But, I’ll admit it. Over the years my view on SEO has become increasingly negative and pessimistic. This conference helped solidify that view.

When I create sites, I’d like to think I cater to good, basic ‘on-site’ SEO best practices. I make sure the code and structure is well-made and semantically coded. I use header tags appropriately, I use descriptive names for divs – or more recently with the HTML5 spec – sections, articles , headers and footers. I do the basics to set a good foundation for clients to build on. But after that, unless I’m working with a great copywriter, much of the hard work to getting a good search ranking is very much down to the client. And their content. And I make that very clear.

Content is king

Content is and always will be king. I’m not naive enough to think that Google aren’t in it for something, but ultimately they’re trying to bring relevant search results to the masses as they drive their advertising cash cow. For the end user, like my mum or your dad, the ability to find something on the massive www is simple, quick and easy.

So back at the BrightonSEO conference, the first talk was about Google’s recent algorithmic update, codenamed ‘Panda’. Based on the tweets, this was a highly anticipated presentation, seeing as Panda clearly affects the work that the SEOs in this room do for themselves or for their clients.

During the presentation, the speaker gave a telling anecdote:

Some of our clients’ sites have Our main site has still not recovered from Panda, 4 months later.

I’ll get back to that in a second. First, some tidbits from the speaker of things to do in light of the recent Panda update:

• don’t duplicate content
• improve your site’s design to cater to your user
• write better content
• block weak content

Am I taking crazy pills? Isn’t all of the above just common sense to cater to the user > customer > conversion process? The utter nerve Google have that they updated their worldwide search algorithm – used by millions every second of every day – to ‘weed out’ all of the crap content out there on the web! Who the hell do they think they are?

As for that quote above… doesn’t the fact the speaker’s clients site(s) were still affected by Panda directly implicate them as an agency that doesn’t provide the necessary best practices, guidelines and quality content that Google and other search engines want to see?

As outlined in the comments below, the speaker worked in-house exclusively. As a result, any opinion on any client sites has been redacted.

In subsequent talks throughout the morning, an underlying theme was content. Both good and bad.

Shocking

The second speaker was utterly shocking. Speaking about creating a private blog network, he bluntly, openly recommended SEOs trick Google and the SE’s by spreading their sites over multiple IP addresses. Mix up the name servers (!). When creating sites, make them at least look ‘real’ by purchasing pro WP themes, and even go so far as installing Google Analytics, Adsense and make ‘real’ about us/contact pages. And, if they couldn’t be bothered to create multiple GA accounts, meh, just steal the code from bigger sites like the Daily Mail. Then, for content, just go to oDesk or similar and pay for any content, regardless of quality. ‘It’ll be fairly dubious, but…’. Yes, my jaw was on the floor.

The juxtaposition between these two opening talks couldn’t have been more clear. Google’s Panda update wants better, more relevant content. So do I. It has and will affect sites that don’t get in line by providing better content and better customer experience. The private blog network guy completely contradicted that, speaking about content farming, gaming Google and complete black hat practices.

One more time

Content is king. It ought to be, seeing as that’s what we do when on the web. We consume content pure and simple, and as users we want easy ways to discover and digest content. The best sites out there are designed to package content first. It’s a bonus if they’re easy on the eye. So when we and Google, MSN, etc experience bullshit fake WP blogs using the Daily Mail’s Analytics code, it affects not only my mum and your dad, but the web as a whole.

I’m understanding SEO less and less. As my clients will attest, I never recommend SEO. I recommend using common sense. Write good stuff. Sell good stuff. Get a site well built and designed. Enjoy it. Search engine ranking comes only after that.

In a nutshell if any or all of the slides happen to give you goosebumps, put a smile on your face, or just simply make you go ‘wow’, it’s pretty obvious that:

• a) If you’re already in the web industry, you’re in the right industry
• b) If you’re not already in the web industry, you sure wouldn’t mind being in it
• c) Technology, innovation and the rampant growth of the web is something to get excited about, no matter how you look at it

Check out the ’87 cool things’ slideshow, you won’t be disappointed.

