That’s a powerful tool for many content creators. But there are caveats. Ning works best for companies that have already cultivated a community on blogs and in comments after stories.

Wired Journalists is one of the more successful Ning networks and is a good model to check out. What makes Wired Journalists work is that it has a healthy user base (this is key. A user base in even the hundreds is probably not enough), and it’s on a topic (getting wired for the new era of journalism) that spurs a lot of discussion.

Ning makes sense when you have a beat or a niche where people will want to carry on the discussion and create content without you. Any beat or niche that requires professional journalists to keep it going may not be the best for Ning. But for topics that people can discuss amongst themselves, Ning is an easy way to start up a dedicated, niche social network.

Combine a strong network with strong content and you have a winner.

Susan Boyle Videos To Exceed 100 Million Views — YouTube and singing sensation Susan Boyle demonstrates the power of social media. Virtually every media commenter and even my parents have seen the video of the unlikely Scottish singer blowing away the judges on “Britain’s Got Talent.” Social media has allowed Boyle to become a star.

News orgs that don’t understand social media risk being left behind. Social media is viral, and it’s the kind of grassroots marketing that any smart company wants to tap into:

The Susan Boyle phenomenon shows no signs of abating – in fact, one video tracking firm claims that momentum is growing behind the Scottish singer.

While the official YouTube video of the performance reports over 32 million views, tracking company Visible Measures is monitoring the statistics for all versions of the clip, plus fan responses and interviews. Their Viral Reach Database tracks views across 150+ video sharing destinations, including YouTube.

On Friday, we published metrics from the company that totalled 47 million views across 200 unique Susan Boyle-related videos. As of 10pm ET Sunday, the company has upped that number to 93.2 million views across 650 unique clips. Given the current viewing rates, the total count will almost certainly exceed 100 million views on Monday.

Can social media make us buy more cars? — That’s what Ford is trying to find out. They gave 100 heavy Web users Ford Fiestas (not yet released to the public) to use for free for six months. The idea is that people will tweet, blog and share their experiences all over the Web about these cars. It doesn’t cost that much money to loan 100 cars for half a year (these cars could become tester models when they are returned), and this could prove to be a great bit of marketing on Ford’s part.

This is a really interesting case to watch. At least no one can say Ford isn’t trying innovative ways to market. Will social media marketing prove to be more cost effective than traditional marketing? We’ll find out later this year.