Today marked the launch of an exciting and innovative new website called FashionStake.

A New York-based company has come up with the idea of allowing the consumer to purchase a ’stake’ in a designers collections. In return they get various privileges, which any fashionista would love, such as pre-order discounts and runway show tickets.

The idea is a novel one; it gives us, the consumer, the chance to fund and shape a designer collection before it has even been produced. It allows you to become more hands on, or to have more online input, in the clothes you will eventually wear.

Firstly FashionStake allows you to  provide feedback, so you can vote for individual pieces and also interact with the designers themselves in discussion boards.

Secondly you can become a buyer. This means you can pre-order from a collection and get a big discount, thought to be about 40%.

Thirdly you can become a funder. Pay $50 and you can purchase store credit, worth up to $125 return on a $50 stake, which you can use to shop till you drop once the collection goes live.

And lastly, for the die-hard fashion fans, you can pay $500 to be a VIP. You will get things like Fashion Week tickets, dinner with one of the designers and even a free item from the collection.

So, it’s great for designers who want to launch a career, it’s great for the owners of FashionStake who don’t have that much money to support all up and coming designers and it’s great for the consumer. It offers them the interactive aspect that you don’t get when buying clothes in most shops and there is also a social media feel to it that people want.

Is this the way forward for all new online businesses? If you lack the funding to do everything you want, then this seems like a good alternative because you get the money and also a fan base. It’s using the principle of crowdsourcing and crowdfunding.

We know this idea does work, to an extent anyway, look at Ebbsfleet United, the English football club.

In 2007 instead of allowing the club to be owned by millionaires, it was announced that it would be taken over by the website MyFootballClub.com.

27,000 members of the website paid £35 which provided the £700,000 takeover fund and they were all given an equal share in the club, although they do not make a profit.

Similar to FashionStake, the members vote on transfers, player selection, even the kits.

Initially ideas like this do very well, especially with all the press involved and people like to be a part of exciting new projects.

Ebbsfleet United is still owned by the members of MyFootballClub.com. However in March of this year, only 800 out of 4000 members have continued to pay membership fees. The initial idea clearly works but the future of the club may be rocky. Speculation suggests that the club had far too many debts in the first place for this to succeed.

What about FashionStake? Presumably it will do very well in the first year but whether it will stay the distance is anyone’s guess.

But if you are looking for an injection of funding, a chance to get your customers involved and drum up a little publicity, crowdfunding seems to be the wave to ride.

Let’s forget about all the teen-based online attractions for a minute and take notice of the latest thing making waves on the web, yes it’s the mummy bloggers.

Ok, so if you’re not a mother, it’s probably unlikely you have come across these, but put ‘mummy blog’ into Google and see how many you are faced with: metropolitanmum.co.uk, potty-diaries.blogspot.com and littlemummy.com to name but a few.

Starting in America, like most things, mummy, or ‘mommy’ blogging as they like to call it, is a big deal. And as with most things that are a big, companies realise that this means money and will find some way for them to get in on the act.

But what exactly is this ‘mummy blogging’? It’s basically a mum, or sometimes a dad, talking about their experiences of parenting. It’s the ins and outs of what is like to have a child, covering everything from nappies – which are good to use? Recipes – what work well with children? And great days out – where to go? Can you see a theme here?

Recommendation is the common theme running throughout these blogs. Women are one of the most influential consumer groups and it is thought that typically they are the ones who buy products for their children and make decisions on the big household items to buy. So, if a woman sees that another woman liked a product or a place they will be more likely to use it or go there.

How can you use the mummy bloggers? If you have a product that you think could be useful in any way at all to mums, families, couples, then target them. Ask them to write a blog about it. Even the big shot companies are doing it.

This year Universal Pictures contacted the most well-known mummy bloggers in the USA at the time of the release of their movie Despicable Me. One mum Jennifer Donovan, who has been blogging for six years, was flown to the LA, put up in a luxury hotel and met all the stars of the film. Of course, she then blogged about it and openly admits a little more time was devoted to it, than perhaps if they hadn’t given her the trip.

The head of digital, online and mobile marketing at Universal, Doug Neil said: “We believe that the parents can be big influencers for us, and helping to sell the film and get their interest in promoting the film to their audience, as a stamp of approval for being a good wholesome safe film for families.”

In the UK, things are on a smaller scale, but advertisers and PR agencies are still keen to get their products out there and they know that mummy bloggers are a great way to do this.

