I read today on the Social Media Examiner that Americans, on average, spent over 7 hours on facebook in January. 4th overall, according to Neilsen. That’s more than the top 3 Parent Companies combined (Google, Microsoft & Yahoo). This is huge news to businesses who are fighting for that split second of time with their consumers, and have already lept into the realm of social media on facebook.

The secret weapon, in my opinion (and I’m not alone): RICH MEDIA. Photography. (In some cases…) Better yet, video.

Here’s an excercise for you to try.

Instead of buying or printing expensive invitations or sale flyers, paying postage, then waiting for RSVPs, try this: Invite people to your next event on a flip cam or an iphone. Upload it to YouTube. Link to it from your fan page via facebook events. Use a bit.ly link and tweet about both. Your invite just cost you a flip or an iPhone’s retail price, if you didn’t already have one. If you did, you’re pretty much out 15 minutes of your time, instead of the $100s you used to spend on invitations, postage, etc. Furthermore, you can answer questions (“Can I bring a friend?”) and even track the number of people who clicked on it via the kick ass bit.ly plug in through Firefox.

New drink at the bar? Show me. New employee? Introduce them. New location? How about a tour? New item on the menu? Show me that, too. Best part: letting people talk about it afterwards.

Watch and see how sales spike, how people know your new staffer, and know their way around the store.

I didn’t have any video on hand, so I thought I’d include this piece from the good people at socialnomics.com. Just because it would be pretty stupid to have a blog post about rich media and not include some, right? One could even argue that I should have posted this via video, huh?

ADVANTAGE: SIRIUS/XM

1. JASON ELLIS SHOW – Absolutely hilarious daily train wreck combo of comic relief, action sports, and really dirty jokes. “Dude, is it gay?” segment is hysterical. Mayhem Mondays with Mayhem Miller is great, too. See #2.

2. FACTION 28/ XM 52: The Marky Ramone Show is sort of like going to punk rock church and the sermon was given by God on Wednesday nights. Tony Hawk might be the coolest guy in America. Johnny Moseley is up there, too. Bam Margera annoys the crap out of me, but I think that’s the idea.

3. NO FUSS IN THE CAR – No battery issues, cables, worrying about adapters, compatibility, etc. A dream for long-distance drives.

4. PERSONALITIES – Confession: I’m a rock fan. (Old/new/heavy/indie/folk) I’m biased towards Faction, but Little Steven’s Underground Garage, Alt Nation, Boneyard, and Octane (I’m sure I’m forgetting several others) all have fantastic DJs. Frequent guest channels are cool, too. I hear great things about the Hip-Hop channels, and there’s plenty of talk networks for politicial douchebags who like to argue and people that can stand Martha Stewart and Oprah. Hey, more power to ‘em. Gives them something to do with their time to feel important, I suppose.

5. STERN’S NETWORK – Not my bag, but millions of devoted listeners dig the legendary shock jock. Opie & Anthony and Farrell are great.

ADVANTAGE: PANDORA

1. IT’S FREE, DUMMY – And when you run out of free hours, finish out the month for $1.00. A BUCK!

2. DESIGNER CHANNELS – If you hear a song you don’t like, just skip it or delete it. (Perfect for when Nickelback and Linkin Park interrupt your good channels). Imagine, you can make a custom channel with Slayer, Run DMC and John Mayer. Though, it might make you a little schizophrenic. Ask me how I know!

3. YOU CAN SHARE YOUR MIX – the new mix tape? Check out my Pandora Profile here: http://www.pandora.com/people/nate.ludens

4. BEST EVER SOURCE FOR DISCOVERING NEW MUSIC – I love the voodoo formulas that Pandora uses to know what I like.

5. NO HARDWARE MAKES IT OFFICE FRIENDLY – streaming free radio at work makes the world a better place.

BOTTOM LINE: Get them both. You can say you were there when the power in radio shifted from boring, redundant, record-company crap-oganda to the people’s-choice radio, featuring inspiring music you want to hear, when you want to hear it. Without commercials.

1. Retail & sales contacts need cards. Back of the house staff don’t. Save yourself some dough and make a company card for those who don’t need a lot of them.

2. Don’t use a template that came with Microsoft Word/Publisher, etc. There’s a reason nobody uses clip art anymore. It’s garbage. Usually these are the wrong resolution, the wrong color mode, and incompatible with any professional software your printer can work with. Pay for a real designer who knows what it means to build a cohesive brand identity for your company.

3. Don’t have cheap cards. If you do, I fully expect you to show up to your next business meeting in sweatpants and a torn, stained white shirt, because you clearly don’t value first impressions.

4. Websites like LinkedIn, Facebook, eLance, etc. won’t kill the business card industry. Why? Not everyone has bump (or an iPhone, for that matter), and what are you going to give people at mixers, bars and golf courses?

Want some cards designed? Email me, maybe I can help.

Hootsuite is a great twitter application for business social media usage. It’s web-based, not Adobe AIR-based like the very popular Tweetdeck, and therefore it doesn’t rely on calling an external Twitter API. (Which I thought was going away, but still seems to be looming overhead). Since hootsuite is web-based, your column setup looks the same on your Mac, PC, laptop iPhone and your desktop. It doesn’t take long to set your preferred channels, i.e. import and monitor twitter, facebook, LinkedIn, RSS feeds, Wordpress blogs and more. One feature that I particularly love is that you can schedule facebook fan page updates. There may be other apps that do this, but I haven’t discovered them yet. (Seesmic, maybe? Can anyone help me out with suggestions – I welcome your comments.)

