Whether you are blogging or building a web site their is one piece of social content that will always grab a visitors attention and that is a graphic, picture of photo. Many people are visual and while the written word can send a message, a picture, as they say, can tell a thousand stories.

Humans are strange creatures. When it comes to pictures, it needs to be funny, cute, dangerous or just plain stupid - and I mean that in the nicest way. Social content that involves images that people can talk about will get shared. Cute animals, particularly if they are doing something strange, or acting human; funny cartoons; people jumping out of buildings and people doing something crazy to themselves like tattooing ads to their heads; these will all get shared
around the social networks.

If you think about it, finding a picture or graphic that fits one of these topics could be a social marketing dream. Place your site URL in one of the corners, or blazon it at the top or bottom, then let it go viral thoughout the social webisphere. Social content submissions like these can work wonders for your web site.

The next time you come across something that looks a little crazy, or a little too cute, think about whether or not you can capitalize on it through your social content programs. Opportunities don’t often come around like this, when they do you need to jump on them.

I will preface this by saying that one size doesn’t fit all and sometimes, by a fluke of good fortune, terrible social content does go viral, occasionally as a case of how not to do something.

There are many articles written on how to produce social content to get your site noticed. There are not as many that tell you what can get your content totally canned - the social content turnoffs.

Incorporate the following into your social content and you may be doomed for failure:

1. Unprofessional design - there is nothing worse than a really amateurish looking site
2. Hard to read text - either the wrong font, size or color. If I cannot read it I am gone.
3. Ugly, inappropriate or obtrusive ads. Need I say more.
4. Pop ups; unders; overs. Considered rude and inconsiderate - my pet hate.
5. Poorly written content. Particularly grammar, spelling and lack of subject knowledge.
6. Bad, hard to find or missing navigation. Why is it when I want to read more I cannot find a link to any further articles - even though you tell me they are there? Bad news.

These are all major site turnoffs and, generally speaking, totally unnecessary. There are ad units that can blend in with most sites. Pop ups will chase away traffic. It is not difficult to publish pages that are easy to read and provide good navigation links. If your social content looks bad, so do you.

Provide the opposite and you will find visitors appreciative. Sometimes appreciative enough to send your social content viral.

YouTube is one of many multi media social content sites that can be leveraged to increase traffic to your web site. These sites provide space to store multi media files like video clips and photos. It is simply a matter of knowing how to use these sites to increase your traffic.

If you sell products through your web pages, have you thought of developing short videos or taking photos of your products. Videos can be on any subject, however ‘how to’ type videos work particularly well. Open an account at YouTube or any of the other social content sites and upload your videos (or images) with accurate descriptions.

Consumers are now using social content sites to find information or help for products they are intending to purchase. YouTube provides a good search interface that enables users to find what they are looking for. Some of the searches they make include ‘how do I’ type questions. If your video provides a solution, they more likely to also visit your site.

Using social content sites can serve two masters. You are providing information for YouTube users (or which ever site you decide to use); you are also acquiring an offsite storage facility that reduces the load on your own servers.

An added benefit is the opportunity to include these videos (or images) into your web or blog pages when required. Search engines index sites like YouTube and include the content in their search results. Whilst it may be a three step process; search engine to social content to your site; internet users are familiar with the process and often follow through. When they do, they arrive on your site with a purpose - to buy or for more information.

Leveraging social content sites is the future, particularly if you are targeting under 30 year olds. They have adapted to the technology quickly and now often use it as their primary source of consumer information. Satisfy that need by providing the information that they are looking for. YourTube is one site that helps to provide the link between those seeking information - and those that have the information.

It’s available, it’s free, it’s popular. Social content is in demand and YouTube feeds that demand. You just need to feed YouTube.

Sometimes as a writer you find yourself unable to find that spark to fire up the fingers and produce the kind of content that your readers come to expect each day. Writers block! The bane of any writer, and yet, in a small way it can add power to your social marketing strategies.

If you are a regular reader of those in your social marketing circle, I am sure they have written articles that you have found not only interesting, but useful as well. I can hear opportunity knocking.

A simple cure for writers block. Steal their content! Of course not. However, I am sure you could add your little blurb to their thoughts. Perhaps even copy a little chunk - properly referenced of course - and then add some comments.

What does this have to do with social networking. First, if it is done properly, you will be continuing the conversion started in the original content. Secondly, the original author will appreciate the link and most likely appreciate the fact that someone thought their article worthy of reprint.

One aspect of social networking is the circle of creating content and watching as it permeates around the web, each author adding their views on the subject. It can be interesting to watch as topics go viral.

The next time you get writers block, have a look around you and see who’s content you can build on. It is interesting to note some of the top bloggers and their posts. They are often simply rehashes of articles from their networks of friends.

A social marketing friend was playing around one day and discovered a new way to leverage the social content he writes. There are few things more satisfying than to get MORE use out of content you’ve already created.

Anyway, he dipped into his social blogging archive, back to April about 2 years ago. He published 14 articles that month. So he opened that file, and he opened a new text file. And then he took one paragraph at random from the first blog post and pasted it into the text file. He copied a random paragraph from the 2nd blog post and pasted it into the text file. He copied a random paragraph from the third blog post … well, you get the idea. He copied 8 paragraphs from 8 blog posts, then closed the blog archive to see what he had.

