Here are some great posts from the past week about social media:

1: The Ultimate List: 300+ Social Media Statistics | Hubspot

Social Mediarology thinks: While this is a somewhat dated list (May, 2010) there’s still a wealth of information to be found here. My favorite stat: Nearly 30% of all link sharing is done via Facebook (24%) and Twitter (10.8%).

2: Old Spice Sales Double with YouTube Campaign | Mashable

Social Mediarology thinks: The old economists’ adage that “correlation does not equal causation” is certainly true in this case, but you can’t argue that the campaign has contributed to sales. If nothing else, it created a tremendous amount of brand awareness.

3: Google Introduces Location-Aware Mobile Display Ads | TechCrunch

Social Mediarology thinks: This could be huge for any tourism-related business. Attractions, hotels, restaurants, etc. This brings the location-awareness of apps like Foursquare to the general public.

4: 5 Critical Web Metrics to Keep a Close Eye On | ReadWriteWeb

Social Mediarology thinks: These are five great metrics. Some related to your website, some to Facebook and some to Twitter. Do you notice you have more Daily Active Uses on Facebook when you ask questions? Post more? Offer discounts? Check out the insights for your Facebook Fan Page at Facebook.com/Insights and unclick Total Likes to get a better look at your Daily Active Users.

Bonus! Here’s a fifth story you should check out from this week:

5: The Time for Foursquare Marketing is…Later? [STUDY] | Mashable

Social Mediarology thinks: We’ve been talking about Foursquare a lot lately and so have many other people. Mashable reports that

Only 4% of the adult, Internet-using population has used any kind of location-based service, and just 1% of all adults check into a location at least once a week.

While that’s true, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t at least think about integrating Foursquare into your marketing efforts. Especially if your target demographic is more likely to have a Foursquare account.

A colleague at a local Convention & Visitor Bureau (CVB) recently mentioned that their office wanted to include a blog in their social media strategy, and she wanted my thoughts about which blogging platform they should use.

Here is a brief rundown of some of the most popular blogging platforms, as well as a few up-and-comers, along with some of the benefits and drawbacks of each platform. I’ll just cover free blogging platforms today, there are plenty of other paid platforms, including TypePad and Compendium.

WordPress.com

WordPress.com is a hosted blogging solution. That means that when you create a WordPress.com blog, your address will look like: YourBlogName.wordpress.com. I switched from Blogger to WordPress.com several years ago as I wanted more control over what my blog looked like.

Here are the WordPress.com features available for bloggers.

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Here are some great posts from the past week about social media:

1: Beyond Foursquare: What Search Engines Could Do With Location Data | New York Times

Social Mediarology thinks: This is great news for consumers everywhere. With proper integration, Google Maps may, by default, look a lot like FourWhere.com (Read our post about FourWhere here), and search results could have some great location-based tips baked right in (Check out our post about Bing Maps’ Foursquare layer here).

2: Status Update: Facebook Logs 500 Million Users | USAToday

Social Mediarology thinks: With half a billion users, Facebook shouldn’t be ignored. The good news is that more and more organizations are joining Facebook every day in an effort to leverage the platform.

3: Is Email More Important Than Social Networks? | KyleLacy.com

Social Mediarology thinks: Kyle hits some great points in his post. In the end, the channel you use to communicate with your customers should depend on what your customers want.

4: 5 Mobile Commerce Trends for 2010 | Mashable

Social Mediarology thinks: With smartphone sales rising 49% in the first quarter of 2010, mobile technologies are here to stay. Here are some trends to keep an eye out for through 2010.

This is the third in a series of interviews with local leaders in the social media and technology industry that will be featured on Social Mediarology. Today’s interview is with Scotty Wise of Scotty’s Brewhouse, an Indiana-based restaurant with 6 locations throughout the Hoosier State.

