The internet is growing at an astounding rate and if you take blogs as a prime example, they are growing by the tens of thousands daily. With the increases in the numbers of bloggers, the number of pages being bookmarked each day is incredible, forget the tens of thousands, try the hundreds of thousands.

With this amount of activity growing on a daily basis it will soon become impossible to find anything of value on a social bookmarking site unless some sort of filtering is put in place. Voting no longer works. If social bookmarking isn’t screwed, it is certainly skewed. With certain sites, and Digg is a great example, either you are part of the ‘in crowd’ or you are no-one and your chances of making ‘front page’ becomes impossible.

Some of the newer sites are a little easier to manage. It seems the only way to make an impression on any of the social bookmarking sites is by joining whilst they are new and really becoming an expert on that particular site.

Social bookmarking is rapidly reaching flood proportions. Conversation sites such as Twitter have problems just staying ‘live to air’ as their growth exceeds capabilities. The bigger problem is that some individuals are bookmarking everything they write and then bookmarking as many other pages as possible in an attempt to appear social.

The true concept of social bookmarking seems to have gone out the window. Originally designed to enable users to bookmark their favorite sites online, rather than in their browser, so they had true portability. No matter where you were in the world, you could log in and access ‘your’ bookmarks. As and added bonus, you could share your bookmarks with friends.

That is no more. Rather than social bookmarking, these sites have become, to all intents and purposes, blog plug sites with users submitting their own content with the hope that others will come visiting in their droves. Sometimes they do, often they don’t.

Social bookmarking; skewed or screwed - can it continue in its present state?

Social marketing can be a powerful tool used in the right hands. However, if you misuse the system you could be in for some serious consequences - and those consequences could have a profound long term effect, as some have discovered.

There are two social marketing sins that can not only ruin your online image, they can potentially ruin you business - if not your business, your own career.

Social Marketing Sin #1: Never misrepresent who you are!
In the online world it is easy to take on a pseudonym and totally change who you are - you can change gender, age, profession - basically reinvent yourself - and many do. However, if you are in the world of business then this tactic can be fraught with danger.

Whole Foods CEO John Mackey was caught posting on Yahoo! under a pseudonym. He spent some time praising his company while at the same time rubishing another company - a company that Whole Foods eventually acquired. The detection of his acts lead to some pretty bad publicity and provoked an investigation by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission that delayed the eventual acquisition. Mackey claimed he was just having some fun. The problem is, he may have come close to being prosecuted and he probably would have if his actions had affected the acquisition cost of the takeover.

These actions could be considered illegal in several countries including the US, UK, Canada and Australia.

Social Marketing Sin #2: Never misrepresent who you represent!
In the past, social marketers have given their clients a boost by entering various sites and falsely representing rival companies. They have then quietly released misinformation or technically incorrect information in the hope that this would have a negative affect on the competitors reputation.

This is illegal in many countries and could lead to some very interesting damages suits if they hit the courts.

Social marketing is a tool that can be used to promote yourself, your business and your products. Using underhand methods is not only an illegal activity, in this day and age of smart users, you will be detected by someone and once outed, your own reputation will be shot. Play the game in a positive manner and everyone wins. If you need to resort to negatives then it doesn’t say much about your own product, business or social marketing skills.

If your business ‘professional’ then you will know all about plans: business plans, marketing plans, cash flow plans (also called budgets but still plans), so do you also have a social marketing plan?

Most website owners do not! They do not see the purpose of planning their social marketing campaigns, after all, it’s social and that is ad-hoc. Well it is isn’t it?

The answer is no, it is not ad-hoc. Quite the opposite. To be successful you need to carefully plan your social marketing strategy to ensure you receive maximum benefit for the time to you put into it. The bigger question should be, how do I plan my social marketing campaign?

That question is not quite so easy to answer as each of the sites requires a different plan of attack. What works on one site is not necessarily going to work on another. There are however a couple of things you can do.

Look, Listen and Learn
My first suggestions is simply to visit any one of the sites you intend using for your social marketing program and watch. Have a good look around, get a feel for the site and people on it, listen (read) to what other people are saying and doing, and learn as much as possible from your observations.

Profile, Profile, Profile
Look at other profiles and try to design yours to the same standard as those within your niche. Your profile page is often the first place people visit to find out more about you - don’t disappoint them; don’t frighten them away either. Don’t add every Tom, Dick or Mary who asks to be your friend. Leave that to your social marketing plan.

