A recent study by USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism found that while nearly half of all Americans have used free microblogs like Twitter, a whopping ZERO percent of them would be willing to pay for them. Not exactly good news for startup companies hoping to launch subscription-based networking sites. Or for existing sites looking for alternatives to advertising as a revenue stream.

“Such an extreme finding…underscores the difficulty of getting Internet users to pay for anything that they already receive for free,” Jeffrey Cole, director of the Center for the Digital Future at USC, explains. ”Twitter has no plans to charge its users, but this result illustrates, beyond any doubt, the tremendous problem of transforming free users into paying users.”

What else was discovered in the study? That 70 percent of Internet users find online advertisements “annoying,” for one. And 50 percent claim never to click on such advertisements. For internet startups and old hats alike, this means that an inventive and consumer-friendly solution is crucial for solving the wicked problem web apps have of attaining both fortune and fame.

“Beginning with our first Digital Future Study in 2000, and in every year since, we have found extraordinary levels of shifting views, new and evolving attitudes about technology, adoption of new media, and casting off of old methods as part of involvement – or not being involved — in the online experience,” Cole has said. So where will the virtual world turn next? Can you keep up?

Within the enormous realm of social media, the primary goal of every blogger, Twitterer, Facebooker, and FourSquarer alike is to differentiate him- or herself—to be uniquely fascinating. If for no other reason, this is his purpose because the millions of others vying for the same attention as him demand it.

According to Guy Kawasaki, co-founder of the “online magazine rack” Alltop, “the challenge is to achieve a consistent level of fascinating information about your area of expertise.” The solution, he says, is to find  good blogs, stories, and videos about the topic and then to provide links to them within your preferred social networking site or profile.

To uncover these subject-appropriate gems, Kawasaki offers three web-based sources:

1. StumbleUpon

2. SmartBrief

3. Alltop

Each site allows you to enter specific search criteria and then generates websites, industry-specific newsletters, or blog posts and articles, respectively, that pertain to your criteria. So take a minute to give them a go, and your readers,  followers, friends, and business will thank you for it.

I listened with interest to a SC Business Review interview last week, in which a career coach suggested 70% of this year’s college grads will either be unemployed or will need to enter their family business. Now…I might take issue with the notion that going into the family business is a fate almost as bad as unemployment (!), I do see the difficulty young people are having entering the workforce. So here’s the advice I give them: Work in your field, even if you aren’t getting paid for it. Come out of an internship or externship with real exerience makes you marketable!

We took a nice trip to Columbia, SC recently and came home with some bling for our clients. Touchpoint earned some appreciated Mercury Awards from SCPRSA (entries were judged by pros in Kansas City). We were thrilled to win for Bulldog Tours’ marketing program, and for our Brand-Aide effort last year. Best of all: our very own Grace LeSueur won Rookie of the Year! The only surprise there is that somebody so seasoned and talented is a “rookie.” Thanks, clients, for helping us do what we love!

Accepting the award for Brand-Aide

Grace accepting the award for our work with Bulldog Tours

Grace is SCPRSA's 2010 Rookie of the Year!

Thanks to our TV media sponsor for the event, WCIV ABC News 4. Special thanks to Dean Stevens for his help emceeing the event!

I am admittedly a compulsive multitasker. I am known to have 10 windows open in my Internet explorer at one time, to text on my phone, to check my email and to read the paper all at the same time. A new study makes me wonder if I’m not as good at multitasking as I thought.

The study finds that people that multitask using several types of media (email, word processing, wathcing online video, IMing, browsing the web) do worse in attention tests than those who don’t. On top of that, heavy multitaskers are more easily distracted by irrelevant or useless info, which is retained in short-term memory. Multitaskers also had slower response times.

Now, doctors are trying to figure out if our brains modified based on our multitasking behavior, or if the brain automatically just multitasks. This question will be important in determining how to reverse this multitasking habit.

I never thought of multitasking as a problem, but now I am going to reconsider some of my everyday tasks.

Read the full article here.

A recent study by iPressroom found that PR professionals are leading the management social media activity for organizations, beating out marketing professionals. Not only are PR pros handling social media engagement, they’re surpassing marketing’s efforts in blogging, microblogging and social netowrking.

• Public relations leads the deployment of digital communications at 51% of organizations (marketing takes charge 40.5 % of the time)
• Public relations manages the use of blogging, (49% to marketing’s 22%), microblogging (52% to marketing’s 22%) and social networking (48% to marketing’s 27%)
• Among survey respondents who are responsible for hiring public relations and marketing employees, more than 80% said knowledge of social networks is either important or very important. Other new media communications skills that hiring decision makers found important or very important are blogging, podcasting and RSS (77 %), micro-blogging (72%), search engine optimization (62%), email outreach (56%), web content management (52%) and social bookmarking (51%).

Marketing pros hold the lead for email marketing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO). I handle a lot of digital communications for Touchpoint Communications and am the least familiar with SEO, so this makes sense.

Another study found that approximately 70 percent of all social media programs are being driven by public relations professionals.

The next obvious question is why organizations are seeking PR pros for their social media efforts. Here are the explanations that I completely agree with…

Social media puts the consumer in control, and public relations professionals are accustomed to operating in an environment that cedes control to others. Too, public relations has always been about engaging with key audiences to establish mutually beneficial relationships. Plus, public relations is a two-way discipline; it disseminates information about an organization and brings back information for analysis and response.

Among those survey respondents who are responsible for hiring public relations and marketing employees, more than 80 percent said knowledge of social networks is either important or very important. Other new media communications skills that hiring decision makers found important or very important are blogging, podcasting and RSS (77 percent), micro-blogging (72 percent), search engine optimization (62 percent), email outreach (56 percent), web content management (52 percent) and social bookmarking (51percent).

Fortune 100 companies have taken a liking to Twitter according to a recent study. The study does note that Twitter may have had an advantage over Facebook since fan page status updates were just introduced at the beginning of this year (which is a major advantage to using a fan page for business).

Of Fortune 100 companies:

• 54% use Twitter
• 32% have a blog
• 29% have an active Facebook page
• Of companies using more than one social media tool, 76% said their top pick is Twitter
• 17% use all three social media tools (Twitter, Facebook, blog)
• Of the companies using Twitter, 94% use it for news/announcements, 67% for customer service and 57% for deals and promotions

Not only did we sign – enthusiastically – the 10% shift pledge this summer. We’re also delighted to see so much of our client work focusing on local enterprises. It’s been a big summer here, and we’re excited about the great mission of Pluffmudconnect.com – and their generous, capacity building Thrive! Prize. We’ve rocked some great fashion this summer, too, thanks to Butterfly Consignments and their new store on King Street – follow them on Twitter via @ButterflyonKing or join them on Facebook. Our local Relax The Back store is about to kick into high gear with a Cash for Clunker Chairs promotion – and the benefit goes to Carolina Autism – another group we’re thrilled to get to know. Next on deck: Discovery Ice Cream, a locally-owned store that is the first in the world to use a robot to serve food. In this case it’s yummy ice cream. In all – welcome fall, and welcome all!

Had a great time today on the SATW panel in Charleston – focused on Reinvention. Number one takeaway: if you’re not reinventing yourself these days, you should be. Number two: it takes a village to hone an entrepreneur. None of us makes it alone!