With 2011 drawing to a close and 2012 just around the corner, businesses may be a little worried about what the New Year holds for them. Indeed, many are predicting that 2012 will be a difficult year. Due to the ongoing economic crisis in Europe and ongoing worries about a double-dip recession, it should be obvious that these worries are well-founded. However, with a little preparation and understanding of successful business and marketing strategies, you will weather 2012 like a champ, and you may even flourish a little.

So what can I do?

The first thing to remember is to not, under any circumstances, freak out about these predictions. This may lead to a decrease in spending and fewer new hires, which will play right into these naysayers’ diabolical plans. Indeed, a recently released report by a group of University of Massachusetts economists suggests the current unemployment crisis could be solved if America’s largest banks and non-financial companies would cough up some of the $3.6 trillion in cash that they have been hoarding over the last few years.

“There is no reason that the US needs to remain stuck in a long-term unemployment crisis, Robert Pollin, lead author of the report and co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute, said in a statement. “Getting the banks and corporations to move their hoards into productive investments and job creation requires carrots and sticks—policies such as a new round of government spending stimulus as well as taxes on the banks’ excess reserves—that can both strengthen overall market demand and unlock credit markets for small businesses.”

Okay, what next?

After you are able to breathe a sigh of relief and stop worrying about things over which you have no control, it’s time to focus on the things that you do have control over, in order to strengthen your company and ensure that your year is productive and profitable.

Like it or not, the Internet is here to stay. The stats from this past Cyber Monday only serve to prove that this medium is not only highly effective for marketing, but that it can literally make the difference between a successful year and one that is not-so-successful. Learn to use every aspect of the Internet, in order to gain a toehold in the virtual marketplace.

And how exactly do I go about doing that?

Here are five places on the Internet where you should focus your attention in order to have a stellar 2012.

1. Social media sites, which were originally dismissed as being a frivolous waste of time, have really helped small businesses. Not only do they offer consumers a way of spreading the word about your business in a new-fangled word-of-mouth manner, but some sites like Facebook now offer advertising. If you were going to plan a weekend trip to the Windy City and were looking at Chicago hotels and events for your itinerary, would you choose one that you had never heard of, or go with the one that your Great Aunt Rhoda raved about on her Twitter account? You get my point.
2. Blogs are important, whether they are your own or someone else’s. By starting your own blog, you give consumers an insight into your business, and also open the floor for discussion and/or constructive criticism about what’s working and what’s not. By reading others’ blogs—particularly “mommy blogs” and those sites geared toward consumers—you are able to hear what consumers are saying, in their own words, and can strategize accordingly.
3. Google is more than just a way to pass the time or find directions to the theatre. By using white hat SEO tactics, you can increase your site’s visibility and brand recognition; this is done by raising you in the search results, which equates to more revenue for your company. The key is to learn everything there is to know about white-hat SEO and Google’s various algorithmic updates, in order to avoid angering the Google gods (hint: think relevant, quality content over spammy junk).
4. As I previously mentioned, Google and Facebook now offer advertising that is affordable and far more efficient than traditional advertising methods. In addition, email marketing is the new way of targeting consumers that doesn’t involve wasted paper, expensive postage, and annoyed consumers. Each of these methods is better able to target the specific demographic that you desire than previous methods.

Learn everything you can about web design and HTML code. This way, you can create an aesthetically-pleasing, intuitive site that will lure customers in and keep them there. There are multiple guides on the Internet for doing this, or you can hire a professional. Whatever your choice, be sure that your site is always at its best.

A freelance illustrator Beatriz Torres, best known as Zirta has drawn the ongoing competition between Google+ and FaceBook in a funny way.

I think the most ironic part of the illustration is MySpace Founder Tom Anderson’s advice for Mark Zuckerberg to sell FaceBook before it’s too late. Tom Anderson actually  shared this comic and his thoughts about  the question of “when to sell” on his Google+ account :)

Social Media has completely changed how we as a culture communicate and interact with one another.  Myspace, Facebook, and YouTube allowed anyone to create a website that is all about themselves and their ideas.   These social media outlets allow us to express our selves in a completely different way than what we ever could before.  But, there is a darker side to social media and companies tracking our behaviors.  Like all forms of technology, social media is constantly changing and coming up with new ways for people to express them selves.

