There are some very striking social media icons out there, and they can only add to a website, as well as showing you are aware of social media and its importance in everyone’s online life.

Smashing Apps have put together a full range of social media icons for you to plagiarise, enjoy, to inspire or just to oooh and ahhh over.

However, the reality is that whilst 35% of the Fortune 500 companies tweet and use Facebook, much smaller (and hence more agile) fastest-growing companies in the US already showed a 91% usage of at least one social media tool in 2009.

It would seem that the larger companies have some catching up to do, and that smaller companies have an advantage at present when it comes to adopting the use of social media for many purposes. Marketing, CRM, collecting consumer feedback, reviews, and raising brand awareness are all reasons you should be adopting a social media strategy today.

As 2009 rolls to a close, everyone is considering the changes in the world of search during the year. So, we have gathered together the views from some of our experts in the Clickthrough Marketing office of what we may see in 2010 as a result of those changes.

Adam Symes, Head of Paid Advertising:

2009 has been a year of great change in social media. MySpace and Bebo have seen huge decline and yet back in 2006 they were the top two searched for terms on Google.  Conversely, the Global Language Monitor has named ‘Twitter’ the word  of the year. The last 12 months have seen a huge increase in the use of Twitter and although this may plateau in 2010 it will still remain a huge force as Google continues to integrate tweets into real-time search results.

Another trend that has experienced significant shifts is the use of retargeting, a form of intelligent behavioural targeting where an ad / banner is displayed on a site (sometimes unrelated) a user visits after the user visits the advertisers site.

Adrian Epstein, Paid Search Account Manager:

Google continued to develop AdWords opportunities this year. It is now allowing Google advertisers to place additional site links into ad creative when bidding on performing campaigns. These additional site links take users directly to the other categories within your site from within the ad; this is great for additional shelf space. Advertisers can now opt in to ad extensions taking products from the Google Merchant centre, this then provides selected products that are relevant to your ad, increasing conversion opportunities.

Finally, rumour has it Google is taking into consideration the page load times as a factor for ranking.  That pushes the focus back on hosting companies and more importantly developers who can decrease these page load times. Whether or not Google make page load times a factor in rankings, it is one that should be a focus.

Bryn Firkins, Director of Paid Advertising:

The iPhone has now shifted around 33 million units worldwide, by default bought by affluent consumers. For many, mobile marketing has been about banners and search. Now, iPhone apps have given marketers a powerful way to get their brand message in the hands of people who have proven they are happy to spend. The iPhone App store has gone from holding around 10,000 apps at the start of 2009 to just over 100,000 now.

Advertiser spend in developing these apps can sometimes sit outside usual online media budgets as they can be a powerful source of direct revenue in their own right. With Google Android now gaining some traction, and the relative portability of iPhone apps to Android, expect apps to continue to grow in importance in 2010.

Rob Stoubos, SEO Account Manager:

Brand building and online awareness through online PR and Social Media is becoming increasingly important.  Online PR and Social Media are being factored into Google’s natural search algorithm increasingly, and  Google wants to use ‘public opinion’ when it comes to deciding which sites to promote in natural search.  Companies who don’t establish themselves in these areas and as a result increase their traffic referrals from these areas may begin to fall in rankings when Google’s new Caffeine algorithm comes into play in 2010.

What do you feel may figure highly in the world of search in 2010? Do you agree with our experts? Where will you be committing your online marketing budget next year, and where do you expect the big wins/losses to occur?

Joe Morter is not a highly paid media/PR exec, he is a hi-fi engineer, and along with his wife, Tracey, they set up the Facebook campaign to attempt to dismantle the monopoly on the charts which Simon Cowell’s X Factor has enjoyed over the last few years.

Seemingly, this campaign had everything that it needed to go viral….and it did. Rage Against The Machine were yesterday announced as the UK No 1 with their single, “Killing in the Name” instead of the X factor entry by Joe McElderry, who won the X Factor this year.

The purpose of the campaign was to encourage as many people as possible to download the RATM single, instead of the X Factor single. There was a Facebook group, which quickly garnered 450,000 fans. There were banners and images produced for everyone to use on their Facebook status, websites, blogs, Twitter and so on, thereby spreading the word very quickly about the campaign.

