The following video is by Erik Qualman, author of the book, Socialnomics. The video details some of the implications of social media as well as how businesses can benefit from the use of social networking to increase sales revenue. Check it out.

Have you ever visited someone’s website and walked away from your computer with a raging headache? Did you even stay on their landing page long enough for a headache to set in? While some of us lack the ability to design a catchy website, some of us love to experiment with things that we think our visitors will love….or so we think. However, being a little too creative can sometimes come with a hefty price in the form of a loss in your return on investment (ROI).

Do the Research:

If art class wasn’t your strongest point back in high school or if you are simply unsure as to what would translate well, color-wise, onto a web page, then it doesn’t hurt to do a little research and/or simply hire someone who is knowledgeable in the field of web design. If you do go the route of having a web designer help you with the construction of your website, don’t be afraid to ask questions about color schemes. After all, it doesn’t hurt to learn a thing or two, and it may even help you in the future if you ever decide to do an ad campaign or something else of the sort.

Advertising and Color Psychology

It’s no coincidence that McDonald’s is known for it’s golden arches or that children’s books are usually decorated in bright colors. In fact, most market research is done well before we are even aware of it in order to come to the conclusion as to what types of colors will have various effects on us. Therefore, depending on the particular industry that you are in, you may want to research color schemes a bit more as its effect among different cultures/audiences varies from niche to niche.

In this chapter, Evans talks about the importance of connecting the dots between managing social information on the web as well as keeping up with social interactions.  Managing social information can be eased with tools such as RSS and blog aggrigators in an effort to help you stay organized and up-to-date with the latest information.  Evans states:

Social Interactions–the third big collection of channels making up social media–  consist of the messages, feeds, and emails that flow as social content is created, discovered, consumed, repurposed, and shared.  The updates, feeds, and emails–the connective threads–tell you to go look, that something new is waiting for you.

What matters as much or more than the post itself, Evans points out, is how that post comes to the attention of someone who needs or wants to know about it.  If you haven’t already experienced it or were never very good at it, you will find that with the Internet and social media, etc. multitasking becomes an essential skill.   Participants of the Social Web are constantly dividing their attention between two or more computer screens at a time just to keep up with an incessant flow of information.  We have alerts and emails and RSS and blog aggregates and all sorts of other things that make noise, just to tell us when there is something new that might interest us.  This is why it is so important to have a system in place.

Evans also reminds us that we shouldn’t neglect the content of what we are trying to get across to people.  On the Social Web, content is still king.  After all, you might receive a notification that there is somethibng that might interest you.  However, when you go to read what someone has written, you quickly realize that it is of no use to you.  This is where content comes in.  You have to make what you are saying interesting.  How do you do this? You do it by making what you have to say useful, informative and catchy.

The Main Points According to Dave Evans

• By combining social knowledge with real-time presence, mobile social applications are changing the way people interact in real-world settings.
• Feeds make it possible for you to manage large amounts of information.  You can use feeds to keep up with customers, competitors, partners, and suppliers.
• Feeds make it possible for your customers to keep up with you.  As you create social content, consider adding a feed to make it easy to track and discover.
• Social media forces a rethinking of branded content: what does it mean when recipients have a hand in the creative and when the content itself is reduced to its purely informational state?