Ask, Answer and Participate
Whilst looking around, start to ask questions if you are not sure of something. You will be surprised at helpful most people are on many of these social sites. If you come across a question you feel you can answer, answer it - make sure you really can provide a decent answer - don’t just reply to every question with half baked answers.

Once you have an idea of how the site works and what sort of social marketing is acceptable, start to develop a plan. The first part of your plan should be to target ‘friends’ in your niche who can be of value to you. From there, read, comment, and, if necessary, vote on material they have supplied.

Your first plan of attack should be to add value to their side of the relationship. Over time they will start to reciprocate and before you know it you will have a fairly decent friends base to build on. Social marketing is about being social - however it is being social with a long term goal.

Over time, you will come across new social sites that appeal to you and you will start to use them more than some of the others, particularly if you feel you have gained as much as you are ever going to gain from them.

This can be particularly true of bloggers who hit the 9-12 month period in their blogging life. Website owners can also find themselves in this position.

Most people, when they first start using social sites, abuse them more than use them. This is due to inexperience and not really understanding how to really use these sites. Before they know it they unwelcome sign is out - in fact many don’t know it.

However, with time and experience individuals start to learn how to use and manage their time on social sites to the point that sites they have joined in recent months are proving to be quite effective. The reason of course is because they are effective in their use of these sites.

If you find yourself in this situation, don’t forget to look back at what has been written over the last 12 months. Is there material there that is either good, or as proven to be popular in the past. If there is, submit is to the new sites.

History can repeat itself, with a whole new audience to provide content to. If you have used the new sites effectively you may find that the attitude to some of your old content is completely different. It isn’t that the material is better, the key is in the fact that you are now using these sites more effectively.

Find some of those old gems and submit. It’s a good way to revitalize your site when times are a little slow.

Social media marketing is fast approaching us and before you know it this concept will hit blog status in levels of popularity and controversy. We have only scratched the surface of social media marketing and as time moves forward the demand for employees that know what they are doing will grow as well.

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YouTube is now experimenting with videos longer than 10 minutes (current limit) and extending the storage capacity to 1GB - this equates to around 80 minutes of standard definition video. It’s limited to YouTube’s “content partners” at present but has the potential big to explode into far greater things.

Content partners received the following in an email:

Long Form Content
You now will be able to upload and monetize videos in your account that are longer than 10 minutes. This feature is exclusively for partners. Independent Film makers that partner with us will now be able to upload their feature films on our site. Please note that for long form content, the maximum file size is 1GB.

The long term aim will be to monetize videos with ads running before, after and, in one format or another, during the replay of the video. This may well create a situation where Hollywood blockbusters are available for viewing free of charge so long as the viewer is prepared to watch the ads as well. I don’t there will be a lot of resistance when the word ‘free’ is used.

For advertisers, the opportunity to access virtual cinema at probably a fraction of the cost of cinema or tv advertising will be quite appealing. The concept of free viewing in exchange for included advertising is not new to media marketers and I am sure they will find way to capitalize on the concept fairly quickly.

It will be interesting to see how it pans out in the longer term. If Google can see an increase in revenue then it wont be long and the file size limitations will be changed to include quality high definition videos from the top studios. The revenue may well flow then.

One of the interesting aspects of social marketing and social bookmarking is that each of the different social bookmarking sites has a particular angle.

If you take Digg and Fark as two completely different sites, one, Fark, is more likely to deliver traffic if your headline is catchy and somewhat humorous. Digg on the other hand is more likely to deliver traffic if the headline is more technical. It goes with the territory as each of the social bookmarking sites have different audiences.

It is possible to attract traffic from both of these sites, but only if you can be very creative in writing that headline. For example, include the latest cell phone or technical gadget in your title, and you may find your sites receiving traffic from Digg. If you can make the title quite humorous, then the Fark group may also be interested.

Follow up with content that both groups can relate to and you will have a real winner. Of course it is rarely possible to write to satisfy both groups, and they are not the only social bookmarking sites on the planet.

The key to writing good headlines is to visit each of the social sites and spending some time observing which content appears to predominate the ‘favorites’ sections and what sort of titles are being written. You will be surprised at the differences between social bookmarking sites.