As humans we’re inherently 2 things: mobile and social. We like to move and we like to be gregarious.

So my answer was pretty simple – both are the way forward in web. With smartphone sales set to eclipse PC sales by 2011, we’re going mobile as a society whether we like it or not.

As for the social aspect… well, regardless of the surge in social media ‘gurus’ sweeping the web, all that was ever needed to get humans talking on teh interwebs was the technology to facilitate conversations and interaction. As a species we’re born to be wild social, and the professionals plying their trade in the social media space aren’t professional socialites per se, they’re just professionals at understanding the many vehicles and technologies – current and future - out there that enable us to be social. The current arena for social media might be our desktop/laptop and a browser, but ask any social media strategist you know about the importance of the mobile web, and I hope they stress just how important it’s going to be: very.

As mobile technology gets more sophisticated, as GPS improves, and as mobile apps and augmented reality continue to multiply and grow respectively, our mobile media use will become second-nature. Handsets will become more powerful. Our social media use is already becoming ubiquitous. We as an industry will continue to combine the two in new and innovative ways, enabling users as a collective to be more productive, more connected, and more interactive than ever before (disclaimer: one’s rate of adoption and privacy concerns notwithstanding). Web Version 3.0 isn’t about the semantic web anymore, it’s about the socimobi web with semantics and microformats already built-in for good measure.

My advice to my colleague in the end? If nothing else, keep an eye on the mobile horizon, and be social. Take some refresher classes or training in the basics, sure, but no matter what just get into it. Go social, and have fun – try a favourite social network on a data-enabled phone, and get stuck-in. Learn what value an app gives a user, visit favourite sites through a mobile browser, or try out Google Latitude. It’ll be more interesting and engaging than SEO, that’s for sure.

Having attended e-consultancy’s event on the ‘Future of Digital Marketing’ in June, if I’m being honest, it was the first time I’ve felt excited about digital marketing for a long time. Way back in February I attended the dire DMA show in Las Vegas, and subsequently wrote up a diatribe on why it and the industry as a whole seemed to be lacking in innovation. Thankfully, e-consultancy’s choice of speakers for their event seems to have gotten me back on the right track. This is part 1 of a 3 part series on the future of digital marketing and a recap of the event.

So what’s the future?

Not surprisingly, not one speaker on the day truly answered that question. All of them did however provide their thoughts and opinions on what they thought was at least coming onto the horizon – or what’s already here and hasn’t been properly utilized yet. While much of me wanted fundamentally new technologies to be unveiled (more on that later), the strongest recurring theme of the day was making the best use of the methods and tactics we digital marketers use today – just ‘better’. So the first take-away: if the basics of a digital marketing strategy at the moment include email marketing, pay-per-click, search engine optimization, referral and affiliate marketing and increasingly social media, then the digital marketing strategies of tomorrow will likely include the same. The innovation that represents the future of digital marketing is primarily in how each channel is represented, managed and utilized – focusing more on value to the end user and striving to maximize their experience beyond anything else.

Below are some choice extracts from the show that to me captured the essence of what the future of digital marketing actually will be, interspersed with my own opinions and thoughts or additions for good measure.