As a business, it is an affordable and effective way to get your product seen and talked about. Elisa Camahort Page, the chief operations officer of BlogHer.com , a leading US-based community for women bloggers, said: “Blogs also act not only as a loud speaker for the person writing but as entertainment for those reading.

“People are twice as likely to report turning to blogs for anything about information-sharing,” she says, citing the results of a recent BlogHer survey that compared blogs to other social media. The BlogHer directory lists almost 22,000 blogs and about 28 per cent of those are about parenting, she says, with fresh voices joining the blogosphere all the time.

So, particularly if you are small business, it is clearly worth targeting bloggers is an ideal opportunity. The mummy bloggers are often looking for ways to make a little money or to get freebies, so will be more than happy to try out your product.

Remember they are mummies and they write these blogs because they genuinely love their child and are devoted to giving them the best things in life (well, we hope so anyway). Without wanting to stereotype, women do enjoying sharing ideas and discussing things that work well, especially when it comes to children. So, writing a blog is just an extension of that. It’s creating that word-of-mouth buzz that would normally cost big bucks. And if the blogger doesn’t actually like your product, it really isn’t the end of the world, because online any news generated really is good news.

I’m sure everyone’s read this week that there’s a distinct likelihood of The Social Network, the Facebook film, being swiftly followed by a film about Google. Googled: The End of the World as We Know It, the book about the company penned by one Ken Auletta, has been optioned for the silver screen by producer John Morris.

I can’t help but wonder how the CEOs and employees in question feel about these films. Sure, they might not be representing the most positive view of the company, but surely any press is good press? I know no one needs to call attention to Facebook and Google – that’s a done job, being the two of the most popular online destinations on the internet.

But why not make a statement? Embrace the fact that the films are the talk of the town? I’m looking forward to The Social Network and the drama and controversy that the film aims to convey. Mark Zuckerberg, the film’s protagonist and arguable founder of Facebook itself, doesn’t think the film will hold to the truth. However, doesn’t he realise that Facebook’s saturation of the planet’s population means hundreds of thousands of people are going to see the film anyway?

Google’s film, however, may be far more interesting. Google is, like Facebook, a monopolistic online entity. Their market-share hovers at around 95%, they’re rapidly spreading into every digital market and medium, from their search engine to books, television and domain management and registration. I have an account, a homepage, a domain, a YouTube account and a browser, all done by Google and used by me on a daily basis.

But the end of the world? Is this really bad market for them, or is it an opportunity for Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page to show off their PR muscle and demonstrate they’re serious, business-minded entrepreneurs whose determination meant they were able to place themselves at the centre of the internet. How many companies can lay claim to inventing a verb?

It’s an interesting, online-focused Russian doll concept to consider; the film’s advertised on sites, some of which using domains sold to them by Google, to talk about a Google movie that people will research using Google. No other company can claim to act as such a seller of information, and they could raise or sink the film depending on the complex, secretive algorithms they use to determine what comes first in their search engine – the excited Google critic, or the excited Google fan.

Both Google and Facebook have had their fair share of third-party controversy – Facebook has stalkers, kidnappers and rapists, and Google’s safe-search features aren’t always as “safe” as they proclaim. But what other companies will we now see drifting into the limelight? McDonald’s PR staff must’ve had minor aneurysms after Super-Size Me was released to the public, and they’re the most dominant fast-food chain on the planet – I discovered only last night that if you’re visiting the pyramids of Egypt and fancy a Happy Meal or a Big Mac, it’s only over the other side of these sacred architectural relics.

It begs the question; are you really coping with your critics as well as you could be? Everyone releases statements, denial-esque press releases, and product changes to respond to critics without actually responding. But what if Google’s founders sat down, tomorrow morning, and used Google Video to release a vlog of them discussing what they’d love to see discussed in the film. It calls attention to a film that could be dangerously critical, while making them seem involved in how they’re perceived by the public.

As with all the major shifts in the online sphere, time will tell on this one, but hopefully we’ll get a Google film that pulls no punches and stays neutral. The Social Network seems fun, but a little dramatic. An adaptation of a critical work of non-fiction about a company with monthly online visitors numbering in the billions deserves to be taken seriously, and the company should take the opportunity for a little serious marketing of their own.

As proved by Starbucks and Converses and use of the word ‘movie’, you can bet you you bottom dollar (pound) that if the American’s are drinking/wearing/doing it, it won’t be long before we are too.

