It’s a jungle out there!

Everybody’s talking and twittering and flickr’ing and sharing everything. The whole world has gone social. Can you digg it? There are times when you stumble upon something del.icio.us to drink and you realize before long the technorati will find out, drop a roll of Mentos in it and stick it up on YouTube.

New vectors for social interaction are sprouting from the seams of the Internet each day. The opportunity is there for web enterprises to partake in the conversation of the marketplace, but be careful. A small misstep in social media can stain the reputation of a company in a highly visible way. Unlike in SEO where the only major thing you risk is your ranking in Google, with SMO you have the potential to risk your reputation, alienate your potential customers and be publicly shamed. There is little tolerance for heavy footed marketing and the Internet has a long memory.

This blog is going to take a look at the various forms of online social media from a number of angles and try to separate the good from the bad and the ugly techniques of social media optimization and marketing.

Until then, be careful, be honest and tread lightly. It’s a jungle out there.