What point? The point at which social networks have become sufficiently popular for entrepreneurs to recognize the potential of this as a market space not just for showing advertisements in well-defined sidebars, but through which they can actively generate sales by using and participating in the social medium itself.

Just as email became a forum for unsolicited sales pitches (spam), web sites for graphical ads, online article comments for the positing of promotional links (comment spam) and blogs for paid reviews and promotions, now paid and sales-centric tweets are on the agenda.

In each of these cases, users felt a certain cynical inevitability as a communications channel that was previously free of promotions — a source of pure information — became yet another forum for selling. But it didn’t stop us using those vehicles.

In the interim, though, confusion and disenchantment reign on both sides of the equation. Today, just as some people ask the question, “Would I tweet if somebody paid me to?”, Aliza and others ask “When is ‘free’ too much of a good thing?” It seems that those of us using social media to brand-build and self-market face real challenges in making social media pay. Perhaps the likely solutions to these problems are as much about our approach and philosophy as they are about the practicalities of using social media to sell.

The Challenge

Nathan Hangen, in “Your Dream is Under Attack”, bemoans the fact that when entrepreneurs break with their self-built tradition of giving away free content by using the same channels to actively promote a product they want to sell, their followers get shirty.

While in “When Is “Free” Too Much of a Good Thing?”, Aliza proposes ways to get around the uneasy feeling that arises when her followers try to take advantage of her professional generosity — the kind of generosity on which millions of online brands, corporate and personal, have been built.

To my mind, underlying these two anecdotes is a single question: Can we harness the enormous potential of social media as a direct sales vehicle?

Social Media in Principle

In his article, Hangen asks, “What is it that makes one place acceptable for commerce, and another ’sacred’?” Nathan is obviously one of those entrepreneurs who’s at the front of the proverbial wave, and has already perceived the sales-related possibilities of social media.

The thing is that most non-entrepreneurial users see social media as, well, a social forum. Yes, maybe they find your offerings interesting, informational and educational, but most people I speak to see social networks primarily as interesting and entertaining.

From the perspective of the consuming (rather than selling) world, the thing that makes one place acceptable for commerce and another “sacred” — or unacceptable for commerce — is its underlying purpose.

The first place — an online store, your company’s web site, your professional blog — is clearly and primarily built for commerce; the other — a social networking site, a friendship, a weekend barbeque — has fun, interest and enjoyment as its underlying premise. We don’t go to a BBQ hoping to buy a TV, nor do we go to a department store to make friends.

Trust is central to this differentiation. In a commercial forum, the consumer knows that you’ll be trying to obtain their trust so you can sell to them. They’re ready for it. In the second forum, their guard is down: no one’s expected to be actively trying to convince anyone else of their moral credentials. At the same time, though, the other factor that differentiates a social network from a commercial forum is that in a social medium, the user knows they have some control: they have a voice.

So in a real or virtual social network, the development of trust is more organic and more of a two-way street than it is in a commercial forum, since no one has a conscious, vested interest in being seen as trustworthy. People engaged in these networks take a more personal risk in trusting another individual, and invest themselves more heavily in the relationship in the process. They also have the power to make it known if someone in that forum does something to damage that sense of trust.

Is this too touchy-feely a way to think of your Twitter followers or your Facebook fans? If you’re the kind of entrepreneur who talks about your personal branding efforts as “giving back to the community you love”, and “fulfilling your passion”, some would say you’re using the same kind of rhetoric, but in a different field.

The issue of trust is ultimately the reason why, as Nathan testily observes, “when a passionate entrepreneur uses social media to create relationships and ask for money, that’s over the line.” Few of us believe that social relationships should be financial. In the real world, and currently online, these concepts do not usually go together. This may also help to explain the ream of responses to Aliza’s post from entrepreneurs hounded by followers who want usually costly advice for free.

Social Media in Practice

In the frustration of Hangen’s and Aliza’s posts, we’re reminded of that essential truth about social media: we don’t own it, and we can’t control it. Social media is a two-way exchange, so entrepreneurs will always be at the mercy of the crowd. Unlike traditional forms of promotion, social media talks.