Launched last Thursday, and currently only available in the States, is the new Facebook application ‘Facebook Places’. Places allows you to ‘check in’ at your current location, giving friends the opportunity to see your whereabouts immediately. Are you coincidently attending the same event? Brilliant! Have you skipped their dull birthday ‘do to attend something far more glamorous? Not so brilliant…

As if this wasn’t likely to become addictive enough, you can also tag those that are with you, like you would in a photo or status update, as well as browse other people who are checked in at the same place. Obviously, this has raised numerous privacy issues – something which the site is all too familiar with dealing with.

But what’s the implication for small businesses? Aside making it even easier for skiving employees to be caught out by a social networking slip-up, there are several advantages to using geolocation technology.

Twitter has offered geolocation for tweets since last year, as well as its ‘local trends’ feature allowing local business the ability to promote themselves as a ‘trending topic’. Location tagging network Foursquare also found popularity with small businesses, many which used the opportunity as a free platform to get themselves noticed amongst local customers. Of course, now that Facebook’s caught up, the site’s tendency to crush its competitors (i.e. The Myspace Effect) could see changes in the way geolocation is implemented elsewhere.

Facebook’s huge online presence means this latest development is likely to be even more effective for small businesses aiming to benefit from geolocation technology. Businesses in less commercial regions are advised to offer incentives to customers on geolocation networks in order to generate interest and draw people in from more tech-savvy areas. Teaming up with other local businesses to do this can be even more profitable for the companies involved, as well as the local area.

Geolocation content also has the advantage of operating in realtime, and by featuring in conjunction with social networking sites it offers businesses the opportunity to utilise valuable social interaction. Many businesses already use static location services, such as GPS, but the social aspect of applications such as Facebook Places are much more effective when it comes to networking opportunities.

Of course, businesses (large or small) will be well aware that no amount of advertising can beat social recommendations from real people, and Facebook Places could well be the answer into generating such valuable publicity. Yet whether a rise in corporate use of geolocation technology from those keen to make their make their mark using social media might result in little more then irritating promotional advertisements and more organised after-work socials is yet to be seen.

You may be thinking, firstly, who on earth is Justin Bieber and secondly why am I writing about him? Well, unless you are a tween reading this, which is unlikely, or have young daughters, you’re forgiven for not knowing who he is.

Justin Bieber is an internet sensation. In 2008, his music, which his mum had posted on youtube, was discovered by manager to the stars, Scooter Braun, who arranged a meeting between him and the singer Usher. The rest is history. Bieber went on to be signed by Island Records. His debut release My World went platinum in the US, he was the first artist to have seven songs from a debut album chart on the Billboard Hot 100. Then he released the single Baby in January 2010 and things really blew up.

But what does this have to do with social media you may ask? Well Beiber currently has 4,556,617 followers on Twitter and there are over 200 profiles devoted to the 16-year-old. So, I think it’s fair to say he is doing something right and, it turns out, a few things wrong, all of which business owners can learn from.

I’m going to take a look at what he does and see how it can be applied to your business, so you too can be a teen heartthrob with millions of girls following your every word. Maybe not that, but at the very least, become a small business with a big presence.

Get the big guns involved:

For a middle-class teenage boy who is only 5 foot 2, Beiber has some pretty cool friends. Not just cool, but ones who are hugely influential in the social media world, such as Kanye West (who has only had a twitter account for a few weeks but has already racked up 689,562 followers.) Following and being followed by these big names of the Twitter world, can only be positive. Having someone with a huge amount of followers @ing you or retweeting your comments brings you to the attention of a much larger audience.
Although this may be easy to do if you are Justin Bieber, if you are not you can still get in there with profiles that relate to you and have a large following. Twitter is all about flattery, so flatter someone and make their ego and profile bigger. Even JB does it, just two days ago he tweeted ‘@kanyewest me, u, and the chef 2gether on a song = EPIC. haha. might sound crazy 2 u but even having this convo is living the dream. thanks’

Talk to the ’small people’

Although there has been plenty of stories saying Beiber is a brat, one thing can’t be denied – he makes a huge effort connecting with fans via Twitter, and there are a lot of fans. Instead of ignoring his crazed fans he will retweet their comments and engage them in conversation.
Beiber, or his management, knows that it is these people who buy his records, so it is them he looks after.
It has been said time and time again, but letting the customer know that you are not a faceless business is essential. A bit of time and effort will make them feel relaxed, trust you and be more likely to buy from you or use your service over someone that ignores them via Twitter or sends out generic messages.

