This is a guest post by Dan Zarrella, social and viral marketing scientist. He has put together a viral content sharing report and below is an expansion and exploration of some of the data uncovered by that report.

The research I did on viral content sharing shows that frequent users of social web technologies like Twitter, blogs, and social news and networking sites tend to share online content with more people, more often than those that do not. This means that for marketers these users can be a powerful vector for making content go viral.

While this may sound like some what of a “duh” statement, the concept of “influencers” has been much debated recently. While there is data that individuals give more attention to content passed to them from friends as opposed to A-list bloggers, the fact still remains that there are segments of users who spread content more prolifically than the rest. And by their very nature as savvy social media users, these viewers engage in online activity that makes them easy to target.

We know that people who read Digg, Reddit, Propeller and the like tend to have higher viral reach and sharing frequency than those who do not, so make sure your content appears on these sites. The same applies to those who read blogs, and use Twitter. When it comes time to seed your content, be sure to put it in the path of these extra-contagious users.

An interesting detail of this data is that while frequent users of Facebook and web forums share content with more people and more often in some aspects, generally they’re not as virulent as the users of less-mainstream technologies (with the exception of blog readers). This may be due to the fact that users of sites like Twitter and Digg tend to be early adopters, as opposed to the less-geeky Facebook audience; which seems to indicate that geeks share more content online than non-geeks.

When I segmented these high reach and frequency users, I found that they displayed useful preference trends. When compared to average web users they share more content via IM as opposed to email or Facebook messaging, and they share more news and opinion than humor. When these users share content one-to-one with their friends, they prefer blogs and social news sites to mainstream sites, but that aversion to mainstream media disapears when they share in a one-to-many fashion (broadcast sharing like submitting to Digg, blogging and Tweeting). Again as these users are important viral seeding vectors, we should listen to their preferences and give them news or opinion with short, clean links ideal for instant messaging, and lay off the “funny” email chain letters.

This is a small part of the large data presented in the full report I did on the results of my survey, if you want to know more, be sure to read the rest of my viral content sharing report.

Dan Zarrella is a social and viral marketing scientist, you can read his blog here or follow him on Twitter here.

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[Special guest post for Friday fun from none other than my daughter. No, really.]

Everyone thinks their dad is weird. But I, on the other hand, know my dad is totally crazy. He does this thing called “Social Media” or whatever. I can’t even count the times that he’s tried to explain it to me. Don’t get me wrong, I mean my dad is amazingly cool. All the ridiculously hilarious (and usually meaningless) videos on YouTube that have come out within the last 30 seconds, he knows about and feels necessary to show me and tell me about it.

Back to this Social Media (or whatever) I’ve started to understand. Started. It’s a bit hard to grasp at first, that’s why I’m stuck writing about how I absolutely know nothing about anything, I mean writing about what my dad does and how he knows everything about everything. So all the time, I hear my dad talking about this thing called “Plurk” and “Mixx” and “Digg” and whenever he brings these things up, I suggest making a parody of them called “Crapp“. But that never really works out.

Basically what I know about his job is that he talks to a lot of people all over the world, makes websites cool and popular (relatively speaking) and gets paid for it. Seriously. I suppose their might be more to it, but with my youthful ignorance, I see this job as a cakewalk!

And so, one day, I decided I wanted to help…boy was that a good idea. Right now he’s clickin’ and clackin’ around on his laptop, no doubt reading over my shoulder in the office. And I’m just silently frustrated, wondering why my dad couldn’t have a scuba diving equipment store, or drive a boat or at least own NASA. But, no, he does the boring job. Which really isn’t so boring once you think about it.

What do you call it when you get 20 Plurkers together on one thread, all discussing the same subject in detail for an hour or so?

Why it’s a Plurkshop, of course.

The number of Plurkers can vary, I’ve seen Plurkshops that had around 5 people doing most of the talking, and others with 40 or 50 people, all discussing the same subject.

Plurkshops can be on any subject, we’ve had discussions on blogs, CSS, marketing, social media, security, second life, and more. To date there have been 13 Plurkshops; the 14th, coming up this Tuesday, August 12, will be discussing the benefits and challenges of switching your blog to WordPress.

Because you have so many people, all typing at once, Plurkshops can get more than a little confusing. To me it feels like a big family dinner, where everyone starts off talking about the same subject, and then the conversation branches out, with Aunt Bertha and Grandpa Fred talking about one part, while Mom is talking to Aunt Sarah and Uncle Tim about something else, and Dad is shouting to Cousin George (whom everyone, except Cousin George, knows is a little hard of hearing) trying to catch him up on the original topic.

If you’ve ever watched While You Were Sleeping, the dinner table scene is a great example of a Plurkshop.

Yet in spite of, or perhaps because of, all the different conversational threads, Plurkshops end up being very educational. It is especially enlightening to read the summaries afterward because there are almost always threads of discussion that I missed while the Plurkshop was going on.

Paul Chaney, who writes Conversational Media Marketing, donated Plurkshops.com so that we would have a place to gather all the Plurkshop information. It is a great place to read summaries of past Plurkshops or to see what’s coming up soon.

Back when I first started using Plurk, someone asked if I could see a business use for it. My answer then was that I couldn’t, it seemed more of a fun site. Now, my answer would be yes, Plurk has definite business potential.

In fact, plurkshops.com and the link to an actual plurkshop are the first things I show someone who has a business when I’m telling them about Plurk. It has the benefit of not depending on as many variables as statistics from my own Plurk usage, and shows that Plurk can be used for more than just saying “Good morning” or talking about what to eat today.

Teeg is a Social Media Explorer who has been exploring the social part of the web since 1996, when she first discovered chat rooms. She details her exploration of various social media sites on her blog, SU Comments. She is also the author of the 10 Minute Guide to Plurk, a five part series that answers questions other Plurkers had when they were getting started.