While the bright shiny apps like Twitter and Facebook are getting all the buzz these days, we’re still getting and reading email. Although social media and mobile are cutting into email’s terrain and numbers, marketers are still using email with some companies now integrating email with social media campaigns, thereby extending the reach of email content into new markets

In this recent emailINSIDER post by George Bilbrey, president of Return Path, he lays out his arguments on why we should remain bullish on email and includes some trends for the future such as the Mozilla Raindrop project and Yahoo’s recent changes.

Via techPresident, Marc Ross, Christine Stineman, and Chris Lisi of 2ndSix, Tribe Effect and Chris Lisi Communications have just published a report: Social Media and Advocacy Analysis 2009 looking at how 102 Washington-based trade associations and advocacy groups are making use of 14 core social media tools and platforms.

For the analysis, the researchers identified 14 online advocacy tools, websites and grassroots techniques [Advocacy Center, Facebook, MySpace, blog, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Digg, StumbleUpon, widgets, email signups, badges, SlideShare and Flickr] and over the period of 08/3/09 – 10/2/09, confirmed each category through the organization’s home page and social user accounts. Existence of a tool was scored 1 point; no tool, score zero. Top scorers included the Sierra Club (#1), SEIU (#2), and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, American Wind Energy Institute, Human Rights Campaign and the National Electrical Contractors Association all tied for the #3 ranking.

My first reaction to the report’s methodology brought up a core concept I frequently share with clients: Just because you have a social media tool on your website, it’s meaningless as to whether an organization is or isn’t communicating effectively unless you are actually using that tool on a time-committed basis with a real purpose and agreed-upon ROI measurements tied into the organization’s business plan. Evidently, I’m not alone in that thinking as techPresident later posted in a follow-up: DC Social Media Survey Touches a Nerve.

Having worked at a DC trade association for several years, I was still interested in learning more about  these organizations use of social media. Beyond the reported number of platforms, what were the specific tools organizations are using? Are smaller organizations utilizing social media?

One source I found was the Association Social Media Wiki. A list of 135 organizations ranging from the big-time AARP to the smaller Virginia Society of Certified Public Accountants, you can easily find and confirm what these organizations are doing in the social media space. Quick analysis: Large and small organizations are utilizing these platforms, generally using just one tool. Blogs are the most popular followed by wikis and podcasts.

I agree with the report’s findings of trade associations and cause groups still cautiously finding their way through the often puzzling Web 2.0 playing field but I see definite movement and interest on learning more. The recent Buzz 2009 Social Media for Associations was a sold-out success and the attendee list for this week’s TWTRCON DC 09 is showing registrations by many representatives from associations and advocacy groups.

For Gov 2.0, it took a new White House administration to provide the real catalyst for a different kind of communications strategy. Which organizations and individuals will be the catalysts for trade associations and advocacy groups? Stay tuned to this space.

While working with clients on their Twitter feeds, I’ve been using these Twitter guidelines that I’ve put together over the last few months. But I’m always looking for new ideas to share, so feel free to add your best Twitter maximization practices in the comments or email me.

Here’s my list:

1. Add your Twitter URL to email sigs and business cards. Link to your Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn etc. profiles. If you have a blog, add a graphic or link asking people to follow you on Twitter.

2. Find the most knowledgable and relevant people in your niche and follow them. Respond to their tweets when possible and if you’re lucky enough to get a response, you may see a surge of new followers.

3. Mix it up. As with blogging, give your Twitter followers a good mix of helpful content as well as slices of your own life. We want nothing more than to connect with each other and giving your followers 140 character bursts of who you are — interests, thoughts, questions, etc. — serves as a powerful connection tool. It’s fine using Twitter to give information about your company but make sure to mix it up with tweets of third-party links and other resources for more reader interest. If you want to find out what your followers are interested in, check out Twittersheep and create a tag cloud from the bios of your network.

4. A great way to get more followers is to promote others. Whether giving them props on their tweet or linking to a choice post on their blog, giving credit to your favorite @username will help get you noticed.

5. Add your feed to We Follow: http://wefollow.com

6. Twit the peak. Post most often to your twitter account during peak browsing hours of your targeted followers. Not sure of the hours, ask yourself when you tend to be online the most. You are more likely to interact with more of your followers online as the same time as yourself, as well as maximizing your tweets’ exposure to more potential followers. Which days of the week do most people tweet? Research shows Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday are the most popular days.

7. Tweet often. It’s a fine line between too many and not enough but 3-5 a day seems to be a range that works. (According to @timoreilly, the tweet average is 4.22.) The more you tweet, the more opportunities for new followers and search engines to find you. For the time-crunched, try using a client such as HootSuite to schedule your tweets ahead of time to keep up feed momentum.