Get the basics right first

• Search is and will continue to act as the launch pad for most online experiences. The difference will be in the application, access and delivery of search results. With access to search increasingly varied by platform (mobile, web, API, socially-aided, etc.), search can become increasingly targeted and (as Google has shown us) will always be monetized.
• Localized search will become ubiquitous with Search. Users will increasingly use search to find local and offline results. In this respect, local search will become a microcosm of the SEM landscape we know today, with results targeted on such a granular basis that the competition between websites for conversions will take to the street.
• The consumer’s voice, since the advent of *shudder* ‘web 2′ technologies like social platforms, blogs and other dialogue enablers has been increasingly heard and will continue to lead the way marketers do business. This isn’t anything new, but recognition that as internet infrastructure grows, the need to listen to what your customers want – and don’t want – is beyond imperative. Barry Smith of SkyScanner summed it up by underlining the need to understand your landscape – get feedback, monitor, and respond accordingly.
• Social media will continue to proliferate and become increasingly synonymous with the web as a whole. Already we’re accustomed to checking our favourite social sites as part of our daily routine, but with innovations on the horizon like Google’s Wave plus socially-driven mobile apps and social search, most of the things done online by consumers and businesses alike will have a strong social component to them.
• The basic channels, and significantly email marketing, will become the foundation to a marketers kit. During a surprisingly open and telling presentation, Mark Kelleher – Head of Marketing Technology and Operations at the BBC – highlighted the BBC’s constant and continued use of email marketing as one of their primary interaction methods. 110 different newsletters totaling 30 million sent/month are delivered as timely, relevant and highly personalized communications thanks to advanced CRM techniques. It seems based on this that as a tactic, email marketing shows no signs of abating anytime soon.
• The web services we use today behind a monitor will tomorrow be integrated into more devices and channels. Integration and convergence as well as multi-platform access are indeed the next logical progression of the web, and marketers need to diversify their messages and technologies to reach the maximum number of users effectively.
• The underlining rule so far? Get the basics right before venturing into the ‘what’s upcoming’ waters. Focus on what you do already, but do it better, and always remember to maximize value to your end user, listen to them, and offer them what they want. Simple things to overlook like website conversion optimization, calls-to-action, A/B testing, platform/browser optimization, feedback user groups, localization and continual evolution need to be addressed before anything else. Build a solid foundation, and you’re setting yourself up for success.

Stay tuned for the next post: Getting to the fun stuff – the next level up in the future of digital marketing.

This past week I attended, albeit briefly, the TFM&A show in London. I normally love trade shows – the glitz, the glamour, the schwag – the buzz always gets me really inspired. This time it was all a bit different though. Maybe I’ve been getting used to the B2C arena in the last 1.5 years and become somewhat removed from the furore that is a B2B marketing tradeshow, but overall there was a strong theme I couldn’t shake – it’s all the same.

Turning down one aisle to another, every vendor’s booth might as well have been touting the same snake oil remedies to your problems. Unfortunately the snake oil was just a permutation or mutation on the basics: email marketing, SEO, CRM, viral marketing or the best/most potent of all – social media. The queue for the social media keynote alone was an unbelievable 4 wide, wrapping around booths and across aisles for at least 300 feet. Of course this is representative of the fact that social media has become an important tool in the marketer’s toolbox, and more importantly that our industry is booming, but is that it? For what it’s worth, I thought the exact same thing at the DMA show in Las Vegas in late 2008, and it seems to be a recurring theme or question of mine –what’s the next big thing in digital marketing and where’s it going? Why are the booths all touting the same old thing, or just a variation of it? Social media is our most recent revelation, but it’s a testament to how much like a fat kid on a smartie our industry has become. Are we so starved for newness that social media is the only thing that gets us out of bed in the morning?

We all know that marketing is all about getting to your target audience, and in the last 5 years it has become paramount to display the relevant messaging to your audience for the best yield. Digital marketing represents a medium that is extremely cost-effective, thanks in no small part to the internet revolution and how ubiquitous it is across all demographics and markets. As the web matures, behaviours mature, and products need to match those behaviours. In that respect, a part of marketing has always been inherently underhanded – we aggressively seek out and exploit new areas that show any sign of being lucrative. First it was the web in general (1.0), then it was communication channels like email, RSS, and now it’s all social (2.0). From a wider perspective, it just seems that marketing will always be moving 5 steps behind the general population, and playing catch-up to ‘fish where the fish are’.

