Henry Stewart held it's annual Digital Asset Management Symposium on June 1 & 2nd  in New York City at the NY Hilton.  There were over 300 attendees at this years event to learn about solutions, best practices and network with peers in the corporate marketing, publishing  & broadcast markets.  Kodak's Marketing Workflow Solutions team was there with our partner Aprimo to talk to corporate clients about Marketing Asset Management, Digital Workflow, Brand Content Management and Enterprise Marketing Management Solutions.

The statistics for the social media market are staggering. Social media sites are attracting visitors like mad with minimal amounts of effort.

Here are some numbers to consider (thanks to Nateonk ):

• Facebook is growing by 600,000 to 700,000 users per DAY .  The site has 150 million registered users today and is obviously growing.
• Twitter has 6 million users. I love this statistic: 11 percent of Internet users are on Twitter.
• LinkedIn , the professional social-networking site, has over 35 million users.

I have said this a number of times, but there is a whole generation of people who are turning on their computers, opening their social-media application first, leaving it on and living their Internet day in the application.  Recently I was out with a bunch of social-media loving twenty-somethings, PSOGLE and Meadball . Somehow, I ended up arguing against the power of Facebook and Twitter with these young guys. But they were confirming the points I make every day: social media is incredibly relevant as more and more people manage their Internet experience out of these applications. I don't have the statistics, but I honestly believe no one under the age of 27 has a @yahoo email address or goes to Yahoo! or MSN. They use Facebook and have GMail.  They are "doing the Internet" differently than my generation, and it's all about social media. It seems like my peers are more likely to live on LinkedIn and Twitter.

So, you would think that this would translate into an entirely new paradigm for Internet-revenue generation, but it doesn't. The revenue generated from these social media sites just does not come close to their popularity. Everyone tells me not to read Valleywag , but I do and do so religiously. Anyway, they had a post on Facebook's inability to generate revenue commensurate with their enormous number of users . Do the math and you realize social media might be headed for trouble:

1. Facebook is trying desperately to justify the $3.7 billion dollar valuation and failing.
2. Twitter just has to get bought; I can't see anyway out for them. They're going with the old-school Web site model — building traffic now and figuring out the rest later. There have been a lot of posts on how Twitter can make money and none have resonated with me.
3. I have hope for LinkedIn , but I am not hearing much about their revenue.

The net-net: I was asked by Steven Woods from Eloqua : Can social media scale? According to him, the market is growing and frankly starting to dominate, but won't scale without revenue.

Stay tuned.

Marketing Automation is becoming a buzzword and is finally beginning to mature. Companies have invested in ERP, CRM and a whole host of other technologies but poor lonely marketing has been the one area of the organization that has been largely ignored in the rapid adoption of technology. However with CMO's under fire to bring results, the only way to measure that success is through technology, process and return on investment. Hey as a fellow marketer, it is only going to make us better at our job! The old adage that "50% of my marketing is working, I just don't know which 50%" is a tough place to be these days.

Early adopters in consumer packaging, financial services and pharmaceutical sectors have implemented sophisticated marketing automation tools. "Companies that invest in workflow technology that integrate into business systems will be 30% more competitive in the markets they serve" according to Gartner, A Return To Growth Fuels Marketing Automation, 2007. Most marketing research firms project increasing budgets for automation in the years ahead as firms look to capture that competitive advantage. Few firms can afford to overlook what this can do to maximize their marketing spend. Few marketers can afford to not be part of the process.

Just think if you could address some of these issues in your daily routine of trying to push campaigns out the door:

• Better visibility into what campaigns are currently running
• A project management process that all parties are engaged in and is managed by a system to push it through the organization
• Global access to campaign ideas and concepts
• Accurate budget & expense management
• Campaign alignment of work with strategic business goals.
• Campaigns that can be analyzed and adjust early in the running to account for market needs

We will flush these topics and more out in the coming weeks so check back!