Keep it relevant

This relates to the previous idea. It’s all very well having the followers, but to keep them you have to keep them interested. Beiber knows that the way to do this is to talk about the things they want to know, like his shows or where he currently is. He always directly addresses the people of that town and he will then thank them for their support.
Make sure your business profile isn’t talking rubbish. Before you hit tweet think about what you are saying, will anyone care? Will it make them want to be involved with you more? Always keep in the back of your mind that you are using twitter as a marketing tool, the idea is to get more custom from using it.

Don’t get twitter revenge

However angry you are do not seek Twitter revenge (Twengeance? Twit for Tat?), it not only makes you look immature but it shows you get hot headed in situations, a disaster for a business. People will be reluctant to work with you if you are seen to make rash or malicious decisions.
Just this week JB posted a teenage fan’s number on Twitter in revenge for having the fan having hacked the Twitter account of a friend of Beiber to get the star’s phone number. The boy, Kevin Kristopik, has consequently had to delete his Twitter page and change his mobile number after being inundated with calls.
Beiber, of course will not suffer greatly from his childish act, but if you are a small business you will. Word spreads like wild fire over the internet, so one mistake or one disgruntled text could marr your reputation beyond repair.

So what have we learnt from Justin Beiber? He’s not just a teen heart throb who can kind of hold a tune but he’s a social media, and especially Twitter, guru. Whether his fan base has grown since he joined the world of social media or his Twitter following is expanding as his fame escalates, is redundant because either way he has a huge following that isn’t going anywhere any time soon and that will continue to buy his music. And this is what all businesses want, loyal followers and a big Twitter following.

Every business, every person, has one specific thing about them that can’t be replicated or improved on. Most businesses don’t see offering contracts by recorded mail as a USP, but it can be, and everything about you and your business that’s unique must be capitalised on as soon as possible.

I’ll give you an example – one man found that several CEOs had no featured results in Google when searching their names. So he placed a few adverts, and voilà, he was offered a job by two of them within a couple of months. The total cost? $6 dollars. That’s right – it cost him the price of a decent meal at MacDonald’s to gain a senior copywriting job at one of the biggest firms in America, dealing with clients such as the BBC, Sears, Cadbury’s and other brand giants.

This is something you could potentially be putting to work, but chances are you’re not. Search yourself, search your company, and see what comes up. If the top results aren’t linking back to you, you’re not doing it properly. Set your SEO goal for the year to outrank Wikipedia’s entry on your CEO, and if, by the time New Year’s Eve rolls around, the Google result for CEO Joe Bloggs of BlueCorp’s links back to BlueCorp.com before anything else, then you’re doing well.

The problem with Wikipedia and other online community sources of information is that they’re taking away chances for you to speak about what you do, both as an individual and as a business. By letting Wikipedia talk about your USP, you’re not selling yourself properly. If you’re the only packing and distribution company putting a GPS tracker in every shipment, then make sure that all 500 searches that could lead someone to that site propel you to the top of the list.

However, Wikipedia does have its business uses. When talking about your philanthropy, tooting your own horn is a bad idea, both from an individual and a business perspective. Bill Gates has never once directly said how amazingly generous he is on Microsoft.com, but the Gates Foundation is everywhere. It’s not doing wonders for Microsoft’s reputation as a monopolistic entity, but some people (usually the ones at the top of other companies) have to respect the fact that, at least in the public eye, Gates is a stand-down former CEO who put all the cash to good use. That’s more than can be said for many London bankers.

Interestingly, London bankers were missing one key weapon against the massive press-onslaught against them during last year, and that was anti-press statements. Most people think the fact a banker earns £400k a year is disgusting. It’s easy to point out that it’s ridiculous that they’re earning more than the President of the United States. However, when speaking with one of their representatives at a financial journalism seminar late last year, I realised something; footballers and film stars are no different.

It might have done bankers a world of good had they put money into PPC to pick up searches for “dodgy bankers” and then sent users to a site exonerating bankers – saying they earn a lot of money, but in ways that are no more, if not less ridiculous than sports and entertainment icons. The point is this: your page rank on Google decides whether someone reads your positives and your USPs, or your negatives and your generic aspects first. Work on it, and you’ll find that the first words into any curious net-user’s head are always words that will make them invest, rather than criticise.

