We recently quoted on a video project and our client was surprised by how inexpensive it was. Why was it inexpensive? Partly because we’re smart about controlling costs. Secondly, it’s 2010.

Technology is progressing to the point where the barriers to entry are becoming increasingly low. Video equipment is continually decreasing in cost, video editing which used to need a bank of computers and a suite filled with editing equipment can now be done on a fast laptop. This morning Digital Inspiration posted this video from Nokia. It’s a short professional film – shot in only four days in high definition entirely on a Nokia N8. Yes, the Nokia N8 is a wireless phone. Take a look. It stars Dev Patel from Slumdog Millionaire and Pamela Anderson.

Now before you give up your career to shoot a sequel to Inception (or even Patch Adams for that matter) you should know that while this film was shot on the N8, over 50 people were involved in the creation including a professional director, lighting technicians, gaffers, art directors, electricians, stunt coordinators, sound engineers, special effects artists and a few bankers with some pretty wicked parkour skills.

According to a new report by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project people ages 50 and older are joining social networks at an ever increasing rate.

In fact, social networking has just about doubled over this past year, swelling from 22 percent in 2009 to 42 percent in 2010.  comScore, a digital measurement company, found similar results: 27.4 million people age 55+ used social networking in last month, up from 16 million one year ago.

Why is this happening? Well I’m sure you can guess. Older adults want to connect with friends and relatives. But to me, that’s the easy part of the answer. The other half of the answer is in how new technology is not just being created — but designed.

The doubling of any population is unarguably a dramatic increase. Any time you see a change this substantial there must be multiple elements at play. Older adults aren’t just joining social networks because their friends and relatives are there. They’re joining because they are able to figure it out on their own.

Let me clarify. What we’re seeing is a massive cultural shift towards technology — in part because of good design. We have a tendency to stereotype older adults as at best not tech savvy, and at worst Luddites.

As tools become easier to use and better design is incorporated into computer hardware, software and websites the intimidating or hard-to-use “tech” part of technology dissolves away. Older adults no longer need to rely on a grandchild or neighbor to help them. Now, if they can read the screen they can pretty much do anything. I would argue that the problem never was that most older adults were not tech savvy, but that they just didn’t have the patience to deal with something that wasn’t designed intuitively.

Better design isn’t just for those who are not techy. Better design is for everybody. Better design makes things that are complex usable. I’ll go even further. Creating something that is not designed well is inexcusable. There isn’t a single man-made object on this world that can’t be improved with good design from a paint can with a built in roller tray to a superbly designed and well organized website.

I’ve recently had numerous discussions with marketers about the role of their company’s website in the marketing mix. Many marketers think that websites are all they need online, and that the future of advertising is in finding ways to get people to the site — usually with SEO or banner ads. In fact, these people are looking for ways to make it less expensive to update and manage their sites so they can free more money to attract viewers.

Our experience is that this view is sooooo 2008. That’s because unless you’re an online retailer, your website is viewed by consumers as a biased reference tool.

Home builders have on their websites an “about us” page, floorplans, area maps, virtual tours, and even customer testimonials — all valuable information for someone who is interested in the homes. But what about those who might be interested, but haven’t yet decided to visit your sales center? Your website will NOT convince them to come in any more than a brochure that includes the same information. And that’s because a builder’s website is seen simply as information.

Hospitals have the same problem. Their websites are mostly used by consumers to find a doctor, locate a facility, check hours, learn about services, etc. But the site doesn’t persuade anybody that you’re better or worth the viewers’ time. It simply informs.

While this type of reference information is important to have online, you should not think that it is a marketing tool any more than a corporate brochure is a marketing tool. It’s a reference tool.

So what’s the 2009 approach? We are reworking our sites to be the best reference tools possible, and then we drive traffic (and sales) to it via blogs, eblasts, Twitter feeds, etc. that act as sales tools.

We use blogs for builders to talk about customer satisfaction, construction techniques, design tips, technology updates and special offers on spec homes.

For hospitals, we use blogs to promote events in the area, classes, new physicians and their qualifications, job offerings, new technology, and even CON petitions and updates.

All of our blogs are trying to do the same thing — start a relationship with the viewer by getting them to sign up for our eblast updates.

While the blogs and eblasts can link to information within the main site, we often link them to other blogs that we manage for the client and to appointment schedulers or online class enrollment forms.

One advantage of blogs over main websites is that the constant flow of new information makes these blogs desirable to search engines. Combine this “freshness” with some techy tagging and bookmarketing, and you have a search engine’s dream site.