Once you have an idea of what is type of content and what headlines are working, you can craft your content to match one or more of those sites. Social bookmarking is not a difficult process if your prepared to do some research and modify our content to suit your target sites.

Curiosity and suspense have long been a tool of choice by advertising and marketing gurus in the bricks and mortar world and that philosophy is many now be creeping into the online marketing and social marketing fields.

It is not a bad ploy when it works and can lead to a strong viral marketing campaign. An article on Small Business Newz titled Curiosity Got the Customer describes an offline - online curiosity campaign that went viral in a big way. Titled the Cloverfield Strategy it seems to be a clever mix of social marketing and good old fashioned keep-em-guessing marketing.

The Cloverfield buzz began the night the mega-hit Transformers was released in theaters, when the exciting preview was shown without indicating a movie title. Everyone was wondering what it was. In fact, I probably heard just as many people talking about that as I did about Transformers after its opening.

The article went to describe the viral effect as a huge number of individuals got onto their computer to try find more information. The question is whether or not you could use similar tactics to drive traffic to your web site.

I can image having an interesting video on Youtube that only tells half the story with a promise of more to come. How about a campaign on Facebook that hints at more? They could be very successful social marketing campaigns particularly if they went viral. Certainly curious food for thought!

Your profile is the starting point for your presence on Facebook, in fact, it is the window that allows others to look into you and your products. Your profile page is your landing page - the first thing that visitors see is that landing page so it needs to be optimized to sell you.

The profile page is one of the few areas you can control in Facebook. You control the design and the information that is contained. You can reveal as much or as little as you see fit. You can express your passion for any cause, any product or any brand. You need to take advantage of components including the Personal Info, Work Info, Photos, and applications to tell (sell) your story to the world.

Most people don’t realize how many page views profile pages generate. The more you network, the page views you can generate. The more your profile tells a story - the more attractive your message, the more people are going to want to see more.

Develop pages, which were launched by Facebook last year as a way for businesses of many types to easily establish a brand presence on Facebook, and you have a complete Facebook presence.

Social networking will never be the same. Debrett’s, the well known authority on etiquette have weighed in with their version of social networking etiquette.

After research showed that a majority of users had no idea about what was accepted in social networking circles, Debret’s developed their version of social networking etiquette. Here are their rules:

1. You don’t have to make friends with people you don’t know. It’s not a competition to see how many friends you can get. Think before you poke.
2. Always wait 24 hours before accepting or removing someone as a friend. The delay will help you gather your thoughts.
3. Birthdays, engagements and weddings are not ‘virtual’ events. Always send birthday cards or call your friends when there’s important news.
4. Consider your friends’ feelings before posting pictures. Put yourself in their shoes before clicking ‘upload.’
5. Think carefully about your profile picture – if you don’t want to see it in your local newspaper, don’t put it online.

Really, after reading that set of rules, I don’t think I will be changing my social networking habits at all. How about you? Do you have any social networking manners that you stick to?

YouTube offers provides an opportunity for businesses to upload videos on a wide range of subject matter. Now that YouTube is becoming available on many TV sets the opportunity exists to get your message out onto a much bigger screen and to a much wider audience.

Video’s in the ‘how to’ format may become popular and what better way is there to promote your brand and your expertise, all virtually at no cost. The only cost would be the production of the short videos. In this day and age many people are able to produce good quality videos using their home video camera.

YouTube’s post on the subject is quite interesting in itself.

We’ve heard many users say, “YouTube is the new TV!”. Well, the YouTube Syndication team is excited to now offer a number of options to actually consume YouTube on your television sets. We’re also proud to have helped many leaders in the consumer electronics space create YouTube experiences on TV.

The post goes on to list the various TV manufacturers who are providing the required setups to view the YouTube.

If you haven’t thought of using YouTube to promote your products or services, now might be a good time to get some footage shot and uploaded. You have nothing to lose and perhaps everything to gain.

Social networking, or just plain socializing, has become the ‘in’ thing with thousands flocking to Twitter or Plurk each day. Facebook and Myspace continue to grow along with hundreds of other similar sites.

One comment I hear on many of these sites goes along the lines of, “I had better stop wasting my time here and get back to work”. You must wonder what their employers would think if they new how much time was spent on these activities.

