I think it’s appropriate to write this post today, the traditional beginning of Christmas shopping. Now, I’ve rarely been masochistic enough to get up at the crack of dawn to punch my way to the front of the Elmo doll line, but historically, this has been a tremendous day for shoppers looking to score great deals for the holidays.

I’m officially declaring it holiday time, which means I will only check my email every 3 hours instead of every hour. Go enjoy your family and eat good things.

I got an email this morning telling me the ElfYourself campaign that had such phenomenal success last year was back this year. Yay! I had such fun playing with it and blogging about it last year, I was glad to see it return.

While certain social networking sites have peaked in popularity and now settled to a lower place on the totem pole, you have to admit, social networking is here to stay. The very way we do marketing has changed. And it is, in fact, all about change.

I was perusing a magazine recently. I think it was Food & Wine (you know, the magazine that makes you feel inferior for not being a gourmet chef?). I glanced at the ad for this coffee maker, and had to blink twice.

A lot of the people I talk to about social media want to know how to track it. How can they measure the results? What can we project as far as sales? These are difficult questions to answer. Certainly there are ways to see how much traffic to your site comes from, for example, Twitter, but sometimes it’s hard to pinpoint exactly how well social media is helping you.

When I recently attended the Loyalty Expo in Orlando, there was a presentation on marketing to millennials. I perked up. Until the speaker classified everyone from the age of 12 to 31. I am 31. And I do not identify myself as a millennial. I learned to type on a typewriter. Texting on a phone is hard from me. I digress.

It’s subtle (sometimes), but advertisers are finding new ways to get their products on television and actually have people pay attention.

You may not be into the technology behind search engines, but Google and pals have some very sophisticated algorithms that help them see patterns in what people are searching for. Think about it. You probably think in keywords. If you’re looking for someone to fix your sink, what do you type in? Probably “Plumber Orlando” (or whatever city you’re in.)

That Darren Rowse. While everyone else is busy trying to understand a new internet tool (blogs. Twitter) he decides to write a blog on how to use them. Smart guy, that Aussie.