It’s worth mentioning that not for one second am I inferring that I know any better than those many (clearly successful) service providers; nor do I know that the next big thing in digital marketing is X, Y or Z. I’m just saying that at this rate, digital marketing (and I’m not even touching traditional marketing here) is getting, for lack of a better word, predictable. As marketers, we have a basic set of tools, applications, systems and processes that we need to do our jobs effectively – a CRM for contact storage, an email platform for communicating, PPC for quality traffic, a web team for site optimization, and so on. But more and more I see these as assumed infrastructure rather than golden fleeces, and although vendors will always improve their offerings, they’ll always be offering effectively the same thing.

This post is sounding like I’m becoming jaded more than anything else, but I can’t help saying it: I can’t wait for a new paradigm – a fresh new way of approaching marketing (and our audiences) that stops us from being lemmings and instead lets us be part of the creation of products that promote themselves by addressing specific, real needs in a market. Until then, we seem destined to go buy the latest fishing rod by going to these ‘cutting edge, industry-leading’ tradeshows and getting swarmed by a sales crew who tout their ‘unique’ solution as the Holy Grail. Call me (very) sarcastic, but when one interested attendee actually asked a vendor ‘OK, so what are your USP’s’ I almost snorted. In the context of the show as a whole, I think I could have answered for him, although I don’t think my answer would have closed the deal.

They’re questioning what drives and motivates us to open up our daily lives to anyone and everyone, when it’s possible that no one’s listening.   They can’t imagine opening a Twitter account and talking to an empty room, so why do we bother?

It’s a good point.  Taking a step back for a moment (from whatever social medium you’re reading this in), you might wonder how we – the users who aren’t necessarily using social media for financial gain – measure any type of return out of social media? 

What’s the underlying factor that lets us get a return out social media, and makes us keep using it?

First, just skip the marketing-centric, revenue-generating B2B/B2C user who recognizes the potential in social media, so they tap into like it was the Klondike.  For these users, social interaction is a business decision, and going social is often associated with a brand or product to result in revenue.  Identifying why they’re using social media is easy – it’s money.

For the other type of user – the everyday social media/network user –identifying value and drive gets tricky.  There’s no money involved, so they’re simply doing it because they want to.  These ‘C2C‘ (consumer to consumer) users share information and opinions across their network(s) with like-minded people, gaining knowledge and contacts in the process.   So what drives them to continue using social media?

Interaction = Confidence = Value

Some seasoned social networkers might be reading this and thinking ‘There is no immediate return, stop thinking like a marketer.  The return is the interaction itself.‘ 

So what happens when you get no interaction? Do you stop?

Social media is linked to confidence, and that confidence is linked to value for the user.  In fact it’s a lot closer to tracking a basic marketing campaign than you might think, although perhaps not as easy as looking at a finite percentage or number that represents how many people X/Y/Z’d your product.  There are little value-trackers – different to each network – that we all look for and use to show us how we’re doing.   Any significant lack of these value-trackers often leads to low confidence, which results in a user asking the question ‘Why are you doing it?’  Conversely, get a lot of interaction, and you know you’re doing it right.

There are little value-trackers – different to each network – that we all look for and use to show us how we’re doing.

Take Twitter.  First-timers clearly find it daunting to broadcast what they’re doing, but the minute they get an ‘@’ reply, broadcasting becomes interaction, and they’re hooked.  The same goes for blogging – comments are crucial in knowing that people out there are actually reading your blog.  Lack of comments means lack of confidence, which means lack of value, which leads to no more blogging.  Even having a post bookmarked on Delicious means your hard-worked content has been deemed valuable by someone, somewhere, which spurs you on.

Of course there are ton of these ‘value-trackers‘ out there, each particular to a network, but the most obvious might include:

• New Twitter followers
• @ replies
• retweets
• trackbacks
• comments
• favourites
• friend requests
• diggs
• bookmarks
• ratings
• and many, many more.