Yes, this does mean that the more demanding of your followers can seem mightily demanding. But it also means that as we’re carried along on the inevitable swell of social media’s viral commercialization, we have to accept that the boundaries for those promoting themselves, as well as those hungry for information and advice, won’t always be clear. We need to consciously look for and observe them.

The concept of personal branding has done a lot to blur these lines. So perhaps one of the most important elements is for the entrepreneur to identify the boundaries for themselves before they start trying to sell through social media.

If you decide, for example, that you’re going to use social media to build your professional reputation, you may automatically assume that you’ll disseminate relevant information a way to demonstrate your expertise and passion in your field. Great.

But perhaps you should also ensure that you make it clear from the outset that you’re a business person who has something to sell, to help set the right tone for the relationships you build through your social networking efforts, and possibly keep the number of followers you upset when you promote a special offer, or draw the line on giving further advice, to a minimum.

The techniques entrepreneurs use to navigate the largely unchartered waters of casually dispensing professional wisdom in 140 characters, expressing their personal and professional integrity in posts on a company blog, and telling people about the products and services they’re selling will be as individual as each personal brand. Whatever the case, the entrepreneur must ensure that their approach to social media aligns with the way their audience sees and expects to use it. Once they understand this, if they wish, they can devise appropriate ways to push the envelope toward making social media pay.

Have you used social media to direct-sell your products and services?

Top Wordpress Plugins

Installation a new wordpress blog is very easy but how to choose a good wordpress theme and great wordpress plugins for your new blog is relly trouble. May say that add wordpress plugins to the new blog is the most important part in building a new wordpress blog and it will decide to the life or death of that blog. If the blog that installed cool plugins , it will run very fest on the way of successful and else if the blog that don’t added well plugins, it will run very slowly to destination.

Today, in this guest post, I will show you Top 30 wordpress plugins that I’m using . Of course these plugins were floor filter very carefully by me and according to the reports of many Wordpress Bloggers.

1. Akismet

Akismet will check your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. This plugin is automatic add to the blog when we install. You need a WordPress.com API key to use it. It has the ability prop and help our blogs prevent the most professional software spammers on the internet.

2. All in One SEO Pack

Its really the best SEO plugin for Wordpress Blog with the features as: Add Titles, Descriptions, Keywords and Avoid Duplicate Content for your Wordpress Blog. I’m sure it will help your blog to have rank well on Google and many other search engines.

3. Contact Form 7

You can very easy to create a contact form on your blog to the readers can contact your for aksing or advertising.

4. Executable PHP widget

If you want to add a PHP code but don’t know about PHP code and wordpress template, it will help you do this

5. CommentLuv

Plugin to show a link to the last post from the commenters blog by parsing the feed at their given URL when they leave a comment. Rewards your readers and encourage more comments.

6. Do Follow

Will remove nofollow tag in comments to help your blog get more comments. After add this plugin, you blog will be a Dofollow Blog.

7. FD Feedburner Plugin

Redirects the main feed and optionally the comments feed to Feedburner.com. It does this seamlessly without the need to modify templates, setup new hidden feeds, modify .htaccess files, or asking users to migrate to a new feed. All existing feeds simply become Feedburner feeds seamlessly and transparently for all users. Just tell the plugin what your Feedburner feed URL is and you’re done.

8. Google Analyticator

Adds the necessary JavaScript code to enable Google’s Analytics. After enabling this plugin visit the settings page and enter your Google Analytics’ UID and enable logging. Then you can check your blog analytic in Dashboard.

9. Google XML Sitemaps

This plugin will generate a Sitemap.XML for your blog to help your blog get faster index on Google, Yahoo, Ask and MSN.

10. KB Robots.txt

Manage your robots.txt file from within Wordpress and of course it will also help you have rank well on Google.

11. MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer

It will inform the ping services to help your blog quickly in the front page of search engine.

12. Nofollow Tag Cloud

Inserts rel=’nofollow’ in tag links to limit the number of links on a page if you add tag cloud on your blog.

13. Permalinks Moved Permanently

When permalink isn’t found, this checks if a post with the requested slug exists somewhere else on your blog.

14. Redirection

Manage all your 301 redirects and monitor 404 errors. Help improve SEO.

15. RSS Feed Signature

Add a customised signature or tag-line to your RSS feed(s).

16. SEO Friendly Images

Automatically adds alt and title attributes to all your images. Improves traffic from search results and makes them W3C/xHTML valid as well.

