The work involved in building the social websites will be as follows:

Set up:

1. Account setup (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn)

2. Aggregating the accounts:

You can have blog post content automatically into the social accounts. There are a few ways to do this based on what accounts you have to use.

Example:

a. Facebook

Has a feature in notes that feeds in blog post when using WordPress CMS.

b. LinkedIn

Has a built-in feature that feeds in blog posts when using WordPress CMS.

c. Twitter

You can use www.ping.fm to deliver the post from your wordpress CMS to twitter. There also plug-ins for wordpress that can do this for you.

So for the main three accounts you have a few different options to go from and depending on the social marketing strategy you would work up a formula.

The one thing you need to make sure about is the campaigns do not overlap and have double post.

Monthly maintenance:

This would be based on the amount of post that need to be done a week. I have streamlined much of the process by using free tools such as ping.fm, hootsuite, twitterfeed. Content is always key. The more you produce, the more your site will be considered relevant and important to the search engines. The other kicker will be the inbound links which shows how many sites find your information more important then others.

To jump start a site’s traffic you will need to do social bookmarking. The social websites are a form of communicating a brand. Social bookmarking is a way of targeting the consumer and allowing them to promote and spread the brand. This will feed inbound links further making sure the site’s content is considered relative and important.

An account will have to be created for the following:

Main aggregator I use.

onlywire.com

Feeds to any of the following:

(Accounts will have to be created for each one)

Ask

Bebo

Bibsonomy

Blinklist

BookmarkSync

Connotea

Delicious

Digg

Diigo

Facebook

Fark

Faves

FriendFeed

Google Bookmarks

Hi5

Jumptags

LinkaGoGo

Mister Wong

Mixx

Multiply

MySpace

Newsvine

Plaxo

Plurk

Propeller

Reddit

Simpy

Slashdot

Spurl

Stumbleupon

Tumbl

Twitter

Yahoo Bookmarks

So the process of maintenance would be as follows:

1. Build Content

2. Add post and search engine optimize page.

3. Check social sites for posted materials.

4. Social Bookmark urls to various SBM sites with one tool 5. Analyze traffic and data with Google Analytics and Web developer tools provided by the search engines.

5. Last but not least (Monitor any type of feedback and follow up).

So here is an Almanac (of sorts) around Social Media and adjacent technologies:

• Social Media has overtaken porn as the number one activity on the Web.
• Facebook has more than 250 million active users (more than 120 million users log on to Facebook at least once each day), Skype has 480 million, and PayPal has 75 million. (July 2009.)
• Facebook saw over 1 billion video views in June 2009. That’s still far less than that 1.2 billion YouTube sees every day, but it undoubtedly makes Facebook one of the top video sharing sites on the web. (Source: TechCrunch, July 2009.)
• Facebook is also the largest photo sharing site, with more than 10 billion photos uploaded as per February 2009 (source: TechCrunch). Flickr currently boasts 3,841,609,965 pics.
• 20 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube every minute. (Source: YouTube, May 2009.)
• Sony’s Playstation Network (PSN) has 26 million members and Microsoft Xbox Live has 20 million members (Source: Reuters, August 2009.)
• The one-year old iTunes App Store has 75,000 applications with 1.5 billion downloads so far. (Source: Apple, July 2009.)
• The milestone of 1 billion iPhone apps downloads was reached in April of 2009, only 9 months after the app store launched (July 2008).
• 1 out of 8 couples that married in the US last year met via social media.
• Years to reach 50 million users: Radio (38 years), TV (13 years), Internet (4 years), iPod (3 years).
• The number of iPhone applications hit 1 billion in 9 months.
• If Facebook were a country, it would be the world’s 4th largest between the United States and Indonesia. Yet, some sources say China’s QZone is larger with over 300 million using their services (Facebook’s ban in China plays into this).
• A 2009 US Department of Education study revealed that on average, online students outperformed those receiving face-to-face instruction.
• 1 in 6 higher education students are enrolled in online curriculum.
• The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year-old females.
• Generation Y and Z consider e-mail passé…In 2009, Boston College stopped distributing e-mail addresses to incoming freshmen.
• The second largest search engine in the world is YouTube.
• Facebook users translated the site from English to Spanish via a Wiki in less than 4 weeks, at a cost of 0 USD to Facebook.
• 25% of search results for the World’s Top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content.
• 34% of bloggers post opinions about products & brands.
• 90% of people who can TiVo ads, do.
• 24 of the 25 largest newspapers are experiencing record declines in circulation, because consumers no longer search for the news, the news finds them.
• More than 1.5 million pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) are shared on Facebook… daily.

Let’s take a step back and think on how this will transform the new generation and digital.

Thanks for the stats Kanishka.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fRUUGvWirM

If you are not going to use the play of content to build and gain fans or visitors then you would have to target the individuals or companies themselves. I think this will be a little tougher because it would be more PR. You will have to produce the list of companies and or people that would best suite client. Investigate the list to determine who or what is already online and has a channel you can get to and then promote a social site from those channels.

Here the thing, some of those channels will be hard to come by because some people do not want to be found or do not care to spread your information. So what you have to do is get the client to start there own social network as an individuals and promote there product from already establish channels. The president, vice, directors, and employees would have to get involved to create an internal social network to promote the external one.

The only other tactic that can be introduced would be the play of a viral campaigns, which can be very successful but really take some creative thinking and I am not sure if there is anything that can be applied to this type client other than a really well done image ad. Social Bookmarking like Digg could help spread the ad.

