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Like exercising to stay in shape, constantly watch trends to stay social media fit.

If you’ve already begun working with social media, are interacting and, maybe, even seeing financial gains from your efforts, you’re ahead of the pack. But in the twenty-first century, the pack catches up fast and today’s social media lead dog is tomorrow’s pooper-scooper. Search Engine Watch offers readers yet another list of ways to utilize social media with its article, “Optimize your Brand for Sharing and Social Search in 11 Steps”. While your eyes might roll at the prospect of reading another list, it provides a few new nuggets about social architecture and human algorithms.

The SSN Take: It might not be fun to sift through social media advice when you’re already doing a good job, but it’ll help you stay in shape.

Patrick Roland, April 30, 2010

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With some creativity, your business could capitalize off of social networking away from the Internet.

Best Mobile Contracts’ recent article, “New Microsoft Social Networking Phone: The Kin,” detailed how the computing giant’s phone competes with the iPhone, but its interesting twists can apply to non-tech businesses too. Microsoft not only built a phone, but angled its features to focus on younger users and making social networking easier with its applications. Social networking is becoming a booming business that doesn’t have to be limited to Facebook updates and Tweets. Attorneys are boning up on social media legalities, marketers are honing their social skills and, obviously, tech companies are adjusting.

The SSN Take: Social media is sprawling into offline sources and it could be a time for your business to capitalize.

Patrick Roland, April 29, 2010

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Crowdsourcing, the recent trend of letting the online populace contribute info, helps gain social media credibility, but is it right for your goals?

The tricky part about promoting business through social media is avoiding dry content, but still sending a message. A recent Advertising Age article, “Don’t Confuse Social Networking with Social Media” detailed how many large corporations, like Coca-Cola, have failed to fully embrace social media by directly interacting with customers. The highlight of the article showcased how CNN’s crowdsourcing iReport site, which allows readers to write and film their own news segments, helped the news site explode with popularity.

The article recommends businesses put their social media friends to work through Crowdsourcing. AdAge claims letting others, like amateur reporters, do the heavy lifting also adds a sheen of street credibility. The problem is, how will this reflect on your business?

It will reflect poorly, according to a few sources. Forbes Magazine, in its article “The Myth of Crowdsourcing” points to Netflix’s recent million-dollar crowdsourcing experiment to invent an improved algorithm through user teamwork as an example of this skewed viewpoint. “The notion of crowds creating solutions appeals to our desire to believe that working together we can do anything, but in terms of innovation it is just ridiculous.” It goes on to state, “the crowd solves nothing, creates nothing.”

Another other ugly side of crowdsourcing by amateurs is that the results look, well, amateur. Wired’s coverage of this online phenomenon, “The Rise of Crowdsourcing,” points out how amateur stock photo sites are putting a seasoned, professional photographer out of business by charging pennies on the dollar for sub-par images. This mirrors the complaints of Wikepedia’s sometimes questionable accuracy, not to mention countless other interactive ventures.

The SSN Take: Crowdsourcing might sound like a great way to draw in new customers, but you must consider whether you are comfortable with less-than-professional results.

Patrick Roland, April 28, 2010

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AT&T seems to have missed the forest for the trees with a new social media site that shares some shockingly similar traits with Google’s social media baby.

A recent News Blaze article, “AT&T Interactive Opens Buzz.com Beta to the Public” laid out the good intentions behind this new service. Combining the logic of countless local recommendation sites and social media, the Buzz.com allows users to share restaurant and other business suggestions to friends. While this gives insight on everything from veterinarians to Vietnamese food, AT&T is cutting things a little close to the competition. First off, the name is shockingly close to Google’s Buzz. Secondly, it too populates a friend list from Facebook.

The SSN Take: The road to irrelevance is paved with good intentions and if you plan to work in the social media realm, differentiate yourself from the competition.

Patrick Roland, April 27, 2010

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Online innovators, Bing, is slowly taking shots at Google, one Tweet at a time.

