It seems some marketers can’t shake off the “forward to a friend” mentality of email sharing and some don’t even insert a link to help recipients share content.

A recent report by email marketing firm Smith-Harmon found that nearly half of marketers don’t insert an option into their email communications that allows recipients to forward them to friends and networks. Even the basic “forward to a friend” (FTAF) option was not included by 46% of email marketers.

And what about the new kid on the block - the “share with your network” (SWYN) option? Well, according to Harmon’s report, “FTAF vs. SWYN: The State of Email Sharing,” just 6% of email marketers use this type of function. By not giving recipients the opportunity to instantly share email content with their social networks and via social bookmarking sites, email marketers are missing out on a far greater reach for their messages.

“As the folks at ExactTarget say, ‘Subscribers Rule!’” said Lisa Harmon, co-founder and principal of Smith-Harmon in the introduction to their 7-page, free report. “If we want our recipients to share our emails, we need to give them choices as to how they’d like to do so. SWYN does just that.”

However, it should be remembered that the key to success with any sharing or viral strategy is content. Without good content, any amount of prodding won’t get a recipient to forward an email.

Loren McDonald of Silverpop penned an article for MediaPost earlier this year in which he discusses what it is that drives consumers to share, and what makes content shareable. The article is worth a read, but to summarize:

What drives consumers to share?

Contributing to the conversation
Self-Interest
Altruism
Validation
Affinity
Prurience

What makes content shareable?

Trustworthiness
Tribal interests
Simple and obvious
Ease of sharing
Social acumen and adoption of subscribers
Creates value
Reward/Incentives
Content

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It’s been said that everybody’s selling something, and it’s fair for those sellers to point out that not a lot of merchandise moves when would-be customers don’t even get a chance to buy it.  But data from Hitwise indicates that content (as opposed to sales pages) may represent a great way to lure people in.

Yep, although the perfect website, from a seller’s perspective, might consist of one gigantic “buy now” button, Hitwise stats show that people are becoming much more interested in content.

Robin Goad reports that the market share of content-driven sites in the UK is 73 percent larger than the share of transactional sites.  That’s a pretty big gap, and what’s more, it’s been steadily increasing since about March of 2007.

So think about spending more time talking than hawking, even if your goods are physical items with price tags attached.

And, of course, this eye-opener will work out just fine for you if you’re in the business of creating content.  Keep it up if that’s the case, as things look set to continue going your way for the foreseeable future.

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If you try to reach people using videos, some new info from Yahoo, Interpret, Havas Digital, Warner Brothers, and PHD may be of interest to you.  Basically, it seems that people watch online clips a lot during the workday.

“Unlike television consumption, which mostly happens during the primetime hours of 8 p.m. - 11 p.m., people across all demographics are watching online videos consistently throughout the day and night, with the exception of dinnertime,” said Jason Kramer, Chief Strategy Officer at Interpret, in a statement.

We’ll let you decide how to best take advantage of this trait.  But videos that people will watch while they’re eating lunch at their desks are not always the same ones that they’ll watch during evenings or on weekends.

Consider the issue of not-safe-for-work content, for example.  Although it may represent a great way to catch people’s attention when they have the freedom to watch whatever they want, there’s no way they’ll watch it with their boss around the corner.  Or by the same token, something that they can watch in front of their boss might not stand out when they’re at home.

So you may want to make a two-prong approach of sorts with your promotional online videos.

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Study after study has indicated that individuals like to see other people’s opinions.  Forums, customer reviews, and stuff along those lines represent a great way of getting folks involved.  Now here’s the trick: not letting all that user-generated content screw up AdSense monetization.

A post on the Inside AdSense blog suggests that you start with some preventative steps.  Be clear about what people can and cannot write and post.  Ask them to sort and tag their content correctly.  And implement spambot protection if you can (the post recommends Googling that phrase for more info).

Then, it’s a matter of monitoring.  “Set up ways for your community to monitor itself.  For example, try adding a ‘Report inappropriate content’ link to your pages, to allow users to flag content for you to review,” the post suggests.

Also, “Proactively review pages, videos, photos, etc. with high pageviews on a regular basis,” and run spot-checks, searching for inappropriate terms, too.

Finally, the post recommends, “Create editorial policies and exercise moderator control in your comments, forums, and guestbook sections.”

User content can be great for a lot of reasons (including its price: usually free).  Just be careful that it doesn’t impact your AdSense income in negative manner.

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Some people treat their cars like appliances, just taking care of the basics, and this approach works fine.  But people who demand high performance consider the brand and grade of gas, the motor oil’s age, and all other sorts of stuff.  And with regards to websites, one of those important-yet-easy-to-ignore-details is your Web host provider.

One Web host provider is generally not the same as another.  Stoney deGeyter recently wrote about a whole list of issues that need to be considered, from cost to uptime to speed.  Also, think about bandwidth allotment, server load monitoring, space, email, and security.

DeGeyter stated, “You may not be concerned about your web hosting package today, but I guarantee you that you’ll be thinking about it the minute your site goes down or you are unable to send or receive email.  Over the years I’ve used almost a dozen different web hosts providers.  In that time, I’ve found only one or two that I feel I can trust completely.”

So do your research, reading reviews and even pulling out calculators as necessary.  (Think 99 percent uptime sounds nice?  That means 1 percent downtime, which translates to about 7.3 hours a month.)

All the SEO and marketing in the world can’t help a site that’s inaccessible.

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