Imagine this: Your next advertisement will know who is looking at it and deliver content that is specific to their gender, age group or race.

It’s not a fairy-tale, it’s real and it’s already in use in London where a billboard has built-in facial recognition technology which determines the gender of a viewer before delivering an advertisement specific for them. The facial recognition technology is accurate about 90% of the time, which isn’t bad, especially when compared to a traditional ad which has no idea who is reading it.

This type of integrated technology means advertisement specificity could be expanded to include anything which facial recognition can recognize, like a bearded man versus a clean shaven man; a woman with straight red hair from a woman with curly dark hair. It’s an ingenious way of utilizing the latest technology to deliver the most accurately aimed message possible.

What about a billboard which contains different types of messages for different body shapes? Obese people see diet ads; slender people see advertisements for athletic equipment. Or an ad which recognizes what the viewer is wearing and recommends other retail outlets which sell similar clothing?

We are still years away from a magazine advertisement which can recognize who is reading it or a television commercial specific to the watcher, but when it comes to advanced technology integration, nothing can currently beat a billboard.

A billboard that went up on Wednesday in London uses facial-recognition technology to know – 90% of the time – whether you’re a man or woman. And it gives you a different advertisement depending on your gender.

Women who walk up to the billboard, which is located at a London bus stop and will be viewable for two weeks, are greeted with a 40-second film explaining the plight of women and girls in poor countries around the world, who often are denied eduction and opportunities that are afforded to men.

Men, however, get a cut-down version of the content. They can’t see the film, but they do get to see shocking statistics about the situation, like the fact that 75 million girls are denied education.

Click here for more of the story at CNN.com.

When it comes to how best to use social media to get your message across, the first question most people ask themselves is, “what’s my message?” Of course with some industries there are more messages they need to get out than there are grains of sand on the beach. The health care industry is a prime example of this. In light of recent national policy changes regarding health care, rising insurance rates, malpractice litigation, new procedures, treatments and medicines, it’s a wonder every facet of the health care industry isn’t already using social media.

But they aren’t.

In fact, outside the financial industry, health care professionals are among the least likely users of social media. Gradually this is beginning to change, however. A recent report by the American Dental Association showed that dentists are increasingly using social media to reach out to new and existing patients and having much success at it. As this one sector begins to have success you can bet every other sector of the health care industry is watching and will be gradually making their won attempts at utilizing social media.

The best part about social media and health is that what helps the industry is also going to help their patients. I believe it will increase lines of communication, help break down barriers and generally create a better feeling between both groups going forward.

But The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, more commonly know by the acronym HIPAA, controls a good deal of the content that health care sites can post on the popular pages.

“Health care is probably a little slower to react to the movements of social media because there are so many patient privacy issues that you have to respect,” said Tim Cloonan, director of marketing and communications for Miami Valley Hospital. “We have a Facebook page here at Miami Valley, as do our other hospitals (Atrium, Upper Valley and Good Samaritan). That primarily is used to reach out to patients and families for sharing events that we have — any type of special information about care that we provide for a particular service line, like heart or oncology, or to let people know about events, like when doctors are speaking to the community, and where they can attend these events.

Click here to read more about health care and social media.

Go Where The Tech Is Going

When it comes to the future of social media marketing all you need to do is look around you. I’ll bet you see dozens of people every day using their smartphone to check email, text, talk, chat and surf the web. All this mobile technology is making advertisers sit up and take notice, and it’s only just begun.

I have seen repeated polls showing that advertisers and marketers expect investment in mobile marketing to triple this year, after posting big gains last year. As long as the market continues to grow this will be an area where businesses can reach out to potential clients and customers.

What you should be asking yourself is how best to capitalize on the mobile marketing market. (Try saying that three times fast!) It’s one thing to make certain your web site is optimized for mobile viewing, but that is only just the beginning. Especially when you consider that the move toward mobile Internet access is not exactly about web surfing, although a fair portion of what people use their phones for is accessing the Internet. Instead it seems mobile users want toys; games, apps and tools they can use to help them navigate the world around them.

This is where your marketing plan should be aimed. Start by looking at the service or products you already provide. Ask yourself, what is my business? Then find a way to turn that service/product/knowledge base into something mobile users will be interested in.

