Utah Search Engine Optimization | Utah SEO Consultant

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With social media it is imperative to be very meticulous about how you tread and interact in social communities. There are unwritten laws of the land in terms of participation, voting, noise, comments, shouting, sharing, and more. I want to talk about a few of the fundamental unwritten laws to educate any Internet marketers out there who are unfamiliar with social media but have a curious interest. If not cautious, you can really shoot yourself in the foot from the beginning of your social endeavors.

Social News Algorithms

There are many sites that are very keen to behavioral activity patterns as well as geo-location. Keep that in mind when having anyone vote or comment on your content. If having someone at your workplace Digg an article for you and they sign up, vote on your article, and don’t use their account for awhile then that’s HIGHLY suspicious activity. The reason why is because Digg will see that the IP address is the same IP address as you use or submitted your content with at work and the brand new account likely was only created to Digg that article.

You may have people ask “What’s wrong with that? I wanted to vote on that story so why should Digg (or anyone) care where I’m located or what my activity is?” Truth of the matter is that social media sites are always getting gamed or manipulated so they try to detect any similar patterns. A same IP address vote probably won’t hurt an article with 90+ various Diggs but if you had a handful of them when your submission is new and fresh then you can bet your threshold for your submission going popular was increased significantly to the point of it being almost impossible to go popular. This is especially true if you’re submitting a domain without a history of being popular in a social news site like Digg.

Community Observation

Aside from the algorithmic portion of social media, you want to observe the scene before you dive in anyway. Every site has it’s own audience with their own interests. Sure there are overlaps between Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, etc. users but there are a lot of loyal users who primarily stick to their favorite social media or social news site. If I wanted to read content on Apple’s new iPhone release I’d head to Digg over Reddit. Why? Because Digg users are Apple fanatics and while plenty of Reddit users are as well that’s typically not the topic of conversation over there.

Karma

Reciprocation is the key to success in social media. Nobody’s going to help you out if you don’t help others out. See who is Digging your submissions here http://sandbox.sourcelabs.com/tinc/ and reciprocate those who are helping you out. Submit the content of others to build credibility in the community. The point isn’t to just market your own sites but to be a valuable asset to the community. Once you have established that you have a LITTLE bit of leeway to submit your own content but most of the time that’s looked down upon and you could get your content buried for that.

Pushing

Pushing is the art of spamming the hell out of all your friends to get them to vote up the content of your site. This also may be known as “shouting”. You should use proper etiquette when doing so. Don’t just send someone on your IM list a link to your submission. Ask them kindly to review the content and they’ll know what to do if they like it. Address your email, shout, or IM to friends personally. They’ll take you much more seriously if they don’t feel it’s a mass contact template message for one of their submissions.

Going back to the algorithmic portion of this, be careful! Use common sense to determine whether you’re having people NATURALLY vote on your submissions or not. Social media sites have great algorithms that can detect mischievous behavior. It’s a bit suspicious if 100 friends vote on your submission within the first 10 minutes and then nobody else does thereafter. With that said, don’t just send people to the actual submission page to vote. Have them go to the category page, vote up some crappy content, and then vote on yours while they’re at it. There’s various ways you can do this so get creative.

Commenting

Read the comments on posts that hit the front page and see which comments got buried or down voted and which succeeded. Get a solid grasp on what kind of language, tone, vernacular, slang, and subject matter is appropriate for each site and each category of content. Give your comments meaning and put some thought to them. They don’t have to be lengthy to have a lot of thought. A catchy and humorous one-liner can raise a ton of up votes.

Monitoring

Don’t just submit and forget. Monitor your Digg comments with a site like Comments7 which will show you the kind of feedback you’re getting on your comments. Also, monitor if your submissions are getting buried on Digg with a bury recorder. Also, monitor your Digg submissions in real-time with Digg Alerter. With Digg Alerter you can see who is voting for your submissions and if any comments are being made without having to go back and check on your posts. In addition there is also StumbleUpon Alerter.

Final Thoughts

With social media marketing there is just a whole lot of trial and error. Read a lot about communities then observe them carefully before trying to use them for any monetization efforts. For further info a good read is: The Social Media Manual: Read Before You Play by Muhammad Saleem.

