Building up your email subscriber list might be one New Year’s resolution for you to consider for your business. Allison gave us some fantastic insights and ideas on how she helped increase her client’s mailing list. In fact, she helped triple it in less than 10 minutes.

According to a study done by StrongMail in conjunction with Zoomerang, marketers plan on spending more money and time on their email subscriber list. They want to increase both the number of subscribers, as well as the engagement factor.

When marketers were asked to “Please indicate the programs for which you plan to increase spend”, email marketing won out with 60%. Social media wasn’t far behind with 55%.

When asked what their most important email marketing initiatives were for 2012, subscriber engagement came out on top with 48% and growing opt-in email lists came in with 32%.

Are you a firm believer in building an email subscriber list? If so, how have you used this list for the benefit and growth of your business?

Klout’s also been under fire recently for creating profiles for any user interacting with another Klout user on Facebook – but they didn’t have age verification in place, which means they created profiles for countless minors. Partially as a response to that incident (and partially, I suspect, because users were asking for it), the company also made it easy and clear top opt out of Klout, even if you wanted a profile in the past.

And so began the wave of opting out. There’s no shortage of people willing to talk about why they’re doing it, and why they think you should as well.

The line has been drawn in the sand – Klout users and non-users. For transparency sake, I want to note that I am still a Klout user as of writing this post, though I wouldn’t classify myself as an avid user, since I only remember to log in a few times a month. I’m firmly a fence-sitter on this one – but I think I might be in the minority.

Let’s Quit Klout: The Grand Exit

I think the need to quit Klout, at least for many people, can be neatly summed up in a recent post by Liz Strauss entitled, “Klout, My Story & Why Opting Out Was My Only Choice.” In the post, Liz writes,

People who had started using their measure, who had trusted it enough to include it in their client work, woke up one morning to find Klout had changed the algorithm without notice and with abandon.

It was at best a naive decision to move without thought to the people who were building on what Klout offered. Those people who were putting Klout scores in their marketing plans and on their resumes were building Klout’s credibility.

Still I stuck with them, because who hasn’t made a bad decision, especially when starting something new? But I watched with new interest in what they would do.

I became more aware that my data, your data, our stories are their product and they seemed to become less aware of the responsibility that might come with a offering product like that.

The Klout perks I was offered — especially the invitation to audition for the X-Factor — were all about my number not me. The additional unannounced tweaks to the algorithm that made it unpredictable and unstable did more damage to a sense of credibility.

What I think it most valid about Liz’s argument is that if the numbers are constantly shifting and the data is never full correct, those who use these numbers to rate you or form opinions about you are going to be doing so without proper data. I’m the same today as I am tomorrow, but my score might drop significantly as a result of an algorithm change. That’s not a very fair way for a potential employer, client, or advertiser to rate my social media value.

In other words, having a Klout score is an invitation for those getting to know you professionally or personally to be lazy – and it might not be to your advantage.

Klout Doesn’t Matter

On the other side of the debate, you don’t exactly have the opposite opinion. Instead of people championing for Klout (which is a sentiment I don’t see often), you have people exasperatingly arguing that Klout doesn’t matter and that the only thing these numbers are doing is giving people who otherwise don’t really matter an inflated sense of ego. The people on this side of the argument aren’t exactly encouraging you to continue using Klout. Instead, they’re encouraging you to stop ranting about it or making proclamations of your need to quit.

A very good example of someone on this side of the argument is Jason Falls, who recently write, “Please Don’t Quit Klout. Or At Least Don’t Announce It.” In this post, he writes,

And canceling your Klout account means nothing other than you were upset your score went down. The algorithm changes attacked your sense of self-worth and you can’t face another day being a 37 rather than a 42.

Guess what? 99.9 percent of the people you really care about in the world don’t measure you with a number. Neither do most people who have half a brain. So why be a 0.1 per center? Ignore the score.

Jason goes on to make a very good point that if people leave Klout (as they have been doing recently), the platform is even less useful than it is now. Measuring tools like Klout need data to be successful. If you really don’t care about your score, don’t care about it…but don’t ruin things for people who do find use in the score. Or, at the very least, stop belittling them with a “I’m better than you because I don’t care about Klout” attitude (something that I don’t think Liz has, by the way, just so we’re clear).

The Klout Advantage

What I think is interesting about this debate is that everyone seems to be talking about how others are perceiving their Klout scores and few people are actually talking about how they’re looking at their own score. That’s how I’ve always used Klout, and why I’m hesitant to leave. I find it extremely useful in this way – in fact, I’m going to write a post for tomorrow about how I use Klout that you might be interested in reading.

In any case, I find the whole Klout debate one of the most important and interesting topics in our industry right now. Which side are you taking? Are you still using Klout or did you quit?

