I was discussing all things web related with a friend and his wife yesterday and one of the topics that came up related to her interaction on the web. Now she spends as much time as I do online, however she has a very small number of activities and sites she visits. Her partner has a small blog that relates to parenting issues.

One of the sites she does spend a lot of time on is a parenting forum type site. On this site she has a lot of authority ranking in the sites top 20. When you consider there are over 10000 registered members, being in the top 20 is nothing to sneeze at - in fact she is now an administrator. What does this have to do with social networking? Good question.

Many months ago she invited me to join and I did, however I only pay passing attention to the site, mainly having a quick peek when she points something out to me. Our discussion yesterday centered around the types of discussions and questions that get asked. I had a closer look today and discovered that, despite being a parenting site, everything was discussed, even politics. Not only that, members quite often sent external links to each other. Now there is a social networking opportunity if ever I saw one.

These types of sites are good for getting feedback on various issues including products. Over time you can also drop links to your own sites - so long as you don’t spam. Social networking opportunities are everywhere now. Treat the sites as ’social networks’ first, and marketing issues second.

I notice many individuals, when they first decide to try social networking or social marketing, simply trying to hard. The end result is that they lose all credibility before they have even started. Sometimes, a little reverse psychology can work wonders.

Some social networking sites thrive on interaction as do forums. The art of reverse psychology on these sites is to get in and participate; offer suggestions; provide solutions to problems; perhaps even refer to websites blogs - but no your own. In fact, you don’t mention your own web site, blog or products at all.

You will quickly build credibility and a ‘friend’ list based purely on your interaction. It wont take long for someone to ask what you do; do you have your own website or blog? When they come to you, you can start to promote - either your site or your products. People are always curious and when they see someone putting in to a social networking environment without taking out - they ask questions.

If they don’t ask questions, then wait until you have a reasonable credibility following then slowly start to promote your products or websites. The premise here is that on social networking sites, you promote yourself first and your product or web sites last.

I am sure you have heard it a million times before - it is all about trust. Earn the trust and the rest becomes easy. Social networking - don’t be impatient, try some reverse psychology.

Social networking is all about getting into some of the social networking sites then meeting and interacting with other users. If you use several different sites then you may find yourself having exactly the same conversation with the same ‘friend’, but on another site. It can get embarrassing if you don’t watch what you say.

Taking care of what you say is obviously one way to ensure you don’t get yourself into too much hot water. Even better, rather than creating a presence on each site, create an identity that is portable and moves across all the social networking sites that you intend using.

The first step is to create user names that are identical across all sites. This makes it easy for you to remember (can you image trying to remember 10 user names and the sites they attached too?). This makes it easy for ‘friends’ or contacts to find you. While creating your user name and profile, remain consistent. You will be surprised how many people will compare profiles across sites just looking to catch you out on anomalies. Finally, when undertaking a social networking campaign, stay consistent in your philosophy, views and statements across all sites.

One easy way to set up a social network is by planning your attack from the start. If you can identify a number of sites that your would like to develop a presence on, open them all at the same time in seperate tabs. Go through the setup process for each one using the same data (cut and paste comes in handy here) for each. Don’t hit that final submit button until you are happy the profiles and user names are identical (or as close as the sites will permit).

Smart social networking is about creating an online identity that many people can relate to. One word of caution - once you create this online identity, your reputation management needs to be spot on. One bad word on one site could spread like wildfire across all your social network sites.

Today’s article is actually inspired by an off line event that shows the unintended consequences of a single action and the effect it has had on reputation, social networking and marketing in general.

You may have heard the story on the news or in a newspaper reporting the New York landscape gardener who stumbled across a cool $140,000 in $20 notes. After giving the matter some thought, he decided to hand the money over to the police who eventually found the owner. The landscape gardener received a small reward for his efforts.

However, since handing the money over, the story together with his name and business has spread throughout New York and the rest of the US. Since then his phone has not stopped ringing. He will probably now have more work than he can cope with for many months.

What does this have to do with reputation management, social networking or social marketing? Think about it. Now that he has a reputation for being honest, if he is a halfway decent landscape gardener he could turn this into lucky strike into a viral marketing campaign that will last potentially for ever and take his business from a one man affair to a major contractor.