Why did it succeed? Well, one reason must be that peculiarly British trait of loving someone until they become successful and then seeming to delight into attempting to bring that person to their knees.  Simon Cowell has become a bit like Marmite – you either love him or hate him, and right now, there are an awful lot of people who feel shades of the latter towards him for being so successful and dominating the charts. This is often seen to be at the expense of other, possibly better bands who do not have the (mis)fortune to be signed to Cowell’s record label.

Whilst it is likely that there will be similar campaigns that endeavour to replicate the success of this one, this is a first in “People Power” using social media to upset something as trivial (and I say the word carefully, knowing how some people feel about the charts!) as the Christmas number 1. There are far bigger and more meaningful causes that could potentially be similarly supported by the average citizen, and it will be interesting to see what happens in 2010 with social media people power campaigns.

And yet, Facebook is now the number 1 communications tool according to a survey by Prompt Communications. Netimperative state in their article:

When consumers were asked which method they used most frequently to communicate, 37 percent said SMS followed by Facebook and the phone at 28 percent. Respondents feel that email is now less important than social media, but only 20 percent said they could live without it entirely.

So, are you giving your potential and existing customers every opportunity to communicate with you using the method fo their choice? Also, just before you ramp up a new email marketing campaign, think about who your target audience are and which methods they might respond best to. Do you need to be looking at integrated marketing media rather than sticking to the same old techniques?

If you find your days and nights are haunted by keyword research, writing META tags, hunting down keyword density tools, aching over whether the copy is sufficiently optimised……

Then, STOP!

Open your website right now and ask yourself these simple questions:

1. Does my website look good?

2. Does it tell a prospective customer everything they need to know about my products and services?

3. Does it include useful, helpful, valuable, content about my products and services eg how to manuals, articles, links to other resources and so on?

4. Does it include full contact details that are easy to find from every page?

5. Does it sell? Or, from a customer point of view, is it easy to buy?

6. Have I recently added some fresh content for regular visitors?

If the answer to all of the above is “Yes”, then you do not need to keep worrying about SEO. What you need to do is find who your customers are and where they hang out – in forums, in blogging communities, on Twitter, in social networks, etc – and go and talk to them. Network. Socialise. Share your experience and help people out. Build your reputation as a good person to deal with and you will find that on its own will encourage people to check you out, remember you, recommend you.

When you are asked questions and can give a great answer, add it to the FAQ on your site to help someone else.

There is far more that will attract your target audience to your website than just SEO. Word of mouse is far more effective in finding your target audience. Think beyond the search engines.

If your answer to any of the above is “No”, then you need to resolve some very basic issues with your website before anything else.

And when you feel you have got enough customers from being social, then you may wish to have a look at your needs for SEO again. And you may find it is no longer required because satisfied customers and people you have met in your ’socialising’ are doing more than a little on-page SEO could do by linking to you, recommending you in blogs, on Twitter, to their networks and so on.

So, we set off to find some of the social media and real-time search engines that are already in existence. Get away from Google for a few hours and explore the many discussions and conversations on topics of interest to you!

LeapFish – this is a great little engine. Blogs, Youtube, Facebook, tweets, diggs, autosuggestion tool for searches, and much more. Definitely worth using.

SocialMention – interesting ranking system, plus regular users, sources, social media alerts, trending topics, and a blog widget.

Whostalking – search by category eg news, blogs, forums, images, videos, networks and tweets.

Samepoint – offers a wide range of searches across wikis, news, blogs, tweets, bookmarks, networks, podcasts, videos, news and so on.

OneRiot uses  social networks to influence the results you receive.  One Riot basically looks at what is being shared and trending at the moment, so that it is bringing you the most popular items.

AardVark is an interesting example in that you submit a question and the search engine finds the best person to answer for you across your social networks of friends and FOAFs (Friend of a Friend). An interesting idea, but one wonders if it implies that you can’t know your friends very well if you don’t know who to ask for yourself!

Fluther works in a similar way to aardvark, although it also shows all questions recently asked, and you can discuss your questions and answers in real time with other users and experts.

So, there’s a few to start with. Please let us know more – these are great fun as well as providing fascinating insights into what people are looking for from the social media they adopt.

the value of a (telecommunications) network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users

Therefore, if you know 2 people, the value of your network is 4. If you need 10 people, the value of your network is 100.

