Techcrunch reported that Google has secretly invested somewhere between $100 million and $200 million in social gaming behemoth Zynga, this might open a new line of interesting revenues for Google once they enter fully into the social media gaming sector. This investment, together with others they have done, build a solid base for Google Games.

Marketers should be observant. Who knows,  soon there might be a new revenue opportunity, additional to the traditional pay per click Adwords campaigns, marketers might start considering the Google Games offer into their internet marketing strategies.

Did you know that every two days now we create as much information as we did from the dawn of civilization up until 2003? … this according to Eric Schmidt, Google CEO. This incredible growth of information is due to user generated content. This is making internet marketing much more complex as the competition to position a company, a person, a product or a brand related to a certain keyword or keyphrase becomes more intense.

Interesting… read more.

In an interesting report, Mashable has published a note where it says “While the more traditional marketing channels for law firm credentialing continue to dominate … in-house attorneys now are using new media platforms to deepen their professional networks; to obtain their legal, business, and industry news and information; and to enrich their social and personal lives. Most importantly, they expect that trend to accelerate in the future.”

Being a typical consulting services operation, law firms can benefit the most from blogging. Nevertheless, important lawyers do not seem to have the time to write and post for a blog thus avoid  having a blog as part of their strategy. The other reason for not blogging is the structure under which most law firms operate, if a blog is designed to represent a complete firm then all lawyers need to blog so all specialties are covered in the blog and if one or several lawyers do not want to blog or think it is not necessary, then they will most likely not allow other lawyers to blog under the firm brand a build a reputation of their own… a real complex issue. Nevertheless, everyday there are interesting examples of sucessfull bloging from law firms.

The power of social media can be capitalized as a tool for referrals from within an existing legal or business network and should be part of any internet marketing campaign for a law firm. If your are a lawyer or represent a law firm, you should read the complete article at Mashable

Content Syndication

If you have a complete Internet  marketing strategy that considers content development and you have done and Internet competitors analysis, the you know what your market needs and you also kno what your competition is saying (and what they are not saying), the next step is to optimize your content for SEO and distribute it to many social media sites where your content will create conversation. People will find your content on search engines, click through to a social media site and participate in viral/push marketing as they comment and link to your valuable content.

Content that Creates Conversation

Your digital media plan should include creating and publishing remarkable content that builds credibility and improves conversation by being found on social media sites that are indexed in Google’s top 30 search engine results.

Without content, conversation is mere networking. Without conversation, content is dead. It goes nowhere.

When your ideal persona searches for the information they are looking for with regards to your company, its products or services, you will have the opportunity to present your content via various social media channels. This provides them to choose the communication channel they wish to engage with your content.

Using popular social media channels to market your content is the new way of being found online. These channels can include blogs, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Slideshare, Squidoo, Hub Pages and many more. Use your website as the hub of your business and attract visitors from the channels they prefer to use online.

Syndication of Content

Syndicate your content and take advantage of social media sites as they enable you to get to your target market on a “many to many” basis as opposed to a static website which offers a “one to many” interaction.

• Blogging – consider blog development as a marketing tool by publishing educational and relevant information about your products and services. Don’t sell; become a “thought leader” and develop your online credibility. Blogs will consistently attract new visitors and increase the online visibility of your company. Blogs enable easy interaction with your readers and provide a quick way to syndicate your content across the web.
• YouTube – create short videos showing how your products can solve problems that your ideal persona is interested in. Upload videos that provide the answers to your most frequently asked questions. Many people add the word “video” to their search term as they prefer to get a visual and audio view of your content.
• LinkedIn – develop your online network of contacts with professionals in your particular industry. Review questions that are posted and provide answers that address these questions without selling directly. LinkedIn provides you with the ability to network with thousands of subscribers that can interact with you or your company.
• Facebook – create a business profile and encourage your clients to become a fan. That way you can attract and communicate to thousands of fans.
• Twitter – allows thousands of followers to be updated on the Internet or mobile phones withthe messages that you wish to publish.
• Social Media Bookmarking sites such as StumbleUpon, Digg and Reddit make it easy for your valuable content to be quickly spread throughout the web.