I am sure you can imagine this scenario. You drop around to my house and see the gardens looking magnificent. You ask me who did it and my response is, ‘that’s the guy that found all the money and handed it in - he is a good landscape gardener too - do you want his card’. Another ‘contact’ made. And so it goes and grows.

The online community is no different. If you can build a reputation for being honest, reliable and willing to help out when needed, you will find your reputation growing in a viral fashion - not rapidly, but growing. Again, I am sure you can see the scene, someone has a problem with their social marketing and the response is, “Nick is a social marketing expert, he is bound to have a solution’. Look at that, a referral and a link to boot.

Reputation management, social networking and social marketing are all closely linked. Getting a leak in one could cause a flood to spread out over the others. I wonder, can a landscape gardener deal with leaks as well.

When it comes to Web 2.0. social networking is not only all the rage, it is the rage. If you haven’t got into the swing of things yet, it’s not too late - you may just have to get into some speed dating to catch up. How quickly can you become involved in the social networking game, it’s totally up to you. Here are my six P’s that may help you catch the field.

1. Popularity - join sites that are already popular. These are the mainstream sites that have a lot of traffic.
2. Profile - develop a profile that is interesting and will entice visitors to add you to their friend lists. Don’t go overboard but at the same time, don’t be too brief.
3. Photo - grab a good photo of yourself and add it to your profile. If you don’t feel comfortable with your photo, find an avatar that looks attractive.
4. Pictures - add pictures, graphics, videos and any other artwork that puts you into the web 2.0 crowd.
5. Promote - promote yourself whenever possible. If necessary, pester your friends, relatives and colleagues to get online and add you to their friend lists.
6. Participate - get into the crowd and start participating. Read and vote on articles. Take part in discussions or debates. Get to know some of the top players and get on first name terms with them

Follow these social networking guidelines and you will improve your chances of being noticed quickly. The faster you are noticed, the more connections you will make. Once you start making connections, become judicious as to who you do and do not accept into your contacts list. Do a little research before adding them and only add them if they are going to improve your profile within that site.

If you notice the same contacts on other sites, don’t be too quick to dismiss them. If you friend them on one site then it is a good idea to add them on any other sites as well.

Once you have made your presence felt within a social networking site, you can start to ease back on the social and start to work on your marketing. Like all dating games, don’t rush, don’t push, just ease your way into it. And you thought I was going to help you with ’speed dating’ - sorry, the last date I had was in a packet.

Social networking is all about value and respect. If you provide good value, you will get respect … and traffic. If you provide questionable - or negative - value, then the members of social networking websites will conclude that you have a lack of respect for them. They’ll either ignore you or ride you out of town on a rail.

So what is “questionable or negative value”? Simple: affiliate links or any other kind of self-promotion. When you join a social networking group and start posting affiliate links, you have just shot yourself in the head. No one will trust you. No one will respect you. Your website will get no traffic. And nobody is going to buy from any of your affiliate links.

OK. So what is “good value”? Simple: valuable information or tools that you give away free of charge. When you join a community and provide “good value”, you are seen as a person who gives good value. So you are respected. If you’re new at this, then your first task is to do a lot of Googling to find valuable information and tools that you can give away free to others in your community. Compile a large list … it’ll come in handy.

The best thing you can do is to actually ask people in the community what they really need. Or listen when they talk to others about it. Then figure out a way to give them what they want. You will gain their trust and respect, which is way more valuable long-term than any affiliate commission you might miss out on today.

Your heart must be pure. Your intention must be to help, to provide value (that word again!). People will trust you when they see that you are genuine, honest, & transparent. But they start out suspicious, because they’ve been burned before. If they think your intention is to do whatever you have to do in order to trick them into buying your stuff, they will know. And they won’t like it. They will beat on you, and they’ll tell anyone who’ll listen what a jerk you are.

On the other hand … if you care, if you bring value to your Facebook community, if you help people, then they will trust you. And they will follow you. You can build long-term relationships with people who will be happy to see you succeed … and may often help … because they like you and they trust you.

Social networking is not advertising. On these social websites, trust is supreme. Blatant advertising kills trust. Providing true value creates trust. And once you have made the connection that creates trust, it’s a natural move for them to go to your website, because they like you and want to know more about you.

That is how to play the social networking game.

Yahoo announced yesterday a deeper commitment to social networking. Yahoo has joined Google’s OpenSocial initiative, whose purpose is to have developers come up with innovative new applications for the most popular social networking websites.