8. Respond to @Replies. Take the time to respond to replies directed towards you. Whether it’s a RT (retweet) or a general comment or question, respond to as many replies as time permits. Try not to give @replies like “Yes”, “I agree”, “Thank you” which are meaningless to the rest of your followers. Provide some context with your @replies to raise follower engagement.

9. Live-tweet events. Share observations, speaker content, questions, and shout-outs to other attendees. Make sure to add the event’s agreed-upon Twitter hashtag to your tweets to make it easier for others to follow and find you.

9. Ask questions. Whether you’re looking for information on how to do something or curious about what others think about a product, take advantage of Twitters enormous crowd sourcing power and ask your followers for help. Not only will this engage your current followers, but you increase your odds of showing up in http://search.twitter.com where many users go to find relevant tweets.

10. Check out the most popular trends and keywords at What the Trend and Twitscoop: http://www.twitscoop.com

A few nights ago, I had an opportunity to attend the first taping of a new PBS series – Planet Forward. Moderated by former CNN special correspondent Frank Sesno, the show’s theme is to promote a discussion about energy and climate change, but in an innovative twist, starts off the discussion in the online community and then goes to broadcast and then eventually back to online for post-show discussion and critique.

PBS started the ball rolling back in early March with a request to the Planet Forward online community for submissions of questions, ideas, videos, podcasts and even poetry, which were then rated by PBS editors and the online community as most popular and deserving to be included in the show. Winners appear on the show and have an opportunity to debate and pose questions to Sesno and panels of industry experts.

This inaugural show featured Carol Browner, Energy Coordinator for the Obama Admnistration; industry experts L. Hunter Lovins, president of National Capitalism and internationally recognized promoter of sustainable development; Shai Agassi, CEO of Better Place, a company focused on building transportation networks of zero-emission electric vehicles; and Jim Connaughton, Constellation Energy executive vice president, corporate affairs, public and environmental policy and former chairman, White House Environmental Quality for the Bush Administration.

I found the show engaging with its lively mix of average citizens and experts, and extremely informative (for example, I learned the famous DC landmark Ben’s Chili Bowl with a 50s-era menu of cheese fries, shakes and half-smoke sausages uses renewable energy sources to power the restaurant. Cool!)

Planet Forward airs nationally on PBS April 15th. It will be fun to see how this show organically grows when it goes back for online discussion and viewer collaboration after its initial airing.

I’ve been doing more tweeting instead of full out blogging of late, and also have been on the road at seminars and with clients. Time to catch up with an actual blog post that’s more than 140 characters.

Here’s what I’ve learned over the last few weeks:

- Digital vs. traditional. Wave the white flag — no longer a debate. This came up at last week’s MediaPost Digital Marketing in a Downturn panel discussion. Razorfish’s Shiv Singh, VP of Social Media, pronounced the end of this seesaw battle over which is the more important media calling it for both. These days, consumers are watching their traditional media tvs while typing a tweet on their laptop and answering e-mail on their BlackBerry. We live in a multi touchpoint information world and it requires multichannel marketing to reach us these days. (Great multichannel marketing resource – Akin Arikan.)

- Social media is marketing. Social media is communication. Social media is… confusing? Answer: All of the above. I’m still hearing clients repeating a similar theme: “We know we need to so some social media but we’re not sure what we want to do.” And for those organizations that have plunged into social media and have blogs and videos and maybe even a Twitter feed on their sites, I’m hearing a need to sit down and actually plan a better strategy to optimize results.

On both counts I’ll give the same advice: First, go back to basics. Why are you in business? What are the goals of your web site? What does success look to you? Answer these three questions and then see how and where social media fits into your organization’s business plan.

- Twitter has exploded with new users and publicity over the last few weeks. I witnessed this especially in the DC journo community with NBC’s David Gregory, MSNBC’s David Shuster, and Air America’s Ana Marie Cox getting into Twitter a few weeks ago which then generated widespread coverage in the New York Times, Washington Post and Politico. Is Twitter just a fad that will go the way of Second Life? I don’t think so. I hope not anyway. I love the immediacy and variety of information that Twitter offers users and I believe we’re just seeing the beginning of its possibilities – especially with the recent infusion of $35 million of new VC money.