So as you think about your website in 2009, please don’t put too much pressure on it. Viewers know it’s biased (have you seen any website with testimonials that were bad?), but they also know that all they are looking for on it is basic information. For online sales power, try blogs and eblasts that link to microsites that can do more selling because they are not part of your main site.

Our results in 2008 have been spectacular for those clients who have allowed us to make these changes. In fact, we can easily compare the results we generated for these clients with those clients who have not allowed us to take this approach and all we can say is “trust us in 2009″.

According to new research from Enid Burns at The ClickZ Network, blogs can have more impact on purchase decisions than social networks. Blogs create a conversation and trusted resource that influences purchase decision.

The study, “Harnessing the Power of Blogs,” sponsored research by BuzzLogic and conducted by JupiterResearch, a Forrester Research company, looks at the evolving influence from the reader’s perspective. “What we wanted to do was look at the reader’s side of the coin, look at reader patterns and how people are reading blogs…and drill down into the content impacting other media platforms,” said Valerie Combs, VP of corporate communications at BuzzLogic.

Readership of blogs is on the rise. JupiterResearch noted a 300 percent growth in monthly blog readership in the past four years. Readers look to links and multiple blog sources to extend the conversation: 49 percent of blog readers, defined as someone who reads at least one blog a month, and 71 percent of frequent readers all read more than one blog per session. Multiple blog sources offer more opportunities for consumers to see blog ads. A quarter of readers say they trust ads on a blog, compared to 19 percent who trust ads on social networking sites.

Advertisements on blogs are an opportunity for marketers to reach consumers. The findings said 40 percent of people reading blogs have taken action as a result of viewing an ad on a blog; and 50 percent of frequent blog readers say they have taken action. Of those actions: 17 percent have read product reviews online; 16 percent have sought out more information on a product or service; and 16 percent have visited a manufacturer or retailer Web site.

“More and more publishers are become extremely savvy understanding the game and becoming better at monetizing, which is great for the advertiser as well,” said Combs.

The survey also finds consumers are influenced by blogs at the moment of purchase decision. The channel plays a greater role than social networks, likely because bloggers establish themselves as an authority on a topic, particularly in niche areas, and create a relationship with the consumer.

“One of the things that’s so great about them is the personal, specific information,” said Combs. “Thorough, useful, honest creation, create a level of trust with the reader.”

We at Demi & Cooper just love blogs for our clients (heck, you’re reading our own blog now!). In healthcare, websites simply cannot be written for discussion purposes — they are reference tools designed to get the viewer the information he or she seeks quickly and easily, such as where are you located, how do I find a doctor, what services do you offer, etc. In homebuilding, websites show what the builder offers, where it’s at, and what it cost, plus a whole bunch of other biased info.

But blogs can go deeper into each subject, explaining medical procedures (even using video), new facilities and procedures, etc. in health care. In home building, testimonials go in blogs, as do local events, new hires, new techniques in building, etc.

But the most valuable thing you can do with a blog is tag it (digg, delicious, etc.) and link it so that the topic of the blog will come up in searches. We even Twitter our clients’ blogs and feed it to Facebook, getting the social community behind our work.

So just blog it. It won’t hurt and the results will be very impressive.

According to a custom analysis by Nielsen Online for the Newspaper Association of America, newspaper web sites attracted more than 68.3 million unique visitors on average (41.4% of all Internet users) in the third quarter of 2008, a record number that reflects a 15.8% increase over the same period a year ago.

In addition, newspaper Web site visitors generated an average of just over 3.5 billion page views per month throughout the quarter, an increase of 25.2% over the same period a year ago (2.8 billion page views). These figures are the highest for any quarter since NAA began tracking the data in 2004.

NAA President and CEO, John F. Sturm, said “… record audiences are trusting newspaper Web sites for comprehensive, up-to-the-minute reporting and analysis on the events that impact their lives… newspapers are the top local brands that readers turn to for information… (to) help (with) challenging issues… ”

The third quarter also set records for active reach percentage (the percentage of active Internet users that visit newspapers on an average month), page views, pages per person, time per person and visits per person.

Randy Bennett, NAA’s senior vice president of Audience and New Business Development, concludes that “The dramatic increase in page views suggests users are visiting newspaper Web sites frequently throughout the day.”