To make the web more relevant for users, OpenSocial is encouraging apps that not only work on many different social networking sites, but also connect them.

“Yahoo believes in community-driven industry specifications and expects OpenSocial to fuel innovation and make the web more relevant and more enjoyable to millions of users,” said Wade Chambers, vice president of platforms at Yahoo.

MySpace and Orkut are already providing providing OpenSocial applications. Hi5 will begin doing so in a few days. With Yahoo on board, even more users and developers will be participating.

Yahoo, MySpace, and Google are also partnering in a non-profit foundation “to foster the continued open development of OpenSocial,” according to Dan Peterson, Google Product Manager.

The big players in OpenSocial:

• Engage.com
• Friendster
• Google
• hi5
• Hyves
• Imeem
• LinkedIn
• MySpace
• Ning
• Oracle
• orkut
• Plaxo
• Salesforce.com
• Six Apart
• TianjiViadeo
• XING
• Yahoo

Pretty much a “Who’s Who” of social networking … with the exception of Facebook. They seem to be the big holdout.

Is it worth your time to get into podcasting? Instat.com says that 182 million MP3 players were shipped in 2006, up 42% from 2005. Probably the main reason is that so much cheap, legitimate music is available online … but it also means your own market is probably buying more and more of the exact social networking media you can use to communicate to them. Projection for 2011: 275 million players shipped!

If you have a business, or a blog, or any sort of web presence, podcasting means just connecting a microphone to your computer and talking about your business.

Why? Several reasons:

• You’ll reach new people, many of whom you’d have never connected with otherwise.
• A lot of people download MP3s to play while they drive or work out.
• When they hear your voice, podcasting helps you build “know, like, & trust” a lot quicker than on a webpage.
• Podcasts are opt-in, so you are reaching only your targeted market.
• Your presentation marks you as a leader, an authority in your field.
• Your “prospects” have the option to listen when at a time convenient for them.
• You can state in your podcast that all questions “received by tomorrow” will be answered on the next podcast - giving your market a strong reason to contact you.

To do a podcast, all you need is a good microphone and audio editing software (available free online - do a Google search). So the cost of entry is almost zero. And you can post your audio files on your website, or give them away as a lead-generator on your site.

Two caveats:

1. Don’t record a commercial. Make it a session of valuable instruction or hard-to-find information. When your podcast gives real value, people will bond with you.
2. Plan on regular podcasts. Don’t do “one and done.” When you do a regular podcast, you have the opportunity to build a base of raving fans.

It’s pretty tough to lose when you do podcasting. Even if you make zero money, you get either more products to sell or more valuable items to give away to customers or prospects. Long-term, podcasting is a big plus.

You’ve no doubt heard the complaints that advertising on the social networking websites doesn’t get the return expected by online marketers. High pageviews, low click-thru rates.

However, there’s another way of looking at this: social networking websites can deliver a demographically focused audience that is not widely available online. Even offline, only TV can deliver this type of audience.

In February, the 25 top social networking sites put 155 million unique visitors face-to-face with advertisers. MySpace, Facebook & Classmates.com delivered over 70% of that total. Tacking on YouTube and Flickr increases the total to 215 million unique viewers a month. Best estimate for TV is less than 200 million unique viewers per month.

There’s more. According to ComScore Video Metrix, US web users watched over 10 billion videos just in December, 2007. Many of those were soft-pedalling commercials … and many more are ripe to have a short commercial attached to the end.

But the most attractive social networking media feature is the younger demographic with high disposable income, much sought-after by ad agencies and advertisers. It’s too big and too focused an audience for that strong marketing connection to not be made eventually.

Social networking websites may currently be struggling for traditional advertisers, but the signs point to a happy, profitable future for them - together.

People get confused about where to start or what to focus on when they begin social bookmarking or any other aspect of social networking. Just remember the basic: it’s a relationship game. And the key to building relationships with people is to share your story. Which means you’ve got to have a story.

Start with the short version. You can build on it later. The short version is ALWAYS useful, in any situation, online or offline. In sales, this has been called your “elevator speech”. That’s what you’d say to someone in the few seconds you share with them on the elevator, to get them to say, “Hey! Can we get together? I want to hear more!”

Your story is in the form of an elevator speech, but it’s focused on YOU. You want to network with people, and you want to make it imperative in THEIR mind that they network with you. The biggest success in social bookmarking or any kind of marketing comes when people knock on YOUR door, not the other way around.