My recommendations would be to make a play on content and have them establish a content outline that can be written on a weekly or monthly basis. This will help produce fans and visitor loyalty to the site. I would also set up links on the main site to promote a Facebook, twitter and other types of accounts on the website to help gain visitors who are already interested in the already established materials. The 3rd thing would be to promote the site with online media buys such as ad words, Facebook advertising and so on.

There is no good answer. Before you can really come up with an all encompassing strategy, you need to have all the research in order and then break it down.

Start with the building blocks.

Phase: 1
a. Establish the structure and content of social websites.
b. Establish the demographic.
c. Build the connections (This would be creating the accounts and making them visible to all the channels you have).

Phase: 2
a. Build the content in all the channels and then social bookmark them
b. Start online media buys
c. Establish a contact form to capture leads

Phase 3:
a. Evaluate the changes and what channels are working and adjust accordingly.

This model saves design companies because the job is processed faster and has a clearer direction. Technology has a way of replacing positions and improving others. There are also tools like www.basecamphq.com which can track a project and eliminate the need for project coordinators and managers.

Sending work back and forth between designers and customers through sales people can be a nightmare if the salesperson has never designed or developed a website on their own before.

This is why…under a traditional model at an advertising agency, an account executive meets with customers, sells their marketing services and brings a customer’s ideas to a designer. The designer then builds the design or functionality. Not knowing all the angles why the particular design or program works well. The salesman will go off to try to explain to the client what is working. The message and approach gets diluted and time is lost on both ends.

Customers are giving a lot of positive feedback to firms that have designers do the talking. In this day in age, Big businesses need to cut cost. They are not going to high paid executives for reinsurance. They are going to the source because time is money.

By working directly with customers, designers at Digital Complexion are able to convey customers’ ideas more quickly and accurately. Digital Complexion specializes in Social Marketing, Hybrid Web Development, Digital Design and Print.

Some of Digital Complexion’s customers include the Apollo Aviation Group, Innovative American Technologies, Carmine’s Gourmet Market, Visit Palm Beach and recently added Dr. Gloria Barredo in Jupiter, Florida for a for social marketing web campaign.

1. Clean, semantic markup
The best thing you can do to lay a solid foundation for a usable mobile website is to incorporate clean and semantic markup. What you may be able to get away with on a traditional website may cause significant problems on a mobile website. Clean markup will help ensure that the browser is capable of properly displaying the website, and it will help give visitors a pleasant experience, with no unnecessary difficulties.

2. Separation of content and presentation with CSS
Alongside clean, semantic markup is the need for the separation of content and presentation. Mobile visitors are much more likely than desktop visitors to see a website with images and CSS disabled. The most important thing for these visitors is to be able to access the content and links: presentation is secondary. A website that uses clean, valid markup, with CSS to separate the presentation from the content, is off to a great start as a mobile website.

3. Alt tags
Because it’s likely that some visitors will not be able to see images on the website (or will choose to disable them), alt tags are extremely important for usability purposes. Of course, alt tags should be used anyway, but it’s even more critical for mobile visitors.

4. Labeling form fields
Like alt tags, form field labels help make a website much more usable for mobile visitors. Imagine trying to use a form without knowing what is supposed to go where. Simple details like alt tags and form field labels can make a big difference this way.

5. Use of headings
With inconsistent and often limited styling of text on mobile browsers, headings become more significant. Mobile browsers are less likely to style text exactly how you would like it to be, but h1, h2, h3 and other such tags generally help make certain text stand out and build the structure of the page from a visitor’s perspective.

6. Avoid floats if possible
Even if a mobile browser correctly displays a website that uses floats for layout, it’s unlikely the website will look good on a small screen. Usually the website will be more usable and look less awkward without floats altogether and with content simply stacked up.

7. Reduce margins and padding
Most likely, your mobile website should have smaller margins and padding than your main website has for traditional visitors. Of course, this depends partly on how much of a margin and padding your website currently has, but very large amounts can make the layout awkward.

8. Pay attention to navigation
Most websites have a primary navigation menu very high on the page. This is helpful on mobile websites as well, but generally, mobile navigation options are scaled down. Provide only the most relevant links, and, if possible, give visitors an easy way to access the other navigation items.

9. Consider Color Contrast
Because mobile screens may not have the same appearance as desktop or laptop monitors, make sure the background and text colors provide adequate contrast so that the content can be read easily.

Article from Smashing Magazine Click Here

Build A Network Of Friends:

The first step to social marketing, believe it or not, is to not market your website at all. You want to start by creating a network of friends within the social site with like-interests and goals. However, you will generate traffic to your site by placing a link in your profile. Each time a member visits your profile, it’s likely they will visit your site as well. Avoid any promotions for the first few weeks. If you jump in simply by promoting your site, you will quickly be ignored by many members of the social network you are participating in.

Step 2:

Socialize Often

Spend time each day socializing on each of the social networking sites in which you are a member. The more you participate, the more exposure you (and your website) will receive, making it easier to build necessary connections.

Step 3

Slowly Introduce Website Links:

Once you have created a network of friends, you can then begin to slowly introduce links to specific areas or your website. Be cautious when attempting this. Only recommend your website when it is absolutely relevant to the member and/or topic you are posting to.

Step 4

Stay Active:

The key to social marketing is to be consistently active. Don’t take too much time off between conversations, postings, etc. You must maintain the friendships and network you have built along the way to keep a steady flow of traffic.