If you're a search marketer and you dabble at all in social media, there is one program you're probably already taking advantage of: StumbleUpon. StumbleUpon gives some great returns with a relatively small time investment. I've discussed StumbleUpon before, in the context of an interview with social media guru Neil Patel, but let's take a closer look at how it works...

With the StumbleUpon browser extension installed, with the click of a button you get sent to a random page. Once there, you can give the page a thumbs up or thumbs down and then move on to "stumble upon" the next random page. Think of it as channel surfing, but on the Web. You can select your categories of interest so that the random pages are more targeted to your tastes. You can leave a comment about what you like/dislike about any page.

It doesn't take very many thumbs-up votes to send hundreds if not thousands of visitors to your site - even if your site is brand new. It sounds easy, just start voting for your content.

But there's more to it than that... there are some important social media "tricks of the trade" that will help maximize the opportunity.

The most important thing is to have mutual friends. As you follow people on StumbleUpon, you will see more pages that they like. The idea is to follow people with similar interests.

The trick comes in when you begin to use the "Send To" option within the browser extension / toolbar. This option sends a site, along with a personalized message to your friend. The friend is forced to view this site before they can continue with their random stumbling. Do you see where I'm going with this? In the message you can ask them to thumbs up your page -- the more thumbs up a page has, the more traffic it will get from StumbleUpon. Your friends will probably ask for you to do the same for their sites in return. One hand washes the other...

What are your favorite tactics for maximizing your StumbleUpon traffic?

When anyone first gets into social media, on any site, there is one thing they all notice quickly – there are power users. Power users are the ones who submit a ton of stuff, comment on everything, have hundreds if not thousands of friends and followers. To someone just diving into the world, it’s rather intimidating. How can you compete with that?

This is the wrong question to ask. What you should be asking yourself is how are you going to network with these power users. Sure you could just be their “friend” and vote their stories up… but that isn’t going to get you noticed and it for sure isn’t going to put you in a position to ask them for favors. To the new user these power users are “famous” and what happens is the new user doesn’t try and connect – they don’t think they can. They see these power users as unreachable.

The truth of the matter is these power users got to where they are, have tons of friends and followers, because they are social people. Some of the nicest people in the world are the power users of social media sites. As I have said before, social media is about being social – not anti-social.

If you’re just starting out on a new network, give it a try – reach out to the big guys and get yourself noticed. You might just be surprised by the results.

When you use any social media outlet, one of the major hurdles is making friends. How you go about making friends will make or break your reputation on whichever service you are on. One of the best ways of making real friends and connections through social media is using instant messaging.

You can find users AIM/MSN/Yahoo names generally in their profiles and can start sending them messages instantly. They have their usernames listed so people can find and talk with them. They do not have them listed to just be spammed with “vote for this please, thanks” messages. If they don’t know you, why would they vote you up just because you asked them?

A good way to go about first contact with anyone on a social site is to be genuinely interested in them. After the initial "Hello I found you through X," ask them about their latest blog post or what they thought about something you saw they voted up or down. Ask them about their business, what they do, what they are interested in, how they got their start.

I chat with people every day and when someone is actually interested in what I do (or at least seems that way) I’m more likely to be interested in them. I’ll take a look at their profile on whatever social site they found me though and maybe check out their blog or website. When people just spam me with “vote for” or try and start a conversation without introducing themselves and just looking for free tips – I ignore them.

(Unless you're a Trekkie like me, you may not fully appreciate this post's title... "First Contact" is a reference to the first time Earth's inhabitants made contact with aliens, specifically the Vulcans.)

SEO is an ever-changing landscape and it's hard to stay current. Keeping up with trends involves work. You have to be out there at least every few weeks reading blogs, looking at what your competition is doing, and testing different theories of your own.

This has been talked about to death on blogs across the internet so I’m not going to say any more about it. What I want to talk about is keeping up with your social media profiles and the massive time investment it takes to be on top.

