Social Media Marketing

Here’s a quick list I’ve put together for upcoming social media conferences you might want to attend:

• ICWSM 2009 3rd annual conference in San Francisco in May ‘09 http://www.icwsm.org/2009/index.shtml
• Affiliate Summit being held in Las Vegas January 11-13 2009 http://www.affiliatesummit.com/09w_conference.php
• SMX West 2009 by Search Engine Land held February 10-12, ‘09 http://searchmarketingexpo.com/west/. I would highly recommend going to this one!
• Social Networking Conference in Miami, FL Jan. 22-23 ‘09 http://www.socialnetworkingconference.com/conference-miami-2009.php
• Search Engine Strategies in London Feb. 17-20 ‘09 http://www.searchenginestrategies.com/london/

So you don’t know which one you should attend? Which is worth it’s money or not? Yet you know you should attend one to learn more on social media. Here’s just a few tips to keep in mind when registering for a social media conference:

• Register early! You get the biggest discount for doing so.
• Know who’s speaking and what they are speaking about. If you can’t find this information on their web page, see if there’s a contact number or email to communicate with someone who can tell you this information or send you more information on it.
• If there’s a conference in your area that’s close and convenient, it will help save money. Remember, you’ll have the out-of-pocket expenses of a hotel, food for 3 meals a day, drinks, socializing, etc. See if someone at your company or a friend who may be interested in going wants to share expenses.
• If there’s only a single speaker or a few speakers scheduled in the same day, it may be worth you only buying a 1 day pass. A lot of these conventions are more about mingling and socializing, well networking, right?! You’ll meet people from other companies who do what you do or at least know what you’re talking about and you may be lucky enough to get to speak with the guest speaker and get a question or two in.

I was recently introduced to a social media blogging website for moms and find it very resourceful so I thought I’d share it with those reader’s who are mom’s. They call themselves the Mom Bloggers Club. You can create a profile, meet other mommy bloggers, advertise, join message boards, etc. Basically your typical social media site but for moms.

I was recently shopping for web designs and found a few people on this website and they even offer discounts for those who are members. Check it out today! http://www.mombloggersclub.com/

When it comes to link building, it’s important for your website to have a nice mixture of backlinks in your ”link portfolio”. And as we all know, it’s against Google’s webmaster rules to “buy” links so everyone scrambles to find reciprocal links and “do follow” links on any given website, preferably one that is within your own industry.

Well, I came across a list of ”do follow” links while I was reading a friend’s blog and I thought I’d share this site too with you. Click here to see this massive list of ”do follow” links. The list was published from a Tucson, AZ SEO company.

Squidoo is a social media website that allows users to basically create a free web page for their business or to promote their website. Knowing how to make the most of your Squidoo lens can make your lens out perform other lenses about the same topics. Squidoo is one of my personal favorites of social media websites.

 Here’s just a few tips on how to “optimize” your lens for search engines and to target the right audience you’re looking for.

• When creating the path for your lens, incorporate an important keyword as a part of the URL.
• Play around with the various modules the lens allows you to have appear on your page. Put the most eye catching and most informative modules to the top.
• Be sure to use anchor texts within the lens. Basically this means create a hyperlink on important keywords throughout the lens and direct that traffic into your main website and always direct them to the most relevant page on your site for that keyword. If your site is optimized, be sure you’re bringing the traffic in on the page that is being focused on for that keyword.
• Add pictures! Be sure your pictures are optimized as well. When naming the picture, incorporate keywords into the file name of the picture. Instead of the picture file being called pic1 call it what it is. If it’s a picture of a Carly Coach Handbag then name your picture when you save it “Carly Coach Handbag”. (Tip - this will help you optimize your pictures for image search)
• Be sure you have signed up for an Adsense account. If you haven’t, you can do that here. It’s free to have an account and you’ll make some money off of the ads that appear on your lens, not much but it’s something. In fact, my girlfriend makes about $100/mo. off of her Squidoo lens. When you create your Squidoo account initially it has a place where it will ask you for your Adsense account number. Be sure to enter that so you can get paid.
• Add a lot of content that is relevant and interesting. You can also link a YouTube video that may be relevant to your lens. Things like pictures and videos help capture and keep your audiences attention.
• Promote your lens. Let your friends and family know about your lens. Show it off!
• Check this page out. It’s basic HTML for Squidoo.

