With how fast the Internet and digital marketing are evolving, it can sometimes be difficult for traditional marketing education to keep up, as shown on this site that lists common marketing degree programs that are still organized around traditional marketing themes. For the best information on how to succeed in digital marketing, often the best place to learn is on the internet itself or from experts who are actively involved online.

I did a quick Q&A with author and marketing pro Aaron Goldman after the Pivot Guild launch event held on Sept 22, 2011 at Boulder Digital Arts. Get Aaron’s take on the most important thing a business owner can do to be successful with digital marketing strategy.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Add This, the social sharing widget, recently released the trends in social sharing they documented for 2010. It’s not surprising that Google had more growth than Facebook, but did you expect Stumble Upon to have more growth than Facebook?

The statistic worth noting is that Email is 38% bigger than Twitter.  This doesn’t make Twitter ineffective.  In fact, Twitter click through rates kill Facebook and Email.  If you want people to click on a link Twitter is the place to place those links.

What the Add This statistic on email should tell business owners is that email should not be overlooked.  As social media has risen in prominence and stature in the word of mouth marketing world, email has been prematurely ignored or abandoned by many companies.

The simple truth is that email still builds relationships when consistent communication is sent to people who opt-in to read messages from your company.  The open rates on email campaigns can run run as high as 36% where direct snail mail campaigns average a .05% – 2% open rate.  Remember that most snail mail marketing is unsolicited and unwanted whereas email is requested by people who want to receive offers and information from your company.

In summary, don’t put all of your eggs in one basket.  Just as you need to use the best in offline and online marketing to support your word of mouth efforts, you need to use a mix of the best online tools to extend your reach and build your business.  Three tips you can takeaway from this article are:

1. Twitter is where your links will receive the highest click through rates so connect to your friends and followers with URLs on Twitter
2. Facebook is where people share the most and where you should engage your customers
3. Email will get you the most referrals so communicate weekly with your customers

This post was originally published at Oxstein Labs.

Yesterday the Federal Trade Commission took the first steps towards creating a Do Not Track feature to allow internet users to opt-out of having companies obtain data on their online surfing habits. This mechanism is being designed in the spirit of the Do Not Call registry that regulates the activities of telemarketers.

On the surface this sounds great. You would be hard pressed to find anyone, besides a telemarketer, who preferred life before the Do Not Call list eliminated those annoying sales calls that interrupted your dinner. But online advertising and telemarketing are very different animals, so let’s look a little deeper into what the reality of a Do Not Track bill would look like.

In theory implementing a Do Not track mechanism will allow consumers to have more control over their personal information that is shared online. Internet privacy has been a hot topic for awhile now, so it’s easy to have a knee-jerk reaction to supporting anything that will protect online privacy. The more prudent way to analyze the implications of a Do Not Track bill is to look at what it will actually accomplish.

Eliminating or decreasing the frequency of internet users receiving targeted advertising while they surf websites is the result that the Do Not Track bill. Building individual profiles of how we search, surf and interact online for the use of targeted advertising, based on behavioral targeting and contextual advertising, is assumed to be a problem that needs solving. …but is it?

Common wisdom tells us that people hate advertising. Is this true, or is this is a myth when it is thrown out as a blanket statement?

People don’t hate advertising; they hate advertising for stuff they don’t want.

People love advertising that tells them about a new cool product they will use. We are psychologically wired to connect with other people and seek their validation. Therefore we love to be the first one to tell our friends about something that we think is cool, and that we think they will think is cool.

Click here to view the embedded video.

With this in mind, why wouldn’t you want to see targeted advertising when you’re online? You’re going to see advertising anyway, so what’s bad about it being for products and services that are aligned with your historical online profile of interests?

Why should anyone be afraid of marketers using this data to offer you more things that you want? This isn’t the same as someone using your private information for identity theft. This is a way for you to find out about things you’ll probably be interested in rather than finding out about things you don’t care about.

The word ‘privacy’ is a trigger word. No one wants to give up their privacy. If the Do Not Track bill goes into effect you can choose to keep a little bit of your privacy in exchange for continuing to receive nonspecific advertising instead of targeted advertising online.

Either way, this issue is not anywhere near the problem it’s made out to be and your life as an American consumer will continue on. You just may have to wait longer to discover cool new products and be stuck with seeing diaper advertisements when you don’t have any toddlers or ads for singles websites even though you’ve been married for 10 years.

This article was originally posted in the Huffington Post.

This article originally ran at Oxstein Labs.

Geo-location or Location Based Services (LBS) are getting more press all the time.  In the same way we have heard for a few years that mobile computing would be the next huge thing, we are now hearing about Foursquare, Gowalla, Wrrrl, Loopt and Brightkite.

On a side note, only 42% of Americans currently use smart phones.  This doesn’t mean that mobile computing won’t eventually be predominant, but that people usually overestimate how quickly adoption rates of new technology will reach a mainstream tipping point.

We are at the tail end of the early adopter phase for location based services.  When the rumored Facebook location based service rolls out to compete with Foursquare it will be a whole new ball game.

Our favorite LBS apps were just served a slap of reality by Forrester Research, who discovered that only 4% of online users in the US report using a location-based application on their cell phones. The takeaway from the report is that marketers should wait for the LBS market to mature before integrating them into their campaigns.

As a blanket statement that makes obvious sense.  But when you review successful campaigns that have already run, and account for the impact that different local and regional markets can have from LBS marketing, it’s another story; and both stories are true and include many nuances.

There is no form of marketing that gets the same results across most or all industries and locations.  Marketing is an art blended with some science.  In the case of location-based services, tech savvy cities like Palo Alto, San Francisco, Boulder, New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland and Chicago are going to have much more success than markets that are traditionally slower to adopt using new technologies.

Starbucks recent partnership with Foursquare is an example of how mixed results can be.  Tech savvy Foursquare lovers ran into not-so-tech-savvy food servers and managers who weren’t properly informed of the campaign and had to be educated by their customers instead of by corporate headquarters. Though this is awkward, it is part of the growing pains as we all figure out how to market through location-based services in ways that excite customers and allow the brands to have fun while they drive some good word of mouth.

So are location-based services ready from prime time?  When you don’t research whether your customers are participating in “check-ins” through Foursquare or posting LBS pictures through Pegshot, no way.  When your research and brand strategy mixes correctly with the local markets you are trying to serve, and when you realize that the growing percentages of location-based service users are trend setting influencers, definitely.

In conclusion, if you are new to the geolocation and location-based services conversation, I highly recommend reading Rob Reed‘s guest post at SocialWayne.com on 10 Ways Geolocation is Changing the World.