- Make tagging and bookmarking easy: Don’t make users try to figure out how to add
your blog or site to their content feed. Instead, make it easy by a function that generates
the necessary URL or code for visitors to add you to their important links. There are tools
available to help with this, including the RSS Button Maker: http://www.toprankblog
.com/tools/rss-buttons/.
- Reward inbound links: People who link to you want something in return. If you can
provide a link to them in your blog, blogroll, or some other area of your web site, people
and companies will be much more likely to link to you. Just remember to keep the links
into and out of your site directly related to the topic of the site.
- Help your content travel: Having traveling content means having content that can be
accessed from another site easily. If you have content that many people will be interested
in, consider making that content available in PDF format or as an audio or video file. Then
when users want to spread your content, it will be easy for them to do.
- Encourage the mashup: A mashup is a web application that combines data from more
than one source into an integrated experience for your site users. For example, if you make
it possible for others to embed your content in their blog or web site in exchange for a link
back to you, you’ll find that your popularity climbs faster than if you won’t let them move
your content from one place to another.
- Be a user resource, even if it doesn’t help you: Today’s Internet users, and most especially
those users who participate in social media and social networking, will expect you
to provide information that is useful to them. If you’re not providing that information,
they’ll go to someone who is. So, call it being a Good Resource Ambassador, but try to
help people without expecting anything in return. Your returns will come just because
your actions proved your site’s worth.
- Reward helpful and valuable users: Helpful and valuable users will be the best help you
can have as you’re working with your social-media optimization. Find a way to reward
those users so they’ll continue to be helpful.
- Participate: If you don’t participate, your thoughts and opinions will not be welcomed
in a social-media network for long. If you’re going to leverage the power of social media,
you have to be willing to participate.
- Know how to target your audience: Audiences can be tough. If you approach the wrong
audience with the wrong message, you’ll be slaughtered in the court of opinion. Before you
make that kind of mistake, take the time to learn who you’ll be in the community with.
- Create content: Content is one key to social-media marketing. If you make it a point to
create fresh, unique content regularly, visitors will come to you because they know they
can find the information they need.
- Be real: Social networkers can spot a fake nearly as quickly as they could spot a threedollar
bill. Don’t try to con your audiences. Eventually, they’ll catch on and annihilate
you. Be who you are. That will get you much further than being what you think others
want you to be.
- Don’t forget your roots, be humble: When you participate regularly in social media,
you may find yourself in the position of being considered an expert. Many people will let
this distinction go straight to their ego. Just remember, someone one else was on top yesterday
and will be tomorrow, so treat the people around you as you would like to be treated
when you’re not the talking head of the moment.
- Don’t be afraid to try new things, stay fresh: One of the greatest benefits of social media
is the ability to use your creativity to do something different. And in social-media optimization,
creativity is often rewarded with better traffic and higher interest.
- Develop a social-media optimization strategy: As in SEO, you don’t want to be wandering
in circles as you’re trying to optimize your social-media presence. Develop a strategy
that keeps you on track and helps you target the social networks that are most closely
related to your topic.
- Choose your social-media optimization tactics wisely: As great a marketing tool as
social media can be, it can also be the most detrimental practice you institute. If you use
the wrong tactics in a social-media forum, you can expect to find your efforts worthless.
You can also expect that it will be very hard to rebuild the trust that you destroy.
- Make social media optimization part of your processes and best practices: Socialmedia
networks require constant participation. And as with SEO, that means ongoing
efforts — daily. Integrate your social-media optimization strategies into your daily SEO
workflow.
Bhargava and the other social-media experts who put this list together are people in the front line
of SEO and SMO (social-media optimization) every day. These guidelines will help you begin your
optimization process. And if you follow them, you’ll be well on your way to gaining all the value
available from social networks and social media.
But there are also other guidelines that might be helpful as you try to follow the guidelines just listed.
Some are technical in nature, and others are simply a matter of etiquette:
- Spend some time listening to your audience before you join the conversation. This time
allows you to gain an understanding of the language, the tone, and the expectations of
conversations.
- As you begin to participate in social networks, monitor what effect your participation is
having. Watch closely at how you’re received, and track your site metrics at the same time.
Sudden jumps or dips in your metrics can point to participation that works, or doesn’t.
- Use what you learn to craft your social-media optimization strategy. You have to have one.
Use the information that you gather as you’re watching and listening on a social network
to ensure that your strategy is targeted properly.
- Deliver content that will add to the conversation. If it doesn’t add anything, the other participants
will roast you faster than you can burn a marshmallow at a bonfire.
- Use RSS feeds to enable your content. RSS feeds will instantly update anyone who is watching
your content and that’s good for you. It means that your links will spread faster than
anything else you could have done to share them.
- Social media is all about relationships. Engage and encourage participation. Build relationships.
And think of it from the aspect of “what can I give?” instead of “what can I get?”.
- Choose a theme related to your core content that is actively being discussed online. And
stay within that theme. Include articles, webcasts, videos, or whatever else works well with
your theme. And try to look at the theme from different angles. That’s the key to opening
discussion, dialogue, back links, and all the things that go into making someone want to
pass on what you’ve got to offer. If you choose something no one is talking about, you won’t
have any results.
- Approach social-media optimization as an individual. You can’t approach others in a social
network as a corporation. Corporations automatically garner suspicion (as in, “I know you’re
here only because you want to sell me something”).
- Develop content that will appeal to the networks in which you participate, both from an
audience perspective and from an information perspective. If you are trying to market to
a 30-something soccer mom, having the 50-year-old male CEO trying to get her attention
isn’t going to work. But you can hire a 30-something soccer mom who will have the right
perspective.
- Consider hiring bloggers or other social-media participants. If it makes sense to use socialmedia
marketing for your organization, you may have to devote a large chunk of time to it
each week. If you don’t have the time to commit to that, consider hiring someone to do
it for you. At ComputerWorld (http://www.computerworld.com) a whole staff of
freelance bloggers helps to keep news current and related to the industries in which it
appears. If they can do it, you can, too. Hiring a blogger isn’t usually as expensive as you
might think. You can usually pay them anywhere from $10 to $50 per post, depending
on the industry.
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