Facts tell. Stories sell. To put together your short story, answer these questions:

1. What’s your background? (What did you USED TO do?)
2. How long did you do it?
3. What did you like about it?
4. What did you HATE about it?
5. How did it lead you to what you are doing now? (The more irony & contrast, the better.)
6. Talk briefly about the social networking benefits of what you do now v. what you used to do.
7. What do you LOVE MOST about social networking?

Write up your “About Me”. You should be able to speak it in a minute or less. One reason it’s effective is, it’s short. It personalizes you to other social bookmarkers. And, of course, you can use the same story over and over and over.

This social networking tool will help you build relationships, and that is what gets you the real benefits in social bookmarking.

When you step into the room, the social networking is in full swing. The party is already going strong. You see dozens of people … but you don’t know any of them. In one corner is a group of 8 or 10 obvious friends, laughing and talking and enjoying each other’s company.

You walk up to the group and smile and say, “Hi. I’m Bob. I have a great widget. Let me tell you about it!”

Yes, yes. That sounds absolutely ridiculous. But most marketers approach social networking websites like MySpace and YouTube with just about the same amount of tact, courtesy, and understanding.

To be a successful socializer at that party, what would really work?

• Study the interactions of the individuals and groups.
• What unwritten “rules” can you observe?
• Often, such groups have a special language they speak, unique to their group. Can you hear it?
• How do others join into ongoing discussions?
• Who are the “big dogs” in the groups? Do they bite?
• What’s your plan? Target the “big dogs?”
• Or start by approaching smaller groups, maybe even singles who seem to be standing alone and left out of the socializing?

Whoever you approach, consider this plan:

1. Blend in.
2. Add real value.
3. Stick around. (Don’t disappear, or you’ll have to start from scratch when you come back.)

Recognize that marketing in a social networking setting is much different from what you are accustomed to. In normal marketing, most of your targets want to avoid you. In social networking, your targets are there to talk to somebody. That can be you, if you understand them and approach them correctly.

You can quickly meet so many people online, it seems like the marketing part should be a slam-dunk. The problem is, sometimes social marketers get so focused on the marketing that they forget the social. Here’s a checklist to keep you focused on the power behind social networking:

• Think “know, like, & trust.” Your marketing attempts are doomed if your market doesn’t trust you. You can’t tell them about a product when they don’t know who YOU are … just won’t work.
• People are individuals. You can’t address your message to a group, because individuals know you aren’t talking to them. You can connect with each individual who gets your message by talking to them as an individual.
• Don’t waste your time trying to get them to understand your message. Your time is much better spent understanding them. Find out about them. Get to know them. Be social.
• Respect and understand their dreams. Tell them how you might work together.
• Social marketing means don’t hype your stuff.
• Individuals smell manipulation coming a mile away. Go through your process from start to finish and eliminate all manipulation.
• Offer help in your area(s) of expertise, to any who may benefit from it.
• When a person gives you their trust, treat it with great care.
• Let people know what you are REALLY good at, and what you’re not. People want to deal with the specialist, because they know they’ll get best results that way. Let them know your specialty, as specifically as possible.

Make sure these elements are in your social marketing, and people will trust you.

If you have a gun held to your head, how do you make a choice between social networking and money? Bottom line profit has always been and will always be Job #1 for a business. No matter how much you love what you do, you’ve got to make a profit, or you won’t be able to continue doing it.

However … Robin Good recently wrote an interesting take on why he doesn’t want venture capital money and why he doesn’t sell his hot list to a big publisher to really leverage his social marketing results. Good’s plan reveals his view on the true value of social networking:

“My key need is not having more money, but having more passionate young learners that can capture and grow inside this new media culture being created right now. People are my real key asset … I am interested in creating and building tools and resources that can help other individuals become more effective agents of change: as I call them, communication agents.

“By sharing what I have learned and keep discovering about how to communicate and collaborate effectively online I can truly enable more people to affect change in their personal lives than any amount of big government spending on education can do.”

Naive? Idealistic? Robin Good is certainly in the minority. On the other hand, just by the nature of social networking, idealists are probably a significant niche in online social marketing. And no matter what enterprise you may be building, finding the right people - those who truly share your passion - will usually get you closer to achieving your goals than a pile of venture capital will.

