Found this in research for a client project. I’m not sure I agree with his first statement, since content gets you connections, but the rest is there.

As to taking more homework to understand the social media aspects of web 2.0, that’s why we teach Websitetology, we give our students the knowledge to make sites that work.

Getting small fast isn’t as important as being fast period. Sometimes the window for getting attention is so short that someone else will eat your lunch before you even finish ordering it.

Ketchum Interview on PR & Social Media at Like It Matters

Social media is about connection, not content.
Social media is about them, not you.
Social media may be cheaper initially, but it takes far more homework.
Get small fast. (Niche is nice. Think smaller feature sets, more targeted audiences, less chatter from you, and so on.)
Relax, it’s early in the social media game. You’re not behind, because everyone’s just trying to figure out the new environment.

We’ve been running the seminar for almost a year now- and people still are resisting the idea that a website can be a lot more than a brochure or a store. Ideally, you are building a community of like-minded people who are interested in the needs your business serves.

Target marketing is finally becoming a reality with social media.

Although we believe that a blog is a website- and a website can be run with blog software- Internet users are quickly finding their way to blog based sites (some may not even know it).

If you’d like to read more about it- here is the link- we’ve grabbed one small quote:

Pew Research Center: A Blogger Portrait

the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that the blog population has grown to about 12 million American adults, or 8% of adult internet users and that the number of blog readers has jumped to 57 million American adults, or 39% of the online population.

39% of the Internet users knowingly are reading blogs! How many are visiting sites without knowing that it is run by a blog? Probably a lot more.

Advertisers are also aware of this, and have begun buying ads on blogs because of their highly focused readership and low cost per eyeball. We’ll have more on that in the coming weeks- but here is a post to consider: Blog advertising a quick tutorial.

Until you start getting a lot of traffic- you won’t be ready to sell ads on your site, but- maybe you might consider placing some ads to bring that traffic. However, if you are “the expert” on any one thing- you may just have the “Right” readers that someone wants to reach. Selling ads, not just Google Ad Sense placements, can be profitable- if you have an audience someone really wants to reach.

Consider this:

If you think blogs are not a viable ad medium, consider this: Many blogs are achieving “big media” reach. The celebrity gossip blog Perez Hilton, for example, or DailyKos have 500,000 readers a day, which is a quite a “big media” reach.

Read the full article The Value of Blog Advertising | MarketingProfs.com for more information. It also has tips on what to put in your blogad.
We’ll look more into advertising on blogs in the near future here- if you have questions about how to do this and can’t wait, give us a call.