Youth watchers have long argued that for young people, email is how you communicate with elders in formal situations, while social networks and SMS are the preferred method of communication among peers. Nielsen found, however, that Facebook in particular saw greater growth among older people than it did among the young.

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I’ve therefore decided that I’m only spending time with the “Big 4″ business social networking sites SUp.biz, Plaxo, LinkedIn, and Ecademy.

These four are without a doubt the top 4 social networks to promote your business on.

I’ll focus on the social network Fbook here real quick to prove that the four above are the best place to spend your time.

Let’s just look at 3 popular applications on Fbook:

1: Top Friends
Add a box of up to 32 of your BFFs to your profile.
2,658,733 daily active users

2: FunWall
Videos, Photos, Graffiti, Greeting Cards, Embeds and more!
2,603,946 daily active users

3: Movies
Test your movie knowledge with the Never-Ending Movie Quiz.
2,373,887 daily active users

A very impressive list by daily active users, you must agree. Is there anything there that jumps out at you as a compelling reason to spend time online at work ‘networking’? Indeed. I could go down the list of the top 20 apps and continue showing you things that have nothing to do with networking.

Now let us break down the big 4 social networks and where to spend most of your time on each of them…

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Here is a good video tutorial that teaches you how to add your blog’s feed to your Facebook profile. That way, every time you publish a new blog post, Facebook imports it as a Note and notifies your Facebook friends.

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Google Fellow Jeff Dean, in a keynote talk at WSDM 2009, shared some numbers about Google’s impressive growth run from 1999 to 2009. According to Dean, while both search queries and processing power have gone up by a factor of 1000, latency has gone down from around 1000ms to 200ms. Crawler updates now take minutes compared to months in 1999.

Another significant change was the switch to holding the complete search index in memory, resulting in the use of 1000 machines to handle a single query compared to just 12 previously.

This revelation may be a bit embarrassing for Google, which has defended its ecological record in the past, claiming that a single Google query takes just 0.0003KWh of energy and that the Google datacenters are “the world’s most efficient.”

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Track what you use on your desktop (even web apps like Gmail) and share it with your friends through widgets or even on Facebook.

Wakoopa will also give you smart recommendations based on your own software usage. Games, audio & video players, instant messengers or office tools: Wakoopa helps you discover the best apps out there. Software discovery is social again.

To learn more about Wakoopa, click here.

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Over the years, I’ve found that there are various types of conferences, tradeshows and events. I like to break them down into two categories:

1-Shared learning events where education and knowledge transfer are key, and
2-Vendor-saturated events where the show floor consists of companies introducing you to their products.

The key to any social media marketing strategy is to first have a keen understanding of your market and its tie-in with the event you plan on attending. For example, the recent South by Southwest (SXSW) Conference held each year in Austin, Texas – this conference brings together an extremely diverse audience from the music, interactive and film industries. While an audience this diverse may seem advantageous, it can create a challenge for a marketer trying to start a conversation with a targeted portion of these folks. Therefore, before you get started, its important to understand how your marketing objectives align with your conference goals. Once you understand this, you are ready to start planning your event-based social media.

ESTABLISHING YOUR PERSPECTIVE

Since social media marketing takes advantage of the combination of technology, social interaction and rapid dissemination of your message, you have to get it right the first time. The first step is research.

The role of a social media marketer is very much like that of an anthropologist, using the evidence of a culture’s history to predict future behaviors. So, after choosing an event that you feel would be of the most interest to your audience, begin by researching past events.

I believe that the best starting point in your research is to establish a perspective or point of view that will be compelling to your audience and will capture their attention, interest and imagination. Social media marketing is about “being” social, so any successful campaign needs to be able to “mingle” with the community; generating insightful, unique and newsworthy dialogue at each event.

Second, establish a perspective that supports the mission of your brand. For example, at SXSW, attendees might be artists that would like to increase the level of control they have in expressing, monetizing and distributing their content online. Once you understand your audience and their objectives create a campaign that will empower them while driving traffic to your website. A smart idea could be to interview artists on their passions and post the interviews exclusively to your site. In order to do this, you need to schedule time with these artists.

CHOOSING YOUR WEAPONS

In order to execute your campaign onsite, it pays to engage with attendees before the conference begins. At SXSW, attendees were connecting to each other through Facebook, Twitter and even company blogs weeks before the conference began. The discussion had started, and companies that engaged in social media were already sending people to their websites and promoting their brands.

