If you’re late on the bandwagon for Web 2.0 - and it seems that you’re not alone - and you plan on running your business online into the future, now is the time to crack down and fully understand the pulse of the internet.

Don’t worry if you are late to listen to the message. It seems hundreds of internet marketing trainers are just jumping in now as well - a full year since I published Stampede 2.0. And sadly, one of my favorite marketing authors is still taking the stance that Web 2.0 doesn’t exist. I do hope he’ll come around soon before his business slips into red.

If you don’t believe me (and the words I’ve been writing to you since last January), then who would you believe?

Would you listen to Bill Gates?

After all, so much of how we run our businesses, so much of what we’ve accomplished online for the last 10 years can be attributed back to Bill. There’s absolutely no denying today that the web is big, is here, is integrated into our lives - just as Bill predicted.

• comScore reported that $22 billion has been spent online during the first 44 days of the Holiday season (November 1-December 14)
• Online spending for the year (2007) is project to be over $200 billion. An increase of 20%+- every year, for the last 4 years.

Not just commerce and business. The net also has a hold on our youth.

• Future Laboratory reports that 18-24 year-olds would rather spend 15 minutes visiting social networking sites than watching the idiot box, or playing video games, or talking on their cells.

So back to big Bill.

If you’d seen the future as he saw it 12 years ago you’d be a rich man or woman today.

Perhaps as rich as Bill himself.

Who, by the way, is only months away from retirement.

Follow a leader. Heed a visionary’s words and advice.

In Bill’s January speech he shared his vision for the future, stating that advances in connectivity, high-definition video and audio will be the top driving forces for the next 10 years.

What does that mean to you if you’re not a tech company? What does that mean to a company with an online presence?

This. Give your user what they’ve come to expect from so many other online properties. No, you don’t have to be the next FaceBook to succeed, but you do need to incorporate Web 2.0 principles and strategies into your marketing.

A lot of people email me asking how to build a Web 2.0 site from the ground up. (Answers vary based on target market, site mandates, etc.)

One area I haven’t had requests for the past year however, are queries on how to build a .mobi site. Even though anyone on their game here would see the huge opportunity based on how fast we’ve come to rely on the world wide web and cell phones - just in the last 5 years!

Take a few minutes out of your day and check out this new service Jagango. Integration into larger networks soon, this is a mobile-internet interface stored on Jagango’s servers. In just a few steps you can create a personal mobile website. Wait till the ‘hip’ crowd gets a hold of this!

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More information on Jagango is available through the press release on PRweb. Don’t forget to check PRweb weekly for news related to your industry. For that matter, be sure to leave your own press releases on PRweb whenever you want to get the word out.

Spent 5 minutes on Sphinn lately?

It’s amazing what you can find, new authors you’ll discover, and marketing or traffic generation techniques you’ll learn.

It’s a great place to spend your morning coffee break to see what the rest of the internet marketing community is buzzing about.

My personal tip to save time on Sphinn (or risk clicking and reading and commenting all day) is to choose one topic in the green navigation bar - Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Search Marketing, Social Media, Online Marketing, Searching, Other - and browse the headlines. You can find me skimming through the Social Media tab from 9:30-10:15 am EST, Monday to Thursday.

Some of the faces you’ll find there are well known in the industry. Others you’ll be thrilled to discover.

Social Marketing on Sphinn

Today I landed on a Courtney Tuttle post and found it informative enough to share here. These are the basics of social marketing - build for your market, strategize your efforts, promote others.

Five Reasons I Used to Suck at Social Media (November 7) - “In the last few months, I’ve gone from getting almost no social traffic to regularly having 3,000+ visitor spikes.”

Good read. Especially helpful if you have been hearing all the hype about Web 2.0 traffic, have tried to generate your own Web 2.0 traffic stream, and aren’t seeing the results everyone else is. Courtney also comes clean about the huge waste of effort most internet marketers expend on getting to the top of Digg. Be sure, as well, to skim the comments left on the post.

I’d suggest subscribing to Courtney’s site as well - the traffic to that blog alone has steadily risen since April 2007 (launch) and is now in the top 25,000 visited sites online (according to Alexa).

A Bit on Sphinn’s Backend

Last year I told you about a Web 2.0, Open Source software, called Pligg. It was great then and it’s still great today. Not that open source programs don’t come with their own set of problems, but the programmers and volunteers behind Pligg are dedicated and hard-working.

Sphinn.com is powered by Pligg (as are a number of very busy and profitable Web 2.0 sites). Launched just 4 months ago, Sphinn’s current Alexa places it in the top 25,000 most visited websites.

If you’ve considered jumping on the bandwagon and having your own Web 2.0 site there’s no time like the present and there’s no better free program and support than Pligg offers (in my opinion anyway).

I have Pligg running on a niche site that I started last year - but did not launch - and loved playing around with it. Pligg has been updated since and is now easier and has more features. (see: Web 2.0 OpenSource).

Step aside from all the hype, excitement and disruption of Google’s OpenSocial project and what you’ll see is a time saving opportunity in the not too distant future.

At a gathering last night I became ‘as excited as Scoble*‘ trying to explain what OpenSocial meant to the online landscape. And yes, my personal show was complete with arms flapping, heightened voice tone, and even forgetting where I was in the point I was trying to get across.

My friends and associates (who are not geeks and many don’t even own a website) listened and watched for 5 minutes as though I had 5 heads.

Sigh.

Thankfully two entrepreneurs in the room ‘got it’ and wanted to talk more about it - making me feel not quite so ‘fringe’ and nerdy.

So let’s talk about what OpenSocial and those Scoble videos mean to you — the online entrepreneur with a well defined target market — and let’s do it in a less sensationalist manner than I displayed last night. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ll write more about these videos tomorrow, but right now I don’t want you to miss it. Primarily because if you aren’t excited about social marketing yet, this Scoblizer vid will change your mind when numbers and concepts start flying.

Secondly because I expect a lightbulb or two to go off mid-video regarding how the social sites are inter-linked and connected and why (and how) you need to capitalize on that to ensure your marketing message is heard, is cohesive, is effective…

This is not ‘their’ starfish! This is ‘your’ starfish. (Click play, watch to the end and see what I mean.)

To save you hunting to find video 2, here it is… Read the rest of this entry »