I do actually see these comments from individuals who run blogs or commercial websites. Social networking is supposed to be good for your business or at the very least, good for your website or blog. You can develop an image or a reputation and over time exploit that reputation to deliver traffic and, hopefully, more business.

To hear individuals referring to the social networking as a waste of time is therefore a little perplexing. Surely any type of marketing has to be good for your business - for these individuals, perhaps not.

The again, perhaps I have it all wrong. Social networking is probably not a waste of time. It would be more accurate to describe these users as ’spending time wasting opportunities’. Now that sounds more accurate. I wonder, can I get everyone to rephrase their lines. Instead of saying I am wasting time here. I want everyone now to say, I am wasting opportunities here.

With that attitude, you may find that social networking actually brings results!

The Friday Traffic Report has an interesting post on what are the Top 10 Social Sites By Alexa Rankings. Alexa is not the most reliable of ranking services although in this case, they may be fairly close. Social networkers appear to use the Alexa Toolbar in greater numbers than non social networkers.

What is probably more remarkable are the sites that are missing from the list. The top listed are:

• YouTube
• MySpace
• Facebook
• Orkut
• Hi5
• Flickr
• Friendster
• Skyrock
• Bebo
• Digg

It depends on how you define a social site of course, but with Digg appearing at number 10 and possibly considered more a social bookmarking site than a social networking, the fact that StumbleUpon, Reddit and Propeller are not there is quite interesting.

StumbleUpon more so given the reported high use of the Alexa Toolbar by SU users. Skyrock is the interesting one at number 8 given it has been very much regionalised, more so by language than anything else. Expanding into English has obviously given it a real lift.

The usual suspects take up the first five spots, however with Friendster, Bebo and Skyrock in the list they are certainly worth adding to your social networking rounds.

Social networking has been going crazy over the last two or so years and the main emphasis has been on either providing value for others or self promotion. There are few who can really use these sites to create win win situations.

We all know the win win scenario - you gain something and I gain something. Every bodies happy. With social networking, the idea is to engage with others to gain a network of people who are all interested in similar ideas or products.

By engaging in social networking you are building that network of ‘friends’. For you, there is the chance that they will visit your site, link to your content, or perhaps subscribe, or, if you are selling, buy your products. For the individuals, what is in it for them?

In most social networking sites, everyone’s aim is similar. I want you to visit my site. You most likely want me to visit yours. I want you to subscribe to my newsletter - ditto from you. Of course this would be the perfect win-win scenario - except I don’t want to subscribe to your newsletter. Your content doesn’t particularly interest me, its your links and patronage I want!

Therein lies the problem with most social networking sites. Everyone has a hidden agenda and that is the promotion of their own content. To be really successful at social networking, the people that ‘you’ add to your friends lists should be those that you are happy to interact with. Individuals whose content you can and do subscribe to or whose sites you do visit on a regular basis.

This delivers a group of ‘friends’ who are targeted towards your interests. A win for them. Because you are interested in their content, you are more likely to participate in discussions and follow discussion threads that they have instigated. The end result is that you will build a strong network of related individuals, you will get your backlinks and traffic, and with it perhaps sales.

Adding individuals for one way benefit will only work for a short period of time - then they will turn away and the value of your network will be greatly diminished. Social networking is all about gathering a network of individuals together, all to often we fail to put a real value on that network.

One of the most important relationships between a website and a visitor, particularly a customer, is the websites reputation. When it comes to seeking help or seeking advice, a website or webmaster needs to be able to demonstrate an expertize, to be considered an authority on the topic. Social content is one to establish that reputation.

Everything you say or do on any of the social sites is, to all intents and purposes, permanent and there for the world to see. When you leave your mark, it needs to show a degree of respect to others and, when offering advice, a level of knowledge that exceeds those around them. Social content is often viewed by thousands over time - as a marketing exercise, it exceeds every other form of media.

I have often seen questions asked, and the question is often rather silly when you first view it. However, from the writers perspective, they are probably quite sincere in their request for advice. The number of answers I see that belittle the asker is quite frequent. My response, if you are going to treat that person like that, I don’t want you in my friends list.

Treat the question with respect, or leave it alone. Remember, days, weeks, months perhaps years after, that question and answer will be read. The last thing you need is too look a fool with your answer. Build respect, build authority and respect will be returned. With it comes all the benefits of being considered an authority.