So to help, I’m going to put the pace of the internet in perspective. We take big companies like Google and Amazon for granted, but we fail to see that these companies are incredibly young compared to peers in other sectors. Google, Amazon, Facebook–they didn’t grow in the traditional way other companies did. They exploded. And those who decide to adopt too late will face a lot of competition who are more seasoned in the online space.

Think about it in historical terms:
-Google was launched as a privately held company in September of 1998. It is now a publicly traded company whose products are used all over the world. “Google” is a verb. You can use it on your desktop your laptop, and on your phone. There’s a good chance it’s your home page. Google is just over ten years old and has over 20,000 employees.

Just eleven years ago, if I told you to “Google” something, you’d probably think I was insulting you. You used the phone book. Remember those?

–Amazon.com launched in 1995. It started by selling books. Amazon now attracts 615 million viewers annually which is twice the traffic of walmart.com. It has websites in the UK, China, France, Germany, and Japan. They are now trying to take over the online book market with the Amazon Kindle.

People thought the founder Jeff Bezos was crazy. Just 15 years ago, you didn’t buy anything online, much less books. Think back on how many brick-and-mortar book stores have closed in just 15 years.

–Facebook launched at Harvard University in 2004. It was still “The Facebook” until 2005. Facebook started as a way for students to keep up with each other, but has since grown to do everything from connecting college buddies to event planning to playing Scrabble to raising $200,000 for Cambodians. Facebook now has over 200 million users in every country but Syria and Iran, where it is banned.

If I told you five years ago that I could use an interactive Rolodex to keep tabs of people all over the world for free, you’d think I was nuts.

Where did you buy music ten years ago? Best Buy? Where do you get it now? How many CD stores are now GONE in just ten years?

People think social media is a fad. Was Google a fad? How much more did early adopters make because they knew how to leverage search engines to be on the top of Google? How much more do established Amazon and eBay sellers make over those who jumped on late out of desperation? Being successful online takes money, work, or preferably both. But it’s not going away and the rates of growth are accelerating even more rapidly than they were before (see Twitter stats)

Whether you are a business owner thinking of improving (or adding) your online presence or a web professional who is selling it, it’s important that we understand the urgency of how the web affects our economy and how we can use it to beef up national GDP, employment and our way of life.

What I fail to understand about the dismissals and criticism of social media by traditional pundits is why they can’t see the additional add revenue it would bring in. TV channels and news sources should be eating this stuff up. Earlier today, I was watching “Heroes”. Anyone who pays attention to my Facebook and Twitter feeds knows I love this show. I’m doing what I can to catch up so I will be able to watch episodes as they come out. “Heroes” is so popular it has its own wiki community dedicated to everything about the show. Yet when I go to the NBC site, their “Heroes” group has a measly 542 members. NOTE TO NBC: You are slacking on the community stuff. There are currently 2425 people subscribed to my Twitter feed and I’m just a goofy girl from Austin. You could crush me with your pinky. There is another “Heroes” page on the NBC site that has behind the scenes footage, comics and other fun stuff. It even has cast members’ Twitter feeds. It’s not really a community though. I can’t meet fellow “Heroes” fans to have discussions about the show. God forbid actually interacting with the cast members or writers there.

The New York Times is read all over the world. They could write articles and then lead readers to discussions about those articles. But they don’t even allow for comments. They sit and struggle while blogs like Mashable and TechCrunch kill it in ad revenue. Their Twitter feed is merely a push channel. If we are reading the New York Times, are we so dumb that we can’t actually add value to the topic at hand? If this is the case, should we read something that wouldn’t make us so dumb? You can moderate the comments. Why not give it a try?

WAKE UP CALL: When you are as popular as “Heroes” or the New York Times, you can integrate tools similar to Twitter and Facebook IN YOUR SITE. It’s what your content management system or a simple embed code from something like UStream or Shout’Em can do. Since you have a big enough fan base, pull your fans into your site, interact with them and let them interact with each other, and THEN SELL ADS THERE. Get feedback for what’s good and consider producing more of it, and for what sucks, and then produce less of that. Why would you 1.) let down your fans by not doing everything you can to enhance their experience and 2.) waste the potential ad revenue? It makes absolutely no sense to me whatsoever.

Meanwhile, we have buffoons out there who get the technology but don’t actually have something worthwhile for people to talk about. These are the “narcissists” you so love to point out. Please put these people back to work by actually figuring this stuff out. It’s sweet but it gets old.

When you are ready to get started, my contact form is right here on my blog.

So here goes:

1.) I’m the youngest of seven kids. My parents were Catholic and apparently glutton for punishment. I have three sisters and three brothers. I like to think they stopped only when they finally got it right.

2.) My dad was in the Air Force, which meant my family moved around a lot. I’m surprised my parents didn’t completely forget one of us somewhere.

3.) While at Dell, I was notorious for a being on the other line of a man calling in to buy a computer so he could “look at porn”. I figured he could use a fair amount of RAM and a good processor as well as a nice monitor. The call was recorded and the managers all laughed while listening to it.