Google sites (mainly YouTube), Facebook and VEVO rounded out the top three ways people watch online videos. In September, Facebook had dropped to the number five spot, but saw 59.8 million viewers for October raising it to the number two spot behind Google sites.

Other notable findings from October 2011 include:

• 86.2 percent of the U.S. Internet audience viewed online video.
• The duration of the average online content video was 5.5 minutes, while the average online video ad was 0.4 minutes.
• Video ads accounted for 14.9 percent of all videos viewed and 1.4 percent of all minutes spent viewing video online.

For those of you who frequently watch videos online, where do you watch them: YouTube, Facebook, VEVO or all of the above?

You can see in the chart below that in just 6 months, small businesses have embraced social media use  much more. They are finding the low cost and ease of use well worth it.

Here are some statistics from their survey:

• 83% of respondents use social media because of its low cost
• 67% of respondents use social media for its ease of use
• 45% of respondents use social media because it doesn’t take up a lot of time
• 51% of respondents use social media because it works for their customers

Out of all the social networks, Facebook came out on top as the most popular for small business to use. Twitter, LinkedIn and Video Sharing followed.

How is engagement between small businesses and their customers? Sixty percent of participants said they respond to all comments on their social media platforms, whether the comments are good or bad.

Did anything surprise you about this data? You can see more of their key findings here.

About the Survey

This Constant Contact-sponsored survey was administered during October 2011 to small business owners and employees. Results include responses from 1,972 organizations across a range of business-to-business and business-to-consumer industries. Ninety-five percent are Constant Contact customers, 87% are located in the US, and 81% have 25 or less employees

• 4,114 bloggers were surveyed by Penn Schoen Berland, 1,231 consumers were surveyed by Crowd Source, and for the first time, 111 senior level agency and brand markets were interviewed, with more interviews to come.

• 61% of bloggers are hobbyists.

• 59% are male (down from 64%)

• Bloggers are educated and affluent – about 79% have college degrees.

• Bloggers have an average of three blogs.

• 80% have been blogging for 2+years and 50% have been blogging 4+ years.

• Bloggers measure success first and foremost by personal satisfaction (61%). Most blog to share their expertise with others (70%).

• 66% of professional bloggers use Google+ (59% of all bloggers use it).

• Probloggers use Twitter more than Facebook, but both are popular.

• The average blogger has 847 followers on bloggers (probloggers have more).

• 75% of probloggers and 50% of all bloggers have separate Facebook accounts for their blogs.

• Only about 13% of bloggers syndicate on Google+.

• LinkedIn, YouTube, Flickr, Stumble Upon, Del.isio.is, Picasa, Foursquare, Tumblr, and Digg are the next most popular social networks (in that order).

• Twitter drive the most traffic overall, though Facebook drives the most social media traffic. (Tagging your blog posts and commenting for reciprocity are also high traffic drivers.)

• The top tools for bloggers are: social sharing widgets, built-in syndication, providing site search on your blog, video hosting sites, widgets from other sites, trackbacks, photo hosting, and commenting systems beyond the traditional blog platform system).

• Blogs outpaced other media for inspiration, product information, and opinion. They won out over traditional media in all categories except news information.

• Consumers still trust convos with friends and family first. Friends of Facebook come second.

• The number one influence for bloggers is other bloggers (68%). This is a huge jump from only 30% in 2010.

• 2/3 of bloggers blog about brands. 1/3 post brand/product reviews and 1/3 post about everyday experiences in stores or with customer care.

• 1/3 of pros publish product reviews once a week or more.

• 2/3 of pros are approached 8 times a week by brands.

• It is very important for bloggers to choose advertising that aligns with their values. This is up from 10% last year.

• Last year, 33% of bloggers encouraged readers to boycott brands. This year, that number was 25%.

• The biggest complaint with brands was that 60% of bloggers say they are treated less professionally by brands than traditional media is being treated.

• Only 15% of bloggers characterize their interactions with brands as very favorable.

• Less than 25% say brands provide value or are knowledgeable about their brands.

• 86% of bloggers disclose when a post was sponsored or paid. 58% disclose when they receive a product for review. (Alarming, since the FTC now requires disclosure.)

• The majority of brand social media professionals have only been using social media for 1-2 years. 34% have their own blogs.

• Brands most commonly measure success on social media with followers, friends, likes, and social sharing.

• Some of the biggest changes brands saw in 2011 were that individuals trust bloggers, the subject matter needs to fit the brand, and it’s about building small pieces of content to entertain. In the future, they see that social media is a campaign leader, not just a supporter.

• 4% of bloggers and 37% of full time pros say that blogging is their primary source of income. 14% receive a salary for blogger.

• Only about 6% of bloggers write sponsored posts, but most make less than $50 per post.