While you can get behind on SEO by stepping away from the world for several months, all it takes to lose connections in the social realm is several weeks.

Social media is something that if you want to stay at the top of the game you have to be in it, constantly - every day with massive amounts of time spent weekly. You could be the top Digger but leave for three weeks or more and you’re all but forgotten. It’s a constant struggle for the coveted few top spots that most people just simply cannot invest the time in.

Sure, when you do go back to your social media sites after being away for an extended period of time it takes less energy to regain your crown than just starting from scratch - but it is still a massive time investment to get back to where you were.

Being a power user on social media sites can send massive traffic and links to you or your clients pages – but for those truly committed social media isn’t a hobby – it is a "lifestyle".

Social networking is all about being social and networking - duh The question is: How do you do this; what does that mean? It means being active in the community; it’s saying thanks to people who vote your stories up; it’s responding to comments on your blog; it’s posting comments on other folks' blogs. It’s starting topics of conversation and being a part of other conversations.

Be careful though, it is very easy to destroy your online reputation by being a jerk, so watch what you say. Don’t just go and type in your gut reaction to things like you would if you were having a conversation with someone. The same care and attention in crafting responses is required in social networks as in email, since the emotional cues that are present in in-person and over-the-phone interactions are missing in online communications. You have all the time in the world to make your communications and your online persona funny, witty, insightful, thoughtful, ingenious. So take that time. Ultimately, however, your true character is going to shine through - but this is a good thing!

Being honest and open with people is what will net you real friends – friends that if you happen to be in the same city will buy you a drink, show you around, or even put a good word in for you if you’re looking for a job. It’s these kind of real social media friends that will bend over backwards to help you out if they can. If you’re a freelancer or a business owner, they might even recommend you to people they know.

Just by being yourself in social networks you’ll find that you are making friends with people of similar interests and humor types – people with similar personalities that actually like YOU and not just your online presence.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Neil Patel, leading practitioner in social media optimization, recently by phone and by email. Social media optimization is the new art of wielding tools, strategies and influence for the purpose of gaining visiblity on social media networks and sites like Digg, del.icio.us, reddit, NewsVine, Netscape.com, MySpace and even Wikipedia.

There was a great Wall Street Journal article in February talking about social media and the top influencers. Neil was featured as one of the top influencers on Digg.com.

When Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point (a book I highly recommend, btw!), wrote about "connectors" and the power that they wielded to influence large populations of people -- to infect them with new ideas, fashions, fads and so forth -- I really think of people like Neil as the online equivalent. When Neil submits something on Digg, it can yield 20,000-30,000 visitors and cause the featured story's web server to crash!

Making it on to the Digg.com home page is a laudable goal for social media optimization but, as Neil points out, it is not always appropriate or feasible. Digg users are alpha geeks. They are not going to be terribly receptive to articles about home decor or feng shui.

StumbleUpon is another great social media network worth targeting. For those who are unfamiliar with StumbleUpon, it is like channel surfing -- but on the Web. There is a plugin that you install on your web browser that provides a button that you can press to channel surf. As part of the installation process, you select which topics you are interested in. Then, when you hit the StumbleUpon button, you are taken to websites which are given a "thumbs up" by other StumbleUpon users and which are in your areas of interest. I've found some really neat websites just by "stumbling upon" them.

Each social media site network has its own quirks and nuances and politics. Getting high visibility on reddit requires a very different submitter profile, story, topic and so forth than Digg. Getting visibility in Wikipedia is a real quagmire. Stumble Upon is certainly more straightforward than Wikipedia but it has its own quirks and tricks.

Have a listen to my 15-minute podcast interview with Neil, and also check out the text interview (conducted separately by email) which is in the Netconcepts' Cool Friends library of interviews.

Neil will be speaking at the American Marketing Association's Hot Topic: Search Engine Marketing, in San Francisco on April 22, NYC on May 25, and Chicago on June 22. I highly recommend attending. I'm chairing the conferences, so I'll be there too!