4.) In college, I was a bit of a hippie and bought my clothes at resale shops aside from underwear and socks. I soon gave up after writing a senior thesis on sweatshop labor and realizing that being a Nike laborer is a lot nicer than working all day in a rice paddy.

5.) I was interviewed by Ananda on MTV. The crowning achievement of my career.

6.) My boyfriend is from another country. Oooh, who is he?

7.) I love writing six real facts about me and one fake one and making you guess which one is a lie.

So now, so the blogosphere really gets to know each other, I’m passing this on. Hugh MacLeod, Cody Marx Bailey, Alex Jones, Ryan Joy, Ed Schipul, Giovanni Gallucci, and Mike Chapman, it’s your turn.

I did some research on the variety and figured it would last through the spring, but that I’d have to trim back for summer. No worries. Unlike many roses in the United States that are cross bred for their looks at the expense of their smell, this rose had a sweet aroma that struck you every time you passed by. Worth the risk.

I gave it rose food, plenty of water, and put it in a good spot with just the right amount of sun. And sure enough, I had a huge yellow rose bush that all my neighbors loved. It was every Texan’s dream.

So how does this relate to marketing campaigns?

Preparation is key. Before you plant anything, you want to make sure the soil is the right pH for the plant. You should lay down some compost to enrich the soil. I’ve seen products launched before they were ready and the result is a disaster. You can try to be agile, but if people already have it in their minds that your product sucks, you could be doomed. Or at least, having to work a lot harder than you should have to be.

Some businesses will be doomed from the start if you don’t know where to put them. English roses are beautiful. I’d be an idiot to put English roses in Austin because we get a fraction of the rain they get. I’d really be stupid to put it out in full sun and somewhere far from me where I couldn’t water it easily. Where are you marketing your company? Are you putting it in the right target audience? Putting a company in an inappropriate spot is just wrong, because everyone else in that company is working hard to build the product, and you are squandering it by not putting it out there to the people who want it.

Certain businesses need certain elements to grow. Roses generally need very acidic soil. They generally do best with rose food. Are you supporting your team properly? Do they have the tools and knowledge they need? Do your customers have the information they need to differentiate your product from someone else’s?

Don’t be lazy. If you clip roses back, they grow back stronger. If you water them regularly, you get better results. Having a routine helps you figure out what you’ve done and what you need to do. This could be checking analytics, reading blogs, or sending newsletters.

Plant at the right time, and diversify. Yesterday I ate a salad from the lettuce I’m growing in the side yard. I want to plant zucchini, but you just don’t plant zucchini when its cold. It just doesn’t get what it needs when it needs it and it can’t take the frost. If you have to wait to launch a campaign for the right moment, wait. It could give you exponentially better results.

Don’t grow what you don’t understand. If I moved, you better believe I’d be studying up on my zone before wasting my money on plants. Home Depot makes a fortune off of people who couldn’t tell you the difference between a perennial and an annual. These people pick based on “what is pretty”. If all the bloggers are talking about an industry, don’t just decide you want to do marketing for that company because “it’s shiny”. You could end up with nothing but a pile of dead snapdragons in your yard and a huge balance on your Home Depot card.

Be prepared for the worst. I was out of town and it snowed out of nowhere. My neighbor, who shares the plot with me, didn’t cover my basil and I lost all of it. I should have told him to watch out for it but was not anticipating such wacky weather. Sometimes disaster strikes when you least suspect it. That’s why it’s important to know every objection for why someone would buy your product before you go in. It’s also important to have a strategy if your budget gets cut. Bad things will happen.

Pick and maintain relationships with your partners, affiliates, employees and any alliances wisely. Why is that rose bush dead now? Because I moved out of my ex-boyfriend’s house, and he purposely killed it. The little boys across the street would have no more random roses to deliver to their mother. One person can really poison a campaign if they want to.

And most importantly, if you don’t like it or can’t grow to like it, don’t grow it. It doesn’t matter if you have a great spot for a particular type of bush. If you don’t like that bush, don’t grow it. By working for a company whose products you don’t believe in, your campaigns will never be as good as those done for a company you love. Remember that.

1.) According to John P., I finally need to update the look and plugins of this blog so it does not suck.
2.) Andy Skelton wants to have a “rate my neighbor” Google maps mashup that allows you to see if your neighbors are total duds. Aaron Brazell thinks we should have a “rate that driver” application that allows you to call out crappy drivers by their license plate number.
3.) B5Media’s VP of Social Engineering, Ed, is a former diplomat and a total social media guru. Look for his ideas on how to kickstart your career using social media on Twitter soon.
4.) Will Andy Skelton allow me to whisper sweet nothings to you in your WordPress dashboard? Doubtful.
5.) Oh yeah, some guy named Matt Mullenweg announced the WordPress 2.5 launch 20 minutes after it happened. Then he gave insights as to what would be in 2.6 for the first time ever. Well, whoopidy do!

Look for more news from me, Ryan Joy, Paul Menard, Jen Simmons and Jeff. I’m hoping they don’t release the official WordPress mascot, Pressly the grizzly bear. That got kind of ugly last time, from what I heard.