We have a new Congress and a new way of doing business. Yesterday it was announced by House and Senate leaders that we can now find our Representatives and Senators YouTube channels (did you know they each had one?) on two new platforms:

The House Hub

The Senate Hub

I sampled what my senator — Senator Jim Webb (D-VA) — has to offer on his channel and it’s fairly substantive. Nine videos and the usual line up for subscriptions, e-mail, friending, and sharing. Senator Webb also puts out an e-mail newsletter and next time it hits my in box, I’m going to check and see if they list this YouTube channel on it. Cross-promotion is key in terms of building video buzz and not taking advantage of a senate office’s enormous e-mail database would be quite the lost opportunity.

At last week’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES), NBC News Vice President of digital media Mark Lukasiewicz talks to Web Newser about how and why he made the leap from old to new media and how NBCU is gearing up for more web content expansion despite a down economy.

Peter Whoriskey writes in The Washington Post today about the U.S. government’s work with search engine giants Google and Microsoft in opening up previously “hidden” site pages for better SEO. Virtually millions of federal Web pages are largely invisible to Google, Yahoo and Microsoft search engines mostly because the data, while public, can only be accessed after filling out an online form and crawlers generally skip over these kind of databases. To make databases visible, the feds have to make each item into a Web page and then provide a list of those Web page URLs to the search engines.

The Post article notes some grumbling by federal information technology officials over the costs and manpower needed to transition their sites — the Smithsonian alone gave Google 78,000 links. But given that users these days expect immediate gratification to search queries or else will usually exit the site, it looks like a necessary step in the right direction to better serve the public as well as building site traffic.

Last night while checking my RSS feeds, I saw this TimesOnline column by one of my favorite bloggers, Andrew Sullivan, about the looming death of print newspapers. Pretty timely given the latest torrent of bad news coming from the world of legacy media companies: Tribune Co., owner of the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times and Baltimore Sun, filing for possible bankruptcy this week; The New York Times borrowing up to $225 million against the value of its mid-Manhattan headquarters building; McClatchy looking for a buyer for The Miami Herald; and E.W. Scripps Co. selling the Rocky Mountain News.

UPDATE: (Within a few minutes of going live with this post, I received word that the Tribune Co. is filing for bankruptcy. Another one bites the dust. UPDATE 2: Given the company’s almost $13 billion of debt along with declining local tv and newspaper ad revenues, it’s a tough road ahead for the Tribune Co. )

Sullivan, a blogger since 2000, gives the history of his blog as to why bloggers hold such an economic advantage over these legacy media companies, despite the best efforts of these companies to beef up their websites:

“To give my own example: I started blogging eight years ago. My once quirky blog, born in time to cover the 2000 election campaign, has steadily grown in traffic over the years, but this year, with the election campaign and a media revolution, it went into the stratosphere. In October last year my blog got 3.5m page views; in October this year it had 23m page views. The story of the campaign, in other words, did find a readership (and page views of big online papers soared as well). The growth just didn’t occur in newsprint, and the next generation of readers – those now under 30 – barely knows what a newspaper is.

Now compare my little blog’s traffic with The Baltimore Sun, a big metropolitan paper with a long history and great reputation, featured most recently in the HBO series The Wire. It had 17.5m page views in October; The Dallas Morning News got 12m; The Atlanta Journal-Constitution got 14m. The operation largely run out of my spare room reached many more online readers than some of the biggest and most loss-making papers in the country. The economics are remorseless: as news goes online, the economic model for papers cannot survive. If advertising follows page views, the game will shortly be over.”

Will large newspapers, even if offered online-only, survive? Only time will tell. But I also agree with Sullivan that blogs are not a complete substitute because most blogs don’t have the budgets and staff to do in depth reporting (Josh Marshall’s Talking Points Memo and Huffington Post are notable exceptions), and often rely on traditional media sources to back up an opinion or issue. Add this to the tremendous loss to the public discourse and it will be a sad day indeed, should only a few media companies manage to survive.

Saw this story yesterday about NASA’s popular Mars Phoenix Lander Twitter feed.

“When NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory News Services manager Veronica McGregor was tasked with delivering word of the agency’s first-ever robotic landing on Mars during a holiday weekend, she turned to the social-networking website.

Readership and viewership in traditional news media usually goes down over a three-day weekend,” said McGregor, a former CNN correspondent.”

McGregor created a distinctive Twitter persona for the Lander and the number of followers skyrocketed to over 39,000.

“The Lander’s writing style helped the blog stand out, according to Twitter co-founder Biz Stone.

“It was the way she chose to send out the updates — in the first person and anthropomorphizing the Lander — that really made all of the difference,” Stone said. “As a result, NASA gets a level of engagement with citizens they didn’t have before.”

Pleased with the Phoenix Lander’s Twitter success, NASA plans on adding more Twitter feeds for future agency missions.