It seems like there’s an over-abundance of social sites nowadays. For a newbie, it can be quite intimidating when first joining a network or two and building a community. A handful of questions may run through your head:

• Which networks to join?
• How to participate?
• What’s enough, or too much?
• How will it help my business?

So, to answer some of these, I’d like to present my “Social Media For Dummies” overview. First, a quick recap of my favorite networks and what they’re about.

Facebook - The ultimate platform for keeping up with (stalking) friends. I joined Facebook way back in 2005, you know, when it was just for college students and before you could even share photos (gasp!). I’ve witnessed the evolution of this mega-network over the years, and it has become, not only the 4th largest website in the world, but the best place to find people, keep up with them, and inform them. It is the son of Classmates.com on every possible steroid ever ingested by humans. The ability to share and communicate with friends and colleagues is seamless. Overall, Facebook is a great place to start your social networking endeavors. Continue Reading »
Social Networking for Business Guide

Twitter is a wildly popular microblogging service. It involves writing Tweets, which are short updates of a maximum of 140 characters that tell your followers what you are up to. Although your Tweets are technically supposed to answer the question, “What are you doing?” Twitter has moved far beyond that. Tweets are used to share stories, link to photos, promote content, break news, and a whole lot more. Twitter has also become an incredibly important tool for social media marketing professionals. Here are 12 ways in which Twitter can be used in your social media marketing campaign.

1. Sharing Links to Items of Interest

As soon as you read something online that you think is interesting, it is easy to share it on Twitter with all of your followers. Twitter is highly effective in this manner because it is such a quick way to be able to reach a large group of people. You can also get a lot of great ideas for blog posts from Twitter since many new ideas and stories are floating around that haven’t even made it to the blogosphere and definitely not to mainstream media. Continue Reading »
12 Ways to Use Twitter for Social Media Marketing

Around the middle of last month I took a phone call from a friend who runs a similar web design agency to ours, with a request for help in putting together coherent SEO/SEM packages for seven of his clients. Before we met, I looked at his clients’ websites and found there was much to do.

When looking at the SEO, virtually all of these sites used keywords in the title that had been plucked out of thin air; most of them had no relationship with the copy whatsoever. With research, we made recommendations for changes in both title and on-page copy. The easy part was the SEO; the difficulty was then to educate the client about how they need to be involved. The feedback from one company was instant and unusual: they accepted our recommendations without question.

In the good old days of directory submissions and the like, SEMs had the sole responsibility for search engine marketing. Not any more. Today, it’s about providing advice to clients on writing press releases and articles, on-site blogging, and how to get involved in social media marketing, together with tweeting. Continue Reading »
Is It Our Job to Educate Businesses in Tactical SEM?

Barack Obama started using social media and the marketing gurus went “Oh my God, he’s a genius, now all we have to do is use his name to promote this and voila, clients will be lining up to buy social media marketing (SMM) services“. Well, it didn’t quite happen that way. And the wonderful case study that was “Presidential candidate Barack Obama” became a not-so-active name on various online portals including, Twitter, where from November 2008 to May 2009, his twitter update has had five posts. Yep, only five posts in six months.

So what is happening in the Social Media world right now?

Well, first of all, social media website use has exploded with millions of people using popular Web 2.0 applications such as Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, and dozens of others. I personally “play” and “work” on many, but my favorites remain Twitter and Facebook. Continue Reading »
Where’s Social Media Headed?

Monitor, monitor, on the wall, “Who’s the most Internet Famous of them all?”

Wired.com has launched a new, free service for everyone who wonders how Internet famous they currently are.

It’s called the “Celebrity Meter.” It won’t tell you how whether you have celebrity friends, but it will let you know - in rough numbers - how much of an online celebrity you are.

Wired’s Celebrity Meter launched in beta this morning. The program uses data from Google’s Social Graph service to see how many people are following you on MySpace, Twitter, and a personal blog/site. It takes into account things like incoming links and number of friends or followers to give you a numerical score — which you can then compare to other big names in the blogosphere and across the Web in general.

We know Jason Calacanis, Robert Scoble and Mike Arrrington will be battling for the top spot.

Wired writes, “Of course, it’s not a complete view. The measurement doesn’t account for FriendFeed, Facebook, or a lot of other social services just yet. But it’s still hard to resist giving it a whirl.”

Social Media, Social Networking, Leveraging Web 2.0 - it’s known by many names and it’s all the rage!

Let me start by saying I am a fan of social media, I personally choose to participate in social media. However when you read about social media, you often only hear one side of things - the message is clear - Participate or miss out! And while I do believe that is true, I think it’s not always that simple.

