Archive for the '"Social Marketing"' Category
“Social Media”
The search engine marketing arena is buzzing with discussions on the importance of “social media”, i.e. sites where USERS are the main contributors to content generation.
These include:
Shared bookmarks and web pages (“Del.icio.us”, “Shadows”, “Furl”),
Tag engines, tagging and searching blogs and RSS feeds (“Technorati”, “Bloglines”), -
Collaborative directories (“ODP”, “Prefound”, “Zimbio” and “Wikipedia”),
Personalized verticals (“Google Custom Search”, “Eurekster”, “Rollyo”),
Collaborative harvesters (“Digg”, “Propeller” and “Reddit”) and social Q&A sites (“Yahoo Answers”, “Answerbag”).
In addition, there are increasingly popular video-sharing sites “YouTube” and sites that give users a personalized space on the Web with a blog, photo sharing etc.
Pandia has several articles covering social media and social search, but there are also sites out there dedicated to social media. Here are 3 of the best:
(Mashable is not as technology-oriented as Read/Write. The main focus is on social networks like Myspace, Facebook, YouTube, Bebo and Xanga).
The news coverage is extensive, and the blog is a must read for anyone interested in the future of the Social Web. The articles are well written and the blog is updated daily. Mashable wants to be a social network in its own right. Hence there is also a “Mashable Community” where you can make comments, add friends, upload photos.
By the way, there is also a “Grid” you can use to find Mashable friends on other social networks. Actually, you don’t have to be a member to make use of the grid. It functions well as a repository.
CenterNetworks say their site’s mission is to help industry professionals learn more about topics like social networking, Web 2.0, and social media.
Note the term “industry professionals.” This site has a stronger focus on industry development than some of the others mentioned here. That being said, anyone being interested in the Social Web will find articles and news of interest here.
“Social Marketing Optimization”
The concept behind SMO is simple: optimize a site so that it is more easily linked to, more highly visible in social media searches, and more frequently included in relevant posts on blogs, podcasts and vlogs.
Here are 5 rules to help guide our thinking with conducting an SMO for a client’s website:
Increase “Link-ability” - This is the most important priority for websites. Many sites are “static” - meaning they are rarely updated and used simply as a web-presence. To optimize a site for social media, - increase the link-ability of the content. Adding a blog is one way, others are, create white-papers and thought-pieces.
Make Bookmarking Easy - Adding content features like “quick buttons” are one way to make the process of tagging pages easier. An additional way is include a list of relevant tags, - suggested notes for a link (which come up automatically when you go to mark a site).
Reward inbound links - Inbound links functionally raise search results and overall rankings of a site. To encourage them, make it easy, and provide clear rewards. For instance, listing recent linking-blogs on your site provides the reward of visibility for those who link TO you.
Help your content travel - Unlike SEO, — SMO is not just about making changes to a site. When you have content that can be portable (such as PDFs, video files and audio files), submitting them to relevant sites will help YOUR content travel further, and ultimately drive links back to your site.
Encourage “Partnering” - In a world of where “creation” is everything, it pays to be more open about letting others use your content (within reason). For instance, “YouTube’s” idea of providing code so you can imbed videos from their site. Syndicating your content through RSS also makes it easy for others to drive traffic, (augment) your content.”