For some reason, some people think that Social Media should not be exploited for money. I can understand why some might want to think that way. Search started out the same way, as have many other technologies. Search was known just by the select few and it was something that really helped people find what they want (I remember people telling me that Search would never take off -how wrong they were!). I think if you think in terms of exploitation you are using the wrong words, if you think in terms of how does it work for me, then that is a good way to think.

Unfortunately, most people who consider themselves ‘social media experts’ (who for some reason shy away from this term!) fall into two camps: 1) Idealists who believe that social media should remain ‘pure’ and NEVER be exploited for money, and 2) Spammers and Scammers who see social media as another medium that, like TV, direct mail and email marketing, is prime for exploitation, that they can stamp on it to make it work!

The truth is, both camps are just WRONG, indeed the statement is wrong. There is a happy balance to be had. You don’t have to – and you should not ever resort to spam – there is no need anyway, as Social Media is an opt-in system. Without the opt-in element it would not be social. Those that want a technology to stay ‘pure’ is just not realistic. The social media vendors are trying to monetise them. Youtube, Facebook, Linkedin have found ways to monetise their service – wake up guys, it has already happened!

We would agree that social media is not the ideal source of get rich quick schemes. Social Media takes effort – it can be your effort or someone elses. Whatever you do, you need an effort management system. To operate blind in any media is crazy! You need to work out how to triangulate for effect, time management and results – these are the keys to social media – to make sure you get the most out of it.

There are some things that you can do, that are immediate. You can build rapid relationships, you can test headlines and you can generate leads. Why is this – the reason quite simply it is that there are just so many millions of people online, getting involved, from every walk of life – and it is a two way street.

People can talk back to you too. In social media, the average person spends 19 miutes a day getting involved, Google is around 2 minutes per day and Ebay is past its heyday.

At this time, the big players in Social Media include Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and Linkedin. Currently the numbers involved in Facebook is nearly 400m people. YouTube has over 75 million videos. Youtube has about as many daily viewers as all of the TV channels combined worldwide. The number of worldwide unique visitors to the Twitter website reached 44.5 million in June, up 15-fold year-over- year, according to comScore data.

So, we would explain that Social media is the newest marketing frontier because of all the people there. If you are in business, the only way you can trade is where there are people. Combined, the business opportunities Social Media present are endless if you know what they’re doing, if you take care. It is possible to blow it, it is also possible to recover from mistakes – but better not to make them – we have made a few, for which we humbly apologise, but we are the kind of people who push boundaries. Of course there are obvious limits and these are down to common sense mostly.

Fundamentally, for Social Media to work for your business ‘you have to be in it to win it’. In search, the way we did it was to have a network of sites, each site being on a different part of the equation, all of them connected together. With social media, you don’t need to make micro-sites, you can if you want, but today, the ‘micro-sites’ are your account pages in the Social Media.

However, on balance, the truth will out and the truth has outed, probably in part because of social media, I will test that in a moment… The key issue as I understand it is the main founder of FaceBook stole the code from his employer. Now, he was unwise to do that as it is not an ethical foundation to a business and it seems he has paid the price.

This is only half the reason I am posting. You see, this whole scenario has happened to me. Staff have left and lied and have been discovered to run off with clients. They have seduced other members of staff and set up in competition and this has been, to put it mildly a very expensive waste of time. They have willingly and knowingly signed lengthy contracts agreeing that they will not do this, yet gone ahead on the basis that they might find a loop hole? Why would they even consider this as a reasonable course of action, they must not be thinking clearly.

I have written to all those involved and left it to them to make good. They have decided not to make and they are calling my bluff – to see what I would do? So now I have to make the decision to proceed, I have all the evidence, I have given them the opportunity to make good…

I have to admit, when things happen as personal as this, it makes you think much more about the best course of action to take. Did they mean it, was it an accident, would it have happened anyway and what is the real cost? Does it matter?

Whatever the reasons, it has certainly cost and at the end of the day it was their decision to break the terms of our agreement. But when I read about actual cases and we start to see just how much compensation has been won and also how embarrassing it must be to the people who committed the crimes. It is a shame that their careers have been ruined because they could not maintain a basic agreement that they entered into as adults. It has to stop, I have to take a stand, I cannot continue to help others, for those people to then bite the hand that feeds them.

In the case of FaceBook the cost has been the shame through the public notifications that have occurred and millions of dollars have been awarded against them, I understand. In my case I have seriously considered cancelling my account with FaceBook. I know I am not alone, we could be witnessing the demise of FaceBook.

Ultimately I have decided not to cancel my account with FaceBook and this is why I feel comfortable writing about it. They have paid the price, the quality of the software is not in question, just the ethics of the team behind it – heavy stuff – for them – not me. They have to work that one out for themselves, there is no one else to blame. Ultimately the law has won through and those whose invention it was have been rewarded as they should have been.

Also I have to say I like the application. I have recently been talking to my first born via FaceBook, after 21 years of separation, so to give that up is not something I am in a hurry to do.

I must admit to finding it difficult for the people that I had personal working relationships with to knowing and willingly break their trust with me. Their actions demonstrate their true selves and demonstrate their immoral and unethical attitudes to the world – their problem has become mine. It does not have to stay with me, there is a just world out there. It is they who are caught with their hands in my till. I have already paid the price – upfront! Now it is right that they will pay the price for their actions. We need laws, as the final protection when ethics, morals, common sense fail… I am very sorry to say I just feel that we have no choice in the matter the choice has already been made and there is a well trodden path to the law courts with many companies winning their cases for this kind of disloyalty.

