Success in a social network is less about the number of individuals friending a certain page and more about the creation and viral spread of brand-related content. It is crucial that the team behind the endeavor think about creating content users want to share, and being sure that the technical infrastructure is optimized for this sharing.

For example, marketing groups might want to let users pull web content off of the company site and onto their social networks. Great videos are relatively easy to repurpose, and with a snippet of code are available for the world at large. The good news is that it could be successful, and suddenly people everywhere are viewing the site. The bad news is that if it's not set up properly, the content can be pulled off of the company's servers, instead of the file itself propagating. In this case, there are considerable risks, such as drastically increased bandwidth charges from the hosting provider, or performance impacts as unprecedented numbers of users access their servers.

The best bet is to work closely with the IT staff to make sure that the site is optimized for content sharing, or consider other alternatives. Uploading the content to YouTube minimizes the risks of inordinate traffic breaking the bank or bending the backbone of the site.

Another approach is to store content in a format that lets users share it easily. A services oriented architecture (SOA) can facilitate the movement of content without causing the tech team to perform coding gymnastics to free data.