The #1 value of social networking is the ability to connect with like-minded people. Does that depend on money? To an extent. But even more, it’s knowing where your best “agents of change” are likely to hang out. So find a few. Talk with them, study them, understand them … and then, provide the environment that is a perfect gathering place for them. That will probably get you the best social networking results, and it won’t take a huge pile of dollars to accomplish.

The more social networking you do, the better you must get at reputation management.

“Social networking.”

The phrase sounds so … businesslike. Let’s try another one:

“Social backbiting.”

Ooh! Might be fun to eavesdrop on THAT one! Unless, of course, YOU are the one whose back is being bitten.

If you’re active in social networking, your ideas will be attacked by other marketers. You’ll be challenged by strangers. Or customers. Or even colleagues or friends.

Someone will rail against your thinking and try to intimidate you. They’ll be rude. They will try to look good by making you look bad. It’s important to have a good reputation management plan in place for these occasions.

So what do you do when you make what you thought was a helpful comment on one of the forum communities, and in return you get hostility - someone else in the community slams you or ridicules you?

This absolutely will happen if you are an active social networker. Consider yourself fortunate. You now have an enormous opportunity to bond more closely with a lot of others in the community. Because they see that you are in a very uncomfortable situation, which is OK with them, because it should be pretty entertaining. They are watching closely to see what you do.

Your first reaction may be a kamikaze scream and attack. But remember, you are onstage, in the spotlight. You know these situations will happen, so you need a reputation management plan. Here are some choices:

1. Do nothing - which means you absolutely lose face in this group.
2. React defensively or angrily - see #1.
3. Pull the ol’ switcheroo, positioning yourself above this silly fray.

It’s like jiujitsu. When the other person attacks you, the force they use and their momentum always leave them vulnerable in some way. What would be really useful is for the whole community to picture you as your attacker’s infinitely patient mentor.

The key word here is “patient,” because along with expertise, that is what your market wants from a mentor. You will probably have the words for some clever counter-attack screaming in your ear. Resist it. When those words show up in print, they will put you right in the middle of the battle, not above it.

What words can you say to achieve “patient mentor” effect?

You might start with:

• “That’s a pretty common reaction” or
• “I forgive you” or
• “I respect your opinion. Here’s what I’ve seen …”

Then go on to very patiently explain why people often go off in this totally wrong direction. You’ve seen it a thousand times before. Maybe refer to the flawed reasoning that goes hand-in-hand with this flawed thinking. But do NOT attack your attacker. Let the community see your superior reasoning ability and your your infinite patience. Let them see that you are 100% unflappable in the face of a full-on attack.

Do you think THAT picture of you in their minds will create any new social networking opportunities for you? If you can keep that picture in the heads of community members, you will need to do very little active reputation management.

YouTube has moved up near the top of the charts of most popular websites over the last couple years. You can hardly turn around online without bumping into a YouTube video embedded on whatever sites you visit, but the YouTube folks certainly aren’t resting on their laurels.

According to Jim Patterson of Product Management,

Nevertheless, we worried that we weren’t open enough. So, we pulled some all-nighters and added some powerful new ways to integrate YouTube content and community into other websites, desktop applications, video games, mobile devices, televisions, cameras, and lots more.

Let’s review. With YouTube, you can

• join and upload your videos
• access all YouTube videos from just about any website
• quickly & easily manage, search, & play back videos
• network with YouTube’s huge global audience
• build traffic to your website
• improve brand recognition
• attract users to your site and give them a better social networking experience
• … and do all of this for free.

And since that wasn’t good enough for them, they’re adding new social networking features:

• Upload video responses to posted videos.
• Add/Edit user & video metadata (titles, descriptions, ratings, comments, favorites, contacts, etc).
• Fetch feeds (most viewed, top rated, etc.) for 18 international locations.
• Custom queries optimized for those 18 international locations.
• Customize player control (pause, play, stop, etc.) through software.

It’s pretty creative. For instance:

• You can use the Electronic Arts game “Spore” to create some crazy creature, then upload your creation to YouTube.
• University of California, Berkeley, is pioneering the automatic publication of free educational content videos to YouTube.
• You can use Animoto to create a music video from your own photo … and upload the video to YouTube.
• Tivo is now integrating YouTube videos into its TV platform.

Continuous social networking innovation going on at YouTube.