SMX West was great this year. I enjoyed hanging out with old friends and meeting new ones. The panel I did was on 301 redirects with Carolyn Shelby, Stephan Spencer, and Jonnah Stein.
While they spoke more on the technical aspects of 301 redirects I spoke more on how you can use them with social media to leverage higher search engine rankings and more link juice.
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.
So my mom and sister are driving me to the airport because I was on my way to SMX Social Media in Long Beach, CA. On the way they were asking me what the conference was about that I was going to. I was explaining social media to them when my sister pulled out a piece of paper out of her backpack and handed it to me. It was a study guide for an exam in a communications class she was taking that was all about social networks.
I was dumbfounded they were teaching about social networking in college when most all schools aren’t even teaching search engine optimization and the ones that do teach it aren’t teaching the best practices. My undergraduate degree was in Digital Media where we learned a lot about web design, animation, and accessibility so SEO did come up during our discussions. One teacher took 45 minutes to go over search engine optimization on Websites. Some of his recommendations included hiding keywords with the same color text as background, stuffing meta tags, and the typical spam stuff you’ve heard before. According to him, meta tags were one of the biggest things search engines looked at. I kept my mouth shut with a big shit eating grin on my face the whole time.
Social Media on TV
It’s amazing to see social networking going so mainstream. The other night on The Office they were talking about how they were making their Website “2.0″ and having a community on there to interact with each other. Unfortunately they faced the conundrum of pedophiles on the site…haha.
Social Networking Exam
Back to the exam…I am very impressed in the content of the exam. In addition to the exam, the teacher had assigned them to join, explore, and recap on 3 social networks over the weekend. My sister let me have a copy of the study guide so here it is:
COMM 1500
A ______ is a social structure made of nodes (which are generally individuals or organizations that are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as values, visions, idea, financial exchange, friends, kinship, dislike, conflict, trade, web links, sexual relations, disease transmission, (epidemiology), or airline routes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network
They use video and paper to make complex ideas easy to understand. They present subjects “in plain English” using short, unique and understandable videos in a format called Paperworks. http://www.commoncraft.com/
As you can see the exam looks pretty rudimentary and brief but a great step in the right direction to open up the world to social networking and social media Websites.
This resource for social media is a compilation of other great resources, tools, and Websites from around the Web to assist you in your social media efforts, efficiency, and comprehension. Whether your interest is in social media marketing or general social media participation this resource list is invaluable in assisting you in your journey.
I realize there may be quite a bit of overlap in these lists so please consider that. Do you have a resource that I missed? Email me and I’ll add it to the list.
I had the privilege of attending PodCampSLC today which is a podcasting, blogging, and vidcasting conference style of event where one go to sit in session to learn about various aspects of multimedia and applying it to a business model. Unfortunately, I didn’t catch the whole thing but I’ll share what I did learn while I was there mixed in with some of my own personal recommendations.
According to statistics from the Omniture Summit, which I was unable to attend, there will be 8 billion dollars of ad spend on social networking this year. This is a 75% increase from last year 2007. By 2011, 12% of ad spend will be completely devoted to social networks and social media channels. So what does this mean for you? Well it’s kind of an eye-opener to see where the industry is headed. Blogging alone won’t give you the pervasive coverage you need to make your voice heard. A rich mix of multimedia is pertinent to provide enhanced content to your audience.
Understanding Your Audience
Before even beginning to outline a strategy for your social media marketing deployment you must really understand your audience. This is easier said than done. We hear a lot of marketers preach about understanding you audience and understanding your community but how exactly do you do that? Well, if you don’t have thousands to throw at in-depth demographic research there’s a few things you can do.
Do some surface level demographic research with tools like Microsoft’s adCenter Labs and Quantcast to profile audiences that visit certain sites or are searching for certain keyphrases.
Conduct some brief surveys. The strategic deployment of this will be highly contingent upon your industry.
Use gut intuition. Personas are also a great way to classify stereotypical viewers of your media to taylor your message to them.