A recent CNET News article, “Bing Rolls Out Real-Time Twitter Feed,” showed yet another way this upstart search engine is making big strides and providing inspiration. Recent reports show Bing slowly taking away users from Google and its Social Search function is one reason why. Social Search takes the most interesting and timely Tweets of the moment and lists them for users to view. While other search engines are grasping at straws to catch up to Google, Bing uses social media to its advantage and offers solid search options with unique social media additions. Businesses from all walks could learn a few things here.

The SSN Take: Stretch your creativity and use social media to your business’ advantage and there is no giant too big to kill.

Patrick Roland, April 25, 2010

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If your business deals with entertainment, Twitter could be a goose laying golden eggs.

A recent ThoughtPick article, “InfoPorn: Twitter by the Numbers” regurgitated a lot of commonly known data about Twitter, but tossed in one surprising nugget about where Tweeters disappear to. The bulk of the information focused on how Twitter boasts having millions of users, but about 80% of accounts are dormant. It’s no secret a small concentration of users do most of theTweeting. While this didn’t raise any eyebrows, a graphic about sites users visit from Twitter links was shocking. According to a study by Hitwise, over 30% of users went directly to entertainment sites—more than any other destination, including other social media.

The SSN take: If you have a business dealing in entertainment, consider Twitter a holding pen for future customers.

Patrick Roland, April 19, 2010

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As Spammers turn to social media to prey on users, it will become more and more important to differentiate yourself to succeed in business.

A recent Technology Review article, “Spammers Turn to Social Networks,” focused on the increasing threat of spam in the world of social media. The reason for the threat is an aura of trust, which makes people more apt to click on a strange link or befriend someone they don’t know. While it’s disappointing to see spam ruin the social media fun, it should also put honest social media marketers on alert. There is a thin line between you encouraging legitimate business through honest means and spammers using that mentality for bad.

The SSN Take: Build your marketing network slowly and avoid blindly attracting customers because you could be viewed as spam.

Patrick Roland, April 19, 2010

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Several new tools give you a bird’s eye view of social media and allow you to see what people think.

A recent 10,000 Words article, “10 Ways to Track What People are Saying About You on Twitter” provides some excellent tools for honing your social media marketing plan. Each of the 10 ways involve a website that allows you to search Twitter for specific words, ideally your name or your business’ name. Some, like Social Mention, are more in depth and say whether reaction is positive or negative. These sites should take up an important space in your social media toolbox, because it allows you to see what strategies receive positive reviews, which ones get negative reviews and which ones simply fall flat on their faces.

The SSN Take: Utilize new Twitter tracking technology to strengthen your message.

Patrick Roland, April 18, 2010

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The new Internet might demand new thinking about success, but old yardsticks still apply.

The Daily Blogger recently provided an interesting list in its article, “10 Social Media Monitoring/Analytics Monitoring Tool for Measuring Social Media” for adjusting your thinking about social media marketing success. Your number of hits and referrals and links clicked might be old news because social media success is measured a little more loosely. The article claims success in the Web 2.0 can only be measured in goodwill and a positive opinions toward your brand. To help, they provide 10 sites that help track your social media mentions.  We were confused, though, because the list provides a great deal of analytic tools for measuring numbers and fewer for measuring positive responses.

The SSN Take: Positive impression sounds like a great measuring stick, but numbers still speak loudly.

Patrick Roland, April 15, 2010

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You’re probably already using social media to tell customers about your goods and services, but a fan page could do even more.

The Nation recently said, in its article “Social Media Role Continues to Grow,” that fan pages have an increasingly strong impact on business. Twitter and regular Facebook pages are a great way to get your name out to the public, but they don’t offer the full spectrum of tools. Only with a fan page can you develop unique content like quizzes, games and contests in addition to spreading the word about your products. Fan pages also have a special spot on user profiles and will help differentiate your business from just being a friend.

The SSN Take: If you are already using Facebook, there is no reason not to start a fan page and reap all its benefits.

Patrick Roland, April 15, 2010

Note: Post not sponsored.