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Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Stumbleupon (SU) is a social media site that works a little differently from the rest. To use SU users need to download a toolbar from the SU site, which has various buttons on it that they need to navigate the application.
The first stage of using SU is to register your preferences. Users are offered a selection of topics and genres (such as technology, or sport) from which they select their preferences. These selections are used as the basis for the sites that will be presented to the user when they use the toolbar.
The next stage for users is to simply click the “Stumble” button on the toolbar. The SU algorithm then presents the user with a site that fits their preferences. Users then rate the site by giving it a “thumbs up” or a “thumbs down” rating, which is then used to help recommend the next site that is presented to the user when they click the Stumble button.
The tag line of the site is “the more you use it, the better it gets”, meaning that the more Stumbles you make, and the more ratings you provide, the more targeted and relevant the algorithms selections for you will be.
Users can also use the Stumble Upon toolbar as a form of social bookmarking. By surfing the web and tagging or submitting specific websites, each user can keep track of which websites they like and share it with others.
There are no direct link opportunities to be had from SU; the benefit to gained from the site is from traffic, and, as a result, indirect links. SU gives you the opportunity to Stumble your own site(s), which gives them the potential to be seen and positively rated by other “Stumblers”. As to the number of visitors that SU can generate for your site, numbers cited have varied from 10, up to the thousands. However, be warned, your site is unlikely to get a large amount traffic from the site if it is purely commercial. Like other social sites mentioned in this series, to get good coverage on SU, you need to be utilising original, interesting, useful content, even if it within a commercial site; SU users don’t appreciate blatant commercialism or promotion. Being innovative with your content is the key to getting good levels of traffic from the site.
Of course where there’s eyeballs to be had, there’s methods for artificially recreating the social element of the site. For SU, this takes the form of sites such as http://www.stumblexchange.com/, where SU users artificially Stumble each other’s sites. Do bear in mind that reciprocal Stumbling of this nature is frowned upon by SU. My own opinion is that there is nothing wrong with getting a few Stumbles from friends and colleagues to help you on your way. Mass reciprocal Stumbling, however, is not in keeping with the spirit of the site, and should probably be avoided.
As with all the sites mentioned in this series on social media, check your analytics to see which social sites are sending you traffic, and which are converting. Conversions are, after all, what matters. As they say, “traffic is for show, conversions are for dough”. Keeping an eye on your analytics will enable you to see any patterns that emerge with regard to which social sites seem to be sending you the most, and best converting, traffic. You can then adjust your strategy accordingly, and know which sites to concentrate on.
Get the basics right on social sites, keep experimenting with innovative content, and the odds are that sooner or later you will have a hit on your hands, bringing you untold links, traffic and publicity for your site or brand.
We at SearchPath are experienced in the world of SMO, why give us a call and see what we can do to promote your site on the social web.
Friday, February 13, 2009
Digg, along with its competitor Reddit, is leading the social news revolution on the web. The premise of the site is that users sign up, submit any sort of interesting/amusing/shocking/baffling news story or photo from around the web, and the other users vote for, or “Digg”, the content. The stories with the most “Diggs” get to the front page of the site, which is widely becoming known as one of the most valuable pieces of real estate on the web. Sites that have had stories on the front page of Digg have reported up to 1 million visitors coming from the site.
So what does it take to get to the front page of Digg? Well, having useful, interesting and informative content is the place to start. Don’t expect a press release about your new company premises to get many Diggs – the Digg community is notoriously anti-commercial. Anything that is seen to be direct advertising or promotion of a brand will not only be not “Dugg”, but it will also be “buried”, which is the Digg equivalent of voting down. This feature was introduced a few years ago in an attempt to stop spamming of the site, mainly by gangs of people all getting together and Digging each others content.
So to gain social news visibility you have to think of a way of promoting your website, brand or company in a non-commercial way. There’s the rub – this can be extremely difficult, especially if your business is everyday and prosaic. However, it can be done. For example, if you own a mortgage company, how about doing a “Top 10 Unusual Mortgages Piece”? Top 10’s, top 100’s and the like always tend to do well on social sites; they’re a common ploy to get good coverage.
For more inspiration, take the example of Quensland State tourist board in Australia. They came up with what has become known as one of the cleverest and most viral pieces of marketing recently on the web. They advertised a job on one of their plushest island resorts, paying 100,00 dollars a year, for very little work. The job advert caused a storm, crashing their servers due to the amount of people logging on and applying. It also generated millions of dollars of free revenue, as agencies such as CNN, the BBC and Digg picked up the story. The story received nearly a 1000 Diggs, which propelled it to the front page, giving it serious traffic from the site.
So if you get those creative juices flowing it is possible to generate some content that appeals to the Digg community. It just takes a bit of thought.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Perhaps one of the lesser know social sites, Yahoo Answers is a socially based question and answer service. Users sign up, log in, and pose questions on just about every topic imaginable, from aadvarks to Zen Buddhism, and other users attempt to answer them. People who answer questions well then get points, which boosts their score on the site.
The main marketing benefit to be gained from this site is from the link that the site permits you to leave at the end of your answer. Despite being “no-followed”, these links can provide traffic and branding for your company. It’s crucial to avoid spamming Yahoo Answers, however, for example by talking about your firm in every answer you give. The site has a real genuine community feel to it, and does not respond kindly to people bombarding them with advertising messages, in what is attempted to be a largely commercial-free zone.
The best technique, in my opinion, is to become an authority in answering questions in your field. So if your business is a travel company, start answering questions that you can help with in the travel section of the site. Start developing a presence on the site; aim to have a good number of “best answers” under your belt by the first few weeks. By all means, leave your website details, but do it occasionally, and only if it is strictly relevant.
