Making common repeatable things easy for people to do is great way to stand out from the crowd and make money too.

Internet search engine fatigue is a biggie for me – and for over 70% of you too – and AllMyFaves has been a godsend to me. It’s a simple virtual and visual directory that includes a list of top and most visited sites in major daily-used subject categories such as Blogs, Entertainment, Games, Kids Shopping, Travel and Weekly Favs, but the Home Page alone is awesome.

AllMyFaves is an interesting customer service model for a self help tool.  And, it’s a great model for those of us looking to drive revenue because making things easier for time starved people is a killer strategy and will always be a welcome one.

Are you easy to do business with? Are there ways to improve your processes to improve your “easiness?” Can you improve your messages (e.g., Web site) with more visuals and/ore better design? Is it easy to search your own Web site and find things?

Study AllMyFaves and I’m sure you’ll find a few ideas to apply to your business and improve your quality of internet search life at the very same time.

Check out the AllMyFaves story here.

In an earlier post, I reported that it was great to see the Gen Y kids driving the tremendous outpouring of financial support for Haiti relief via texting.

I’m happy to report that the American Red Cross “Text ‘Haiti’ to 90999″ campaign has raised $24 million to date. See the DMNews story here.

Think about this campaign for a moment. It has achieved some amazing accomplishments – in a short period of time – since this devastating earthquake hit Haiti just last week on January 12th:

• $24 million has been raised via $10 individual donations to help the Haitian people – 1/5th of the amount the American Red Cross has raised to date – breaking all records by a huge  margin.  Reference note: After Hurricane Katrina – a mere 4.5 years ago – the ARC only received $120,000 via texting – and Katrina occurred on American soil!
• The ARC has built a valuable mobile text database for future marketing communications and financial appeal efforts
• The ARC’s core donor base skews older and texting gave the Gen Y folks an easy, quick and convenient channel to offer their support (marketing lesson – treat different people differently)
• The campaign execution of  the ARC and its mobile firm partner mGive was flawless – amazing too – considering the fact that they started to work on the texting campaign the evening of the earthquake
• The viral goodwill spread of the “Text ‘HAITI’ to 90999″ campaign in Social Media channels such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter (100K tweets/retweets)

If you think young people these days are inconsiderate, selfish, concerned with only themselves and wear their “pants on the ground“…think again.

Soon after the devastating Haiti earthquake hit, @RedCross tweeted: “You can text “HAITI” to 90999 to donate $10 to Red Cross relief efforts in #haiti.”

Kudos to the Red Cross marketing folks for being prepared (excellent online disaster newsroom) and recognizing the fundraising opportunity available to them in this terrible time of crisis.

And, much more kudos to the kids that drove this “texting bus” because they’re the ones credited with leading this Red Cross effort which has raised over $10 million for the cause since this record breaking mobile fundraiser was launched last Tuesday.

This is a great example of using technology to build rather than destroy.

Watch text marketing grow from this effort and put in on your list of things to test for your business too!

P.S.: Here is a list of 8 ways you can help Haiti by texting:

1. Text HAITI to 90999 to donate $10 to the American Red Cross
2. Text HAITI to 25383 to donate $5 to International Rescue Committee
3. Text HAITI to 45678 to donate $5 to the Salvation Army in Canada
4. Text HAITI to 20222 to donate $10 through the Clinton Foundation
5. Text HAITI to 864833 to donate $5 to The United Way
6. Text CERF to 90999 to donate $5 to The United Nations Foundation
7. Text DISASTER to 90999 to donate $10 to Compassion International
8. Text RELIEF to 30644 (to connect with Catholic Relief Services who will instruct you how to donate money with your credit card)

…the 9th way to help is to pray.

I first discovered Posterous through Steve Rubel (big fan) and recommend you try it on for size. Posterous is a new, dead simple, easy, sexy and free blogging platform. The “secret sauce” of Posterous is that it acts more like a Blog hub. Rather than trying to pull people back to your site, it allows you to easily deliver your unique content where your readers are living life. I’ve been doing a deep dive into Posterous for the past few months and among many things, I love its email-to-Blog feature and free style form - check it out!

If you're a Blogger or thinking about launching one, study these Top 25 Blogs of 2009.

And, check out the Ad Age Power 150.

Here is a great chart to help you budget you Social Media marketing dollars and planning. 

And, it should help you sell the Social Media to your clients.

EMarketer says that
advertising spending on U.S. blogs will increase to $746 million in 2012, from
$283 million in 2007. The U.S. blogosphere continues to morph into the
mainstream and more advertisers, agencies and ad networks are viewing blogs as a
viable medium to reach coveted demographic groups. Still, blog advertising is a small fraction of total online
spending. In 2007, blog advertising made up 1.3% of the online advertising pie,
and should peak at 1.8% in 2009 before declining to 1.5%
by 2012.

This effort by the Charter for Compassion is a fantastic demonstration of the strength Social Media and I hope and pray their good work succeeds. What an uplifting example of the power of marketing, of the Internet and of individual concerned people. I love the fact that you can view the video in multiple languages.

To quote their YouTube site, "The Charter brings together the voices of people from all religions. It seeks to remind the world that while all faiths are not the same, they all share the core principle of compassion and the Golden Rule.The Charter will change the tenor of the conversation around religion. It will be a clarion call to the world."

It's an excellent example of social media marketing at its finest and kudos to Director Jesse Dylan and Producers Priscilla Cohen, Theresa "Sparky" Pomeroy!

PQ Media reports that despite any recession, in four years Alternative Media (i.e., digital, mobile, gaming and branded entertainment) will soar to nearly 30% of U.S. media spending – a compound growth rate of 17%!

Time to adjust your marketing spend focus and add these new tools to your toolbox!

I’ve been a big fan of Forrester Research for years and they’re pretty spot on with their projections in the Internet Marketing space.  So, when Forrester reports that spending on Web 2.0 stuff such as blogs, wikis, mashups,
widgets, social networks and RSS will grow rapidly – 43% a year in the next five years – you better believe them. And, you better make plans to get on and stay on the bus!

Web 2.0 is not a fad – start experimenting and failing fast!