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.

Podcasting has become as popular as blogging possibly due to the fact you can download and listen to the content at a more convenient time. If it is going to be played back through an MP3 player and headphones, the sound quality needs to be spot on. It really isn’t that difficult to produce quality podcasts in minutes.

Your first requirement is a decent microphone. Quality podcasting relies on a quality recording. You also need to either filter out unwanted background noises or use a recording area that provides a quiet recording environment. Avoid unwanted background noises however don’t go overboard and record in rooms that sound hollow or produce slight echoes.

Using music or related sound effects to introduce and end the podcast adds that little touch of quality and professionalism. The overall effect is a more enjoyable podcasting experience for your users. There are many podsafe music directories where podcasters can purchase music that is royalty free; this avoids any recurring charges when using the music in a podcast.

Use a title that is not only catchy but also related to the content. Podcasts can be found through search engines so you need to package and market the finished product as you would your web site including the use of keywords in the title.

Podcasts can be ideal vehicles to promote your products particulalry if you can provide ‘how to’ podcasts. These ‘how to’ podcasting files are ideal for users to take to a problem where they can listen and follow the steps. Sometimes you just cannot take your laptop with you.

By provide your users with a polished podcasting experience they will return for more. Gain a loyal following of listeners and you will have the perfect vehicle to promote your product. The spoken word can be very effective in the field of subtle persuasion.

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.

Social and viral marketing is a trust issue - not a trust in you - more a trust between friends. It just needs the seeds. For any issue to become viral, the word needs to be spread, and that is done through trust, or at least perceived trust.

Social sites are everywhere and on many of these sites, your online friends are also your offline line friends, relatives or acquaintances. You may have five of these friends who each have another five friends. I need not go on - you know the story. One person says something positive (or negative) and it starts to spread.

What most people don’t realize is that many people will also accept recommendations from complete strangers. This happens frequently throughout the various social sites. Here the emphasis is often either weight of numbers, or the quality of the recommendation.

Take as an example, an individual who asks “who sells the best green widgets”. One friend may say company A. Fifty complete strangers may say company B. One stranger may say company C and provide examples - a good testimonial. As all three have levels of trust, who would you buy from?

I am not going to over analyze this - the answer is either A B or C. And that is my point. When it comes to social and viral marketing campaigns, you can trigger the viral component either through a close friend, or by simply having someone provide a good recommendation; we just need to be able to capitalize on it.

I am not a stats person, however some stats stand out and should be taken into account when planning any campaign. The stats from the Facebook stats page do make for some interesting reading. So here is a did you know?

Did You Know?

• There are more than 70 million Facebook users
• Facebook is the 6th most-trafficked website in the world (comScore)
• Facebook is the 2nd most-trafficked social media site in the world (comScore)
• The fastest growing demographic is those 25 years old and older
• More than 6 million active user groups on the site
• The top three countries are the USA, UK and Canada
• Remaining top ten countries are: Turkey, Australia, France, Sweden, Norway, Colombia, and South Africa
• No. 1 photo sharing application on the Web (comScore)

Apart from the traffic statistics, the over 25 demographic increase and the top countries list are interesting statistics. Where much focus of late has been on the under 25 age group, the balance is returning as moms and dads sign up to stay in touch with their children. The international numbers are interesting with Turkey and Australia at four and five respectively. These countries have much lower populations than France and many of the other countries that don’t appear in the top ten.

These stats could certainly be useful when trying to put together a marketing campaign, particularly if you are considering using Facebook as part of that campaign.

Jason Alba wrote an interesting post on “I’m On LinkedIn - Now What???” regarding his approach to ‘friend’ request on LinkedIn. I am not sure how ethical his approach is although I can see where he is coming from and why.

There are many social sites around and from the moment you join you start to receive ‘friend’ requests. It is a little like a pyramid scheme. You join and add a couple of individuals to your ‘friends’ list. Some else joins and adds you to their list and while they are at it, add your firends as well. LinkedIn is no different.

