This means that Facebook will charge $375 per year for an application that is verified. If your application is verified you get the following:

Badging

• A verified badge graphic displayed on your application’s About Page indicating that it has been verified by Facebook.
• A special icon displayed next to your application in listings within the Application Directory.

Distribution

• Increased allocations for requests, notifications, and emails.
• Increased visibility for News Feed stories.

Advertising

• $100 of Facebook advertising credit.

Events

• Discounted registration fees to events like f8, Facebook’s Developer Conference.

In my opinion this an excellent example of platform type sites that have open APIs in order for other developers to build upon and if the applications are successful (Facebook applications are a great example) the platform is able to associate a fee for the applications to be ‘verified’.

This seals an application and its authority on the website and seperates it from many of the applications that are a dime a dozen.

For more detailed information on the process and policies to become verified please visit the Facebook Developer Verification area.

There are alot of questions when it comes to social media marketing and what are the best approaches. Some like to dive right in by choosing a technology platform that has some type of measurement capability while others take a more conservative approach.

When it comes to strategy in social media marketing I would like to highlight 5 key building blocks to consider.

1. What is your identity?
2. Who do you associate with?
3. User conversation.
4. Platform conversation.
5. Face to Face conversation.

1. What is your identity?

First things is first, when you place yourself or your brand online you need to define your identity online. If you are fortunate to not have an online presence you are in a territory to begin the shaping of your identity as you want to communicate it. You can begin by signing up to a few “profile” type websites that allow for personal and business branding. Good examples of this is:

• LinkedIn – http://blog.linkedin.com/2008/03/20/company-profile
• Facebook Business Pages – http://www.facebook.com/business/?pages
• ClaimID – http://www.claimid.com

Once you setup your brand profile in these website begin to populate the profile with brand specific content and messaging. A key aspect is to make sure your branding is consistent as possible among all profile sites a key to any marketing initiative.

2. Who do you associate with?

Once you have created your online identity the next steps naturally progress to the aspect of association. Who do you befriend? Who chooses to be friends with you? Are you targeting a specific niche within your interests or industry? Are you going outside of this to reach a different demographic?

From experience I tend to befriend people that I find from within site specific searches that are relative to my industry. For example on Twitter, I choose to search for a specific keyword within Twitter that is relative to my industry and begin to seek out those that I have associations with or would like to have. Then I begin to associate myself with this circle. This will begin to shape itself over time to a specific audience. Some great examples to use are micro-blogging tools such as:

• Twitter – http://www.twitter.com
• Plurk – http://www.plurk.com
• Utterli – http://www.utterli.com

3. User conversation

Next next step is to search out to see the current climate on your brand. What are others talking about your brand. I simple google.com search will typically extract some conversations. Other buzz metrics you can find about from a search on technorati.com from a blogging standpoint.

Ultimately you need to listen to others and enter the conversations to support or argue the positions. This begins to give your brand a voice online and for others to respond to it.

The best places to do this listening is by going to blogs, message boards, forums, and group sites. Some examples of these kinds of sites are:

• BlogCatalog - http://www.blogcatalog.com
• Board Tracker - http://www.boardtracker.com
• Yahoo Groups – http://groups.yahoo.com

4. Platform conversation

Another channel to listen to others as they speak about you or your brand is to go directly to the place where user clamor such as large social networking sites that have specific groups within the networks. One aspect to consider is the demographic the social network has when you are listening to it. As some social networks have not only various age groups but also different regions. For example, Facebook is extremely popular in Canada (more so than in the USA). While MySpace is the king in USA, it isnt as influential in South America where sites like Orkut is popular in South America. Bebo and Hi5 are more dominant in Europe and Asia.

Either way, you must tap into the conversation from within these platforms. I have mentioned a few already here is a few more contemporary (as of today) platforms to consider.

• Consumating – http://www.consumating.com
• Mashable – http://www.mashable.com
• Multiply - http://www.multiply.com

5. Face to Face conversation

Social Media Marketing consists of alot of online engagement however at its core as humans we interact on a face to face basis much more effectively than in a virtual enviornment. That is why a major final building block is the actual face to face and networking opportunities that you can position yourself and your brand. Thankfully there are many resources within the social media world that allow you to monitor and choose to host or participate in an event. Some examples are:

• Meetup - http://www.meetup.com
• Upcoming – http://www.upcoming.org
• Eventful – http://www.eventful.com

Each of these three examples is an excellent place to tap into the opportunity to meet face to face and continue your online brand to the real world. This is a key aspect of social media marketing. The online brand and persona that you choose to create must be transparent enough to leverage in real life situations. This will solidify your brand and persona and allow you to merge social media marketing to its fullest potential.

One of the earliest blog post was by Kristen Nicole over at Mashable.  Where she covers Ping.FM as a place to update your ‘lifestream’. At the time only Twitter, Facebook, Jaiku, Tumblr and Pownce were supported. Now, Ping.FM supports so many sites that I had to register for a few just to round out my collection of profiles within the social world because with tool, I can actually aggregate all of my accounts and post status’ and blog posts directly from one location. Ping.FM.

What is amazing is the fact that it is still so simple and the functionality is in its infancy, I am curious what additional components they will add to be able to update their social ‘network’ of sites.

Currently the supported sites are:

1. Twitter
2. Facebook
3. Plurk
4. Pownce
5. MySpace
6. LinkedIn
7. Tumblr
8. Identi.ca
9. Brightkite
10. FriendFeed
11. Jaiku
12. Bebo
13. hi5
14. Mashable
15. kwippy
16. Xanga
17. Rejaw
18. Friendster
19. Delicious
20. Yahoo 360
21. Koornk
22. Multiply
23. Yammer
24. Flickr
25. Utterli
26. Blogger
27. Plaxo Pulse
28. LiveJournal
29. WordPress.com
30. Diigo
31. YouAre
32. Custom URL

All of these social networks can be categorized as either:

1. Status Updates
2. Micro-Blogging
3. Blogging

What is great is you can also create a ‘trigger’ which is basically a hashmark type control for specific social sites that have been added to your network. For example, If I want to target only the top micro-blogging sites such as Twitter, Pownce, and Plurk, you can create a trigger #top and select from your list of sites only those three and then when you place your comment you place the trigger at the beginning of the comment and it only updates those three sites.

This is an awesome way to ‘channel’ messages to a certain audience within your network of sites.

Lastly, does a service like Ping.FM have ways to be able to post to all of these outside of logging in to Ping.FM proper? This is the ace card that really got me excited. Ping.FM has methods to allow a user to post from the following channels:

1. AOL Instant Messenger
2. Google Talk (GTalk)
3. Yahoo! Messenger
4. Windows Live Messenger
5. iGoogle Gadget
6. Facebook Application
7. iPhone Web App
8. Mobile App (WAP)
9. Ping through SpinVox

What’s great is this list still is incomplete as I still wish there is a Blackberry application.

Ping.FM is an amazing tool that I believe will catch on like wildfire as there are more and more social network and micro-blogging websites that has various audiences and to have a central dashboard to communicate to all or a specific audience will be an invaluable tool for early adopters and businesses.

I am curious to hear what competitors are out there such as Ping.FM that are similar or better.