Third Quarter 2008 Newspaper Online Audience

3rd Qtr 2008

3rd Qtr 2007

So what does it mean? In this time when printed newspapers are getting thinner and thinner, it’s nice to know much of the audience isn’t fleeing news altogether. Online advertising is just a click away from getting someone to your web site or landing page, so take the easier route and run on your local paper’s site.

We have had excellent results with this in all industries, but particularly real estate. Even healthcare is doing well with news sites, particularly because we can link our ads to blogs and other “microsites” designed to get the viewer into action mode.

At the SHSMD Conference in San Francisco Thursday, September 18, one of the featured speakers was Andrew Keen, a self-described Silicon Valley insider and pundit who sought to expose the “grave consequences of today’s new participatory Web 2.0″ world. According to Mr. Keen, “in today’s self-broadcasting culture, where amateurism is celebrated and anyone with an opinion, however ill-informed, can publish a blog, post a video on YouTube, or change an entry on Wikipedia, the distinction between trained expert and uninformed amateur becomes dangerously blurred.”

Not surprisingly, many in the audience took offense. Nobody argued that misinformation is bad. Rather, the point was that information on the internet should not be limited to only those contributors who are deemed to be “experts”.

Indeed, the internet is a surfeit of information, of which not all is honest, accurate or fair. But the same charges of inaccuracy can also be applied to all our sources of information over the past few centuries. Truth is, information only has as much credibility as the reader is willing to give it.

Now I agree that there are people out there who intentionally write posts or blogs full of misinformation in an attempt to harm a person or organization. That’s too bad. But any reader who accepts just one opinion is looking for trouble — or simply looking for information, no matter how bad, to support a position. Fortunately, in most cases the internet is full of information about virtually every subject. So getting “the other side of the story” is almost always a click away.

Speaking of getting out “the other side of the story”, it is this exact idea that leads me to disagree so strongly with Mr. Keen. While I believe the benefits of these “amateur” blogs and posts very much outweigh the negatives (for instance, when trying to learn more about Alzheimer’s Disease, I found the posts and blogs authored by relatives of the patients to be far more emotionally educational than the clincial information I found that was written by the “experts”. In healthcare, “experts” have to be careful about what they say for fear of lawsuits, whereas amateurs write it as they see it), I also know that the negatives can create many problems for my clients; therefore, we monitor information about our clients and react to it with our own posts and blogs. In essence, we’re presenting the other side of the story whenever we see a negative one inititated. We are our clients’ “online brand manager” and our job is to make sure their names and information are everywhere they need to be.

What’s more, we think that the internet’s role as an information source can be used to our advantage for our clients by allowing us to put up an incredible amount of positive information covering any topic we want. By uploading videos, podcasts and photos, and generating blogs and posts, we can literally dominate a topic for our client’s benefit.

Are we harming the world as Mr. Keen sees it? Hardly. The participatory information game is on, and it’s been active now for nearly a decade. All we’re doing is playing the game to our client’s advantage using the same messages we run for them in other traditional media.

And I can tell you this: our clients are winning.

I gave some serious thought to this question over the past year, understanding clearly that blogging was a growing communication tool. After all, we create, write and manage blogs for our clients, so why wouldn’t I practice what we preach (to be fair, Jim Tome from my office has been an active blogger for a while now)? I wasn’t concerned about coming up with enough content. Those who know me understand that I’m not short on words. My fear was the time commitment necessary to make my blog a valuable resource for marketers who take the time to read it.

You see, I came across many blogs that got off to a fast start, but failed to keep the author’s own attention to the point that the most recent entry was months ago. Not only does that blogger look bad, but the company itself looks bad. That hit to my firm’s reputation is not something I was at all interested in feeling.

Obviously I’ve decided to blog. And I can assure you that I’ll keep up with it.

In addition to being enjoyable for anyone who likes to write, blogging lets our current clients know what we’re thinking about before we even present it to them. It helps them understand why we recommend what we recommend, and what leads us to change course in things like web stat software, TV spot doughnuts, print media, etc.

For potential clients, blogging helps them know who we are and what we know so that they might consider including us in a discussion about their marketing needs. Blogs build name recognition, and enhance our brand. It allows potential clients who are searching similar subjects on the net to “find” us (due to some complex tagging work on our part). But most important, blogs give potential clients an anonymous way to stay familiar with an agency that they might want to talk with in the future.

So read away ’til your hearts content. Comment where ever and whenever you think necessary. Dialog is good here. In fact, it’s really the point. If you’ve experienced something different or similar, post your comments. It won’t hurt. You won’t get a call from us. And it will be greatly appreciated.