17. SEO Title Tag

This plugin is very powerful with Google. Create a customised title tag for any post, static page, category page, UltimateTagWarrior tag page – indeed, any URL!

18. SexyBookmarks

Add social web 2.0 buttons to your single post pages to help readers very easy to submit your posts to social bookmarkings.

19. Simple Archive Generator

A plugin which simply lists all posts by category.

20. Subscribe To Comments

Allows readers to receive notifications of new comments that are posted to an entry. Its very well in increasing your RSS Subscribers.

21. Thank Me Later

Sends a customizable “Thank You” message after (a few hours, few days, weeks) a comment has been posted.

22. Top Commentators Widget

Adds a sidebar widget to show the top commentators in your WP site to help your blog receive more comments.

23. WordPress Database Backup

Help backup your database. You can use the feature Scheduled Backup to automate database backup to your email everyday for protection your data.

24. WordPress Related Posts

Generate a related posts list via tags of WordPress. You can add Related Posts for RSS Feed to help your subscriber very easy to find related posts on your blog.

25. Wordpress Thread Comment

It allows user can reply comment and same comment on comment form.

26. WP-Ban

Ban users by IP, IP Range, host name, user agent and referer url from visiting your WordPress’s blog to prevent spammers.

27. WP-Optimize

This plugin helps you to keep your database clean by removing post revisions and spams in a blaze. allows you to rename your admin name also. Additionally it allows you to run optimize command on your wordpress coretables (use with caution).

28. WP-Polls

Help you add poll on your blog or posts. You can use to open a survey on your blog to get idea for writing content.

29. WP Super Cache

Very fast caching plugin for WordPress. It will make your blog loads faster and optimize files on your blog for search engines to help your blog have better google ranking.

30. MaxBlogPress Favicon

Vey easy to add favicon to your blog for building a personal brand.

Is it because everyone now expects the web to be social or is it because the full implications of Google Sidewiki have yet to fully realized?

I tend to think it is the latter.

This was the reaction of the New York Times Bits blog: “Google is rolling out a new service on Wednesday that will allow users to post notes alongside Web sites that can be read by other users.”

That’s putting it mildly.  What about the part where web site owners don’t control the comments?  They can’t edit them.  They can’t delete them.  And anybody who has Sidewiki will be able to read them in there entirety be they raving reviews or scathing criticisms.  It’s what every web operator needs – a public place for the crazies to leave their messages – permanently.

Google has basically made every single web page social – and that’s a paradigm shift of earthquake portions for brands, brand managers and communicators.

It’s a world where the third Sidewiki entry on the YouTube home page reads: “The new channel editor for you tube sucks. It’s gawd awful, please take that shit off.”

I’m sure that’s exactly the kind of intelligent discourse YouTube’s brand managers are looking for on the front page of their web site – for all to see.

Two analysts who do get the power of Sidewiki are Jeremiah Owyang and Charlene Li of Altimeter Group.  They wrote a post yesterday addressing Google’s “stealth” move into social media by quietly making the web social (thereby weakening the grip of large social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook).

The post goes on to say:

“This is the stealth threat — that today’s social networks won’t really be losing share to the “Google network,” but rather, that they will become slowly less relevant as EVERYTHING gets social thanks to advances by Google.  Their end goal?  Google’s social network is designed to exist everywhere –not be centralized in any one location.”

That’s it in a nutshell.

So far the response by web owners and companies have been surprisingly muted.  The mainstream press has done few hard-hitting analysis on Sidewiki.  Is it because Sidewiki hasn’t reached critical mass yet?

What do you think?

If you’re preparing to participate in the Social Web, you need these ideas your mind. First, that with a common ID developing, the social experience is about to get a lot more frictionless. And second, that not just social networks, but every brand site will become social — whether you include these features, or visitors bring them along.

So what should you do to prepare? First, get started with you social applications now, or you will be completely overmatched as social technology gets woven into the fabric of the Internet. And beyond that, focus more on finding your fans, since they and their friends and friends of friends will be your most important asset in this new world.

Additional Note: Facebook announced it is further opening up its interface to outside developers. This reinforces the ideas in the report about how the social networks are becoming more deeply embedded into the total Web experience.