Social Bookmarking is a great tool to use for your interactive strategy on the Web. Effectively engaging in communities such as Delicious, Digg, Reddit, and others (Buzka is business-focused community) has many of the same benefits as other social media sites. The opportunity to have a "front page" or viral bookmark will help the spread of your blog posts and Websites, plus you can also monitor your brand and related keywords.

Here's a list of tips to help you get started.

Top 5 Do's of Social Bookmarking

1. Get used to the community before you dive in head first. All online communities have some kind of understood code of conduct that members follow. If you dive in and make a major faux pas, then people are going to take notice!

2. Incorporate Social Bookmarking into your blog and news posts, and encourage your loyal following to promote your materials.

3. Monitor your brand and related keywords. Responding to negative comments can go a long way in the eyes of community members and can build lasting credibility, especially if the responder is an involved member of the community and in a position of authority in your business. Searching on a social bookmarking site is different than through Google, Twitter, etc. because it's more based on readily measurable popularity rather than SEO, keywords, or anecdotal data.

4. With your bookmarking activity, be a person first and a business second. Most social bookmarking sites don't have business accounts, and quite often the environment is hostile to businesses that obviously use the services to advance their own agenda.

5. Have multiple people at your organization start accounts. Related to #1 above, make sure that each person uses these on an individual basis, but it never hurts to have more votes and coordinate your efforts to help give the necessary push when there is something has the potential to go viral.

5 Don'ts of Social Bookmarking

1. Avoid aggressive promotion on  these sites. Community members- especially the established and savvy ones- will know what's going on and if the community finds out, they can block your accounts. This will inevitably end up in a PR nightmare!

2. Stray away from gobbledygook titles or descriptions that are written in sales or marketing lingo. This will make your posts transparent and they almost surely won't spread. An article called "Indianapolis Small Business Marketing Success story" would be better off as "Fusework Studios' Viral Campaign Causes a Stir in Indy" or something more natural. Take note and heed the success of successful article titles.

3. Don't post all of your blogs and news. Be selective by choosing information that you think has the potential to go viral on the community based on your observations of the types of content that goes viral on a specific community and the content that you've posted on your site.

4. Don't post materials that are outside of your marketing objectives. If a post doesn't fit your Internet marketing branding strategy, you should probably reconsider publishing it in the first place! Preferably, your site is setup to drive conversion, in which case this shouldn't be an issue in most cases.

5. Make sure to keep activities within your overall strategy. Although you need to come off as a real person in the community, you'd probably want to avoid bookmarking that Website for the mud wrestling match unless of course your business involves or is driven by mud wrestling!

For more resources on social bookmarking check out these articles:

• Social Bookmarking 101 - What is Social Bookmarking and How Can It Help Me?
• Social Bookmarking in Plain English
• Social Bookmarking: The Race to Be Famous of a Useful Tool?

I was working with an Indianapolis client the other day who wants to produce a corporate Internet marketing video for his web site. Sounds straightforward enough, right?

Well, not exactly. In order to truly "tell your story." you've got to ask yourself some basic questions before diving headfirst in to the production process.

I've been a Producer and Writer in the video production world for many, many years, and in order to oversee a great product, the process should always start with answering these questions. 

1. Who is your target audience?
   
   Is it your current customers? Future customers? Business partners? Vendors? Employees? Knowing your target audience is paramount. The answer will drive your message.
    
2. What is your message?
   
   In the small business marketing world, a video can be a great way to introduce people to your business. Is that your message? Or do you need to be more specific about your services and/or capabilities? 
    
3. What do you want the viewers to take away from the video after watching it? What do you hope to accomplish?
   
   The answer should always be the real reason you contemplated making a video in the first place. Is it a better understanding of your business? Is it to demonstrate a new product? Is it damage control? Are you using this video as a fundraiser? See question four.
    
4. What is your call to action? 
   
   Think conversion, conversion, conversion. Complete Internet marketing includes some sort of conversion. If you introduced a new product in the video, your call to action could be to have clients purchase that product directly from your web site. If it's a basic marketing video, your call to action could be a link to a "contact us for more information" form on your web site. Now you've just acquired a qualified business lead. Bottom line, that's good web strategy.
    
5. How long do you want the video to be? 
   
   Ideally, if it's going on the web, you want it to be no longer than three minutes. If it's longer than that, people get bored. Seriously, that's the truth. This length constraint will also help you narrow the focus of your message.
    
6. Who, if anyone, would you like to profile? Who's story would you like to tell? Who's going to represent the company?
   
   Generally, people like to watch a video with a real human interest element.  In other words, give a face to it. Don't always rely on an omnipresent narrator and PowerPoint-type graphics. That being said, it's sometimes best to hire professional talent than to use this video to launch the acting career you've always wanted. But then again, maybe this video could be the perfect platform to show the "real you," and your customers just might dig it.
    
7. When would you like to launch the video on your site? Is there an event or milestone coming up at which you could reveal it?
   
   Create some buzz for the addition of the video to your site. Promote it in an e-newsletter. Tease its addition in all of your marketing efforts. This will give you the biggest bang for your advertising buck.
    
8. In what other ways do you plan to show the video?
   
   The social media community is blowing up, and you need to get on board! Put the video on your company's Facebook page. Consider making a YouTube channel and posting it there. And by all means, don't forget to tweet about it! You would absolutely be remiss if you didn't take advantage of all of the social media Internet marketing options out there.

By answering these questions and by really thinking about Internet marketing strategy, you will undoubtedly be left with a video that does exactly want you want it to do.....whatever that may be.