Whilst email usage continues to grow, social media adoption is growing faster. According to Nielsen in August 2009, 276.9 million people used email across the U.S., several European countries, Australia and Brazil, that’s up 21% from 229.2 million in August 2008. The number of users on social-networking and other community sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Bebo and Twitter jumped 31% to 301.5 million people during the same time.

Some say this represents the end of the line for email, that it’s a passive technology, old fashioned and doomed to extinction as people now become used to and expect a ‘real time’ web. They say that much in the same way that email replaced ‘snail mail’ physical post and mobile phone communication has to a large extent replaced land lines, now social media, permanently connected ‘live’ web access, the evolution of life streams that are rapidly turning into rivers of shared information will render email irrelevant, too slow, clumsy, too unresponsive.

Others are quick to leap to the defence of email citing the real time speed and volume of new social media channels as the very reason that email is and will continue to be valued so highly. Email they argue allows us to filter, to control and manage our relationship with the information that surrounds us. It enables us to take a step back, to measure the input and respond with consideration. Just because the growth in the adoption of email is slower than that of social media doesn’t mean that it should be condemned as old hat. Email has an extremely important role to play for web users.

Does your website offer an email subscription option? A new blog post alert for example? It should. Despite the rise of RSS and plug-ins such as Twitterfeed that will respond to a new blog post with a Tweet often people like to manage their subscriptions through email. Without 24/7 access to the Internet there’s a very real possibility you could miss important information as Tweets and posts pass you by. Email subscriptions allow people to aggregate the information they opt to receive in manageable ways.

Are you building email lists through your website? Offering blog updates, free products, exclusive information and added value – content marketing through email subscriptions? If not you should seriously consider it.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 22nd, 2009 at 4:38 pm and is filed under SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), Search Industry News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.