SMO (Page 2. Contd)
Here is a very short list of some of the most popular sites for social media optimization:
Facebook & Myspace: The most popular Networking sites on the web. You got to have your presence in them. I prefer Facebok to MySpace because of the clear and sophisticated interface. Create a profile - company profiles are not allowed.
You can create your company Page, Groups. Make sure you keep page/group active and updated. We see so many inactive pages. Some of Facebook's Pages - Dell, The Chris Moyles Show, Yahoo!
With Facebook opening up its platform you can now create wonderful apps/ widgets. Which could run on Facebook's platform. Thousands of companies benefitting financially and virally through Facebook's apps.Twitter: The famous micro blogging community. Twitter is a free social messaging utility for staying connected in real-time - send your updates through your cell or web. You can update your Facebook profile, if your subscribers are based in US, Canada, India they can receive your update as text message on their cell for free. There are excellent apps created for twitter like - Thwirl, Twitterfic, iTwitter, TweetDeck Another must have account.
Some Twitter accounts - Barak Obama, Reuters, CNN, General Motors, Dell,Digg: Digg is a user-driven content site where members can vote, bury and comment on stories submitted by other members. Getting onto Digg's front page often results in thousands of visitors flocking to your site and can have lasting ranking effects.
A story can only be submitted once, so craft your titles carefully. Also, don't forget to embed the "Dig This" button on your site so users can easily submit content for you.Del.icio.us: Del.icio.us is a Yahoo-owned social bookmarking site. Del.icio.us allows members to publicly save bookmarks using tags. Don't be afraid to tag your own content. All links are nofollow so you're not getting link love, but you may get clicks and direct traffic.
YouTube: The second most popular search engine, the most popular video site on the Web. With Google's Universal Search - you see You Tube videos in the Search Engine Results Page's.
Make your own Channel, customize your page, upload videos, link it from your site/blog - emails, embedded the video on your webpage, track your vide through 'Insight' (Video Analytics Tool) to view user.StumbleUpon: StumbleUpon acts as a discovery/recommendation engine and match users with Web sites, videos, images, etc. based on their interests that they may have been previously unaware of.
Flickr: The widely used photo-sharing site. Owned by Yahoo!. One of the key reasons for using Yahoo!'s Flickr and Google's Picassa is that in the image search of these search engine - more often than not they use images from their own photo sharing sites.
Wikipeadia: Wikipedia (a combination of the word wiki and encyclopedia) is an on-line copyleft encyclopedia that is constantly evolving and can be edited by anyone. False Notes, Spam will be deleted by the ever-active editors. If you are a regular offender you could also be blacklisted.
Use it sensibly, create company pages like - Kongregate, Facebook. Think of it as a information page rather than advertising page. Note - Wikipedia uses No-Follow rule, so links from Wiki are carry no link juice.There are thousands of Social Networks on the web in fact every site now tries to create a social environment. For comprehensive list of Social Network visit Wikipedia's List of Social Networking websites.
Phase One: Once you know your goals and where you want to submit, your next objective is to be linkable. This is by far the most difficult and the most important step in any SMO campaign. To be linkable, you must create content that is worthy of being linked to and make that content accessible to users.
One of the quickest ways to make your content more accessible is to allow tags and to add a "Digg This", "Add to del.icio.us" or Technorati chicklet to your Web site and RSS feed. By making tagging and bookmarking easy for users, it encourages readers to submit the content for you. This not only helps to increase readership, but it also builds your site-wide community.Phase Two: The second part of the linkability process is the hardest part of SMO. You must create something unique, compelling and worthy enough of being submitted and linked to. One reason why this is so difficult is because you can do anything. There are no boundaries.
Make sure you don't create fake profile and generate spam. This has more negative effect than positive. Users tend to vote against you. Think long term rather than short. Before you start with your campaigns, make sure you have as many friends as possible than start the optimization.Though SMO could drive in traffic, It does not necessarily mean covert. Don't expect your sales to jump. If you earn your revenue by page vies than SMO is great for you. But whatever type of business you're in adopting the new media is a must to thrive in this ever-evolving digital world.