Not sure about you, but the Bing adverts have, as of late, become one of my most despised advertising campaigns. The endless noise and dubious message that any other search engine is going to give you unrelated results, and the implication that we’ve all seemingly got some kind of mental disorder where tangential conversation techniques are the only way to go.

Allow me to de-bunk this marketing campaign, if you will.

First off, take a look at these figures. These were released in July 2010 – before and during the “information overload” advert campaign, which is still   going. Yahoo’s share of the UK search engine market has fallen by a couple percent, leaving it third to Bing.

This all sounds hunky-dory until you consider that their combined market share is still equivalent to what it was before. Bing has consumed part of Yahoo’s slice of the online pie, but Google’s still got the same amount of pastry, crumbs and cherries in sauce it had a year ago. Dominance over the market second-comer is not an achievement, not when you’re supplying the search technology for your competitor and their market share was below 5% to begin with.

But the advert asks an interesting question: what has information overload done to us? This is a valid question, and one that it’s taken a Microsoft ad campaign to make us ask of ourselves. Personally, information overload now means I’m learning more than I was ten years ago in my spare time. It means I can research and reference in the space of a minute, and nothing is too complex now as sites covering a single subject help us to study along a gradient of complexity.

Google has, unfortunately for Microsoft’s Bing engine, sealed the market shut, and if in ten years it became the West’s only search engine I wouldn’t bat an eyelid. After all, it works well for what I need it to. Make sure you’re preferring UK results (especially when shopping), stick Safesearch to strict to filter out the waves of immaturity in Google Images, and you’re laughing.

But what if it didn’t work so well? The problem with a monopolistic market share in technology is that consumers tend to flail in panic, en masse, when something goes seriously wrong. Take the iPhone 4, for example. One moment it’s the Messiah, the next we’ve digitally lynch-mobbed Apple to the point that the man at the head of the operation “decided to leave”.

“Digital lynching” is an interesting phrase, and one a colleague coined recently. Apple’s Anntennagate martyr, and HP’s CEO are suffering from the same melodramatic backlash from the public – social media tirades. Twitter has become the new forum for slamming public figureheads, and trending and hash-tags allow this to happen. But are big jobs suffering for it? If Google’s Android system is successfully sued and the funding goes down the toilet, the OS with it, will Twitter turn on Oracle, or Google?

It brings me back to thinking about Bing. Is it a good thing? Do we need a wider choice? I’d say so. Google’s a fantastic search engine, but when one company gets a monopolistic hold on the market, almost no one holds a hand up and says “stop”. However, if it was to happen in government, there’d be protests on the streets.

Tyranny is no different in business, the only change is that your money’s going to Apple for your phone, Microsoft (or Apple again) for your computer and Oyster for your travel (if you’re in London), rather than paying your taxes to whichever party is currently dominating the ballot box. Are we now more subsceptible to marketing than we ever were? Is Bing just another pusher? What has information overload done to us?

Good Week for…

1. Small businesses:

Expert Nicola Clark from Marketing Magazine reveals that small businesses do have the social media advantage over larger companies. She said: “Small brands are at a massive advantage because they are not at risk of being a faceless brand.

“What I think a lot of big brands are trying to achieve through social media is to create a community where it doesn’t actually exist, whereas with smaller brands you genuinely do have that community – you do have that touch point.”

2. Doing the Rubik’s Cube:

After thirty years of trying to find the minimum number of moves needed to solve the Rubik’s Cube, it appears a solution may have been found.

A team used a bank of computers at Google to discover that the magic number is 20. The research found that 100,00 starting positions out of a staggering 43 billion billion can be solved in 20 moves or less. Hmmm, pretty sure we still won’t be able to do it.

3. Using Blackberry’s in Saudi Arabia:

It had been reported that the country was going to ban Blackberrys from 6 August, as they were unhappy that the handsets automatically scramble messages, which get sent to servers in Canada.

However Saudi Arabia’s telecommunications regulator has said it will continue to allow service for the time being, while they try and work out if they can put a Blackberry server in the UK.

4. Social media movies:

First The Social Network is directed by David Fincher starring Jessie Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield and Justin Timberlake.

Now there’s Catfish, a low budget thriller with Facebook as a key plot element. It tells the story of two film-makers who document a film about one of their brothers who falls for a girl he meets over the internet. Catfish was an instant hit at Sundance and has had excellent reviews. Check out the trailer, it looks amazing, no?