Get any of the above in a respective network, and you start getting personal value out of it.  Your confidence goes up, and you keep going.  At this point it’s easy to answer the doubters why you’re doing it – because you want to and you have proof that it’s worth it.

Do we need social media KPI’s?

Does this mean all social networks should have ways to monitor performance so that users know what they’re getting out of them?  Or does it totally defeat the gregarious, organic nature of social media and risks making them yet another way to track popularity?   Does the lack of performance indicators lessen the likelihood of adoption by ‘newbies’, or is it a good thing that you either use social media because you want to, or don’t use it at all?

What do you think? Add your comment below.

Why submit a static, physical document when it doesn’t even include numerous glowing referrals of your past or present work?

LinkedIn is where social networking meets the CV, and the 30 million strong network is quickly becoming the ‘second stop’ on any potential employer’s checklist when shortlisting candidates. The thousand dollar question is: When will it become the first? Why are job seekers still submitting paper pages to a prospective employer when they could just send a link to the most comprehensive, dynamic and multi-faceted representation of our professional experience they have?

Check out LinkedIn’s growth on Ignite Social Media’s great list of ‘The 2008 Social Network Analysis Report – Geographic – Demographic and Traffic Data Revealed’.

LinkedIn not only highlights present and past job roles, it accumulates real, glowing praise for your work at those roles. It allows you to join like-minded professionals in groups relevant to your professional interests, or allows you to showcase your knowledge (or adding to it) by questioning or answering questions posed by industry peers. It lets you reach employers who otherwise would be totally unapproachable, and through LinkedIn you can strike up professional relationships that might ultimately bear fruit in the form of a job, partnership or simply a valuable friendship.

What’s more, with LinkedIn’s new open application platform, you’re able to pull in different media and channels into your online CV that was previously impossible. Have an industry-related blog that highlights your grasp and knowledge of a particular subject? Pull it into your profile. Give great presentations? Display them on your profile. Tweet profusely about your industry? Pull those tweets in.

LinkedIn is quickly representing a one-stop shop for a true, priceless indication of someone’s knowledge, experience, talents, functions, activities, and sociability factor (increasingly a huge factor when employing) in an employment context.

The question is… when will LinkedIn become the primary tool of choice for job seekers and employers?

When will placement and recruitment agencies request an invite to your LinkedIn profile over your faxed or mailed paper CV? When will the big guys like Monster either attempt their own version, or simply take LinkedIn into the fold? When will the ‘Green Police’ catch on and push the use of LinkedIn over paper as a conscious effort to save the environment?

I think the change is happening, and I’m not naive enough to imagine a paper CV-less world, but I’m sure it will change the employment game if LinkedIn (and the obvious emulators, imitators and clones that will arise) becomes a viable, easy-to-access channel for employers to explore before they make their shortlist decision.

What do you think? Do you have a LinkedIn profile? Feel free to add me to your LinkedIn network. Do you think it will ever replace the paper CV, or will it always act as a supplement or second fiddle? Give your thoughts below!

SweetCron is one such platform, and is quickly becoming the first choice for many lifestreamers. Offering great functionality, maximum extensibility and high customization, it lets a lifestreamer input their feeds, tweak the code (and design) and let the software do the rest.

Did I mention it’s highly customizable? Without further a do, here are 25 of the best SweetCron-powered Lifestreams out there in no particular order. As always, if you have suggestions or think I’ve missed a great example, post a comment below!

http://me.noeruiz.com/

http://Ba21.us

http://ancyru.net/

http://cronthemes.com/

http://dailymax.limpag.com/

http://www.lifestream.papertreedesign.com/

http://colinanawaty.com/

http://simon.dynamicmushroom.com/

http://life.colorlab.nl/

http://cockscomb.info/

http://www.lushanoperera.com/

http://www.bochenn.com.ar/

http://www.ogurosouhei.com/

http://www.pitofdarkness.com/

http://sati.sh/

http://inkh.net/

http://in.jurio.us/

http://roycifer.com/

http://mikesheetal.com/

http://robertpolmear.com/blog/

http://steveeller.com/sweetcron/

http://demo.sweetcronthemes.com/plainsimple/

http://www.unravel.ca/blog/

http://www.qultr.com

Not only is he the president, he’s also a client!

http://www.yongfook.com/

…and coming in at #26

…yours truly.

http://lifestream.carbongraffiti.com

View the full post at: http://freelancefolder.com/35-social-media-tools-make-life-easier/ or keep reading for the quick n’ dirty version.

