What is the foundation of social media? A simple question with multiple ways to respond, but I found a great post this morning that discusses the 5 C’s that make up the foundation of social media marketing.

• Conversation: Go where the conversations are taking place - Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, YouTube, etc.  Establish accounts and create your identity.  Stay up-to-date with your accounts and participate often.  Really get to know your followers and audience so you can actively participate.

• Community: Seize the opportunity to not only join and participate in conversations, but add your own value.  This is how you create a community, which you must work to maintain and earn the trust of your followers. A good site for community building (in addition to the ones mentioned above) is Ning.  Ning allows its users to create their own social websites and social networks. It’s a good place to create a form or community around your product, which in return can produce useful user feedback.

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Do you have a Digg account? If so, add me as a friend (megcolek) so I can follow what you Digg! If not, I highly recommend that you join (it’s free!).

Digg is a great place to discover and share content from around the Web, from the smallest blog entries to major news sources.  All articles are submitted and voted on by individuals like you!

With your account you can:

• Submit and share content you create (press releases, blog entries, papers, etc.)
• Search for the latest and top rated news, images, videos from a variety of industries
• Share your opinion in the comments section
• Personalize your Digg account
• Follow what your friends are Digging

It’s also easy to Digg (i.e. submit) content.  Just locate and click the Digg icon ( ) on the post or article you are reading and easily submit the link. You can find the Digg icon at the bottom of this post!

Become a member today!

Digg anything lately? Share in the comments section!

Last week WeddingWire’s CEO, Timothy Chi, and CMO, Sonny Ganguly, joined many of you at the 5th annual Wedding MBA convention and presented on the best ways to reach today’s wired bride. You might remember them best as “Harold and Kumar”! So many of you asked to have “Sonny’s Top 10 Places to Surf ” that we thought we would just share with everyone:

1. MySpace - 71,486,821
• Build a profile for your business
• Browse through your network and connect
2. Facebook - 42,777,397
• Create a fan page for your business
• Build a wedding group or participate
3. Ning - 3,757,563
• Build your personal niche social network
4. WordPress - 134,875,738
• Create your blog and build incoming links
• Participate and comment on wedding blogs
5. Twitter - 1,723,476
• Create a following with your micro-blog
6. YouTube - 73,537,222
• Showcase your business with video content
7. Flickr - 22,511,915
• Create online photo albums and tag your pics
8. Digg - 21,632,429
• Build incoming links to the content on your site
9. Upcoming.Yahoo.com - 3,419,626
• Broadcast your events and the places you will be
10. Answers.Yahoo.com - 23,386,964
• Share your expert knowledge with brides-to-be

Share which of these you are currently using and feel free to post links to your pages with your comments!

Such a simple phrase with such possibilities. When was the last time you submitted any news or a webpage to Digg.com? For those not familiar, Digg is one of the largest social media sites consisting solely of user generated content. Using Digg can be a great way to create new links to your website (links are a big piece of the search engine optimization game). If you have a blog, Digg your blog content with social bookmarks (like at the beginning or end of the post) and be sure to add a description about the submission. However, do NOT copy the first few lines of your article into the description. Duplicate content is not advised.

Additionally, your visitors can also Digg your posts right on your blog using Digg Tools if you’re feeling fancy (or want your webmaster to do it).

Remember, content is still most important so be sure to give your visitors something to Digg.

Try Digg by selecting the button below this link that matches the “Digg Guy” in this post.