If you think social media is a fad, you’ve got to watch this video. Social media is a biggest shift since the industrial revolution.

Statistics prove that social media is bigger than you may think. The “Social Media Revolution” video, released on YouTube by Socialnomics less than 1 month ago, has already been seen over 130,000 times. This creative video (below) includes a wide variety of statistics, set to music, that taken together are quite powerful. If you haven’t seen the video yet, it’s definitely worth a look for small business owners, authors, speakers – anyone who is involved is marketing. And if you work for a company and are still trying to convince your boss or partner of the value of social media marketing, you might want to gather them together to watch too.

With the Internet there are so many ways to get your business exposed and the most visible way is to create viral videos to be shared on sites like YouTube.  It isn’t as hard as it sounds, either. We’ll talk about two simple ways to create videos for sharing on the ‘net.

One quick way is to create a slide show presentation in Microsoft PowerPoint using Camtasia Studio.  First you create a compelling, eye grabbing headline or title for your video. The content should have 6 to 8 benefits of your product or service – reasons that will compel your visitor to stay with you until the end.

At the end, tell them where they can find out more and then physically point an arrow to the live hyperlink, which will be next to the upper right side of the screen.  Now, do any final tweaks in Camtasia and don’t forget to add a watermark with your business name and your website URL (or a phone number if you don’t have a website yet).  This can easily be uploaded to YouTube now where it can be viewed by anyone.

The second kind of video is a talking head type, which is very quickly done with a digital video camera like a Flip Mino.  Outline a short, 2–3 minute message about your service or product.

Then set up your camera and shoot.  Edit and upload it to YouTube, Revver, Vimeo and other video sharing sites and then spread the word.  It’s just getting too easy to share viral videos on the ‘net to not use it as a viral element to your online marketing campaign.

Once you’ve stuck your toe in the water with one or more of the many social networking sites, you’ll be ready to take it up a notch and use instant video conversations you’re your target audience via Seesmic.

Where Twitter gives you that fairly instant connection to others through microblogging and FriendFeed enables you to tie all of your social networking feeds into one, Seesmic takes it one step to the right by making a nearly instant video connection available between you and your prospects.

The creators of Seesmic wanted to make the online social scene more personal by adding the visual element.  With the video capability, the possibilities of networking with others in your niche are massive.

Once you have established an account with Seesmic, you can begin to network with hundreds of others, sharing questions and answering them on specific problems or tasks your target audience is dealing with.  It enhances your expertise.

Seesmic is like a video forum or discussion board where you can start a thread much like any run of the mill “text style” forum – only you have the benefit of seeing and hearing real people complete with body language.

Do you need instant input on a product you’ve developed that you want consumers to see in action? Flash it up on Seesmic to get great feedback almost instantaneously.  Do you have an idea that needs massaging in a virtual “think tank?”

Throw it out there on Seesmic and “see” other people’s reactions.  Do you have a favorite topic that has to do with your line of work?  Let others get in on the chat and benefit from their insight while they get to see what your slant is, too.

Seesmic won’t replace Twitter or YouTube, but it has and will continue to establish its own corner on the ‘net for entrepreneurs and business owners to network and share information with instant video conversations.

Spreading your message to a target audience is easily done by utilizing various social networking sites where you create a page full of content and publish it so the public can see. What’s difficult is getting your demographic to spread the word for you.

You want your message to infect the web similar to how good news travels in a city about an amazing restaurant. You want people to blog about it, mention it in forums, email one another and post blurbs on Twitter for you.

You can ask them to do this for you – that’s one way to get word of mouth. But there’s another method many business owners use to create a buzz for their websites or business on the ‘net. It involves creating and releasing viral publications.

Viral content is that which you create and turn into a PDF document (so that others can’t alter it), and then allow others to give away to people they know. They can post a link to the report for you via Twitter, Squidoo, Hub Pages, emails, or post it on their website.

The benefit isn’t just for you. While you’re enjoying the increased traffic to your website or pages on social networking sites from inside the pages of the viral report, the person who spreads your report link gets praise for giving away good content to people who look up them for their insight and advice.

But not everything can go viral. You have to create a report (or video or audio – it doesn’t have to be text) that makes people want to spread it. That means is needs to pack a punch when it comes to value. Don’t try spreading anything with poor writing or all fluff and filler but no substance. Make sure people will be able to rave about it when they pass the link along, and it will continue spreading over the World Wide Web for a long time to come.