I just read two excellent descriptions of the word FEAR – False Evidence Appearing Real or False Education Appearing Real, the latter describes the kind of people that perpetrate these crimes. They clearly cannot tell the difference between right and wrong. They cannot determine for themselves how they should behave, so ultimately I, like we all actually have to do as law abiding citizens have no choice, we have to go with the law.

There is a further issue to this. I have noticed in my conversations with other people about FaceBook that they are cancelling their accounts, but in spite of doing this FaceBook are keeping the information. FaceBook are continuing to display information after the person who supplied it has decided that they should not have it any more. They feel tricked. I feel tricked, I have become the unwitting victim of their betrayal. Is it right that I should constantly watch my back whilst trying to move forward, I dont think I can afford that, indeed it would blight all our lives if we had to live this way.

Indeed there have been a few reversal of terms and conditions recently at FaceBook it would seem. They should be ashamed, there is something wrong at the heart of these people for them to think that they can get away with it – it is a warning to others including those that “will do no evil”. I think that they should jump up and do something to make good, but it seems neither are about to do that. No doubt they would be afraid that it would amount to an admission – as they probably imagine it is someones else fault. Or it could be that FEAR coming through again.

I think we might be witnessing the fall from grace of some very interesting software, that definitely has the ability to work very well. The same for the people who used to work for me and who I have no choice in pursuing, I have a family to protect, not least of which are the current staff, friends and clients of my businesses. Watch out all those that work with these type of people in the future, I am glad they have left!

It is obviously a sad reflection of society that these cases exist and are very real. I have to meter it though with the fact that this is not the behaviour of the vast majority of service websites as it is not the behaviour of most employees and partners.

I know I am not alone, it is with some irony that we are able to match online corporate behaviour with offline human behaviour. It is interesting to note that when you are caught with your hands in the online till that you are reported offline. That ultimately there is no escape for the immoral and that people do get the justice that they deserve and that  online and offline, at times, merge.

I would like to know if any other have had any difficult experiences like these, as I think that they should be out there in order to remind people this is not how to behave… I would also like to know if and how such situations are resolved. What can we do to protect ourselves. What can we do to ensure that things like this never ever happen again?

Years ago, I found that creating websites around a subject really helped the optimisation process for search engine marketing. It seemed, as it does now, that just one site is often not enough. For instance, I created a site on Advanced Search Engine Marketing and another site dedicated to Search top tips and more.

Each site I developed had unique, original, distinctively different content that is related to our core business. I have always referred to this as a web of sites and was a concept I developed, tested and proved way back. It became known as a process for optimisation around Micro Sites.

As well as helping each site in the series, it helps individuals get the information that they might be looking for, as a site that is ‘tighter’ in its objectives is easier to use. It seems that you can run a series of blogs in an extremely similar way.

Social Media works quite differently to the Micro Site society. In Social Media it is more of a mix and match of technologies, you can have a core subject and then promote the blog using a range of tools. My last post discussed Feeds, readers and feed enhancers and these are one of the tools that you can employ to promote your posts.

One of the specific Social Media tools that can be used to promote your blog posts is Twitter. Twitter is a short form announcement technology – where you are limited to 140 characters. It also shortens long website addresses – URLs into the tinyurl.com system – very useful. Around Twitter there is a whole family of related software that enables you to search for other peoples posts and to ‘monitor’ the blogosphere, or in this case the twittersphere… try Twilight.com.

Bookmarking is another Social Media tool. Indeed Bookmarking has gone in a new direction since the advent of Social Media. In Social Media Bookmarking is fundamentally a method of highlighting and sharing your favourite web pages with others. To activate, all you need to do is select a button in your browser when you are visiting an interesting page. So, whereas you may be used to storing your own bookmarks on your browser (and then having to work out how to organise all of those if you can be bothered!) now you can open an account at technorati.com, simpy.com or delicious.com, there are many many more, one of the earliest that I used to enjoy was furl.net.

When you have opened a free account with any – or all(!) of these, you just press the button in your browser (it will sit in your bookmarks!) when you find a page you enjoy. In some cases the bookmarking site may ask you to rate and describe the page that you bookmark – it would be nice, but is not essential for you to do this. Nice because, if you do, you can advise others as to what they might find useful on the page – and of course you build up your reputation within the site as a good bookmarker.

An extra dimension to all of these sites that is extremely socially integrated… You are bound to find someone who has been saving things similar to you. As a result you can send an email, ‘shout at’ or ‘poke’ people (the mechanics varies from site to site) who share similar interests and build and expand your human network online.

Which leads us directly to the human networking sites like Facebook, Linkedin, of course again there are many others. But these two are locked in communities – you invite your friend and give only your friends access to your information so that they can see what you are doing, they can contact you and you can contact them – it is just so much faster and an extremely social way of keeping in touch and doing business.

To my mind, Social Media is a success because it is hard for people to abuse. Partly because you will be caught with your hands in the till if you do, the people you share information with are your friends. So ultimately, it seems that this is leading to an extremely well balanced and integrated society. No bad thing.

There are many more tools, sites, technology, blogs, video, audio and web rating systems out there that are too many to mention – you can Share and Enjoy some of those below…

I find that I am still learning – and this is a great sign for me. It means that it is extremely likely that you will meet new and interesting people who can offer all types of advice, tips and help.