GET IT TOGETHER

Since a large portion of the SXSW conference focused on interactive media, it was an efficient use of efforts to look at the supporting website for clues as to what technologies were in play this year. We discovered that one of the key platforms this year was sched.org. The team at Sched had imported the entire SXSW conference schedule including panels, film times and parties into their platform. After creating a simple username, attendees were able to create individual and group schedules, and could view the list of others that had selected the same sessions. Attendees could export calendars that could be shared to keep track of our meeting schedules, panels to attend, and parties where we thought the next set of interviews might come from. Effective, yet flexible scheduling is a key to any social media marketing campaign. Use scheduling methods such as this to find ways to locate your audience.

THE SOCIAL GPS

In 2007, Twitter made an enormous impact from SXSW and emerged as the leader in micro-blogging at events such as this. So it makes sense to include a Twitter component in social media campaigns. Employees can use existing Twitter accounts to broadcast interview plans for SXSW and invite our Twitter community to follow our interactions. Post messages to boards, blogs and other social platforms that include a call for interviews, and ensure that your Twitter name is included. This year at SXSW, Twitter continued to be the social GPS of the event with tweets like “Billy Bob Thorton is in the Dell Lounge right now” or “@groovemonkey We are in line for the Rock Band Party. Password is drum solo.”

IT’S ALL ABOUT TUBES
Once the interviews are scheduled and conducted, figure out your initial method of distribution. Tubemogul provides a video distribution platform to over 15 different video sharing websites, as well as a rich set of metrics to help measure the success of your campaigns. Users can publish once or distribute widely, and then spend more time interacting with the communities that inspired you to generate high-quality content in the first place.

ONCE YOU CAPTURE IT, SET IT FREE

The final piece of every social media campaign is the widespread distribution of the conversations that you have gathered. It is not enough to just capture insightful interviews or well-positioned marketing pitches. Campaigns must be seen and heard and interacted with in order to be successful. Tools such as Digg, StumbleUpon, and del.icio.us are great examples of social bookmarking. Video sharing platforms such as Blip.tv, YouTube and Veoh continue to be used as a way to integrate user-generated video in social media campaigns. Facebook will continue to be an excellent place to provide and disseminate your campaign, as well as the host of blogs, websites and platforms that your audience follows. Leverage the research you did upfront and use the communities that helped define your campaign goals. They are likely the ones that will be the most useful in disseminating your piece of the conversation.

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE

Using social media in your marketing execution is about making the most of technology, perspective and interaction, in order to capture the attention of the end-consumer and relate to them in a meaningful and relevant way. This helps build relationships and connections with your brand. If your point of view for the campaign is relevant to your audience it will be engaging, insightful and valuable.

The platforms and tools that you select must also be relevant to your audience or your message will be missed. Facebook, YouTube and MySpace are all established platforms for your social media campaigns. Blogs and other micro-publishing platforms such as Tumblr and Twitter will continue to grow in popularity. Social Bookmarking sites will also continue to expand and show value in the tool box of the marketer that uses social media to participate in the conversation.

The final key to social media marketing is that there really is no end to the conversation. Fresh voices will emerge, additional perspectives will be added to the mix and new technology will surface that will continue to push the notions of social media. This will continue to challenge the marketer to find effective, relevant, noteworthy events and tools to engage their consumers in the conversation. The question becomes, will you be ready to participate?

About the Author
Over the past decade, Christopher Smith has helped companies build brands online including Apple, Disney, Nextel, Phillips and Quicksilver. Christopher is currently the creative director for MediaTrust, an ecosystem of online media properties. Visit www.relevantlyspeaking.com to see how MediaTrust leveraged social media at SXSW to generate Web site traffic.

Using video to demonstrate products is nothing new. I have had the luxury of producing dozens of instructional/how-to videos over the years. Originally they consisted of VHS tapes that were packaged along with the products. Beyond giving the customer insight into how to use or assemble a product, they were of little additional use after the individual customer viewed them. Today, we can also use that content to find new customers, create additional search results and provide multiple entry points to your brand and product.

Social networks are a great way to syndicate your video content. They continue to increase in popularity and are becoming part of the professional toolset. This fall, The Wall Street Journal announced that it’s adding a “Journal Community” to its site. And Business Week reported in September that Google is working on an “influence rank” calculation for social network members. Stay tuned for more on that as Google moves forward. Still, I recently read an article downplaying the effectiveness of social networking. I was not surprised to see it was written by a traditional broadcast guy.

