagine that? A planet of transparency!

I need to put all the suggestions and warnings into some kind of order so I won’t make the mistakes that drive people away. I have discovered a prevalent message in all the articles I have read on using Twitter, listen, learn, engage and integrate. I have developed a Top 10 list of some of the best ways to get the most out of Twitter with those four things in mind:

1. Follow people who share interests in common with your business. Many times they will follow you back.
2. Begin by giving. Give people something interesting to see on the Internet that goes along with your common interests.
3. Continue to follow new people. When you make a new Twitter friends and enjoy their tweets, consider following their friends.
4. Customize your Twitter page with an interesting background.
5. Listen to what people are saying.
6. Provide twitter specials and sneak previews. Share picture previews with your twitter followers that show items you are developing and that will go on sale shortly by using http://twitpic.com
7. Vary your tweets. Be careful not to act spammy. Be friendly, fun and share interesting information.
8. Don’t be a show off, use poor grammar or be too personal.
9. Don’t overtweet and be sure to thank people for their tips and promotions.
10. Build relationships and build trusts.

The big agencies are so accustomed to working with mid to high six-figure accounts to do just one small TV spot or print ad, they have avoided the small-budget advertising using social media.

What role will ad agencies play in the future? According to Forrester Research, successful agencies in the future will build campaigns plus platforms, not messages;  think about a community of participants instead of thinking about audience; integrate in new ways, such as co-creation and crowdsourcing; and master new technologies quickly.

Marketers will look for three things from an agency

• Ideas: this does not mean messages or ads.
• Interaction:  engagement, connection, community, media.
• Intelligence: need to collect, report, analyze and predict.

It is a new world and the people have spoken. More and more consumers are using social media and according to Forrester, consumers trust consumers more than brands with consumers as the creator, sharer and distributor.

So, the agency in the future is looking much different from the agency of today. Several changes need to take place including integrating marketing communications and creating a new mix for clients, offering more innovative services using social media and technology efficiently.

I can’t guess how long it will take agencies to get on the bandwagon, but if they don’t, they won’t even be able to pay the fiddler.

Here are a two ways to Tweet:

• # (Name) – your Tweet will go to (name) and all the people following them.
• d (Persons Name) – Your Tweet goes to the person in a direct message.

Have you noticed that instead of “Fan” at the top of a page, the word is “Like?” Times are a’changin’ … When I can get all my notes together, I will add more resources here from time to time. It may take a while to absorb it all and to practice Tweeting using all the new features.

Go to the KipCamp Facebook page for a lot of the resources at the Extended Info page. Some really great resources are listed there.

If you have accounts on both Facebook and Twitter, you can actually edit both pages at the same time by migrating to Tweet Deck (www.tweetdeck.com).

We were also introduced to the Flip Camcorder and I have videod different things and hope to use some of the resources to produce my first video. This little tiny camera is just a little bigger than a pack of the long cigarettes and can fit in your pocket. Technology is getting smaller and smaller while the capacity is getting much, much larger. The quality is pretty good on these little cameras too.

There are so many Web sites to use for resources and two we were introduced to for videos (www.splashup.com  for video editing and www.incompetech.com for free music). This is going to be fun!

Here is a screen shot of the banner ad on the Guardian.

 When you click on the banner, a full screen view of the new model shows up and the consumer can browse the car details. The consumer can schedule a test drive directly from the handset. 

Another hot ticket is the use of coupons in mobile marketing. A&P, the grocery-store chain, and Zavers, a digital promotions and information management company, are joining together for an Earth Day promotion through mobile marketing – the environmentally friendly promo to save money. Paperless coupons can be redeemed with a loyalty card of just by using their mobile phone. Mobile coupons have been growing in strength with more and more being redeemed and because it is a “green” campaign, it is a natural fit. When a consumer “clicks and saves” the coupons, it automatically downloads to their loyalty card account and the savings can be used right away just by having the clerk scan the card! 

AAMCO, the car care company is also offering mobile coupons with a new version of its iGaauge mobile application for Google’s Android phone users. The company had already offered the iGaauge for the iPhone and iPod Touch last year. Users can use diagnostic tools and maintenance information at just a touch and receive mobile coupons with any of the versions.

How do these retailers let the consumer know about all their mobile marketing and coupon deals? Through old-fashioned advertising in print ads, TV and in-store posters. Mmmm!