Be careful, these lenses are addicting to create. No matter what your reason is for creating a lens, have fun with it!

There are things you should be doing to promote your site and become a recognized authority site within your industry or niche. I talk about this kind of stuff all day long to my clients. Social media, social media, social media - You HAVE to participate! Here are some things you should absolutely be doing to network:

• Participate! Search for forums, blogs, etc. and join in the discussions. Reply to a post offering information that will come across as credible and knowledgeable. DON’T just go in to leave a link to your site. Leave a comment that might have the other members wanting to find out more.
• Network! Get to know others within your industry. Reach out to them. Ask their oppinions, compliment an article you may have seen of theirs. Ask advice.
• If you want to participate in blogs, try to search for industry or niche relevant blogs. Post comments there.
• Create your own niche blog. Get a following going. How? Be sure you’re writing good quality posts that are informative and helpful. Leave out the technical terms. Speak as if you’re explaining it to someone who doesn’t know anything about the business or industry/product.
• Do a guest post to attract attention to yourself. Expand on what someone has already written but compliment their knowledge as well so you don’t come off as a “know-it-all”.

Remeber, your site isn’t going to promote itself and it may as well not even be on the internet if you’re not going to promote it and market it. After all, would you open a store and not use a sign for your business? Would you go on word of mouth to attract business? Would you not participate in any type of marketing whatsoever and hope the flocks of customers come? NO!

It will take time. This won’t happen overnight. Hire someone (an intern or a p/t student) to do this legwork for you if you don’t have the time.

On Monday, Yahoo launched it’s newest website targeted at women ages 25-54 called Shine by Yahoo! The website targets the female audience with topics of interest to women like love, beauty secrets, parenting, etc. This is opens up new opportunities for the advertising aimed at women. Yet, another social media site targeted at a woman based audience. Sweet!

I personally tried clicking through yesterday from a link in an article I was reading. It was obvious there was some sort of glich because it brought me to flickr sign in. So I attempted again this morning when I got in to work. It’s pretty neat. There is a log in (using your Yahoo! login information). It then brings you to what I refer to as like a “home page” where I was exposed to articles on entertainment gossip (which I have to admit am a fan of) along with multiple categories displayed clean and neat on the page and my mail feature is available for me to retrieve my Yahoo! mail as well as my horoscope.

The main feature that I really liked is that you can create a blog on Shine to share with other members. Of course you can also click on others and read theirs as well. This is a great outlet to discuss what you want to with other members and of course my first and most important thought to utilize this as another way to promote my websites. I haven’t gotten that far yet to submit my first post however I will and I’ll report back on their linking, although I would think it’s safe to say they have “no follows” in place but that’s ok. It’s good to have “no follows” and there are some benefits out of those types of links.

If you haven’t  yet checked out Shine, you may want to go there after reading this post.

If you haven’t yet dabbled in article directory submissions, you may want to start incorporating it into your online marketing campaign.

Article Directories are a user-friendly collaborative collection of “news worthy”articles. Posting the articles(s) to these types of social media sites provides the opportunity and possibility for the articles to be picked up by multiple sites.

Some of these sites allows users to “vote” on articles as well. Some article directories take the articles that have the highest amount of “votes” and place them on the first page, or the home page of the article directory providing immediate exposure to all users who visit the site. Article directories also have an RSS feed and an end user can set up a feed by category or niche.

Now, even more of a benefit to get out of an article directory, getting the “do follow” and the “link juice” or “link power” back to your own site. So not only do you distribute an article in hopes for a mass pick up, but you also obtain a natural link. So who offers “do follow” links and who doesn’t? Here’s ten article directories I was given by a good friend that have “do follows”:

1. articlecube.com
2. articlealley.com
3. ideamarketers.com
4. goarticles.com
5. freearticlespot.com
6. articlebasement.com
7. tweako.com
8. finditt.com
9. merchantcircle.com
10. articlemarketing.com

Some well known article directories with No Follows are Zimbio are Squidoo but I definitely wouldn’t discount their power. I have tested the both of these sites for my own websites and though I haven’t quite figured out the power I get from them, there’s definitely something there.