• Interactive broad casts: Ustream is the new YouTube, by allowing people to stream live video of events online.  Even politicians are using Ustream to allow a larger population of voters to speak out and ask questions.  This allowed the political candidates to answer the questions in a timely manner.  More and more people are watching internet broadcasting and this trend is not going away anytime soon.
• Review Sites:  Sites such as angie’s list are taking on a strong presence in the social media landscape.  Consumers not only want to know about products before they buy, they also want their opinions, on the product, to be heard after the purchase.  These websites are forcing companies to respond to both the positive and negative reviews.  All it takes is for one person to write a negative review to spark others who have had similar experiences to jump on the band wagon.  Review sites such as Angie’s List definitely make it a buyers’ market; which is beneficial to those looking.
• Location check in:  So you go to your favorite lunch spot on Wednesday and you want all of your friends to know about it.  Instead of just updating your status on Facebook you can now utilize Facebook places or foursquare.  This allows you to check in to places you go throughout the day on your smart phone.  The apps award points and sometimes the stores you check into award you coupons or discounts on your next purchase.  This is great advertising for the companies because when people check into a location it prompts their friends to come to that location too.  It also allows users to interact with their environment by using their mobile devices.

With all of these new and growing social media trends it crazy to think about all of the information about us is known by companies.  But by someone taking part in these different medias they are giving companies permission to use the information.  Use these services for their advantages, but be aware of all the stipulations.

This guest post was contributed by Joseph Baker.

Joseph Baker’s business experience in management spans more than 15 years. A leader of development and management teams, he also implemented budget reductions professionally and as an independent contractor. Joseph led strategic planning and systems of implementation for nine organizations, public and private, and worked extensively with small businesses.

He holds a Bachelor of Science in Marketing from Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business, and an MBA from Kellogg School of Management.

Refers to the late 1990s during which countless Internet companies were riding an enormous wave of enthusiasm that pushed their stock valuations into the stratosphere even though they never made a penny. Billions in venture capital were given to entrepreneurs with little or no experience to fund ideas that were ludicrous. It was a crazy time, and people were very excited. With all of the nonsense, many dot-coms did survive, and countless concepts and techniques were developed that continue today.

In these days, professionals from tech and media industries repeat all together that social media companies are over-valuıed and we are “in the middle of a social media bubble”. Some experts think that these social networking sites will never figure out a workable business model because there may not be one.

Mashable shared this Infographic prepared by social media site G+ about top-valuations of  social media sites.

People have many alternatives to sign in around the web. Users have existing online IDs and they don’t want any more accounts to sign-in. Internet developers need to determine which providers to let their users how to login.

The Infographic below from Gigya shows what online people are using the most to sign in around the web. Here are some statistics from the research.

• Across All Sites: 46% of people prefer FaceBook, 17% Google and 14% Twitter…
• Entertainment Sites: 52% percent prefer FaceBook to sign-in entertainment sites, 15% Twitter and 14% MySpace…
• News Sites: Twitter is preferred 45% to sign-in News Sites, 25% FaceBook and 16% Google…
• B2B Sites: 37% FaceBook, 19%Google and 18% Yahoo…

These statistics show us FaceBook is above all other alternatives to sign in online. I think this Infographic will be very helpful for developers to decide which online IDs are most important for their websites.
Which online ID do you use the most?

What can happen in one day? If you are talking social media, the answer is a lot. DBA Worldwide has made a cool video for the impressive stats of social media. For example 700,000 new users register on FaceBook every day…

A Day in the Life of Social Media from DBA Worldwide on Vimeo.

While news from Iran streams to the world, Clay Shirky shows how Facebook, Twitter and TXTs help citizens in repressive regimes to report on real news, bypassing censors (however briefly). The end of top-down control of news is changing the nature of politics. Shirky, a prescient voice on the Internet’s effects, argues that emerging technologies enabling loose collaboration will change the way our society works.

In this Ted Talk which took place at took place at the U.S. Department of State, Clay Shirky tells the effects of Social Media on our livings.

Celebrated yearly on 5 June, World Environment Day (WED) is one of the principal vehicles through which the United Nations stimulates worldwide awareness of the environment and enhances political attention and action. WED was firstly established by the UN General Assembly in 1972 to mark the opening of the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment.The theme for 2009 is climate change and the broader consequences of environmental change, and what societies can do in response.

Combating climate change and preserving ecosystems services that underpin our economies is an issue for everyone. Every individual’s efforts, no matter how small, can contribute to the sustainable development of our economies and communities around the world.

On this day, individuals, non-governmental organizations, community and youth groups, business, industry and the media organize activities to renew their commitments to protect and develop the environment. They organize activities such as clean-up campaigns, tree planting, colourful street rallies, green concerts, essay and photo competitions in schools, and recycling efforts.