If you deal in plumbing supplies perhaps you should consider a mobile app which searches the Internet for answers to plumbing questions. Or, maybe you can create a game about plumbers (although Super Mario seems to have cornered the market on plumbers already.) Whatever it is you decide to do should be mobile and useful and branded by your company.

Despite discrepancies among forecasters, mobile transactions are clearly morphing into a critical revenue stream for retailers and products and service providers. The 15% leap in online holiday spending to more than $35 billion, and the overall retail e-commerce grew 13% to $161.5 billion in 2011, according to comScore, were driven by consumers’ accelerated use of mobile price comparison and payment apps.

This activity has been fueled by Square, which progressively facilitates mobile consumer transactions by acting as a medium between merchants and payment networks (credit-card companies and banks) across all smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices.

Click here to read more about mobile marketing from BusinessInsider.com.

An Army Of Social Media Sites

One of the biggest and most effective users of social media marketing right now is the United States Army. That’s right, the U.S. Army can definitely teach you a thing or two about how best to use a social media network to get your message out to the largest (and most demographically important) audience.

Unlike many private companies, the Army makes full use of a whole host of sites, including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Vimeo; Pinterest, Google+, Flickr and more. Not only does the Army have a presence on these sites, they regularly post meaningful and relevant content there as well. Granted, their messages are more less themed toward self-promotion and recruitment, but that is their job after all.

Now ask yourself, how well do you make use of social media networks to get your message out? Are you everywhere you can be and should be to reach the largest possible audience? Do you use the sites effectively, sharing messages which are relevant to your brand message?

You probably don’t have the resources f budget of the U.S. Army, but I’ll bet there are still ways you could better use social media to effective market your company, brand or product. And don’t be afraid to copy what you see others are doing, especially when they are seeing huge benefits as a result of their work.

After all, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

The Army knows what’s up content wise, in a PR sort of way, at least. Most of the stuff is more like promotional material than anything else, the badass Army image, like this wounded soldier video or these heroic soldier photos on Flickr. The Army even understands social media’s potential to hurt its own cause. Since it uses it as a PR tool, rather than a news or information portal, the wrong kind of messages can make it look bad. Hence the social media guide it put out last summer. The understanding goes deeper than “what to post.” The Army also gets Internet pace, updating these profiles on just the right type of regular basis, tweeting a couple of times every hour, or Facebooking a handful of times a day. None of the profiles go dormant for too long. Our own social media editor, Jared Keller, tells us that this type of timing is strategic, as to neither bombard or disappoint followers. To maintain all of these unique platforms with the right kind of content as well as the Army does must take … an army. (Sorry, had to.)

Click here to read more about how the U.S. Army uses social media.

When it came to light this week that the Department of Homeland Security is regularly monitoring all social media networks for activity which them deem relevant to issues of national security, some lawmakers started to question whether they were violating the Constitutional right to free speech.

I am not exactly sure how it is that Facebook can monitor, even claim ownership of, our social media activity on their network, but DHS can’t. That seems illogical to me.

I have written before that you should have no expectation of privacy when you post something, anything, on the Internet. It stands to reason, if history is any lesson, that the laws governing who can access this information are liable (likely is a better word) to change. When you consider that an assortment of international entities, some decidedly unfriendly toward the United States and its allies, are actively using the same social media sites as the general public, it makes sense these sites will be monitored.

DHS representatives said they only monitor social media for issues deemed important to matters of national. Oh, wait–did I say that already?

Look, nobody should be surprised to hear the government is monitoring their activity on social media. The government has been monitoring public activity since the days when all they needed was a G-man parked at the local bar, listening to conversations. They are the government. It’s practically in their job description.

Here’s why you shouldn’t worry about what they might see in your social media stream: Because you are careful about what you post. Simple enough. This is the same reason you shouldn’t worry if your boss reads your status updates, your spouse reads your Tweets or your mom follows your Pinterest. If it isn’t safe for public consumption, you already know better than to post it online. Right?

I should hope so.