Different Multimedia Platforms
You might be wondering which form of multimedia you should be utilizing the most. I believe it was the CEO of Podango who was speaking when he layed out a pretty good rule of thumb. “Blog everyday, podcast every week, vidcast once a month.” The point is you need a good blend of media to really establish an audience from all different channels and platforms that have all different needs and desires.
The Impact of Multimedia on Search Engine Optimization
With Google’s Universal Search being such a large part of the search engine result pages (SERPs) it’s important that you have enhance media on your site to try to dominate some of the verticles that appear in blended search such as YouTube. This will allow you to own the SERPs while bringing in more traffic to your site.
The Impact of Multimedia on Social Media Marketing
Social Media thrives off audio, video, and imagery in additional to traditional copy. If all you’re doing is blogging you’re putting all your eggs in one basket. I’m not going to get into the four dominant personality types you need to be targeting but I will say that some of them respond differently to the same message in different format. If you really want to get all cylinders pumping then you need to outline a marketing strategy that’s transparent, pervasive, scalable, and robust.
Taking Shortcuts with Vidcasting and Podcasting
Between your families, work, hobbies, social network participation, school, reading, and learning I know the last thing you have time for is full blown multimedia production, right? Well rest asure there are a few shortcuts. For example, Buzzbooster.com was telling me about a service that submits your online video to 45 different social media channels and strips your audio and submits it in podcast format to a whole bunch of others. So you’re actually getting killing two birds with one stone but unfortunately I can’t remember the name of it. However, TubeMogul.com is similar one that is free and sends out to 23 different social media channels. In additional, there are services like CastingWords that transcribe your audio or video into text so you can post it in blog format and search engine optimize it.
Monetizing Multimedia
So you’ve done all this hardwork, have a big audience, now what? There are additional ways to monetize your media. Some ways are through:
paid subscriptions
paid sponsorships
lead generation
One point made was that Web users have been trained to expect content for free so paid subscriptions are often times harder to push. You can find paid sponsors but unless you have a massive subscriber base and audience then most companies won’t be interested in forking out the big bucks. There are residual benefits through branding and lead generation which requires an additional marketing strategy to meet your goals in these areas.
One Size Does Not Fit All
When a lot of people thing of social video they think of YouTube. It was reinforced at PodCampSLC that YouTube is NOT an end all solution nore a outlet for the highest amount or best quality of traffic. Other channels like Revver and BlipTV can not only be easier to get your message across in but provide more qualified traffic all depending on your goals, niche, content, and industry. YouTube tends to be more focused on a younger audience while Gather.com tends to be more focused to adults 40+ years of age.
Summary
So in order to be a good Internet Marketer you really need to get out there. Putting all your eggs in one basket is a surefire one-way ticket to failure in the long-run. It’s also improtant to note that widespread multimedia is not the solution for EVERY client or industry either. The Web is changing everyday and it’s highly advisable to break out of your traditional habits and embrace the future to come.
I recently guest authored a post on David Harry’s blog entitled “Social Media Pitfalls: 5 Lessons Learned“. In this post I discuss the lessons I’ve learned by diving into social media. My hope was that others could learn from my mistakes so they don’t make the same mistakes when getting started in social media marketing.
The reason this is so important is because social media done wrong can have some costly mistakes as far as reputation, time, and money wasted. So shoot on over to Huomah.com and give it a read. Hopefully it’ll help you out in your future endeavours.
Jordan Kasteler is a seasoned professional and an SEO consultant specializing in Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Social Media Marketing, and all aspects of Internet Marketing. He is currently available for SEO consulting and full-service Internet marketing through my SEO Firm BlueGlass Interactive.
Engine Optimization (SEO), Social Media Marketing, and all aspects of Internet Marketing. He is currently available for SEO consulting and full-service Internet marketing through my SEO Firm BlueGlass Interactive.
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Jordan Kasteler is a seasoned professional and an SEO consultant specializing in Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Social Media Marketing, and all aspects of Internet Marketing. He is currently available for SEO consulting and full-service Internet marketing through my SEO Firm BlueGlass Interactive.
