SEO Tips - Social Network Marketing

SEO Tips

Email Tips SEO Tips PPC Tips eBuzz FAQ

Social Network Marketing

Like it or not, spam has given — and continues to give — email marketing a bad name; positive, ethical email marketers and campaigns often have to overcome the "spam stereotype" that's in many people's minds.

In much the same way, social networking marketing is going to need to overcome the prejudices that accompany it — the perception that marketers are trying to somehow take advantage of the social communities set up and run by users. The early SEO attempted manipulation of MySpace — which caused Google to discount wholesale any links from MySpace to any website — was the search marketing equivalent of spam, and search marketers must overcome that reputation just as email marketers have done and continue to do.

And they'll do it the same way: through building trust.

Social communities are about presence, they are about stories, they are about sharing. And if we are to do any marketing through them, we need to be aware of that basic foundation:

• Build a presence before you do any advertising. People who frequent social media sites need to recognize the name of the person making recommendations before they will listen to him/her.


• Be part of the community. Respond to other issues when you can, not just the ones that affect your business. Becoming a trusted resource goes a long way toward building trust.


• Take the necessary time. Social network marketing is not a quick fix. If you cannot become an active part of the targeted community, you will not build the necessary trust to be successful marketing to it.


• Be flexible. Videos, images, and other creative approaches are at the core of social networking communities. Make sure you use them as appropriate, and find new ways of interesting community members in your products or services.

Remember that in social networking sites, content is king more than ever. Getting your content onto these sites and getting it read is a challenge, but it's a tremendous demographic; a recent Search Engines Strategies conference noted the increase in the use of social networking sites as portals to the Internet, starting-places for all searches.

Here are just a few social networking sites you may wish to join:

• Squidoo: Despite what you may have read about the famous "Squidoo slap," this is still a viable place for content. You create a "lens," which is a snapshot sort of site, and then do two things: link to it, and change its content frequently.


• Facebook: The secret to Facebook is to build something useful and then to link to it from other sources. It's the usual content paradigm: if you build it, they will come. Provide useful and interesting content and you can be successful here.


• StumbleUpon: It's a bit of a hard landing, but we're told it's the second driver of traffic for SEOmoz, so worth a little effort. The key here is being sure to submit your content to the correct topic.


• Digg: News community with lots of comments on the stories; this site is known for some of the nastiest remarks online. It's not for the faint of heart. Submit links or vote on the ones there.


• YouTube: Everyone may well think they're John Cassavetes these days, but if you supplement your copy with images and video and place them out there, it provides linkage back to you for users who might not otherwise access your site.


• Flickr: Same idea as YouTube: tag the image content that goes here and link it back to your site and your copy.


• Slashdot: This is where all the cool kids hang out. Warning: if your content gets placed on Slashdot, make sure your servers can handle the traffic. Google the "slashdot effect" for more information.


• Yelp: Here's a geo-targeted site that does local business reviews.


• LinkedIn: A professional community that was originally intended to act as a sort of job-reference site. The content you place here is all about you, so can serve as a mini-resume to which (and from which) you can link.


• InkedIn: A social community for artists (primarily writers) run by the folks at the Burry Man.


• Technorati: It's a way to bookmark blogs; ask people to select yours as a favorite to get mileage here.


• Newsvine: You can submit stories here, but make sure that they're newsworthy and not just advertorials.


• Helium: In our view, the best of the content sites. Too many of them are used by two groups of people: 1) folks desperate to get links to their site who will throw up a paragraph or two and call it an article, and 2) beginning writers who put articles up so they can say that they're "published," no matter how awful the writing or inaccurate the content. Helium has a lot of content in a lot of areas, and while it's not strictly speaking fact-checked, at least an editor takes a look at it. It's a good place for your content to appear.


• Sphinn: a content site and community for Internet marketers. Lots of SEO information and opinions. Users have the option to "sphinn" the content found here.


• Wikihow: Just as Wikipedia offers information, WikiHow is a how-to site/community made up of user-generated content.


• Reddit: Submit or vote on links to determine what's popular online.

If you want to try social network marketing, take a look at these and other sites (new ones appear daily!) and see which one might work best for your company, your product, your service. Then behave responsibly.

In the social network marketing world, it’s all about trust.