For example. I put up a brand new website and have only obtained 7 back links. So what I DO have going for me is that I have optimized the site as much as it can be. But I am subject to the famous “Google Sandbox” right? And it’s not like I have an incredible amount of back links. Yet, I rank on the first page of Google for MANY of my terms and including my #1 top keyword with 1,740,000 competitors! What have I done? I have joined forums, I have submitted articles to a few article directories both no follows and do follows, I add new content almost on a daily basis and I have on page SEO.

If you haven’t already heard a new search engine “community” launched today - topicle.com. (not “topical.com) 

It’s creator? A former Google product manager, Steffen Mueller.

Topicle.com allows their users to create their own verticle search engine and submit URL’s to it.

 How does it work?

• Users create their own verticle search engine. Check first to see if the “category” or “verticle search engine” has already been created. Seems like they should have thought about eliminating duplications. If you see one has already been created then you just add your URL to it. To do this you simply select the search engine by clicking “browse by name” at the top. Then locate the search engine and click. Then click on the “Edit” tab and then click “add URL’s”.
• Users can then add their own URL or multiple URL’s into that verticle.
• Users may also “rate” URL’s by selecting the “Rate URL’s” tab found within the specific search engine.
• The more they get rated and searched, your “popularity” increases and those that are most popular show up under the “Most Popular” tab.

I knew that there would be many visitors today since it is the 1st day it launched live to the internet. This morning somewhere around 650′ish verticle search engines had been created and now at 3pm PST there are 809. It will be interesting to see my Google Analytics tomorrow and moving forward to see if I got any traffic from the curious visitors to Topicle.com since I’ve landed myself on the “most popular” tab.

Vote Up Countdown – Design Diva Fabrics 

Design Diva Fabrics have been doing what they love the most for over 30 years, seeking out the finest quality of fabrics and trims worldwide. You can find designer fabric names like Scalamandre, Versace Home, Brunschwig & Fils, Clarence House, Cowtan & Tout, Ralph Lauren, Old World Weavers and many more superior quality designer fabrics including the most recent addition, David Ross Fabrics.

Design Diva Fabrics is now jumping into the social media wave head first. Design Diva Fabrics has incorporated what they call “Vote Up Countdown” to reach out to their customers and get them involved hands on. They have taken the concept similar in those sites like Digg and Sphinn and are letting their customers take charge in discounting the cost of the fabrics.

Here’s how it works. When a registered user logs in to their account, they can vote on their favorite designer fabric. A user can “vote up” as many fabrics as they would like but you can only submit one vote per item. The fabric that receives the most votes goes on to the count down mode where the price then begins to drop by the second, making the price of the already discount fabric even cheaper to the customer.

From a social media marketing perspective, this not only is going to create company branding and open up the door for an increase in sales but it will also create the opportunity to build up natural back links to their site by allowing the customers to place the widget on their website. (Great for SEO)

 Seems these days the presence of a recession is becoming more apparent in just about every way of life, marketing and advertising NOT excluded.

With the economy down, individuals not spending money, homes foreclosing, jobs being lost, and companies going under,  it’s not a suprise that companies that are making it (or just barely staying afloat) would begin to explore different avenues and find means to make their advertising budgets stretch more than they’ve ever had to and likely more than they ever knew it could.

As the availability of marketing dollars decrease, advertisers are seeking out non-traditional avenues of marketing like social media applications online, holding their breath and hoping for the best.

In the meantime, companies are finding social media outlets are panning out to be useful marketing tools. Creating funnels like word of mouth campaigns, branding products, and getting the online community to interact is exactly what sites like Sphinn, Digg, and Facebook are accomplishing.

While these types of leads and traffic may not generate as many clicks that will lead to conversion, I still firmly believe it’s an avenue worth exploring.