I can’t really blame him for trying to spin things in his favor. But online television is here to stay. There are far too many factors supporting its development, including the merging of the computer and TV. Traditional TV networks do not give you additional search result listings or the ability to have the content go viral and be shared. Both are advantages of online video. And the cost of creating your own syndicated show to highlight your products and services on traditional broadcast would be astronomical, unless you get some late-night cable slot that your target audience would never watch. Free syndication services like TubeMogul add to online video efficiencies. With one upload, you can deploy your video content to the top video-sharing Web sites and have access to powerful analytics that tell you how and by whom your videos are being viewed.

7 Ways Online Product Videos Improve ROI

Point customers to your e-commerce site to make purchases any time, any day of the week.
Generate additional search results for your brand and products through multiple distribution channels, including social networks and RSS feeds.
Add validity and lift to your current site with link building and use of a video sitemap.
Improve targeting and click rates over static-image ads with rich-media ads.
Produce compelling content that builds your brand, keeps your customers coming back and provides information.
Expand your keyword search reach through meta data.
Answer customer questions and ease pressure on customer service and call-center staff.
Still, I would not tell anyone to eliminate traditional TV from their media plan if they can afford to do it on a regular basis. Big brands can afford to do both. Video should be part of a comprehensive marketing plan that includes all facets of marketing. The advantage of creating online content goes well beyond the expected lift in product sales.

As marketing budgets tighten during the current economic slowdown, being able to create multi-purpose content is even more critical. Video offers some of the most compelling marketing solutions, and is extremely cost effective when extrapolated across your entire business.

Using social networks to help syndicate your content is a good start, and it is currently free. But it does not come without some investment. If you are not regularly working these sites, or properly optimizing your content, the payoffs will not be as large or sustainable. It also helps to have a viable product, a reliable and effective user interface (UI) and an e-commerce solution.

As video becomes a vital component of search, I encourage you to start improving your search results — and your bottom line today.

About the Author: Darin Ingalls brings 15 years of broadcast and online video marketing experience to his role at Blue Hue Interactive.

No matter whether or not you do both of these activities or only one of them, you need to know what messages you want to convey to your audience.

That’s why you need to create a list of your 10 Most Important Business Principles (MIBP). Without them, your marketing efforts will be too diffuse to really grab the attention of your intended ideal clients.

Your 10 Most Important Business Principles inform, expand, and provide clarity for your business vision. For example, the vision statement for my company, SoloBizVille is:

Through collaboration, community, and continuous learning, any professional can create a joyous, sustainable, and profitable one-person services business.

For me, as a Business Coach for Solopreneurs, my 10 MIBP are:

1-Nobody needs a stronger weakness.
2-If you chase 2 rabbits, both will escape. Focus is power.
3-Ideas are “a dime a dozen,” but right action is rare and worth millions.
4-Mistakes are the stepping stones to success. Embrace them.
5-Success and integrity are not mutually exclusive.
6-Embrace the goal, not the plan.
7-This is your life, not a dress rehearsal.
8-At least 5% of your clients and projects are from Hell. Always. No exceptions.
9-Success comes by doing what you do magnificently. Delegate everything else!
10-Your strengths are so easy you think everyone can do them. They can’t!

As you can see, some of my MIBP are reasons why solopreneurs are frustrated; while others are principles for business success. But all of them are principles that I believe in and use when I coach solopreneurs.

For a contrast, these were my 10 MIBPs when I was working solo as an Independent Technical Writer and Publications Project Manager:

The client is always right, even when he isn’t. Always respect and honor the client’s objectives.
Project risk is always reducible.
Success requires mistakes ­ but make them small ones! And always correct your own ­on your own time and dime.

- The client wants options and possibilities.
- Never surprise the client.
- Always communicate cleanly, regularly, appropriately, and proactively.
- Use an editor!
- Keep all boundaries professional, clean, and open at all times.
- Hold the client as accountable as I hold myself.
- Manage the client’s expectations at all times.

Once you know your 10 MIBP you immediately have at least 10 topics for promoting your business. You can write a series of articles like this one, or use them as topics for speeches or seminars, or create checklists and worksheets based on your MIBP for use by your clients, or print them on the backs of your business cards, or write a book or ebook about them. You get the idea.

Using your 10 MIBP in your marketing ensures congruency in your business messenging ­ strengthening the image of your business in the minds of your potential clients.