“No element of First Amendment-protected speech is collected, disseminated or analyzed,” she told the House Homeland Security subcommittee on counterterrorism and intelligence.
Ms. Callahan said the agency would collect and store only personal information that was publicly available, and then only about public figures such as TV anchors, to help determine the credibility of their reporting, or about individuals who were in “life-or-death” situations, where it might be used to get them help.
“I am deeply troubled,” Rep. Jackie Speier of California, the committee’s ranking Democrat, said, referring to agency documents about the social media monitoring program that were released under the Freedom of Information Act this year.

Click here to read more about the DHS monitoring program.

Be Who You Are On Your Network

Social media is an excellent promotional platform no matter what business you are in. It is not only helping conventional businesses find new customers and new sources of revenue, but it is also offering new paths for people who may have well-founded traditional paths to success but need something new and different.

A good example of this is the recent success of the latest Sports Illustrated cover girl Kate Upton. At 19 Upton is already an online and offline star, with a YouTube channel boasting millions of views, 170,000 Followers on Twitter and a #2 spot on the list of “top” women at AskMen.com; a Sports Illustrated cover and modeling job offers from some of the world’s most elite fashion photographers.

Upton began her online career with a simple one minute video of herself posted on YouTube. That “little video has since had more than 3 million views She parlayed the attention generated by that video into a social media promotional campaign which eventually brought her to the attention of a modelling agent who was willing to take a chance on an otherwise unknown model. The rest is history.

The lesson to be learned from Upton’s success is that although your path to success might seem clear; might have been walked by thousands before you who ultimately found the success they sought, it doesn’t mean you need to walk that same path to find similar success. In fact, trying something new might work better for you depending on what you are trying to achieve.

And of course, social media offers the flexibility and reach to provide a great many benefits for a great many people regardless of what they are doing or want to do with their life. Try it and you just might surprise yourself.

In modeling, as in movies, music and most other cultural endeavors, it is increasingly clear that there is no longer a single path to success.

“We all know that social media now creates its own reality,” said Wayne Sterling, the publisher of Models.com, an industry website. “If you become a YouTube star among teenagers, you have even more recognizability than a TV star,” he said. “Kate Upton is the perfect example of that.”

It was soon after the Dougie video went viral that a seasoned scout, David Cunningham, brought Upton to the attention of Ivan Bart of IMG Models, the company behind the multimillion-dollar careers of women like Gisele Bündchen, Klum and Kate Moss.

Click here to read more about Kate Upton.

Event planners know the importance of excellent promotion. In fact, failure to properly promote is essentially a recipe for disaster. If people don’t come to your event you will likely not be in the event planning business for long.

A new survey of event planners conducted by Constant Contact indicates that they are still relying on email marketing, but are also turning to social media to get the word out about their upcoming events. This is good news for social media and for email marketing firms (of which Constant Contact is one.)

I have written before about the importance of using social media to supplement your marketing efforts. Including social media with traditional marketing techniques such as email, print ads and even broadcasting advertising, is the best way to get your news out to the widest possible audience.

According to the Constant Contact survey, more than 75% of all event planners surveyed are currently using social media marketing to promote their events and another 14% said they plan to start using social media as a promotional tool in 2012. This trend toward further use of social media marketing tools is apparent in just about every industry that needs to get a message out, with the exception of some financial, investing and insurance agencies which are still wrangling with privacy issues.

If your business is not making full use of the impact wrought by effective social media management you are clearly at a disadvantage. You can almost bet that your competitors are using social media to reach new and existing customers, share information about upcoming events, sales and promotions; and generally doing everything they can to engage the billions of people using social media marketing every day.

So, what are YOU waiting for?

But it’s not a clean sweep for social media, according to a survey of 474 small businesses and nonprofits conducted by Constant Contact, an engagement management company. The survey also reported that event planners still rely heavily on email marketing, online event marketing tools, websites and print advertising to promote their events, indicating that traditional forms of event marketing still play an essential role.

But the vast majority of respondents using social media said they would increase their social media efforts to market events next year (81 percent), with the remainder reporting that their level of usage will remain the same.

Click here to read more of the Constant Contact findings.

To kick off Social Media Week JWT North America CEO David Eastman warned marketers that they are on the verge of being made obsolete by companies seeking a less expensive, do-it-yourself approach. According to Eastman, who spoke this morning at the JWT event in New York City, said some companies are taking the approach that all they need is a Facebook Fan Page to successfully market via social media.