Utah Media News

Last year I wrote a post dedicated to the top 3 unsung heroes of SEO in 2007. They were: Marios Alexandrou, Bill Slawski, and Sebastian X. While Bill and Sebastian weren’t necessarily “unsung” I felt they still didn’t get the credit they deserved so I wanted to give them props.

This year there’s been some people really making it shake that I’d love to give my allegiance to and thank them for their efforts and contributions in the search engine marketing arena. While it was hard to choose just three top SEOs and Internet marketers, and there’s many many more, here’s the people who deserve a tip of the hat:

Ruud Hein

- Ruud’s Sphinn Profile

Ruud works at Search Engine People and has written some great blog posts over there. Starting back in January, he started a series of posts entitled How Search Really Works. These posts are unbelievable written well and ended up scratching the surface on the world of informational retrieval and phrase-based indexing. He really won my respect with this series because he demonstrated his in-depth knowledge in a manner that anyone could understand.

In addition to being a great SEO and Internet marketer, Ruud also is very fluent in Web development including server-side scripting.

David Harry

- David Harry’s Sphinn Profile

David Harry runs his own Internet marketing and Web development business with his wife as well as blogs on HuoMah.com. This year he has released a new edition of his SEO handbook that teaches people search engine optimization best practices.

David’s been offering Internet marketing and Web design services since about 2002. He his a huge contributor on Sphinn.com and almost always has featured content on the homepage. He is very talented in all SEM areas but has the keenest interest in:

• Personalized Search implications
• Phrase based and semantic search approaches
• Temporal ranking factors (content creation and link building programs)
• Social Media Marketing and Qualitative research

I asked David about his primary job role. His response was “I have a few really as I do still handle the managerial/financial aspects of Verve, our web design company. As such I get involved in tasks from technology plans to marketing ones, pricing and budgeting forecasts and analysis to SEO site audits and more. While I do still work in the implementation of the programs, more and more these days I work more in a consulting/planning/analysis capacity. I enjoy working on the larger planning/analysis areas which does tend to cut down on the amount of hands-on time I have available. I do still enjoy that aspect though and will always be down in the trenches to some extent as that’s where things are really happening…“

David author’s some great posts on his blog. Throughout the year he’s had some big hits but here’s his favorite three:

Social Search Engines – Another chat with Bill Slawski; Bill being one of David’s favorite people to talk to in the industry (besides myself) and social search being an area of acute interest.

The Value of Social Media Marketing (Part II) – This post had a variety of social media marketing people (including myself) helping out to answer some of the many questions that clients and cohorts had .

Link builders Guide to Historical Ranking Factors – While it may not be a sexy topic, understanding historical ranking factors is important and not discussed very often. David is hoping to do more in this area this year.

If you get a chance, shoot David an IM. He’s a great guy to talk to, very friendly, and is willing to talk SEO all day long.

David Snyder

- David Snyder’s Sphinn Profile

David Snyder has worked professionally in SEO about two years now. While fairly new to the game, he’s accomplished a lot in a short amount of time. He is the search engine strategist and Internet marketer for JRDunn.com, a blogger on Snydey Sense, and a contributing author at MarketingPilgrim.com. You can catch David speak at Search Engine Strategies Toronto very shortly.

David sees his strengths in four main areas and this is what he had to say about each area:

1. SEO - Realizing how to build a site with search in mind. Creating a
   well structured architecture around solid, ongoing keyword research.
   And creating a lasting link building strategy to move the site into a
   competitive placement.
2. Social Media - I think I see social in a multi-platform view, which
   is what it takes to be successful. A good social media campaign can’t
   be simply blogs or video or social networks, it needs to be an
   integrated and layered concept that builds upon itself.
3. Search Egine Marketing - I have strong background with running pay per click
   strategies with high ROI. I am a Google Adwords Qualified
   Proffesional, and led my last agency to Google Qualified Company
   Status
4. Content and Press Strategies - I know this kind of works in with
   “SEO”, but I find that a lot of SEOs have a hard time building content
   distribution networks whether it be for press or other content. This
   goes beyond link building as it also translates into a strong traffic
   generation strategy.

Three great blog posts from David this year are:

• Beyond Keyword Research: Competitive Analysis
• Beyond Keyword Research: Utilizing Analytics
• The Sport of Reputation Management

David is also a great guy to converse with. Keep an eye on him because he’s going to really make things in happen in these upcoming years.