This is a perfect case of viral marketing meets social media marketing meets, well, probably a stupid decision.

George Murphy, Foster Web Marketing’s SEO and social media marketing manager, was interviewed last week in an article by the Baltimore Sun on the power of social media marketing.

The article also featured a young Baltimore native who was brave enough to get a Twitter whale tattooed on his body (which is making pretty big headlines). I wonder what his return on investment will be.

Some great quotes from the article:

“With Twitter and Facebook, the power of it is just amazing. I’m constantly blown away by this world,”…. “How quickly you can get people to respond, to react, to become aware of something. … It underscores how no business can ignore this.”

“Be personal, share personal stuff on there so that people can relate to you, and they’ll actually pay attention to what you’re saying,” he says. “Nobody pays attention to you if you’re self-promoting most of the time.”

“Why not? It doesn’t cost us anything.”

“And as unpredictable as Twitter is as a Web traffic generator, its route to the bank is even less direct. But based on what Malis has seen so far, he thinks tweets just might pack profit potential.”

Proving a return on investment when it comes to social media marketing is always an obstacle, but considering that the only investment that you’re making is the time that it takes to setup and manage a Twitter or Facebook profile (spend maybe an hour a day), I’d certainly say it’s worth it.