As social media marketers, we know it’s not quite that easy.

In order to be effective, social media marketing must be adequately managed, monitored and maintained. It requires careful planning and execution and spread across more than just a single platform if you expect any decent results. Eastman said there is a danger more companies will look not at the behind the scenes efforts of successful social media management campaigns, but the surface, leading them to believe if they create a page, people will flock to it.

This does more than threaten the social media marketing industry, it makes our jobs much more difficult as we already fight an uphill battle attempting to get clients to understand just what is involved in a successful social media marketing campaign, and not expecting overnight results when it comes to relationship marketing.

Not to mention getting them to understand “relationship marketing” in the first place.

Facebook “has become the default tool for lazy marketers who really don’t know what to do,” he said, recalling the days when businesses bought IBM computers because they were a safe bet. “No one got fired for buying IBM. Today’s equivalent is no one gets fired for marketing on Facebook,” he said.

As a result, some brands are pursuing “me-too marketing” on Facebook instead of developing marketing strategies. He pointed to a Business Insider article headlined, “P&G To Lay Off 1,600 After Discovering It’s Free To Advertise On Facebook,” as an example of a brand potentially using Facebook as a “default” marketing strategy.

“Brands need to have conversations with people. Ultimately it doesn’t matter where you are having these conversations,” he said. However, these conversations must not be boring, or else they will turn off consumers.

We’re all familiar with the social media giants: Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Now we’re beginning to realize that while mega-social media sites can be fun, smaller, niche sites offer more benefit because they focus on our individual (and very specific) interests.

You wouldn’t go to a big chain store to buy your wedding dress, right? Of course not. You would want to visit a boutique, a specialty store where they will cater to you, as the individual, and deliver exactly what you want; let you try on different dresses; provide a host of styles and looks for you to consider.

Social media has created a new Age of the Customer. People realize they can expect, and GET, specialized, personalized service online. It stands to reason therefore that when it comes to social media it won’t be long before one size does not fit all. People will likely retain their public profiles at the mega sites, but do most of their interaction on the smaller niche sites which have begun springing up.

They want to discuss model trains with other model train enthusiasts; comic books with other comic book enthusiasts; recycling with other recycling enthusiasts, and so-on and so forth. In this way these smaller, ’boutique sites’ will slowly carve out their own user base of users from the major social media sites.

In fact, it’s happening already with sites like Pinterest and the just announced LittleMonsters site being started by Lady Gaga. In time there will likely be a niche site for just about every one. Until then, we’ll do our best to make a comfortable nest on the bigger sites; someplace we can each call our own.

Click here to read more about niche social media sites.

Lady Gaga regards herself as part performer, all promoter. Everything she does is geared toward making herself more famous, more well-known, so she can sell more CD’s, more merchandise, more concert tickets to her adoring fans. Or, as she likes to call them, her “Little Monsters“.

Now she is reaching out to the Social Web to make full use of her fan base. A fan base which pushed her Twitter Following and Facebook Fans to eclipse 1,000,000 faster than any previous human being. She now has more than 19 million Twitter Followers and more than a billion views on her YouTube channel.

So when Lady Gaga announced this week that she was starting her own social network called LittleMonsters.com, everyone took notice. With legions of fans both online and off, Gaga has (in my opinion) a better chance of having a successful social media site than even Google did.

Gaga has said the new site will be based around shared interests by allowing users certain information about where they are, what they like and what they are doing. Pretty much like every other social media network, except this one has a built in fan base.

The site is still an invitation only beta site, but plans are to have it open to the public sooner rather than later Until it rolls out all the way it will be difficult to know how successful it is and whether or not it will have any relevance for people who are not fans of Gaga or her antics.

The site is currently in beta stage, and available for membership on an invitation-only basis. However, some early reports, including one from CNN, liken the site to the mobile app Pinterest, which allows users to “pin” locations and items of interest.

Matt Michelsen, CEO and co-founder of Backplane — which created LittleMonsters.com — told Mashable that LittleMonsters.com will “nite people around interests, affinities and movements.

“Backplane is about bringing together communities and Gaga’s community just so happens to be the community we’re using to learn about proper functionality,” added Michelsen. “We think we can really change the world.”

Click here to read more about Gaga’s new site.