Your guide to Social Media Optimisation
As the internet grows and progresses two of the buzzwords that seem to be thrown around at the moment are “web 2.0” and “social media”. But what exactly are they, and how can they be used for your marketing, SEO and link building benefit?One way of explaining social media could be to break the phrase down into its constituent parts: “social” (where people gather) and “media” (a flow of information). So social media is a web based phenomena where people gather to share and upload content, and to exchange information.
Web 2.0 is usually assumed to be an extension of social media, where content is shared and also rated; this rating of UGC (user-generated content) often takes place to produce top 10’s and rankings of content, allowing the “wisdom of crowds” to take effect.
Over the next few days I will be looking at a variety of social sites in order to determine their usefulness, if any, to the MD/marketer/SEO that is looking to cultivate a niche in this cutting edge area of the internet.
The first site is one that has been around since 2005, and is probably the most popular social site on the web: YouTube.
YouTube
By far the most popular video site on the web, YouTube has become a hub for people looking for video content on the net. The site has videos on subjects ranging from sport, old TV programmes to music videos, and everything in between. Users simply record their video onto a digital format, register with the site, then upload the video. Videos are tagged with titles and keywords that refer to the content of the video, and allow it to be found when people are searching.
YouTube allows users to leave comments on each video page, giving the site an interactive element. There are great opportunities for promoting your site on YouTube; anyone can upload a video, all you need is a camcorder and PC.
One good example of people utilising the site for marketing purposes is the SEO companies, both UK and US, which have capitalised on the thirst on the web for internet marketing information by uploading SEO tutorials onto the site. Some of these information videos and tutorials are scarcely useful; many are basically cheesy, badly made sales pitches. However, many useful and informative, providing useful SEM tips for beginners and advanced practitioners alike. Some SEM videos have received as many as 500,000 views; to get that visibility on most websites would be either very expensive or involve a very long wait.
The comments feature of YouTube gives a good opportunity for enagage your customers, and to get them talking about your industry and company. Just hope you’re comments are positive! Another aspect of the interactive element to the site is the ratings system. This allows viewers of your video to rate it (out of five). This influences where it is found when someone does a search for a video containing your keywords.
With regard to link building, there are no direct links to be gained from YouTube for search engine benefit. If you have a YouTube channel, where users can store all the videos they have uploaded in one place, you can put a link back to your website, but it is "no followed" (meaning that the PageRank benefit of the YouTube will not pass onto your site). Of course the link may still be of benefit due to the traffic and brand exposure ir brings.
Setting up a YouTube channel is a good idea if you are looking to put up a series of videos related to your sector or business. The main benefit of YouTube channels from a marketing perspective is the ability to find subscribers to your content, who get updates each time you add something new. This tool definitely adds to the community building aspect that is so central to web 2.0 and social media marketing. It allows you to communicate with an audience that has signed up for your content, so is in other words a “permission asset” (to borrow a term from Seth Godin) to be utilised to its full extent.
So you can see that YouTube provides much scope for promoting and marketing websites and companies, and is, for most firms, an untapped resource. So why not dust off that camcorder and get filming, and take advantage of the ability to reach an audience in a cutting edge way.
Well that’s enough for one day. Come back tomorrow for the next social site analysis.
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