5. Social Media itself:
Simply Zesty in Ireland shows that 85% of the UK is connected to the UK, and 25% write blogs, 65% read blogs and social networks are the largest activity on the web.

Bad Week for…

1. The boy who let his girlfriend be hit by a baseball:

In some ways this is good as he has become an internet sensation, but bad because it shows him clearly moving out of the way as the ball comes towards his girlfriend. The shame.

The video, at the time of writing, has racked up 83,120 views and there is even a Facebook page dedicated to him. The incident took place during a Major League Baseball game between the Houston Astros and the Atlanta Braves, Astros Third Baseman Chris Johnson drove a foul ball in the direction of a couple sitting in left-field. The boyfriend, who is called Bo, saw the ball coming, allowing his girlfriend, Sarah, to get hit. Not only was the incident caught on camera, but he was interviewed afterwards and given the nickname ” Bo the Bailer”.

2. Mark Papermaster, the guy from antennagate:

Apple’s senior executive has been let go after the recent scandal involving the iPhone.

What’s got everyone talking is that apparently the problem with the antenna was known for years, way before Papermaster even joined Apple. He had only been working their for 16 months. So who is too blame, if anyone, is it the PR team handling the situation, the designers or Papermaster?

3. Newport State of Mind:

The spoof video Newport State of Mind, which became an instant internet hit, getting hundreds of thousands of views, has been removed from YouTube due to a copyright claim.

EMI say that permission should have been granted to use the same basics as the Jay Z and Alicia Key’s original Empire State of Mind.

4. Craigslist:

The popular online classified advertising site is facing accusations that the ‘adult services’ section is in fact a breeding ground for under-age prostitution. Two young women placed an advertisement in the Washington Post saying they were repeatedly sold through the site to men who ‘paid to rape’ them.

Craigslists has come under fire before for charging $10 for adult services ads, whereas other sites do so for free.

5. iPad:

It looks like the Dell Streak, which is a 5 inch tablet device, is going to cost a lot less than the iPad.

Launching August 12, it will cost $299.99 with a two-year AT&T contract, and $549.99 for an unlocked edition, that is less than half the price of the iPad 3G.

It is however smaller than the iPad and is in some ways just a glorified smartphone. What do you think, should Apple be worried?

It seems like such a ridiculous goal, doesn’t it? To make an incredible amount of money from something as simple as a blog about, say, writing white papers, or about social media. But there are a few who blog and rake in an impressive revenue each year, and one of those few is Michael Stelzner.

Reading the incredible account of his meteoric rise to internet fame and economical success via the blogging medium, it got me thinking. Why aren’t we all doing this? I’m a copy-writer, and I’ve written millions of words relating to every subject you can think of over the few years during and after university.

But it takes social media knowledge to drive traffic in. People aren’t going to bother visiting a site unless one or both of the following two conditions are met: a word-of-mouth recommendation, or a larger online social media campaign. But how do we achieve these two goals? Social media, social media and social media.

Firstly, if you’re aiming to grow your fan-base with a loyal cult following, then the foremost thing to consider when attempting to start it off in the first place is your network of colleagues and friends. Everyone knows that when a colleague or a friend makes a new website, you’ll all visit, have a poke around. Some will even return regularly, provided it’s interesting and updated often.

However, that’s only a few, and you’re going to have to work hard. No one enjoys having a friend push their blog at them purely for the sake of the site’s hit-counter. But people do like the odd nudge in the right online direction by someone who knows someone who’s writing some really funny, smart stuff on a daily basis.

However, if you’d like to take the more formal route, or you’re a solitary warrior writhing in existential agony and feeling like you’re one of the army of unread bloggers , then you’re going to have to consider social media as your best, and only option. In this day and age, newsletters are not read like they used to be, and we’re probably not going to visit another news site by seeing an advert for it on the one we’re already reading.

However, we might just have a quick peek if the site turns up on somebody’s Twitter account, or regularly forms a part of someone’s Facebook profile. Of course, when they visit and enjoy your content, there’s the small chance of the gold-dust re-tweet, and once that happens it tends to spread like wildfire through people with similar interests.

Take last week, for example – I had someone spontaneously find this article, read it, and tweet about it. I don’t know them personally, and two of their followers re-tweeted the link to this article. There was no prompting, no request at the end of my blog asking those who enjoyed my work to talk about it: it was free advertising for writing someone enjoyed.

