Utah Search Engine Optimization | Utah SEO » Social Media Marketing

Local Utah SEO & Social Media Content Marketing Presentations

admin — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 18:12:05 +0000

I recently had the opportunity to present locally at two different events. Both presentations are similar in nature but tweaked slightly for different audiences. I discussed content marketing topics and using social media to aid your SEO efforts via content. I’ve posted the slides below:

Social Commerce Exchange

SLC Entrepreneur Meetup

Social Media Analytics – SMX East 2010

admin — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 16:33:05 +0000

SMX East 2010 was a great conference this year. I had the honor of presenting on social media analytics with @RavenPratt. While his presentation focused more on qualitative data, with regards to conversational marketing, my presentation focused more on quantitative data with regards to social content promotion.

As promised, I have shared my presentation here:

AFFCon 2010 Presentation: Affiliate Marketing With Social Media

admin — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 17:49:48 +0000

Link Building with Linkbait – Pubcon Dallas 2010 Presentation

admin — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 19:11:54 +0000

Affiliate Marketing with Social Media – Affiliate Convention LA 2009 Presentation

admin — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 18:14:46 +0000

301 Redirects with Social Media – SMX West Presentation

admin — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 00:13:52 +0000

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.

Social Media Expert Quiz

admin — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 03:02:13 +0000

I recently created a quiz for my company which I will be developing a case study for soon to explore what happened with this viral marketing strategy.

I scored 96% on it! How addicted are you?
96%

This quiz was provided by – Search & Social – Media Experts

The Unwritten Laws of Social Media

admin — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 01:05:59 +0000

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

Social Media Taught at School

admin — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 02:58:09 +0000

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
What is social networking trying to do? Most of the applications so far offer one or more of eight features or functionalities. http://blog.fastcompany.com/archives/2006/08/15/social_networking_a_status_report.html
Lots of people have opinion about Twitter, ranging from a complete waste of time to the indispensable connector with your community. What is Twitter? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter or http://twitter.com/
What is an RSS feed? http://www.fastcompany.com/about/rss.html and http://www.whatisrss.com/
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/
Be familiar with the following Social Networks:

Final Thought:

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.

Ultimate Social Media Resource List

admin — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 03:29:50 +0000

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.