The Wall Street Journal just ran a piece about the evolution of communication technology, chronicling the rise and alleged fall of email to social media. “Email no longer rules,” the title reads.

“We all still use email, of course,” says Jessica E. Vascellaro, the author of the piece. “But email was better suited to the way we used to use the Internet—logging off and on, checking our messages in bursts. Now, we are always connected, whether we are sitting at a desk or on a mobile phone. The always-on connection, in turn, has created a host of new ways to communicate that are much faster than email, and more fun.”

WebProNews wrote this article in response:

20 Reasons Email Isn’t Going Away Anytime Soon

1. People still send hand-written letters via snail mail, even though they could instead make a phone call, send an email, text message, or status update.
2. Nearly all sites on the web that require registration require an email address. Some are starting to integrate social media into this process (through things like Facebook Connect), but that is still a very small fraction, and they typically still allow for email information as well.
3. Email notifies you of updates from all social networks you are a part of (provided your settings are set up that way).
4. We haven’t seen any evidence yet that Google Wave really is the next big thing and will catch on on a large scale.
5. Email is universal, and social networks are not. Nearly everybody on the web (while there are no doubt some exceptions) has an email address. Many places of employment give employees email addresses when they begin working there. Meanwhile, a great deal of them are banning workers from even accessing social networks.
6. There are plenty of people who have no interest in joining social networks. Frequent news stories about security, privacy, and reputation issues do not help convince them.
7. Email is still improving. It hasn’t screeched to a halt with the rise of social media. There is still innovation going on, and integration with social media. Look at how Google is constantly adding new features to Gmail. Look at the new Yahoo Mail.
8. Even social networks themselves recognize the importance of email. Never mind that they update users about community-driven happenings via email. MySpace (still one of the biggest social networks) even launched its own email service recently.
9. More social media use means more email use. Look at these recent findings from Nielsen. The people consuming the largest amount of social media are also the people consuming the largest amount of email.
10. As far as marketing is concerned, email is doing pretty well, as many companies continue to struggle to find the right social media strategy to suit their needs.

VerticalResponse CEO Janine Popick has written a separate piece adding 10 more reasons.

11. Twitter and Facebook are fantastic products and companies; but that’s what they are, companies. Even though email is host to 279 million users vs. 301 million users of social media according to Nielsen, email isn’t going anywhere soon with many companies offering it as a service. Twitter and Facebook are just two companies that likely make up most of the social media users.
12. Your email recipients are still going to use business email for business purposes. They’ll not likely let their boss know that they’ve finished the spreadsheet and are ready for the meeting now by posting to Twitter. If they don’t use their business email address they probably also have a personal email account that they like to receive your email-only specials.
13. You can’t easily segment your friends and followers to do targeted marketing in Twitter & Facebook for the optimal response.
14. You can’t tell who clicked on a link with some social media outlets so that you can follow up with them again because they might be interested in your content.
15. That said, you can’t tell who didn’t click on the link so you can follow up with them with a different message trying to get them to take action.
16. You cannot personalize your Facebook updates. This has been proven to boost response in any marketing campaign you do.
17. You cannot size your graphics or use more than one in Facebook. You can’t use them at all in Twitter. Graphics help tell a story.
18. You can’t track how many clicks you got on your links in Facebook unless you use a third party URL shortener.
19. You are limited to 140 characters in Twitter leaving it impossible to put multiple messages in one Tweet.
20. You almost have to have separate social media accounts for your business and your personal life. Some customers might not care about that vacation you took where you…let’s just say what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.

Is the email landscape changing? Yes, without a doubt. Social media has become a very large part of the online lives for many Internet users. Earlier this year, social sites were even said to have surpassed email in usage. That said, Facebook has come significantly close to matching Google in terms of unique visitors, but that doesn’t make Google any less important does it? The two can co-exist, and so can email and social media. They are co-existing.

Do you agree that email no longer rules? Why or why not.

Getting started

The easiest social sites to use for website promotion are social news web sites. These are sites that allow users to upload, tag and vote for interesting content and have the power to send tens of thousands of visitors to the most popular sites.

Not all content is suitable for all the social news sites so it’s important to get a feel for the type of content that each community is likely to be interested in. To start with you need to register with the social tagging and news websites you want to target.

Here are 5 to start you off that will likely send the most traffic to popular stories:

• del.icio.us
• Digg
• Mixx
• Reddit
• StumbleUpon

Once you’ve registered for the sites it’s important to become a popular, trusted and well known user by contributing quality content on a regular basis. Don’t forget that the users of these sites are typically web savvy and can spot new users who are just joining to promote their own stories and pollute the system.