Create and publish good content and you will stimulate good conversation and, drive traffic to your site, help position your brand and generate more leads for our company..

People and businesses resist others pushing their marketing efforts onto them. This push marketing is interruptive and the message is not always trusted as it comes from just one point of view. People prefer to find out more about the claims of a company’s’ products and services before they want to engage with a sales person.

A study by Microsoft shows the activities that 90% of people conduct prior to making a purchase. The first activity in compare prices, then find out where to buy online. One important activity is find out where to buy offline. Most of the information gathered is to help make an informed decision.

Push Marketing

Push marketing is when you interrupt your target market hoping to get their attention long enough to create interest in your product or service. We are subjected to this interruptive marketing hundreds of times a day, and many of us subconsciously just ignore these messages.

Pull Marketing

Pull Marketing is when your target market finds your company through valuable content that they were searching for. Normally this content is found via search engines.

Once your content is found, your visitor will evaluate the quality and value of your message and may comment either positively or negatively directly on your site or on a social media platform, such as a forum or a blog. By publishing extraordinary and valuable content you will attract links from other websites that point and refer to you.

Increasing the number of links to your content helps you get found in more ways than one:

1. Google will reward you by improving your search engine position as you obtain more “valuable” links from other web sources and if you have a Web optimization SEO strategy, this will be of great help.

2. Your website will receive increased visitors from other sources that refer to your content.

The Solution: Content Marketing

The new way to be found online in 2010 is to develop content, publish and syndicate content that is valuable, interesting and entertaining on many of the social media sites that are available today. And if you are targeting several population groups, then you should consider multilingual content and content that is ready for SEO (search engine optimization) Web and blogs.

Focus on creating optimized content that is specific to what your target audience is searching for:

• Identify the information needs of your targeted audience
• Analyse your ideal persona’s needs by asking them what they look for
• Provide information that fulfills the need of each individual persona
• Include a clear “call to action”. What do you want your readers to do?

This Content Marketing strategy is best described by leading author and strategist Joe Pulizzi (co‐author of Get Content Get Customers) as;”Content Marketing is the art of understanding exactly what your customers need to know and delivering it to them in a relevant and compelling way.”

Social media provides us with the ability to find and comment about almost any product and service niche very quickly.

If we’re looking for a recommendation, review or comment on a company or its services, all we have to do is type our query in Google and look for social media sites that provide the answer.

People type in their search words into Google, find a few social media sites that are interesting and start a conversation. People are talking about your company, its products and even your service, and all this information is easily accessible via search engines like Google if your company has a focused internet marketing strategy.

Everyday each one of us is subjected to intrusive marketing messages in the forms of advertisements from the following media:  television, radio, billboards, junk mail and newspapers

And only *14% of us trust these ads. This is alarming as many companies still continue to pour money into these advertising mediums even when statistics show a low return on investment.

“Word of Mouth” is one of the most effective forms of marketing as *74% of people place a lot of trust in their friends’ and experts’ opinions. Also, relevancy of your marketing message drives the conversions you get out of it, as there is a lot of noise created by each marketer trying to get attention from the similar segment of customers. By using social media you can create brand awareness or improve your lead generation.

A focused entreprise digital media plan allows your company to entre conversations that spread at light speed around the globe, by participating in online conversations through social media, your company can be heard by millions within minutes, thta is why social media on Internet and has become one of the largest mass‐communication mediums of our time.

• 75% of American Internet users engage in social networks to communicate with friends (Source: Internet World Stats).
• 13 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute.
• There are more than 100 new members on Facebook every hour.

Word of Mouth Marketing is generated by people having conversations about you and your products because:

• they like you
• they are unhappy with you
• they were asked their opinion about you
• their community is talking about you

 (Source: Neilsen Global Trust In Advertising Survey, 2007)

So if you want to participate in conversations where people are talking about your company and your products, consider social media as an important part of your Internet marketing strategy.