There is so much to read, so many different opinions. It can be overwhelming. First you have to decide which sites to participate in and then you have to create your account and learn how to participate. It’s often confusing.

 I am not saying this is an excuse not to participate. In fact I am writing this article to provide some helpful tips so you can participate.

I think attention to the details is really important, so I want to cover all the small items that people aren’t really talking much about.

Facebook: I started on Facebook as a way to connect with old friends. I had all kinds of games and the crazy apps (applications) that Facebook offers. When I started networking for business I realized that all my business connections were going to have access to all of this personal information - photos, wall posts, they’d know which Sex and the City character I was most like (if you’ve spent any time on Facebook you’ve likely seen this app on people’s profiles).

I understand that using social media to open up and connect with people is one of the benefits. Allowing prospective clients to get to know you helps build trust and relationships.

But do I really want people to see every little silly app I mess around with? Do I want them to see the crazy pics from high school that have been posted?

Ultimately I decided to clean off some of the silliness that wasn’t really important to me and I left the rest. I figured if I’m opening the door and letting people peek in, there is no point in censoring anything. So I jumped in and started adding “Friends” that were business connections.

Of course, if you are only using Facebook for business, then you don’t have to think about these issues. If you do plan to use it for both - just spend a few minutes thinking about what you do and don’t want to share.

 Twitter: Make sure you think about what name is best for you. I chose EcomBuffet (my company name) but have now realized that people are searching for me by my full name and not finding me. I would have been better off choosing my name. Not a major issue, but something to consider if you haven’t picked your name on Twitter yet.

There are varying opinions about how often you can Twitter (or tweet) and not annoy people. Some people say once per hour, others say once a day. There is no hard rule about this. You do want to consider it carefully though. If you tweet too often, people may get annoyed and stop following you all together, or just remove their cellphone updates. That means when you have important updates, people aren’t going to get them at all or as quickly as they could have. You want to find a balance. For me, I have been tweeting about once a day. On some days when I have more to share, I may tweet a few times day. Every time you tweet, ask yourself if it is really information people will want to know. If you are sure every tweet is useful and serves a purpose then you can tweet a little more often. If it’s fluff and all self-promotional, then you should probably do it less (or not at all some may say).

Social bookmarking buttons: There are so many buttons you can add to your articles for people to bookmark or vote for your content. Digg, StumbleUpon, RSS Feeds, TwitThis etc - My concern is that we are adding so many different options and people become so accustomed to seeing them that they ignore them. And with so many buttons people may get confused and just ignore them. I don’t know what the solution is for this yet. I previously wasn’t using any of these buttons. I realize I am missing out because of that, so I am now going to selectively use them. I don’t have a perfect plan in mind, I am just going to play with using some of the more popular ones and see what happens.

MySpace versus Facebook: There is a lot of confusion about the MySpace versus Facebook issue. The general consensus is that MySpace has been trashed and isn’t worth the time. That isn’t entirely true. There are still people making money off MySpace. The key to remember is that MySpace is a younger crowd with a lower income and Facebook has a higher income and is older. The best thing you can do is study both - see what others in your industry are doing, see how you see yourself fitting in and most importantly, come up with a plan. So many people just jump in and set up a profile and then don’t know what to do next. Just being there doesn’t mean the money is going to pour in. You need to engage people, you need to come up with something that people will want to see, hear or read.

 Is it too late to join now? The answer is no! Studies show that most of the social media sites are growing in popularity and traffic and participation is increasing month over month. Just remember, the rules change as these sites evolve, so be sure you are current on what is and isn’t acceptable participation.

Check it out; see how you think you can fit into the space. But remember it’s not all about how you will benefit. If you don’t have something to provide (information, resources, insights, news etc) then people aren’t going to be interested.

How does all of this really help me make money? Consumers are much more educated and demand much more than they used to. We are all hit with so many sales messages daily; we start to tune them out. What used to work doesn’t work (or at least not as well). In order for your business to succeed and grow, you need to adapt.

People are looking for more information and companies they can trust. Selling has become more about creating trust and building relationships.

Social media helps you connect and establish trust. Any one social media activity may not lead directly to a sale in any given moment, but it helps you establish a presence online; and in your prospects mind. If you get yourself out there and share information, you will improve your following and have a base of people that trust you that you can market to.

That covers it for now. Keep the questíons coming in!