Tweetdeck is a very decent app, but it just doesn’t have the scale that I need as a corporate social media operator. A couple little nitpicky things that I do like about Tweetdeck: I like the way it counts down, not up, when counting characters, and I like to change out the colors of the interface from time to time to keep it fresh. These are small, but important when you tweet like I do: 30-40 hrs of informative (we hope) tweets to a vast customer base with somewhat diverse interests and as much correspondence as time allows. Some pre-programmed tweets are scheduled on weekends and time-sensitive events & announcements, too.  I have 40+ inches of columns on two flat screens monitoring multiple brands, competitors and keywords in real time every weekday, so its understandable that the real killer for tweetdeck to me is the API call. Regardless, I do have both open simultaneously most of the time.

Today, I’m hearing from Mashable (by way of friend @VegasBill) that there are more new features on the way for hootsuite – integration with mobile apps like foursquare are exciting as well. All the more reason to get on board with hootsuite, if you haven’t already.

This is the week the WPPI (Wedding & Portrait Photographers) Convention comes here to Vegas. It’s always a great show.  On behalf of my city, I’d like to welcome some of the best photographic talent in the world.

I have attended the last 3 or 4 WPPI conventions, and it’s clear that my email and mailing address has been cycled through several mailing lists.  Let me tell you – there’s something awry with much of this massive load of photo-promotions. It’s not just email marketing, either. Many of the trade publications, sites, signage, and mail pieces, too. Most of it’s really, really poor.

Look, typography is a science in itself, so don’t be surprised to learn that cute font that came with your wife’s Dell just doesn’t cut it. While you were in the darkroom, Designers were in their second semester of color theory. Look at the “big guys” at the trade show. They have beautiful booklets, great logos and packed booths. Not a coincidence.

Investing in porfessional design shouldn’t be hard to grasp for shutterbugs. And its certainly not meant to sound condescending or offensive. All of us creatives need to check our egos and take a critique from time to time. The experienced Designer’s mantra is identical to yours, Photographers: when your clients hire true, experienced professionals, they get top-notch results. Designers carry the same responsibilities as Photographers, too. Deliver results on behalf of your client, or your phone may not ring again for awhile. In this, the era of facebook and twitter… word gets out about poor service in a short moment.

I’m as aware as anyone of the financial challenges both industries face, so my advice is this: Buddy up. Professional photographers should seek partnerships with Professional Designers and vice versa.  Build it in the budget. Find a way. Work out trade deals, retainers, industry-rates…  hell, issue frequent flyer miles if you have to!

This is a guy who just plain “Gets It.” I read my first Tom Peters book about 5 years ago, and now I am stoked to see that he’s sharing tips and advice via YouTube (new to me, anyway).

“Vegas PUG exists to introduce or reacquaint  people with Adobe’s powerful desktop and web applications for Print design. Our meetings are structured in “show-and-do” lab format, giving attendees an immediate opportunity to put what they’re learning to use right away as well as tapping into the knowledge of our PUG Xperts as they roam the room answering questions and providing individual instruction where needed. Quarterly advanced labs will give seasoned users an opportunity to expand their skills or to share a technique with the group. Meetings are held monthly and are free for members”.

I’m excited to connect with this new community (I’m a community type of guy) and share some of my tricks with Photoshop and all things Adobe (big fan).

Over the next few weeks I’ll have some more news about upcoming programs and – who knows – maybe some other really exciting stuff to share.

Here’s a link to the group page on Adobe’s group pages. Currently there are 59 members. Are you one?

Pick up this album. It's damn good.

Here’s a sped-up version of the process. The first thing I did was (duh) put on the album. Then I started to search through my database of fonts from recent projects. Probably about 375 selections. Most are completely incompatible… but I narrow it down to a typeface that conveys their style of music – I settled on Dirty & Classic by one of my favorite artists and fontographers, Billy Argel. I tweaked it until it was easier to read at a smaller size (from a distance, in this particular application), but still gets across the “vibe” I was going for.

Check out this video I made using Jing (killer app!) and let me know what you think. Starts out a little slow (no pun intended).

For my company, I monitor a lot (a LOT) of tweets and facebook posts in any given week, and let me tell you – there’s a gang of people on social sites that do nothing but complain. Traffic, lunch, airlines, TV, music, and of course, politics are common areas where seemingly, no one is ever happy. Don’t believe me? Spend some time on Yelp.com searching for your favorite restaurants.

Personally, I dislike the idea of a dislike button. As I said earlier, social sites are already littered with negativity – why encourage it, Google & Co.?

I’ve said this before to some friends and they all agreed. What do you think? Hypothetical situation: you and a date go out for a great meal or a movie. If the meal or movie is fantastic, you cowboys and cowgirls don’t have a tendency to reach in your holster for the ol’ iPhone and dial up Yelp, Twitter, or the company facebook fan page quite as quickly as you would if the meal sucked. Am I right?

Let me make something clear – I’m not for censoring the web, or covering up the truth when someone reaches out to a social site as a means to fixing a given problem. Actually, I’m in favor of connecting with companies by whatever means they provide, be it facebook fan pages, twitter or a blog. Hey, let’s hold businesses responsible if their cause or company makes mistakes. I just don’t know if we should be loading the gun and aiming it, too.

This site is a spankin’ new version of NateLudens.com. I plan to blog about all kinds of things you might like. I’m currently a social media guy, spending 50+ hours on facebook, twitter and various blogs at my day job or after hours for fun.

I’m working on different additions to this site as time allows, and I’ll be sure to let you know when it’s up to full speed.

Thanks for taking a look. Check back soon – or I’ll notify you on Twitter or Facebook.

Nate