This “Marketing Matters” column by Paige Henson ran in The Telegraph (Macon, GA) today. Read to the end to find the special invitation code to an awesome new social media website!

 What’s Not to Like

With the vast sharing capabilities now available online through social bookmarking, tagging and syndication, the way we promote products has changed dramatically.
The very colloquial nature of word-of-mouth advertising and online information sharing with friends, relatives and others lends an astonishing level of credibility and power to marketing messages.
Think about it this way: You are much more likely to visit a new restaurant if a friend recommended it than you would if you merely read a review about it.
One promising new Web site rising out of this word-of-mouth phenomenon is Likaholix.com, developed by a young married couple once employed at Google, where they worked on the development of high profile projects that include Gmail, Google Docs, AdSense and Google Video.
Since launching the beta site in March 2008, Likaholix has seen a whopping 3,000-percent growth in registered users, a startling testament to the wave of interest that sharing sites like this can generate.
Likaholix is super easy, fun and intuitive, allowing members to share, comment on and visually depict “likes,” and passions — old or new — be it a movie, a book, a brand, a hand tool, a particular blog, a hotel, a classic poem, a geographic site … you name it.
Creating “likes” is quick and psychologically satisfying.
Just begin typing in the letters of a “like,” and a prompt will finish the word(s) for you. It will then allow you to choose from several photos and videos to post that depict your “like.” Your comments about your “like” are personal expressions about it that create a kind of cathartic effect.
Like the popular NetFlix site, personalized recommendations for new “likes” based on your existing, posted ones are pushed to your Likaholix homepage for consideration, and the likes of others, which are visible to you, can also be added to your own list with a mere click.
If you want, your Likaholix choices can be displayed on your FriendFeed, Facebook and/or Twitter pages, creating an even greater reach.
Consider the marketing potential of sharing at this level.
One of the site’s founders, Bindu Reddy, tells me: “We hope to enable discovery and recommendations for pretty much any type of thing.”
The words “discovery” and “recommendations” used in this context herald in a new era of dynamic, word-of-mouth advertising.
One of our staff members accepted an invitation to the Likaholix site in early March and, soon after, all of us had joined and became addicted, finding it in many ways more satisfying than any social media experience to date.
Because the site is currently in a limited private beta stage, Likaholix founders have allowed me to give readers of this column a special invite code to join: http://likaholix.com/signup?token=PH
Enjoy! And let me hear from you.