Internet has an important effect for the announcement of these types of activities. Especially; as social networking platforms get more popular, we see different examples of “How Social Networking Can Change The World” . Individuals, communities and organizations use social networking as a fast and reliable tool to reach targeted people. The community-driven web can really make a difference.

There are easy ways of using social media to try to change the world for a good cause. One of them is publishing a  blog post on a universal topic, as i do. One another way is tweeting with a purpose. An example for tweeting with a purpose is United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP) “Twitter for trees” campaign. UNEP has a platform called “UNEP and You” – an on-going social networking platform for environmental activism. UNEP has pledged to plant 100,000 trees for 100,000 followers– or one for every follower if we can achieve more than 100,000– by World Environment Day, 5 June. This effort supports the UNEP – Billion Tree Campaign’s goal to plant a total of seven billion trees- 1 for every person on the planet- by year’s end.Add your voice and tweet loudly www.twitter.com/UNEPandYou to help the environment!

We’ve seen how social media is good for business. It helps build a brand, drives traffic and awareness and builds out communities.But, what we’ve also seen is social media bringing together people to lend their time to important causes on a global level. By using the sites we live on every day-why not use all of these friends and followers to do something good? With the help from online communities this process can become even easier, and the results can be nearly instantaneous.

Power.com is a new and 100% free platform that integrates social sites and provides a single interface to communicate, to browse, add a status message to all and reach content over these sites. Power.com is compatible with the following social sites: Orkut, MySpace, Hi5, Facebook, YouTube, Flogão and VoteMe. Power.com is founded in Brasil and Orkut, Google’s Social Network which is very popular in Brasil; so 5 million users have signed up Power.com since August and most of them is from Brasil and use their Orkut account.

On the Internet, there are many Web 2.0 services which we use on the Internet with the same purposes and it’s getting harder to control all of them at the same time. Web 3.0 will be about integrating similar Web 2.0 services and Power.com is a good piece. I think, Power.com is one of the first Web 2.5 services on the way of Web 3.0 and adding Facebook Connect and OpenID support can make Power.com more powerful.

Niche marketing on Internet is one of the fastest growing industries. Firstly, let’s define the main issues.

When used in business, the term “Niche” is used to describe fresh, virgin and profitable. A niche market is a focused targetable segment of a market.  A business which focuses on a niche market  adresses a demand for a product or a service which is not met by any supply. Niche markets don’t exist themselves everytime. In some situations, you must create your niche markets by identifying demands (needs and wishes of your customers) which are not met by your competitors.

Niche Marketing

Niche marketing is the process of finding and serving profitable niche market segments. Niche marketing means less competition but much more effort than traditional marketing. The hardest part of niche marketing is finding customers. The easiest medium for niche marketing is the Internet, because of its capabilitiesfor reaching customers easily.

A niche market means special customers with specific desires and much more challenge for you to sell your specific products or services. Reaching these customers is so hard, but the most efficient marketing medium to use is the Internet. Niche marketers need to know how to use and apply the Internet’s advantages.

Five Key Steps To Succesfully Niche Marketing On The Internet

1. A Niche Business Idea: The first step of finding a niche market is having an innovative and profitable unique business idea focusing on market segment with less or no competition. A niche market can only be built on an innovative, unique business idea. A niche business idea must align with Maslow’s highest need levels of your customers. (If you know nothing about Maslow, please learn Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.) There are lots of ways for having goog business ideas and one of them is to use an idea journal to protect your creative ideas. Divergent thinking and critizing traditional markets will help you to find a niche market idea.
2. Most Detailed Market Research: The second step is as important as the first step. Before blindly investing in a business idea, you must be sure that you don’t have any competitors. This means, if anyone has diffused into your target market before you; that market has become ‘not-niche’ . You need a market research to know how many customers you can have. There are lots of ways to learn market size. If you can, then hire a good market research company but if you can’t, then social networks are the best tool to research potential of a niche market. For example, if your audience is business people; business social networks like LinkedIn and Xing are the best places to look for. Also, hobby sites and special forums and even Google will help you. Internet provides more ability to target than traditional media. Product or service creation becomes easier since you will know which people are potential customers for you.
3. Financial Research:If you want to earn money, you must have a good financial research before you start your niche business. Theoretically, niche businesses bring high margin of profit to their owners. But if you don’t have an income model then it means you don’t know how to make money from this niche market. You must know how much your audience is ready to pay for your niche service or product. Because over estimation will be a reason for high spendings and at last undesirable bankruptcy.
   The total Investment required for your business must be calculated, too. If you don’t have enough capital to start your business, this means you need somebody else’s money. VC’s or angel investors are the best candidates for investing on your business. Banks are another option but in this economic situation, it’s so hard to get a loan. On the Internet, you can reach VC’s and angel investors and submit your ideas to them very easily. But before searching for an investor, you must have a business plan. An effective business plan is a powerful tool for you to use as an effective selling document. A business plan may be used to seekfunding.
4. Internet Marketing:A nieche marketers first task is to communicate the key messages to the audience. The web has very broad reach capability and has passed the the other mediums’ reach level. Internet gives more ability to target the customers. Profiling and segmenting customers is easier than the traditional mediums like television. For example you have an advertisement campaign and target people living in big cities like NY. You can only estimate how many people has watched your advertisements and come to you to buy your services or products. But Internet advertisement can show you who clicks your ads and come to your website to buy your services or products. Internet marketing activities are all easily measurable and you can see the reactions immediately.One of the most important tricks for the Internet marketing is making your customers feel themselves as a member of a invaluable community. This is so hard because state of belonging comes from hearth; this is so easy because you have an efficient tool named ‘Social Networking’ .Interactivity is another advantage of Internet marketing.The increasing ease of use makes the Internet the most interactive marketing media. Consumers want and like to comment on your products or services; and if you response their wishes quickly then you’ll become a lovemark.