And you know what? This new “article” wasn’t half bad. The social content almost made sense as-is (or as-was). My friend chose a couple of new keywords to focus the article. Then he went into each paragraph, changed a word here, a sentence there, smoothed it all a bit, and in 5 minutes, he had a finished product. Sure, it sounds crazy. But try it … I’ll bet you can really leverage all your past years of social blogging.

Some other leveraging ideas:

• Look over your past blog posts for the best of the best. Take one that’s really good, get out your video cam, and film a 2-3 minute segment. Upload it to YouTube. Link to it from your site and MySpace and LinkedIn and any other social networking profiles you have.
• Keep track of every question that is emailed in to support, and every answer you give. Some of these Q & As probably suggest a “how-to” video you can do. Others may be appropriate to combine into a blog post.
• Outline an ebook you want to write. Write out the title for each chapter and section. Now write your blog posts with each of those titles as the headline. In maybe 2-4 weeks, you’ll have an ebook.
• If you have an active blog readership, do one blog where you ask questions about what resources people use to achieve certain results, or why they choose product A over product B. Then compile the results into a report to entice new readers.

To squeeze every last penny’s worth out of every single thing you do, plan ahead. Before you do it, whatever it is, think what other uses your social content could have. Blog. Article directory. Video. Podcast. Comment on someone else’s blog post. Ebook chapter. Free report for new subscribers. A somewhat different spin gives you a whole new article. The more you target multi-purpose content production, the more effective you will become.

After doing some social bookmarking of my own, I’ve discovered quite a few social bookmarking sites that do well over all. Some bookmarking sites are good for certain industries and some are not. For instance, I don’t like to Digg SEO articles because they typically don’t do well, but interesting technology stories do. So when it comes to social bookmarking, you have to know the sites well enough to maneuver around and pick the right sites for the right article or blog post that you want to bookmark. The following five websites are websites that I’ve found are good for bookmarking for social marketers:

• StumbleUpon - StumbleUpon is a staple in the bookmarking and networking community. Different people categorize social websites in different ways. I like StumbleUpon because once you submit a site it’s added to the list of stumbles and anyone who “just goes stumbling” could discover your website. Stumblers are real socialites. They love to discover new and interesting sites and if yours is worth discovering then StumbleUpon is the place to be. Plus, if you find a hard core stumbler with some clout and they like your site, you’ll get lots of stumbles.
• PlugIM - PlugIM is not well known outside the Internet marketing community, but if you plan on doing any Internet marketing then you should know about it. The categories at PlugIM says it all: Business, Development, Marketing, Products, Search Engines. Can you submit in other categories? Yes, but the designated categories usually do much better than “others” no matter where you go. Another indicator of the type of material you can submit to a social bookmarking site is to look at its “Most Popular Story” list. PlugIMs consist of these stories: “WordPress Plugin: PlugIM Votebox,” “Why It Is Good To Link To LZZR,” and “LZZR Linking - Black Hat Or White Hat.” If you do Internet marketing, PlugIM is for you.
• Marktd - Marketing news for marketers by marketers. Great tag line. It’s also true. Marktd has the stories every Internet marketing practitioner needs to read. If you do any social marketing and you want to share your stories with others then this is the place to do it.
• Sphinn - Anybody who is anybody Sphinns. Perhaps the most popular social media site for Internet marketers, all the SEO gurus with any clout are using Sphinn. If I were you, I would too.
• Hubspot - Hubspot is my least favorite the list of five, but I add it on here because I think it has real potential. It’s tagline is “Social Content For Marketing Mavens.” Not strictly for social marketers, you’ll see articles on a variety of business topics. But it does have a heavy lean toward toward social and Internet marketing topics. I highly recommend it.

When you start your social bookmarking, and particularly if you are a social marketer trying to spread the word about your product or service or just connect and share your knowledge of social marketing, then these websites will be helpful.

(Source) Venture capitalists are already looking around to see what they can fund in the way of original content, as evidenced by the news FunnyOrDie.com just got $15 million, and writers are banding together to see what they can launch. The Hollywood Reporter is reporting that three striking writers have joined up with a former MTV exec to start a web series called “The Void” for the WorldWide Biggies studio.

Hollywood writers love to socialize. They also love to write and if they’re not going to get paid for doing what they love from wealthy Hollywood producers then they’ll just go elsewhere. What would any self respecting content producer do?

But they’ll soon discover that the economics of online business is different than the Hollywood business-as-usual mindset. The bright side is that Internet citizens love to be entertained. They just don’t like to pay a whole lot for their entertainment. But they made need to. If creative television writers can create great entertainment for the Internet for a fraction of the cost, they can sell many more units for less cost and keep a higher percentage of the profits. There is potential to make even more money than they could make working for “the man.”

That’s the beauty of the Internet. It’s got a built in social networking. It’s also got a built in content development mechanism. The two things that Hollywood writers love and adore. They may not need their producers after all.