Scotty Wise – Scotty’s Brewhouse

We opened out first restaurant in 1996 in Muncie. Not long after that, we tore down the existing building and rebuilt from the ground up. In 1998 I opened a fine dining restaurant, where I lost nearly a million dollars, but I learned more over the next three years at the fine dining restaurant than I’ve learned in the 14 years of Scotty’s existence.  When we closed that restaurant down, we opened our Bloomington location in 2001. West Lafayette opened in 2004 and the northside Indianapolis (96^th Street) location opened in 2007. We opened our downtown Indianapolis location (at Virginia & Pennsylvania Streets) in 2009. Scotty’s Lakehouse opened in 2010 and we’ll be opening our Brewpub, Three Wise Men Brewing Company in Broad Ripple in late 2010. We’ve also got a project we’re planning to launch in 2011 in Fort Wayne.  We’re looking to locate in left field of Parkview Field, home of the Minor League Fort Wayne TinCaps.

When I was looking to expand to Indianapolis, all the banks told me that the 96^th street location wouldn’t work because we were a college town bar and there was too much competition, but it’s the most successful restaurant in our portfolio right now.

How has social media affected your bottom line?

The best way to apply social media to our bottom line is that we’ve eliminated every single piece of outside advertising, no print, no radio, no other types of traditional media, whereas in the past, we would spend about $250,000 each year in football ads, newspaper, and radio during Christmastime to promote gift cards. We eliminated all of that. The original reason we eliminated that was because of the economy. A year and a half ago, when the economy crashed, that was the one part of the budget we could eliminate without having to lay employees off.

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Here are some great posts from the past week about social media:

1: How the Old Spice Videos are Being Made | ReadWriteWeb

Social Mediarology thinks: You’ve probably see the commercials on TV, but the agency responsible for this campaign went into overdrive this week and cranked out more than 80 180 customized videos for celebrities as well as big (and little) names in social media. They’ve created a very viral campaign that doesn’t bash you over the head with Old Spice. But, like Doug Karr asks, will people buy more Old Spice because of it?

2: Facebook’s Open Graph and Like Buttons are Going Mobile | Mashable

Social Mediarology thinks: While this article is short on details, the idea of bringing Open Graph and the now-ubiquitous Like button to mobile is enticing, especially for businesses in the travel and tourism industries.

3: New Hootsuite Features Offer More Insight About Your Customers | ReadWriteWeb

Social Mediarology thinks: We’ve written about Hootsuite countless times before, and their addition of filtering by Klout (influence) scores or keyword are sure to help you focus on the right followers to engage.

4: The Top 5 Reasons to Switch from WordPress to Posterous | Posterous

Social Mediarology thinks: While we’re big fans of WordPress here, this post was quite convincing. If you’re looking for a user-friendly, if less robust and customizable, option for blogging, Posterous might just be for you.

First of all, thanks to the Firebelly Digitalia blog for the great idea to do a weekly recap of some great social media-related articles.

Check out these posts in case you missed them this week!

1: Mailchimp Integrates Facebook Likes Into Email Campaigns | All Facebook

Social Mediarology thinks: What a great idea for one of the top email providers. Email isn’t going away anytime soon, but this is a great way to provide their customers with some deep social media integration.

2: 10 Dos and Don’ts for Brands on Twitter | Mashable

Social Mediarology thinks: This post is a couple of months old, but it contains some really great tips for what you should and shouldn’t do with your business’ Twitter account.

3: Experts Agree: Gen Y Will Not Grow Out of Social Networking [STUDY] | Mashable

Social Mediarology thinks: Do you STILL think that you don’t need to get your company involved in social media? There are some predictions that Gen Y consumers (Millennials – roughly considered to have been born between 1980 and 2000) will outnumber Baby Boomers soon. Do you really want to leave them behind?

4: Top 6 Social Media Mistakes and How To Fix Them | Social Media Examiner

Social Mediarology thinks: Are you making any of these mistakes? If so, they’re easy to fix.