Social Aggregators

• EventBox EventBox is a mac-only program that integrates the top 5-6 social networks into a single program. From the looks of the site, it’s pretty too.
• http://www.flock.com Flock is a full-blown web browser that has been designed around social media. It integrates with dozens of services and helps make it easier for you to stay connected.
• FriendFeed FriendFeed help’s combine all of your different social networks into a single feed. Make yourself easier to follow, or make it easier to follow others.
• Yumeo Yumeo is a social network that allows you to control many other social sites in one place.
• Ping.fm Ping.fm makes it easier to update your social networks by connecting the most popular networks into one service.
• Second Brain Organize all of your content in one place, including bookmarks, files, etc…
• Plaxo Plaxo is a service designed to make it easier to stay in touch with people you care about.

Twitter Tools

• TweetDeck TweetDeck is an Adobe Air application that helps organize and make sense of your twitters. You can group tweets based on search terms, time frame, and many other ways.
• Twhirl Twhirl is another desktop Twitter client. It adds the ability to cross-post tweets to other sites, post images to TwitPic, and search tweets (among other things).
• TweetBeep TweetBeep is like Google Alerts only made for Twitter.
• TwitBin TwitBin is a small Firefox Extension that allows you to receive and send tweets anywhere in your browser.
• Twidget Twidget is an OS X dashboard widget that let’s you keep up with your twitter account.
• TwitterBerry TwitterBerry is a mobile twitter client for Blackberry users. It works over the data network with no need for SMS.
• Twittelator Pro Twitelator is a newer iPhone app for twitter. This one has been recommended by several top users.
• TwitThis TwitThis is a social button to put on your website that helps promote your articles on twitter.
• Minggl.com A browser plugin that integrates friends and feeds from Facebook, Myspace, Flickr, Digg, Twitter, LinkedIn etc.

Digg Tools

• Digg Toolbar A quick an easy toolbar that integrates with Firefox and provides most of the common Digg functions.
• Website Cache View Shows multiple cached versions of any website in case of the “Digg effect”.
• Digg Alerts It’s like Google Alerts for Digg.
• Digg Notify Digg Notify is a desktop app that will display a little notification box with information every time someone Digg’s one of your stories.
• Digg Alerter Digg Alerter is a really cool desktop app that shows you a lot of Digg info. One version of this actually shows information about who’s ‘buried’ a story.
• Digg Defender This is a WordPress plugin that will save your site from going down under massive traffic by redirecting it through the Coral Cache network.

Tools For Webmasters

• Digg Website Widget Put a list of your latest Digg submissions into the sidebar of your website.
• WordPress Twitter Tools This is a WordPress plugin that let’s you pull your tweets into your blog.
• StumbleUpon Website Buttons These StumbleUpon buttons make it very easy for visitors to stumble your articles.
• Delicious Tagometer The tagometer is an advanced Delicious button that shows how many users have tagged a post and with what categories.
• TwitterFeed TwitterFeed takes your latest post titles and posts them to your twitter account.

Miscellaneous Tools

• Spokeo Search Social media search that makes it easy to find information from 41 different networks.
• Jott.com Voice-to-text, task organization, and much more. Post to twitter and many other services by calling in from your phone.
• Gathera Gathera is an internet explorer plugin that aims to connect social media, email, messaging, and many more features into a single place.
• Nielsen BuzzMetrics Search the blogosphere and track/find trends.
• Infegy Social Radar (Commercial) Social Media Monitoring tool that helps track the web.
• Open ID Open ID is a single sign-on solution that is supported by many of the most popular web-apps and networking sites.

