By all appearances that is exactly what happened.  Scott Brown’s upset, come from behind, win in the Massachusetts Senate race now represents the 41st vote in the Senate, breaking the Democrats filibuster-proof majority in Washington.  In another word passage of President Obama’s healthcare reform legislation is now very much in doubt.

When you dig a little (which we did) you’ll find not only that a Canadian orchestrate the victory but he utilized social media tools to pull off what some referred to as one of the biggest political upset in recent memory.   Whether you support or oppose healthcare reform in the US, the lesson is that social media marketing, properly leveraged, can significantly affect the outcome of a political race or, for that matter, the success of you company

For a good article on this check today’s National Post here or go to - http://www.nationalpost.com/story.html?id=2493174

Over the last few years, the Internet has created a profound transformation in the world of marketing. I’m not talking about Google, Technorati, YouTube, FaceBook or even the industry’s latest darling – Twitter. I’m referring to something much more fundamental, and far more precious to marketers: the diminished attention span of our prospects and customers.

Here’s the thesis. Just five years ago, Web surfers still enjoyed engaging in extensive online research before making their purchasing decisions. Now, those days are gone. Most of us feel so overwhelmed by the vast amount of information we have access to, and the ever-increasing directions it comes from, that we’ve basically stopped processing that data. This is information overload at its zenith. Customers and prospects have so little time to make informed purchasing decisions that they are simply opting out of making any decisions at all.

For marketers, this creates one heck of an objection to overcome. If our prospects feel uncomfortable making intelligent decisions, it’s high time we introduced a new way to engage them in the decision-making process. We call it the “Easy Button”, and our experience with it is showing some incredible results in practice. More on this in my next post.
Welcome to the Attention Age.

I learned an important lesson yesterday: Sometimes, it’s about what you DON’T say.

The big consumer-tech news this week is that Rogers has finally reached an agreement with Apple to sell the iPhone in Canada. The technologist in me thinks this is neat, and I’ve been chatting with journalists - including Canadian Press, CTV NewsNet and AM640 - about what this means.

Although we can chat for days about the iPhone’s impending arrival, what sticks out is what Rogers didn’t say:

• When it would be available
• How much it would cost to buy
• How much subscriptions would cost
• Which device it would be (old, slow iPhone or snazzy new 3G iPhone)

So, essentially, Rogers had nothing to say yesterday. But they released their "news" anyway. And got tons of free media coverage in the process.

The lesson? Sometimes, you don’t need to wait until all your ducks are in a row before you go public. Sometimes, saying nothing is enough to get people to start talking about your product or service. Of course, it helps if your product or service is buzzworthy to begin with - and you need to eventually deliver on what you’ve promised, otherwise all that great buzz will go sour pretty quickly. But there’s a nugget of truth in the Rogers experience that’s applicable in a lot of business marketing scenarios.

Nice job, Ted.

If you weren’t able to join us for our teleseminar earlier today, we’ve got great news for you: We recorded it and have made it available online. To listen in, click here.

In this teleseminar, we cover the convergence point of technology, communications and marketing. But there’s only so much you can discuss in one teleseminar, of course! So we’ll be picking up our microphone again soon - and regularly thereafter - to talk about the topics that matter to you and your business.

Your turn: So what topics do you want to hear us discuss in future teleseminars and podcasts? You ask…we’ll deliver.

For a lesson in why blogging and other forms of social media are relevant, look no further than this week’s Macworld Expo in San Francisco. Around this time every year, Apple hosts this event to showcase its latest technology. Other tech companies do the same thing, of course, but only Apple has managed to raise the conference to high art, with fans of the company speculating for months beforehand what CEO Steve Jobs will announce. In the weeks leading up to the event, Appleheads work themselves into a near-frenzy, filling the blogosphere with chatter.

Apple has found a way to leverage the power of crowds, to focus today’s tools of social media to raise the volume on its message to a degree greater than anything it could ever buy from an advertising agency. Apple doesn’t actually write its own blogs - we’ll talk about the benefits of that in another bog entry - but you can bet your next mortgage payment that its employees are actively patrolling Facebook, MySpace and blogs large and small.

They do this to better understand what’s driving their market and assess what their competitors are up to. Reading what the average consumer has to say about current products helps inform and guide the stuff that’s in the pipeline. Companies that fail to incorporate social media into their market research efforts lose a valuable source of information, and are at greater risk of losing touch with the customers that keep them alive.

So Steve Jobs doesn’t write a blog. But he’s reading them along with most of his employees, using what he learns along the way to build products that people will line up for days to buy. Blogging is as much about the reading as it is about the writing. What will your readers learn about you the next time they load up your blog?

Fascinating things are happening in the world of social networking. While the MySpaces and Facebooks have attracted legions of younger-demographic users, they have been viewed with a certain sense of detachment by mainstream business.

Until now, apparently.

Canada’s TD Bank and Royal Bank have initiated their own initiatives on Facebook. I spoke with Toronto Star business reporter Rita Trichur about what motivates them and what it means for the banking industry. The article, TD reaches out with Facebook group, was published in yesterday’s paper.

The use of social networking resources as marketing tools will only grow as businesses in all sectors begin to realize the value of reaching out to clients and potential clients through these non-traditional avenues.

Is there a Facebook plan in your future business plans?

Once upon a time, the morning newspaper was our first and most detailed means of consuming the days news. We killed trees to keep on top of local and world news. When we were done, we shoved the yellowing, fraying results into the bottom of the bird cage. We didn’t call it recycling back then.

Today, breaking news no longer comes on paper. Sure, many of us still subscribe to our local rag. It lays out nicely on the kitchen table, and you can’t take a laptop to the beach. Not safely, anyway. Convenience aside, rapidly delivered interactive online media have changed the way we consume content. They’ve also changed the way we communicate. The impact extends far beyond the breakfast table. It changes the way we work, making the modern office a very alien place to people rooted in paper-based memos and, gasp, fax machines.

Whether we’re sending an e-mail to a colleague across the hall, preparing a PowerPoint presentation for company leadership or designing in-store signs for the next sales campaign, we can’t forget the one overriding truth: the Internet has fundamentally changed how we interact with others, and how we absorb and respond to messages.

But what to do about this. Start by knowing which way is up in this chaotically evolving world. Writing for online consumption is a necessarily different process than writing for print. Readers have ever-shorter attention spans. They scroll through a page and hover the mouse pointer over a selection of text, fingers to click on whatever link next tickles their fancy. They don’t have time to read War and Peace. They may not even make it to the War part. Be quick, be decisive, and get to the point. Now.

Speaking of which, we’ll leave the rest for the next entry. We said to keep it short, and that applies to us as well. And we’ll continue the story tomorrow.