• Only about 1/4 are blogging weekly or more. Most can’t quit their day job (yet).

Head to Technorati to read the entire State of the Blogosphere report. And don’t forget, you can check out the BlogWorld virtual ticket to get the entire presentation and listen to all of the other awesome new media sessions at BlogWorld.

The study broke the group of adults into two groups – the “connected adults” and the “social media savvy adults”. The connected adults were those individuals who use email and the internet, while the social media savvy adults used networks such as Facebook, Twitter and Yelp.

The study shows restaurant owners just how important it is for them to embrace social media sites and use them for their advantage. Restaurants are taking note and will start using social media more within the next 2 years.

Overall, 51 percent of social media savvy individuals and 48 percent of connected adults said restaurants were an essential part of their lifestyles.

Not only will we see more restaurants using social media, but I imagine we’ll see many more apps being developed around the food business.

For those of you who fall into the “social media savvy” crowd, would you say you eat out more than your friends who don’t frequent sites such as Facebook and Twitter?

The use of the Tablet is changing how much consumers use video game consoles, read books and newspapers, as well as how often they use computers. Here’s a chart which shows what activities are done less as a result of owning a tablet.

As you can see, 59% of Tablet owners say they use a video game console or handheld device less often, 44% of Tablet owners say they read printed books less often and 42% say they read hard copy newspapers less often.

Thankfully it doesn’t seem to be having too much of an effect on activities like going to the movies, playing sports or hanging out with friends and family.

“The fact that a majority of game-playing Tablet owners report using a video game console or a handheld video game less often as a result of owning a Tablet does not necessarily mean they are playing video games less often,” said Risa Becker, VP, Research at GfK MRI.  “But it does suggest that Tablet owners are moving their gaming from other devices to the Tablet.”

For those of you who own a Tablet, what activities do you notice yourself doing less of? Also, do you ever write up blog posts from your Tablet?

Chrome’s popularity has been astonishing and growing rapidly since 2008. They just celebrated their 3rd anniversary.

ComputerWorld shares, “As of Wednesday, Chrome’s global average user share for September was 23.6%, while Firefox’s stood at 26.8%. IE, meanwhile, was at 41.7%.”

What’s the reasoning behind the growth? You could say it’s because Chrome is more user-friendly and so naturally people will start to flock or you could say it’s because it’s owned by Google. I am sure their TV ads are helping somewhat.

Mozilla did release a browser update, Firefox 7, which claims faster web browsing. Have you downloaded it and noticed a difference? Also, which web browser do you use and why?

According to the report, in 2010 the iPad accounted for 83% of tablet sales worldwide. The number was down, just slightly by about 10% for 2011, accounting for 73.4% of the market.

What does the future hold for the iPad? More good news for Apple.

“We expect Apple to maintain a market share lead throughout our forecast period by commanding more than 50 percent of the market until 2014,” Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at Gartner. “This is because Apple delivers a superior and unified user experience across its hardware, software and services. Unless competitors can respond with a similar approach, challenges to Apple’s position will be minimal. Apple had the foresight to create this market and in doing that planned for it as far as component supplies such as memory and screen. This allowed Apple to bring the iPad out at a very competitive price and no compromise in experience among the different models that offer storage and connectivity options.”

The complaint that seems to be holding back Android Tablet sales is high prices and a weak user interface. As one who own an Android tablet, I concur.

Here’s a table put together by Gartner showing current and projected tablet sales.

Of course there’s the rumored Amazon tablet that some have said will be strong competition for the iPad. The Amazon tablet is said to feature a 7-inch screen and will be available in November for $250.

Do you own an iPad, Android Tablet or none of the above?

Here are a few of the highlights from the report:

• Social networks and blogs continue to dominate Americans’ time online, now accounting for nearly a quarter of total time spent on the Internet
• At over 53 billion total minutes during May 2011, Americans spend more time on Facebook than they do on any other website
• Tumblr is an emerging player in social media, nearly tripling its audience from a year ago
• Nearly 40 percent of social media users access social media content from their mobile phone
• Internet users over the age of 55 are driving the growth of social networking through the Mobile Internet
• 70 percent of active online adult social networkers shop online, 12 percent more likely than the average adult Internet user
• Across a sample of 10 global markets, social networks and blogs are the top online destination in each country, accounting for the majority of time spent online and reaching at least 60 percent of active Internet users

It’s no surprise that Americans spend more time on Facebook than any other website. From my FB friends who say they’re addicted to it and take frequent Facebook fasts, to the amount of people (is it 750 million now?) who are on the social networking site.

It’s also no surprise that nearly 40% of social media users are accessing the content from their phone. Especially after the article I posted today of the prediction about where PCs will be by 2015.

You can read the full report here. From the highlights I posted, are than any statistics and trends that surprised you?