The important part of the site in Yahoo Answers is building trust with the regular users of the site, and establishing yourself as an authority on the subject you are knowledgeable. Once you start to do this, people will notice and take more notice when you do leave a link for people to follow.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Facebook is the market leader in a social arena that is known as social networking. Social networks allow users to have a profile, share pictures, videos and news with other “friends” on the site.
From a marketing perspective, there a quite a few opportunities for companies to promote their brands on the site, the main one being the “groups” section. This is where users start a group on a subject, any subject, and people join the group to show their allegiance, add related content, and make comments about what has been happening on the group topic.
Many companies have started groups related to their company; most have been unsuccessful (interpreted as not much activity or few members of the group). The reason for this is that the companies have started their groups without much thought or planning. For a group to work, you have to reach an audience that is interested in what you have to offer. To do this, you have provide points of interest in the group page to draw people’s interest. These include posting videos, uploading pictures, starting discussions and leaving comments about your company, turning it into almost a blog. If you don’t show interest in your Facebook, why is anybody else going to? Ask friends and colleagues to join the group, and contribute to it.
The idea is to make it into a “hub” for people interested in your company, a place where people can gather to discuss, debate and ponder your brand. The web 2.0 element really comes into play here, as people can submit their content to the group and discuss and rate it.
It can also be possible to boost the popularity of your group by referring to it in other marketing you do. Try adding a "see us on Facebook" tag to your emails, posters and other literature.
Ideally a group should become almost viral, with its users recommending it to their friends, and so on. The group should grow organically.
Another place where you can promote your company on Facebook is on your profile. In Facebook profiles the social network gives you opportunity to name your employer, and give their web site URL. This link is “no-followed” however, meaning that the “link juice” will not pass from Facebook to your web site. There should be some traffic resulting from this link, however, as people nosey enough to go through your profile may want to see the company where their friend works. The amount of traffic that such a link generates may be small, (check your analytics for the exact amount of people referred) but multiplied by all your employees, and you might find a reasonable number of people are sent to your website by Facebook profiles. It might be a good idea to ask all your employees who have a Facebook profile to add their employer details (with the web link), as many people choose to leave that section of their profile blank.
Facebook widgets/applications are another place on Facebook where firms can promote their product. An example of where a brand has successfully ran a Facebook widget campaign is MSN messenger, who have seen their "Add Me on Messenger" widget taken up by a large number of people. Users simply click on the icon, and it enables them to add the person with the profile and widget to their MSN Messenger list.
This commercial oriented application is a rarity however, as most applications and widgets used on the site are of a non-branded and non-associated "fun" nature. The application area of the site is a notoriously anti corporate one, where it can be very difficult to gain visibility for your brand/product, so be wary.
Another drawback of attempting to market on this section of Facebook is that since the recent radical redesign of the site, the "Boxes" section of the site (as it is called) has been relegated in status from being seen at the end of the everyone's profile to a separate tab at the top of people's profiles that doesn't get seen much anymore. So the marketing value of this section of the site has decreased.
The last place on Facebook where its possible to promote a brand or product is in the events section. Here individuals or organisations can make a post advertising an event that is going to take place, giving the option of displaying the date, time, venue and a poster or image advertising the event.
In the same vein as the groups, there is the opportunity for the organisers, and anyone who has been invited to the event, to add photos, videos, discussions and comments on the event. This gives the web 2.0 element that is so important in today's social media environment.
So you can see that Facebook offers many prospects for the budding SMO practititioner. Sign up and start "poking" today, and see what marketing on Facebook can do for your business.
If you are looking for a guide in what can be a rather daunting marketing arena, then give SearchPath a call. We are experienced at marketing through Facebook, and can give your business an edge in this cutting edge environment.
Sunday, February 08, 2009
Delicious is probably the most popular and well-known of a breed of social sites known as Social Bookmarking sites.
Delicious is basically an online bookmarking service with other features attached. It allows you to store your bookmarks in the “cloud”, which means you can access them from any computer, not just your own. The site allows to you share your bookmarks with other users, and likewise, you can view other people’s bookmarks.
One of the first things you should do when signing up for Delicious is to bookmark your own site or sites. Ideally you should get your team or even whole company to do this, as the more users that bookmark a site, the more likely it is that it will rank in the “most popular” page on Delicious, where the sites receiving the most bookmark tags are shown. This most popular list is the prime piece of real estate on the site, as it gets the most traffic and therefore referrals to other sites.
Bear in mind, however, that it can be very difficult to get onto the most popular page as the site at the top of the list (at the time of writing) had 500 tags. This would be beyond the stretch of most companies to get that many employees to tag their sites. This is probably best as asking that many employees to tag your site could be seen as spamming the system, which thrives on being a genuine reflection of user's tastes. As a marketer you have to make a decision between marketing and promoting your site on one hand, and damaging the web through overkill and spam. Its up to each person to constantly review the ethos of what they are doing to make sure they are not majorly going against the “spirit” of the web.
It is possible for all new sites to be seen in the “recent bookmarks” section of the site. This displays all the sites that have been bookmarked recently on the site, and gives exposure for sites that might not make it to the popular page.
Like YouTube, there are no direct “do follow” links (ones that pass PageRank from one site to another) to be found on Delicious. However, having your site(s) bookmarked and tagged (under a topic) on the site makes it more likely that a Delicious user would see your site and click on a link to go to the site, providing you with traffic and branding value.
The next part of this SMO guide can be found on this blog next week.
Thursday, February 05, 2009
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.
YouTubeBy 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.
