Here Comes Social Media Optimization?

[EmergenceMedia]

Hello All,

Considering how link building for Buzz, Word of Mouth (WoM) and SEO are melding together, I think we SEOers need to take concrete steps to incorporate Social Media as a important element of WoM and SEO. So follow SEO folks, what are we doing?

Note: Apologies for the "article style" of this posting, but I'm just trying to layout where I am coming from.

Partly addressing this, Rohit Bhargava of Ogilvy Public Relations did a posting trying to define "Social Media Optimization (SMO)" :

"While I believe in the power of SEO, there is a new offering we have started providing to clients which we call Social Media Optimization (SMO). The concept behind SMO is simple: implement changes to optimize a site so that it is more easily linked to, more highly visible in social media searches on custom search engines (such as Technorati), and more frequently included in relevant posts on blogs, podcasts and vlogs"

Rohit set forth to declare 5 Rules of SMO:

1. Increase your linkability (Rohit's Rules 1-5)
2. Make tagging and bookmarking easy
3. Reward inbound links
4. Help your content travel
5. Encourage the mashup

Other's have followed suit, expanding his rules:
- Jeremiah Owyang has added Rules 6 and 7:
- Cameron Olthuis has added Rules 8, 9, 10, and 11:
- Lee Baker has added Rules 12 and 13
- Lee Oden has added Rules 14, 15 and 16

Your's truely has done the same at Emergence-Media , taking a thematic approach.

So what do you guys think? Is it time for make a SEW Forum on SMO?

[toprank]

Hey Daniel, I think the impetus for SMO is similar to what's going on with the new media press release template, or hRelease. It makes information available in formats that appeal to a variety of audiences and also considers SEO.

Social media is gaining enough attention now that corporations are getting the hint that in order to reach the "social media generation", they will need to pay attention to how their information is distributed and found outside of traditional means. The added bonus is that performing "SMO" also affects your "SEO".

The "SMO rules" meme that you cite is basically a set of guidelines on how to behave within the communities that are affected by social media.

What I think is interesting is the application and movement towards the creative side of search marketing - as in creative content optimzation and linking. There may still be a place somewhere for algorithm chasing, but as people change the way they search, connect and interact with the web, search marketing will change with it.

[rcjordan]

# Increase your linkability
# Make tagging and bookmarking easy
# Reward inbound links

That functionality is why blogs blind-sided the search engines, particularly on linkpop. Trackback and blogrolls automatically and programmatically exploited what was assumed to be a manual 'vote' for a site.

[toprank]

Here are two new SMO tools for blogs or web pages we're going to launch in the am. Pardon our dust as we make a few remaining tweaks this evening.

To encourage bookmarks without taking up too much screen real estate, here's a Social Bookmark Tool. What makes this different than version one is that it puts your favorite bookmark links into a dropdown menu to conserve space.

Another tool for freeing up more of the blog screen space is the RSS Button Maker. This one shows a single orange RSS icon and when you move your cursor over it, an array of RSS Reader icons fold out.

Feedback is welcome.

[EmergenceMedia]

Originally Posted by toprank

Here are two new SMO tools for blogs or web pages we're going to launch in the am. Pardon our dust as we make a few remaining tweaks this evening.
...
Feedback is welcome.

Isnt providing free and unique tools one of the hallmarks of good Social Media Marketing?

Great Stuff Lee.

[SEMBasics]

I like the tools, however, I would I'm not crazy about the look of the Social Bookmarking drop-down tool. Would it be possible to make it look similar to the RSS Button Maker (i.e., orange, but with a Social Bookmarking logo -- I've seen people use a plus sign for this, although I don't know if that is standard).

On a different note, are there any good resources for best practices on the different social media sites? There are so many of them and each have their own "rules". For instance, it seems to me that Wikipedia could be intelligently used for some quality inbound links, but I don't know how exactly (some vague ideas, but nothing concrete). How does one best use Digg and del.icio.us? What about the other sites?

All the best,

Moshe

[toprank]

Thanks for the feedback Moshe, we'll certainly take a look at your suggestion. We're making a number of refinements and ideas for new tools as we get feedback from different users.

As far as Wikipedia and tags, one of the better resources for that is the session held at Search Engine Strategies. Here's coverage of that session from the last SES conference over at Search Engine Roundtable.

[SEMBasics]

Here is an example of a RSS feed that I think is well done: http://selfinvestors.com/tradingstocks/

What I like is:

1) It is attractive

2) It gives "instructions"

3) It has icons of the more popular RSS feed readers and text links to the others.

4) It is clear and easy to read and use

One feature that I would like is a link at the bottom which says Click here for more feeds... This link should then lead to a page which has a well organized, easy-to-read and complete list of RSS feeds (same goes for Social Bookmarks). This list can be updated as new feeds and social bookmarks become available (or obsolete). That way one could offer their visitors almost any Feed or Bookmark while not having the button become unwieldy (i.e, the button would be for the most popular and/or relevant feeds and bookmarks and the link would be for the less popular or relevant feeds and bookmarks).

Thanks for the great tool.

Be well,

Moshe

P.S. Thanks for the link on Wikipedia and Tags.

[SEMBasics]

P.S. I forgot to thank Denis de Bernardy of Semiologic Pro (http://www.semiologic.com) for pointing out that RSS Feed button to me.

Here is a link to report about tool for submission links at social bookmarking resources http://www.mavericksocializer.com/free-report.html

And all 5 rules are really great.

[toprank]

SEMBasics, that is a nice RSS tool. Thanks for pointing that out.

trickyone, that page you linked to is, ah, interesting and maybe a tad obnoxious, don't you think?

[SEMBasics]

I just saw (most of) an interesting video which Andy Beal pointed out on his blog. The video is for the new version of Omniture SiteCatalyst. They now supposedly include the ability to track the benefit of appearing on social media sites. Sounds like an interesting idea. With all the hype of SMO it is worth finding ways to actually track the benefit of appearing on these sites. For instance, perhaps it's benefit is short-lived, or doesn't reach targeted customers, etc. Sounds like there is room for new tools in this area, especially since SiteCatalyst is supposedly expensive (at least that's what Andy says on his blog, I haven't actually checked out their software package).

[MeatBallSundae]

I think one area that really gets neglected in Social Media campaignsw is understanding exactly how the social networks people are trying to advertise with work. Good web design / multimedia and interesting content will of course attract attention, but if it is not appropriate to the network the users will bury it.
A good concise summary of all of the social media networks and how they work plus all of their advertising services can be found here -

http://www.demonzmedia.com/DemonzBlog/?p=7

Other than that I think timing is really important, as well as uniqueness. A well timed social media campaign that focuses on a current issue will tend to do better than one that shoots into the dark.