As social networking has taken off, both online and offline (breakfast networking events, niche networks events and so on), those who have the largest followings are often lauded as great networkers, which seems to instil feelings of jealousy and inadequacy in others.

Obviously, applying Metcalfe’s Law to the size of the networks would infer that their networks are more valuable than our own poor attempts! However, there has to be some consideration in valuing your network of: quality.

In telecoms networks, the value of the network is not affected by the quality of the user, so Metcalfe’s Law needs to now include a quality score. I am not the first to state this, and discussions on this subject have been ongoing for quite some time with even Bob Metcalfe himself getting involved, but maybe it bears consideration again as you go for the World record for new Twitter followers in a week!

Commenting on blogs is an excellent way to attract traffic to your site, build relationships and get involved in constructive dialogue. Unless you are spamming. In which case, it is a waste of time.

Here are 10 things NOT to do when using comments as a blog marketing tool.

1. Don’t just write “Nice blog”. That is not a positive contribution to any discussion!

2. Don’t write about something totally irrelevant. eg much as I may care that Aaron has pimples all over his body (which I don’t), it is severely off-topic. And spam.

3. Don’t include a blatant link to your website  in the comment unless it will lead readers of that blog to VALUABLE information about the subject of the post.

4. Don’t link to affiliate sites.Many bloggers are trying to earn money and stay alive too.

5. Don’t forget that comments are for ..um…COMMENTING on the post. Not to promote your site, sell drugs, or any other similar activity.

6. Don’t fill the name field with every keyword you can think of pertaining to your own product/service. Think of a name. Yes, use your company name or twitter handle if you wish, but keep it sensible.

7. Don’t cut and paste and repeat comments on multiple blogs. Many blogs are interlinked because of subject area and any users who visit multiple sites and read the exact same comment from you over and over again will give you negative PR rather than positive.

8. “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than speak out and remove all doubt.” Abraham Lincoln

9. Don’t be offensive, disrespectful or abusive. Be polite. You are writing on someone else’s blog.

10. Don’t forget where you have posted a comment. Duplicate postings on a comment thread are unnecessary.

It should be simple, but judging by all the comments I have deleted today, for some it is more taxing than it should be.

However, there is one particular change which seems likely to upset users, advertisers and hence Facebook’s potential revenue.

Last week, almost below my radar, a small notification appeared which casually stated, amongst other text, that notifications would be vanishing in the New Year and that if you want to keep informed of application updates, you would need to ensure that the application had your email address.

My instant reaction was – that’s me out of visiting Facebook regularly then. Like many people, email is no longer the communication tool of choice.  It has its place, but so do tweets, SMS, phone calls, IM, Skype and so on.

The email inboxes of far too many people are overladen with a surfeit of incoming messages, many for newsletters subscribed to moons ago that you always mean to read but never quite do, offers that you are sure you never wanted to receive, spam, forward chain letters from ‘friends’, and a host of other tosh.

These can often hide the important messages so people resort to other solutions to ensuring they don’t miss an important communication. If you need to talk to another business person, LinkedIn is a great way to ensure attention. If you need an answer instantly, you seek your respondent’s online status in Google Chat, jabber, Skype, IM – knowing before you hit send that they are present at the other end and will respond quickly.

SMS isn’t strictly reliable but in most cases will get a reasonably instant answer – if the message is delivered promptly, if the phone is on, if the recipient is checking their texts etc.

One wonders the logic behind Facebook’s decision. For many people, the notifications are the means to getting engaged in FB, telling them who has said what, posted a photo, commented in a discussion group and so on. It is also a means by which applications drive users to their page or app, relying on people power to encourage viral marketing.

This issue will no doubt cause untold discussion and heated debates shortly and on implementation. It isn’t that users hate change (of course they do!) but it takes away one of the primary mechanisms for users to know what others have been doing. It puts all the footslog and hard work back onto the users, instead of making it easy for them to engage and socialise.

It is a valuable lesson for any company to consider. When you plan changes to your website, are they for you or for the users’ benefit? Or both? Can you meet the target of satisfying your desire to make your life easier without making your users’ lives harder?