Jason’s approach is quite simple and fairly obvious as well. If you want to be my friend, do so on the understanding that everyone on my ‘friends’ list will receive my monthly newsletter. Sounds a little like bribery, or blackmail. I don’t know how LinkedIn looks at this type of activity.

I think the point that is made to back up this requirement is very valid. If you have 100 or more ‘friends’, how often do you really interact with them. Many of these ‘friends’ add themselves and then you never hear from them again. With LinkedIn you can get away with a requirement like this so you know the people you do add will get some value from the ‘friendship’. You are interacting with them, even if it is by newsletter.

A larger benefit is that you wont get 100’s of friend requests. People will think twice before requesting to become a ‘friend’. Whilst I applaud the novelty of using this tactic to combat irrelevant friend requests, I hope it doesn’t become commonplace. I certainly don’t want to receive 100 newsletters each month, one from each of my ‘friends’ on LinkedIn.

If you like to keep up with what is going on with your friends on Facebook then you may like this handy little social blogging plugin. The plugin requires WordPress 2.5 and above.

To quote from this social blogging plugin’s homepage:

this plugin will process your Friends status updates RSS feed and/or your Facebook notifications feed, and add a widget for each to your WordPress admin dashboard.

This social blogging plugin enables you to keep up with your friends without having to visit Facebook. Handy if you are not able to log into Facebook for any reason.

When we consider social sites we automatically think of Facebook, MySpace or perhaps Bebo. Social media sites include YouTube and Flickr. There are many social bookmarking sites that can be used to deliver traffic to your sites.

Digg and StumbleUpon are the two most popular sites although del.icio.us is is also well respected. These are not the only sites around. The following bookmarking sites could well be worth a visit depending on the genre of your site.

Reddit: this is one of the social bookmarking sites that relies heavily on your interaction within the community. In fact if you don’t have the time to invest on this site then you will not get the most from it. Reddit really is a social networking site - the emphasis is on the networking. The more you network the more successful you will become.

De.lirio.us: this site is very similar to del.icio.us - in fact you can import your data from del.icio.us if you wanted. De.lirio.us works in a similar fashion to del.icio.us although when submitting a post, you need to use your own tags - but then you already use tags don’t you?

Linkagogo: a site that is perfect for novices. It is easy to use and easy to get a good understanding of. Whilst no where near as big as some of the other sites, sometimes smaller is better - there is certainly less competition and as the site grows popularity, so too will your authority as an ‘old hand’.

These are just three social bookmarking sites that could be used to bring in new traffic. The keys to these sites include good tagging and good networking skills. The more you network the more authority you will gain.

One aspect of social marketing which every business owner should be aware of is that it’s completely free. However, the most preventable marketing mistake that a business can make is to focus to heavily on themselves, their product or their service.

Don’t get me wrong, social marketing is all about promoting, but it is how you promote that matters. Social sites are, by their definition, places where people meet to socialize. They don’t want products shoved at them from all directions. What they do want to hear is what you can do for them.

Solving questions or providing solutions to problems will win you many fans and should be the starting point for any social marketing plan. Gently promoting your product or service along can be done if it is part of the solution. Social media can be a great vehicle for releasing new products, again if you can feed the ego’s of the members of these site.

Many sites don’t approve of open promotion, or the social marketing of products or services, and for good reason. The focus on many of these sites is to provide a forum where people can meet and socialize. People in these situations will naturally discuss anything and everything. It is through these general discussions that you can develop your own following.

If you really want to capitalize on the wave of traffic that flows through many of these sites then you could purchase open advertising on a pay-per-click basis. To date many of these campaigns have failed. The reason behind these failures comes back to the nature of the sites. People are gathering to socialize and share stories, not buy. Social marketing needs to be subtle.

Find the knack of delivering your social marketing strategy in a subtle way and you will find success. The number one rule for social marketing success, answer the question, what can I do for you? Social networking will be so much easier.

