Last week, Search Engine Watch contributor, Eric Enge, published an article, “Finding Success in Social Media“, listing out some Social Media websites and discussing how great they are for reputation management and how they can help your organic search engine rankings. Having been in the Search Marketing industry for several years, the buzz in the Canadian market as far as Search Engine Optimization goes, is that we’re behind the US and Europe. However, I believe as we expose more people and customers to the power of Search Engine Optimization and Marketing (PPC Campaigns, etc) and with the help of these social media networks, I’m sure we wont be far behind for much longer.

So there’s the social networking that we all know about growing up that involves your parents dragging you along to these get togethers with other adults and kids you don’t know wishing you were at home at on your computer or playing tennis on your wii, then there’s the online social networking that I’m sure you have come accross and use everyday but just never knew there was a name for it.

Online Social Networking, or simply, Social Networking, for the purpose of this article, is basically using community driven websites such as Facebook, MySpace, hi5, etc. to communcate with your friends and family or new found friends :)

I noticed the Social Networking scene start to take off with hi5 and friendster. My friends would push me to get one and eventually I caved in. With the advent of YouTube.com, Break.com, and other Vlogging Viral Marketing websites, spending time online watching videos took over watching tv on my cosy sofa.

According to an article published by AdvertisingAge today, “Social Networking Reaches Near Full Penetration Among Teens and ‘Tweens“, states that their study found 96% of Teens and ‘Tweens connect to a social network on a weekly basis.

What does this mean? I believe the word is out and we’ll start to see more people using these social networks for their optimization efforts. Social Media Optimization has come a long way but will continue to grow as video ads become widely implemented on the web in the future.