I was listening to Jon Udell on The Gillmore Gang podcast the other day, and Mr Udell, who works for Microsoft, referenced one of his old blog posts about the orders-of-magnitude advantage blogging (and by extension, the use of other social media applications) has over email and other web 1.0 means of communication. Same work, much greater distribution. Here is an excerpt from "Too Busy To Blog? Count Your Keystrokes":

From this perspective, blogging is a communication pattern that optimizes for the amount of awareness and influence that each keystroke can possibly yield. Some topics, of course, are necessarily private and interpersonal. But a surprising amount of business communication is potentially broader in scope. If your choice is to invest keystrokes in an email to three people, or in a blog entry that could be read by those same three people plus more — maybe many more — why not choose the latter? Why not make each keystroke work as hard as it can?

When I can refer people to a site I have written and continually update as a reference, I am avoiding duplication of effort and putting my best foot forward. Because most questions about your business are essentially the same questions, over and over, you can maximize your reach and authority while minimizing your effort by communicating on your blog.

Read John Udell's whole article "Too Busy To Blog?". Read it twice. It is uncommon common sense for busy small business people.

A beauty of blogging as a business tool is that your site is a fluid ever-changing process of the sort that search engines love. You have the ability to go back and update old posts. But should you bother updating old posts, particularly ones which appear to have little traction? Isn't it better just to write a new post? I would have thought that there was no question that adding a new post was the best use of energy, but this article in Performancing, to whose feed you should be subscribing, BTW, puts a finer point on it. Here is an excerpt:

The solution, in my opinion, would be to write a new post now and update the old post later. Obviously, you want to create the new post to give readers something to read, and people could simply go back to the old article via links if they wished. Afterwards, you update your old post with some of the new information, and then link to your newer post. This gives people that come from search engines and social sites a reason to go to another page on your site, and if that happens, they are much more likely to subscribe.

Read the whole article by James Mowery on the Performancing Blog, and add Performancing RSS feed to your feedreader.

A few years ago, in the early months of the podcasting phenomenon, I was the web-presence guy for a very funny and briefly popular podcast called "Area 51". I had my own little niche podcast, and I recognized the importance of being "of" that community, surfing on its excitement and innovation. But somehow I could never get the "Area 51" performers to become a part of that adrenalinized world, and the podcast died for lack of direction and commitment. To this day I believe that if the Area 51 crew had been a real part of the nascent podcast community, the exhilaration would have carried them over the rough spots.

I think it is very important to take the time to absorb the zeitgeist of the social media world in which you wish to work. Chris Brogan poses this observation:

It's interesting to note that companies will spend anywhere from $20,000 to $150,000 on a good website design, but will fail to implement even the most rudimentary listening tools to move their capabilities to understand the impact of such a site beyond the realm of hits and clicks.

Read Chris Brogan's piece concerning listening tools for social media. Or don't, and just sling spam into a world you don't really "get".

The idea of Social Media Marketing, as I interpret it, is to get other people to happily do your work for you. In this spirit, and with sincere appreciation for the work and thought that went into it, I present this excellent blog entry from "Viper Chill" by Glen Allsopp. It is itself a compilation of how-to-leverage-social-media articles and tips:

Here is an excerpt:

MySpace Tips Summary

• Look Around - Really get to know all the options available in MySpace before you start comment spamming. Messaging can be a good option and there are also paid advertising spots.
• Target a Niche - If you are going down a 'spammy route', don't just try to target the whole of MySpace. Look into people in niches for example women or members of certain groups.

Read How to Get Traffic from the top Social Media Sites from "Viper Chill" (Cool name, huh?)

If you are reading this piece with a beginner's mind right now, then you are probably very lucky. You have probably not cobbled together a social web presence higgledy-piggledy, signing up for various services as they arrived on the scene with various identities, agendas and degrees of commitment. You have a chance to put together a social media strategy that will present you or your business in a unified and coherent manner across the web. (Actually, it's never too late to start fresh, but what to do with all that accumulated juice, eh?)

As usual, I've found an article from someone who is a lot smarter than I am, and I offer this excerpt to whet your appetite.

Begin with the End in Mind

Strategy isn't the goal. It's the path you plan to take to get there. So, let's put some goals out, and then talk through how to build a strategy to reach them. Here are a few sample goals. Feel free to add some to the comments, if I don't cover yours.

Increase customer base.
Generate leads.
Drive sales.
Build awareness.
Make money from your content.
Establish thought leadership.
Educate customers.
Customer-source part of your product development.
Reach new channels of customers.
Improve internal communication.

Read the rest of Chris Brogan's article "Starting A Social Media Strategy." His is another blog one might consider subscribing to.

... and a new breed of organization techie. Skip this one if you are still struggling with basic concepts, but it appears to be a little peek into the future of small-business IT-guy-dom.

A good I.T. person, though, knows how to interpret "user-speak" and present them with the tools they need even if they didn't know how to ask for them in our language. If anything, they're going to be more likely to say something like: "Sending out an email newsletter seems outdated - I wish there was a better way to communicate with our customers," or "I wish there was an easier way to keep up with the industry news," or "Wow, how many different versions of this documentation is saved on our intranet, anyway?" The old I.T. guy might mumble and turn their head, but the I.T. 2.0 guy knows to say "Blog! RSS! Wikis!" instead.

Read the whole story on RWW here.

From DoshDosh:

After maintaining several blogs for a couple of years, learning about web publishing and observing different niches, I have come to the conclusion that success for web publishers mainly relies on how much passion you have for the topic you cover. Not exactly a ground-breaking insight, you might say. But let me explain how I personally came to realize this.

Read the whole story at DoshDosh

Flash embedding: it's not just for videos anymore. Export to Scribed and you can get the word out just as the generous Brian Solis of PR 2.0 does here. Go to Brian's site to see the best head shot ever!
Oh, and read the book below-- it's genius.

Scroll through the pages using the scrollbar below.

Scribd.com is so cool, and a fantastic tool. Brian Solis rocks the Scribd with alacrity and verve!

The moral of the story?

1. Work hard to write great content
2. Work hard to build profiles on sites that can send traffic to that content
3. - OR network with others who can submit content for you
4. Have other great content that people can read once they are on the site
5. Make it easy for them to share it with the web
6. Rinse and repeat

Read the whole article at Viperchill

This won't put you to sleep--

Ms. Worley...shared successes and lessons learned from H&R Block's most recent social-media campaign. The campaign cast a wide net in the social-media space, with MySpace and Facebook profiles, YouTube postings, a Twitter account, widgets and even a virtual tax office in Second Life. Read the whole article from Advertising Age