Got any more? Comment below, or comment on the original author’s post at: http://freelancefolder.com/35-social-media-tools-make-life-easier/.

It was only a matter of time that email marketing and social media would collide (I’ve been racking my brains for the last few months trying to find a way to marry the two) and kudos to Silverpop for bringing their version to market first.

Disclaimer: I’m no tech journalist or product reviewer, but I think this is big, great news – hence my quick breakdown of what their offering is and what, in my opinion, it means to email marketers. If you have an opinion or thought, don’t hesitate to leave a comment.

A quick analysis

Called ‘share-to-social‘, Silverpop’s offering allows email marketers to include an ‘Addthis’-style button to any outgoing email campaign sent using their platform.  The addition of the button allows recipients to share their personalized email message with friends on the social network of their choice (although from what I can see, Facebook and MySpace *update: and Digg* are the only supported networks so far).

Once posted, any dynamic content in the original recipient’s email is kept intact after posting to a social page.  An example (as per Silverpop) is that a geographically-segmented, personalized email announcing a Golf sale in Tucson would retain its dynamic attributes once posted to a social networking site.  The same applies for a recipient of the same email in San Diego, whose content was targeted to them via email segmentation.  Once they post the email content to their own social networking page, others will be able to see the sale details and attend the sale in San Diego.   While from a marketer’s standpoint this functionality almost writes its own copy, it seems to assume that most ‘friends’ in a social network are local.  As anyone who uses Facebook (or MySpace) will attest, most friends are far from local, effectively nullifying this functionality. However, it’s better to have it than not have it.

Regarding tracking, it seems Silverpop have really nailed it here. All posted campaigns contain a unique tracking code, allowing the original sender to not only report on which social network their message was posted on and how many clicks that network generated for future use, but also which recipients were responsible for future viral activity.  This advanced tracking allows the email marketer to segment future lists and target content specific to the most (or least) active social networkers as they see fit.  Furthermore, this same unique URL can be used to track conversions originating from those social sites, allowing the marketer to gauge which networks drove the most interest, interaction and conversion. As Silverpop put it:

One of the most powerful benefits of Silverpop’s Share-to-Social feature is its ability to pinpoint which recipients share your message on their social network and cause it to go viral. You’ll be able to quickly build list segments targeting recipients who post your message or who generate the most opens or clicks from their shared items. For the first time, you’ll be able to understand which recipients are your most influential and ardent evangelists. With a few clicks, you’ll be able to target those individuals with specific offers and content that rewards them for their efforts or encourages them to share new content.

What does this mean for email marketers?

Silverpop have addressed something that needed attention – as I said it was always coming, it was just a question of who did it first.

Social networks are on the rise.  As I’ve stated in a previous article, just visit this page by Ignite Social Media and scroll down quickly.  The overall prominence of left-to-right climbing is clear. They’re here to stay; humans are innately gregarious and socializing is in our blood.

What’s more, email marketing and social networks have always had a steady relationship. Email is not only the vehicle of choice for all communication between a social network and a new member, it also facilitates intra-network messaging and retention.  While these methods aren’t always email marketing per se, they reflect the importance of email as a tool that compliments social networks and media.  Effectively, Silverpop’s new offering inverses that relationship, making email the primary tool to engage and leverage the power of social networks.

It might be too early to tell, but it looks like Silverpop have hit a goldmine here.  I’d assume they’ll start to roll out more social sites as their technology permits, and would be more than happy if they considered productizing this functionality as a standalone offering, complete with en suite reporting.  They’d stand to make a whole lot more than restricting it for use on their platform alone, but we’ll see! If you know of anyone who has used it, or have creative related to it, post it here!