The key is to make friends, check out their content on a regular basis, vote for the things you like and submit things that you think will appeal to the different communities. Only once you become popular should you start to submit some of your own content and even then it’s important to be careful about mixing too much of your own stories with your usual submissions.

Once you make good friends on the social media sites you can ask them to submit your content for you or they may just do it for you without you having to ask. Assuming your content has value and is coming from a site with a social media savvy readership you should find a proportion of the stories are being submitted by your users anyway.

Types of content to submit

The first rule about submitting content is to make sure it’s interesting, unique and non-commercial. Content from a source that social media users know and trust (such as the mainstream media) is always going to have an advantage over content from a blog or ecommerce store.

Many beginners make the mistake of trying to submit their homepage or one of their product pages to social sites – this tactic almost never works. You need come up with content that’s going to appeal to the community or communities you are targeting.

Some of the different types of content that may work include:

• Breaking news
• Guides / tutorials
• Interesting stories
• Pictures
• Videos
• Statistics

Try to use enticing titles for your content, never lie and always back up your facts by citing your sources.

When you’re planning a submission it’s important to examine your goals. If traffic is the primary goal then the content you produce might be quite different to the sort of content you would create while trying to attract links from authority websites.

Packaging your content

Succeeding on social media sites is maybe 30% about the title of the story, 30% about the presentation and 40% about the content. Quality content with plain boring presentation or lots of adverts stands a much higher chance of failure than average content with remarkable presentation.

Some tips to get you started include:

• Ensure the content is accessible and looks good in all major browsers and screen sizes
• Always include eye catching pictures and images wherever possible
• Break the content down into different sections and use headers
• Avoid serving intrusive ads that get in the way of the all important content

A final word

Social media marketing is a great way to build long term sustainable, natural social media traffic and search engine rankings. It certainly isn’t something that can be mastered overnight. However if you apply yourself and invest time and effort into creating a long-term campaign, the returns can be phenomenal.

The list of social networking sites is long and growing. I don’t want to overwhelm you so I’m only going to focus on two that are particularly suited for you as a business owner, Facebook.com and LinkedIn.com.

So why should you care? What’s the big deal? Well, here are just a few reasons to enter the social networking realm:

• Gain exposure for your business that may lead to new clients or projects
• Increase the credibility of your business (give and receive recommendations on LinkedIn, post messages on friend’s pages on Facebook)
• Be connected to the people in your network in one location (OK, two if you’re on both Facebook and LinkedIn)
• Re-connect with business contacts you’ve lost touch with (sometimes they find you, sometime you discover them)
• Meet new people and expand your business network (meet your friend’s friends that you otherwise wouldn’t meet)

Here’s a quick overview of them (both are gratis and LinkedIn offers paid upgrade options).

Facebook:

• Informal and more social than business focused (this doesn’t mean it’s not good for your business)
• Almost 100 million members (according to Wikipedia)
• Anyone can ask you to be ‘friends’ (you don’t have to accept) and you can ask anyone to be friends (they don’t have to accept either)
• It is possible to share photos, videos, and add applications
• You can join groups within the network that interest you (or make your own group)

LinkedIn:

• Business focused
• 19 million members (according to Wikipedia)
• You can only invite people you know (people whose e-mail addresses you have) and vice versa.
• It is not possible to share photos and video (only your own profile photo)
• You can join groups within the network that interest you

To get started you just have to go to the website, sign up and follow the directions to create a profile. Because LinkedIn is mainly for business it is professional and the profile area is quite structured which makes it easy to follow.

Facebook is another story, although it does have a structured profile area, there are loads of additional features you can add to your page. When you join for business reasons be careful not to make your page too busy or too personal. You can be yourself and share your interests, just don’t reveal anything you wouldn’t feel comfortable sharing with a group at an in-person networking meeting.

When your profiles are finished you can start asking people to connect. The process is different for LinkedIn and Facebook but both are pretty straightforward. LinkedIn has a ‘Help/FAQ’ section on the website and Facebook has a ‘Help’ area as well (bottom right hand corner of the page).

You will learn more as you go, so just go ahead and get started. And as you meet new people you can ask them to join you on your networks. Networking, off-line or on-line, is about building relationships over time. So give first when possible, be yourself, and have fun with it.

The benefits of social networking for business owners are clear. You will be able to meet new people, build relationships with your network, improve visibility for your company, and discover new opportunities for more business. But that’s not all, it’s fun too. So why not get started and join the world of social networking today.