On the topic of blog and podcast promotion, we left out one element in last week’s podcast episode: link love. Link love is when you link back to a relevant site that supports what you might be blogging about. Very often, you can let that blogger or website know that you are doing so, and it can produce some rather nice results that benefit both parties. That’s why it’s called "love." It must be reciprocated. Concept is simple, now here it is in practice:

Our pal Andy at Lotame posted today about the growth of advertising on user-generated content sites. The takeaway is that these sites are experiencing phenomenal growth rates and advertisers better pay attention because this is where the eyeballs are but, more importantly, this is where the active users are. Social media sites’ (even this very blog) whole raison d’etre is to get you do DO something while you’re there: upload or download a picture, video or song, click on something, post a comment, etc. It would stand to reason that if you can reach these people IN THE SAME WAY THAT THEY ARE USED TO COMMUNICATING, you will probably have some success.

Which brings us to link number 2 from VNUnet.com. The article is entitled "Traditional marketing failing on social networking sites" (Kind of telegraphs what the article is about, eh?) Two key takeways from the article are, 1) "…marketers should be prepared to engage in a personal relationship with users by providing something of value." (Bold mine.) And, 2) "People no longer want ‘interruptive’ brand communications; they want interactions with their peers and true value from companies…"