About The Author
Jennifer Horowitz is the Director of Marketing for EcomBuffet.com. Over the past 10 years Jennifer’s expertise in marketing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has helped clients improve revenue. Jennifer has written a downloadable book on SEO and has been published in many SEO and marketing publications. Jennifer is the editor of the popular Spotlight on Success: SEO and Marketing newsletter. Follow Jennifer and stay current on SEO, marketing, social media and more. http://twitter.com/EcomBuffet

SMO, or Social Media Optimization, helps build website traffic by using social media based websites. The dawning of web 2.0 has seen many different social media websites crop up in an equally large number of different guises. Content sharing, social bookmarking, and collaborative websites form the basis of this initiative and it is these types of websites that you need to use in order to leverage the power of the social web.

SMO as Guerrilla Marketing

The nature of Social Media Optimization is such that it could be considered a form of guerrilla marketing. Website owners and blog owners have the choice of either investing money or their own skills and time in order to generate traffic from social sites. As long as your efforts are directed appropriately, the more work you put in the more reward you will reap.

SMO as a Link Building Technique

Social optimization also has a happy side effect - it helps to build your link profile so you will usually gain search engine traffic in the long term. Becoming a part of an online community is essential to your social optimization and this, in turn, will naturally provide links to your website. The links will usually be from relevant pages based on a similar topic to that of your page. The more popular social sites are also given a lot of weight by certain search engines. Optimize Your Existing Site Create genuinely interesting, intriguing, or informative pages. Include images, links, video, and collaborative tools so that visitors really get involved when they do visit your site. SMO is basically digital word-of-mouth and, if your website doesn’t provide some kind of appealing experience to your visitors, then it simply won’t attract the positive word-of-mouth that you want. Add new pages, if necessary, so that you can include more information. However, don’t just add pages for the sake of it - ensure that each page really does have something unique to offer. A website still needs to be well structured. Get a Blog Add a blog. Every website has potential blog posts in it so find yours and start blogging regularly. Blog posts tend to attract links from other blog posts and those in turn will spread the word of your website. The more popular your blog becomes, the more value it is perceived to provide and the more visitors you will continue to get. Be active in those blogs that are within your industry and use your link where permitted and relevant. Don’t spam because that will lose you more friends than it will make but, if you provide relevant information and a forum or blog allows you to link to it, then provide an insightful comment and provide a link.   Be Active Being active is a vital part to your whole SMO campaign. Simply registering with social bookmarking sites and content sharing sites is not enough. You need to be involved, post regularly, and generally become a part of the community. If you don’t have the time or the inclination to do this, then find somebody else to do it instead.

Some Social Sites To Join

You really do reap what you sow in terms of SMO. Determine the sites that are most suitable to your website, join them, and become an active member. Choose some broad topic sites as well as some that are specific to those interested in the industry in which you operate or topic that you cover. Look at social news submission sites, content sharing sites, bookmarking, and networking sites and try to get a broad coverage of all of them. Here are just a few of the sites you should seriously consider using:

Social News/Media Sharing Websites

• Reddit - Reddit is a very popular social news website that boasts a lot of subscribers and covers a wide range of topics.

• Digg - Initially, Digg was reserved to technology and related topics but is now a broad topic news site that again has a lot of subscribers and regular readers.

• Newsvine - Not as popular as the two above but offering a slightly more formal tone to its content. Again, a good range of topics are covered.

Social Networking Sites

• MySpace - It may be largely riddled with spam, but there are still too many genuine users for you to ignore MySpace. You don’t have to be an unsigned band to take advantage either.

• Facebook - Has caused quite a stir and offers users the chance to create and distribute their own applications as well as content. Another very popular site. • LinkedIn - LinkedIn is a social networking site dedicated to professionals and businesses. It can really help to build a huge network of partners, customers, and other useful contacts in a business network.   Social Bookmarking Websites • del.icio.us - Register, store bookmarks that you find useful, and include a bookmark to your website and use a public profile. • Stumble Upon - Same again. Alternatively, you can add a Stumble icon to each of your pages, blog posts, and other media and let your readers do the walking for you. Buttons For Your Pages Many social websites provide a button that your readers or visitors can use to automatically add a page. Bookmarking and content sharing sites, in particular, have these buttons and, if you’ve ever read a website or an article site, then you will have seen the Digg This and Stumble buttons at the bottom of each entry. Users registered with these sites can click the button and quickly add your page. The most popular websites are usually displayed on the high traffic home pages delivering yet more visitors to your site.
Offering Quality

The Social Internet has opened up a whole new avenue for promoting your business, but it needs to be done properly and carefully. Simply tagging, bookmarking, and sharing every page you have regardless of its quality will not bring you the desired results. You may find that it does you more harm than good in the long run.