Companies have heard of many ways that others are using social media but still struggle with how to leverage this medium and optimize it for the best possible results.

With the advancement of the Internet, many new marketing channels have become available to both business‐to‐business (B2B) and business‐to‐consumer (B2C) sectors and the challenge is to understand the best ways to take advantage of the World Wide Web for Internet marketing.

Internet marketing and social media marketing provide a cost‐effective and practical way for small and medium sized companies to compete effectively against their larger adversaries especially since they operate on smaller marketing budgets.

Would it not be an ideal solution be to present your marketing message to your targeted prospect at the very moment they are looking for information on your products or services? This is a major shift from push marketing to pull marketing. It is using content to attract your audience and then market to them when they are ready.

So what are the new ways to be found on the Internet?

People are changing the way they shop for products and services. They go to the Internet to find and gather information so that they can make an informed decision. It is much easier to get the information that you need by searching on Google than to look up a phone number in the Yellow Pages and then call. We just don’t want to be sold to.

Besides searching on Google, people are also looking for information on a number of social media sites such as:

• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• Blogs
• Twitter
• YouTube
• Stumbleupon and other bookmarking sites

These social media sites enable us to get the “word of mouth” recommendations and advice that we all seek when considering making a purchase of a product or service and they are a powerful tool for any Internet marketing strategy.

Many of us in the “Baby Boomer” community think that social media is a trend for the younger generations “X” and “Y” as they are the most active in this medium.

The Generation “Y” population is over 70 million in America and by 2010 they will outnumber Baby Boomers. They will become our future leaders and the majority of them have been raised with technology and belong to one or more social networks.

Companies must start incorporating social media strategies into their Internet marketing initiatives to engage with the Generation Y’s now to avoid being left behind in targeting this growing segment.

• Brazil has the most Internet users in Latin America
• Mexico is the 2^nd largest market for Internet usage in Latin America (35.6 million)
• The study reports that there were 11.8 million people online in Argentina and 9 million in Colombia
• Communicating and Web Surfing are the Most Popular Online Activities
• The majority of Internet users in Latin America (77%) use the Web to communicate with others, either through email, instant messaging or social networks
• 76% of respondents to a recent study visit websites for news, information, entertainment, work or school
• Interestingly, 28% of Internet users download digital content, such as music, videos and graphics

Latin America should be a natural expansion for US companies.

If you are still thinking if your internet marketing strategy should reach the Mexican market, look at this data:

• This year, 35.6 million people in Mexico will go online, consuming 31.6% of the country’s total population
• In 2011, the Mexican online population will increase to 39.5 million (34.7% of total population)
• eMarketerprojects that 37.4% of Mexico’s population will be online in 2012 (43.0 million people)
• According to comScore, the most popular Web properties in Mexico are based in the US
• The study reports that 10.79 million unique visitors came to Microsoft sites (84.6% reach)
• Google sites were ranked in 2ndplace with 10.36 million unique visitors coming to it, reaching 81.3% of the population
• In 3rdplace are Yahoo! sites, which reached 54.6% of the population (6.97 million unique visitors)

You can reach the Mexican market by translating your current website, planning multilingual pay per click campaigns and being present in social media sites with content in Spanish. The first step to go global is to include Spanish content and reach south of the border with multilingual websites, multilingual landing pages, multilingual pay per click campaigns and multilingual content for social media.

If your are not using social media to reach the Latin Amerca market, think twice, look at this statistics for Social Network Site Users in Select Countries in Latin America:

• A study by comScore reports that social networking usage in Latin America has increased in several countries between 2007 and 2008.
• As of 2008, 85.3% of Internet users in Brazil were also social network users (increase from 76% in 2007).
• 73% of the online population in Mexico were also on the social networks as of 2008.
• Almost 80% of the Colombian online population used social networking sites the same year
• According to eMarketer, approximately $10 million was spent on social network advertising in 2009 in LA.
• This year, online social network adspendis expected to reach approximately $15 million
• By 2011, about $18 million will be allocated toward advertising on social networks in Latin America

Social media is an excelente vehicle to reach new markets.