   Hire a social media agency to reach the website audience you want with relevant targeted ads.

5. Innovation is The King: It’s absolutely true that innovation is the king in the niche marketing world. Initially, you must have an innovative – niche idea. But innovation becomes more important if you succeed starting and running a niche market – business. The competition will come to you at the speed of light. There will be many competitors which want to take your market.; even the super niche markets face competition. The key action to protect your business is living with innovation. You must improve your services or products frequently by product/service innovations; so before they copy your idea you must serve new features to your customers.Another type of  innovation is user experience innovation. Usability of your products or services,;how the consumers feel when using your products or services,  how they can reach you when a problem occurs,  your CRM capabilities and some other touchpoints are as important as your products or services. We must control the level of the user experience and we must be sure it’s high-level. Every niche business must cycle through these five steps to survive.

Abstractly, every marketing medium has different applicability and power , and the  positives of Internet as a marketing medium far outweigh negatives. With an innovative – niche business idea and  a well defined customer base you can succeed at  Niche Marketing on the Internet.

I think, niche marketing on the Internet will be the future of the marketing and  believe that marketing will be reduced to  individual-level…

* This article is a draft and will be improved.  Your comments are especially welcome.

As social networks take more time in our lives, we’re starting to feel The Internet’s physical impacts on our daily lives. Today, the gap between the living standarts of  developed countries and undeveloped countries, continues to widen. Social networking hepls us to know about the undeveloped countries more than past. Some smart people use social bookmarking as a tool to reach the whole world to tell what people living in undeveloped countries need.

Nowadays, twitter is a very popular for social networking and also popular for social responsibility projects. This is called “Twitting For Charity”.  Twitter co-founder Biz STONE has talked about this new way for charity in his September newsletter.

First example is Mashable ‘s “The Well That Twitter Built” project. Mashable ‘s founder and CEO Pete CASHMORE told his followers about Charity:Water, an initiative to build wells in Ethiopia.

“On September 18th 2008, Mashable’s Twitter followers donated $3536 to Charity:Water, an initiative to build wells in Ethiopia. On the same day, our Twitter friend Paul Young raised a further $637 through his Twitter and Facebook accounts. And Twitter user Sarah Townsend hauled in $400 – that’s more than $4500, almost exclusively from Twitter, in a single day. With $4000 buying an entire well to supply water to 200 people for 20 years, we can truly call this the “well that Twitter built”.” says Pete CASHMORE…
The second example is Dr. Mani Sivasubramanian, a heart surgeon using his Internet marketing business to fund heart surgery for under-privileged children having “Congenital Heart Defects” in India. In August-September every year, Dr. Mani Sivasubramanian holds a 24-hour day and night blogging marathon called Tweet-a-thon Dr. Mani has founded Children Heart Foundation which hepls children to get heart surgeon. In India, a heart surgeon is not as expensive as in US. Each operation costs between 2500 – 3000 $. He’s seeking donations and making conributions from his growing Internet business.

2500 children die every day from congenital heart defects. 1 in 4 of them lives in India. With early detection and treatment, almost all of them will be completely cured.

These two examples show us the power of The Internet via Social Networking to change the world we live. Social responsiblity must be one of the results of an adequate social network. We must thank Pete CASHMORE and Dr. Mani Sivasubramanian for showing us the way to use a social network as a tool to change the world and make better.

This post is about the power of social networking (virtual communities) to change the world and dedicated to Blog Action Day .