These kinds of digital thumbs-ups are important, because eventually you’ll find your way onto the “must read” list of someone big, and that list often now finds its way onto the web. When I first started to write for a publication called Resolution Magazine, I wrote a long screed about the simulation of cultural identity. It was something I’m proud of to this day, but not half as proud of that as what happened to it.

Kieron Gillen, founder of New Games Journalism and arguably one of the best in his field, included it in his Sunday Papers post that listed his favourite bits of writing during the week. To be endorsed by such a major face had a serious impact on my confidence and the success of the article, and the fact that we got a fair amount of traffic simply by repeatedly turning up in his list.

It’s not impossible to become the blog to end all blogs – you’ve just got to utilise the same method that started political revolutions, the Renaissance, and Twitter – word of mouth. If one person says your site is fantastic to a room of ten people, and they in turn do the same, in a day’s time you’ll have 100 more unique visits. Things multiply if you keep the quality up, so do so, and thrive.

This week, Mark Thompson of Stay on Search was discussing content and the way in which it relates to social media and aggregate sites. “One of the best ways to know what type of content has the best chance of going viral is by being an active member in each community.” Personally, I think that most businesses using social media may not have the time or the budget to employ a social media guru to do all their writing, tweeting, digging and other social media verbs for them.

Viral content is an extremely effective way of pushing your company to the top of the online public awareness sphere. Though you may only be flavour of the month, if you churn out more new flavours than Walker’s Crisps during the World Cup, you’ll succeed in the long term. This is a credible strategy, but it begs the question – when you’re a business that deals in solutions, products and services that don’t appeal to the online or tech-geek community, how do you go viral?

The ideal method to leap this particular marketing hurdle towards the revenue finish-line is simple: make yourselves mysterious. Don’t put your product on a white backdrop, on the homepage of your website. Experiment. Use silhouettes, use YouTube camcorder videos, and place adverts on sites that most people wouldn’t imagine being there in the first place. The more you stand out, the more consumers will become curious about your attitude and therefore whatever you’re offering to them.

Don’t serve up information on a plate, but don’t withhold either. This sounds a little paradoxical, but what I mean is this: list specifications, list capabilities and results, but allow the information to trickle out through the community, then confirm via the press. Doing so means that once the geek community has absorbed and discussed your move on the industry chess board, you can either confirm it to the press, or change something the community deems undesirable and side-step a potential venture failure.

If you take a look at the trending topics, numbers and words on Digg, there’s a few obvious results. Words like “the” and “of” turn up frequently, but this is a given – don’t be disheartened by the obvious. Taking a closer look at the list, “movies”, “games”, and, rather poetically, “time”, pop up too. This raises another interesting question – to “top # [product/form of entertainment] of all time” articles fare better online than a press release from a huge corporation?

Largely, yes, because the internet is a social animal, more so than it was ten years ago, and this is furthered by the simple fact that you don’t talk shop at parties. People love discussing films, games, music and books, because it’s not related to the rat race. But they also discuss politics, the mortgage and their student loans, and this is a niche of viral content that still isn’t being exploited. “Top 5 ways to manage a heavy mortgage and a student loan simultaneously” is something that I’d read, and I’m not even in the home-owner market yet.

Why would I read it? I, like many an English graduate before me, have a student loan to pay off, and it appeals to me due to the fact in the title. The fact is the number 5. Thompson claims that the use of numbers is a fair more visually appealing method of communicating statistics to people than writing the number out. “Five” sounds formal, “5″ sounds quick and sharp, and that’s the two main aspects o viral bit of content – it spreads quickly, and it’s smart.

When you’re next launching that large insurance policy, look at how you’re marketing it, because Reader’s Digest, post-working-hours television and the odd mention on your own website won’t cut the mustard. To hit the consumer where they’ll respond (with their mind and, hopefully, their wallet), you need to craft your titles. Blog a little, and Digg those blogs. “Top 5 ways not to go broke”, and be proud of your company, but be subtle.

Also, think about using a by-line. “George has been the CEO at Insurance, ltd. for 10 years, and you can find the many ways he’s helping people through the recession [here].” Make people enjoy your content, enjoy you, and the work is done. One link by a non-company individual on Facebook, Digg, or Twitter, and you’re laughing, because you might just be the next big thing. David After Dentist should be a good enough example.