Web page design is becoming more important as each day goes by. StumbleUpon joined the thumbnail team earlier this month with thumbnails of stumblers favorite web sites displayed in their profiles.

It is becoming a trend that I feel will only spread further since many members of social networking sites feel more comfortable seeing images. StumbleUpon provides users with two options, either grid or list.

Your web page may soon become your social brand with thumbnails appearing like foot prints behind either your activities or your social friends. Until now, web pages have been designed for the benefit of visitors and search engines, you may now need to consider the thumbnail appeal of your site. Social sites like StumbleUpon are not shy about the size of your thumbnail either. In past thumbnails were very small, these days they are a reasonable size with good clarity.

If your web page is not up to scratch then perhaps it is time to do some housekeeping. Put on a pretty face for all those thumbnails that are going to continue to appear on sites like StumbleUpon. Your thumbnail is now a part of your social marketing face - capitalize on it.

Did you know you can now host your videos on Flick? Flickr have incorporated video streaming onto their site and you can now save up to 90 seconds of video per file. In other updates the storage capacity for each photo has been increased to 20 mb for pro members and 10 mb for free members.

[source]….you know that Flickr is all about sharing photos that you yourself have taken. Video will be no different and so what quickly bubbled up was the idea of “long photos,” of capturing slices of life to share

As can be seen, Flickr primary aim is to get short videos of ‘life’. I am sure we will soon find ways to incorporate marketing videos into the system.

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.

Social marketing has become an important aspect of general web promotion activities and the first question most people ask is ‘where do I start’. The answer is easier said than done.

Research is the key to any social marketing campaign. You need to spend time visiting the various social sites in an attempt to determine where your potential customers/readers/visitors hang out. Once you identify those sites and the areas within those sites, then you can start to target your efforts.

Bloggers are particularly bad in this respect. They tend to hit as many sites as possible and often take a scattergun approach - if I spray enough about, I am bound to hit some targets. The scattergun approach is often caused by time, if you are targeting six or seven sites, you simply do not have the time required to network effectively within each one. Unfortunately that approach can lead to some negative aspects for social marketing.

You do need to target more than one site, however if you can identify where your ‘market crowd’ is then you can avoid the scattergun approach and spend quality time developing your image within that site. Social marketing is after all dependent on developing a good reputation.

Social marketing is about finding your target audience and wooing them. This takes time and patience however the rewards can be very satisfying. Your target group will not come to you unless you can get to them and that is what social marketing is all about.

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.

Podcasting has rapidly become an integral part of the internet with many companies using the technology to deliver the same message to thousands of people. One of the features of a podcast is that it can be created and delivered automatically.

Many users sign up to receive podcasts automatically from their favorite site. Give them a reason to listen to yours and they may well sign up to receive it. Podcasting your products is not going to win admirers, create a series of how to’s or question and answer type podcasts and you may hit on a winner. Leave a link to the podcast on your site and it may draw listeners many months after its release.

Podcasts can easily be distributed using online ads, directories, websites, RSS feeds and emails. They are easy to record with a minimum of equipment and software. Find a quiet room with reasonable acoustics and you are set to go.

When creating a podcast, keep in mind that it should be targeted towards your potential customers and what their needs are. A good introduction to your business is important and you may well add a short description of your services or products. Stay focused on how your services or products can help your customers and what your business can do for them.

Podcasting gives Internet users the ability to do listen while doing other things as the files can be downloaded to any MP3 player. If a potential customer is busy and not able to sit at a computer for hours, they are most likely to download the podcast for later use.

There is good evidence that podcasting is becoming an effective marketing tool and that it will only grow stronger and more successful in the future. As the sales of mp3 players continues to increase and more people become familiar with the Internet, old methods of marketing are disappearing into the background.

Podcasting is offering a quick, easy and inexpensive way to reach thousands of customers. Given the inexpensive and easy creation options, podcasting should be considered by all webmasters looking to add to their marketing strategies.