Social media optimisation was the big topic of the last year in the industry, and at the moment agencies are trying to build a business model around it. Most of them are going down the consultancy path plus offering specific services in the way of building widgets or Facebook applications to boost viral campaigns. Most of them are struggling to give value out of it and most companies marketing departments are still reticent to invest money on not so tangible services.

The erroneous way to approach Social Media services, advocated by some other agencies, it is the pay per profile, pay per automatic tools to be present in social networks or per tweets/Facebook friends/Linkedin contacts, etc. This approach is the equivalent of blog comment spam or automated link requests and goes against the intrinsic nature of social media which is based in engaging in the conversation.

In my opinion, the way to monetise the use of social media as an agency service for marketing departments is through education. You don’t give a fish to a hungry man you teach him how to fish. The marketeers are always going to know more about their target audience than any search agency, they know their products upside down and they can relate to their customer’s needs and enquiries promptly and accurately, unlike any third party agent.

Most of people are already engaged in social media whether the CEOs approve it or not. We all have Facebook profiles or twitter accounts or we use youtube and upload videos. It is the way it is and banning it would be useless. On the flip side, that means that every company has already the potential to leverage social media as a tool to generate leads, improve customer services and cut costs accordingly and apply insight gathered from their customer base to product development. They just have to capitalise on their workforce, find an agency/trainer who can educate them in the use of social media outlets for corporate purposes whilst keeping it fun and personal.

Additionally, a corporation is nothing but the sum of its employees and the sum of the personal reputations would enhance corporate reputation. It is a win-win situation.

At the International Search Summit next week, I will speak about the balance between personal and corporate reputation, how to capitalise on your social media savvy workforce and why social media gurus can just be snake oil salesman; a successful social media strategy will only be successful if stems from the corporate core and the company most valued assets, their people.

Social Media, social behaviour in the web in general, has arguably been the most significant phenomenon in the Internet world in 2008. Google zeitgeist compiles annually some of the highlights from Google searches around the globe and it is not a surprise to see the supremacy of Social Networks within the list of the top 10 countries with the highest number of Internet users.

Social networking in 2008 has spread like fire worldwide but the most interesting factor to highlight is that almost half the list of the most searched social media sites are based outside of the U.S.

Let’s take a look at the Social media penetration in China. Within the top 10 most popular searches we can find online sharing video channels such as Youtube, Youku or Tudou. We can see that video marketing techniques could be very effective in that market.

In India, Youtube, Facebook, Orkut (which is the most popular Social networking site there) populate both the list of most searched and fastest rising queries. In Brazil, Orkut is the most popular query rivalling with football related information and online games.

Interestingly enough, European countries with high number of internet users behave very differently in the popularity of social media sites. In Germany, Facebook shows up within the top 10 of fastest rising terms but also Yasni, a site to find out about personal social media data, Jappy, another local social network, as well as StudiVZ and Schuler VZ. However, Italians seem to adopt facebook as their one and only social network and although French rate Facebook and their local social medias source Skyrock as very popular, what really dominates the top 10 are music related sites. On the other side of the spectrum, Spain has 8 social media related sites in the top 10 of fastest rising terms in 2008.

In social media, importance of early adopters is paramount since they are the force that make the sites go viral. After a year when the role of social media has started to be accepted as a window of opportunity to tap into the Internet audience in their points of communication, we can say without risk that the Internet is now the Social media Internet, and that despite cultural disparities and degrees of adoption, the Internet world is shifting to more collaborative ways of communication. Companies like Facebook have seen the opportunity, and plenty of other local sites have got on the bandwagon of social media interaction, catering for the needs of their local audience.

Will 2009 be the time of the monetisation attempts of all those companies? Will many of them be weeded out by the ubiquitous Facebook or they will survive with their local approach? I will keep you posted.

One of  the most notorious showman in TV in Spain, going by the nickname, “El Gran Wyoming”, member of the TV channel, La Sexta, has proved to be an expert in spreading shocking-but-false information to increase the audience.  This week, the “El Gran Wyoming” has been in the eye of the hurricane after a video of him bullying a journalist trainee hit Youtube and stirred a huge controversy among his detractors.

Interestingly enough, a rival digital TV channel, renowned right wing biased broadcaster Intereconomia, featured that video live in one of the TV shows most critical with the cited comedian . Intereconomia presenter was ferocious in his criticism against the showman, accusing of being a bully and “lefty fascist”. Inevitably, many suspected that the video was a ploy but the gullible Intereconomia took the bait without verifying the facts. As expected, on Monday, in effect, “El Gran Wyoming” TV show “El Intermedio” confirmed that everything was a trap to mock and condemn the lack of journalistic ethics of his media rival.

The strategy certainly worked and “El Intermedio” got its best TV audience of the year with 1,549,000 viewers, a 7.9% ‘share’.  The program scored its best ratings, thanks to the false video, which  has sparked a debate about whether anything goes on television without getting the facts right. Additionally, the journalistic community has discussed if  certain ‘journalistic practices’ are just a way to settle personal grievances or to gain audiences.

Either way, the truth is that Viral video is one of the most effective practises in order to do what is being called “Guerrilla Marketing”. A very little investment can reap huge benefits and big media corporations like main TV channels are not alien to make use of this word of mouth tools in order to get great results.

If you have any question contact me on twitter on http://twitter.com/oscarcarreras